Judging the Cannes Lineup, Plus Special Guest Christopher Abbott

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0:32Ryan Lattanzio:Welcome back to Screen Talk after we took a well-earned break last week and's on vacation. This is Ryan Latanzio from New York catching you up on the latest goings-on in Hollywood, which this week will actually be the latest goings-on in France as we dive into the Cannes Film Festival lineup with our chief film critic, David Ehrlich. Later, I'll be joined by a special guest who is actor Christopher Abbott, who merely a day after I sat down with him in our New York offices to talk about his performance in Broadway's new edition of Death of a Salesman, as well as his upcoming Netflix miniseries, East of Eden, it was announced that he is having a baby with Aubrey Plaza.

1:09Ryan Lattanzio:But before we get into all that, thank you, David, for jumping on this morning. Were you up early to glance at this year's Cannes lineup? My friend Ryan, you know that I was not. I was holding on to every spare minute of sleep I possibly could, knowing that when I woke up, my wonderful and dutiful colleagues at IndieWire, namely Ryan Letanzio, would have already put together and reported the lineup. And all I would have to do at like Christmas morning, a holiday I've never celebrated, but can appreciate from afar, I could reach over and turn on my phone and see what sort of bounty awaited us. But it is always a very exciting morning.

1:46And I thought this year was no exception.

1:48Ryan Lattanzio:Yeah, this lineup is quite striking in its anti-commerciality in the sense that there are not really any big American movies in the lineup. It's very heavy on auteurs from around the world and the art house, which obviously is very exciting for us. Maybe less exciting for our web traffic. I don't know. But what films are you most looking forward to? What is traffic anymore in 2026? What jumps out at me from this list? I mean, there's not there's not a ton of surprises. A lot of the films that we see here were rumored and heavily tipped to be at the festival but obviously anytime christian manju is back with another movie let alone his first english language film fjord with sebastian stan um and is for not to ryan's in that i just assume she's in everything these days she is um great that's a plus for sure but i christian manju is a phenomenal filmmaker um he i don't really think has missed in the course of his future career his last movie rmn i thought was a real standout um this story about a family who moves to um i believe the renata rhymes for the characters norwegian town um only to receive a prickly reception sounds right in line with what he does best uh and i can't wait to see that neon already has the rights already jockeying for palmdale reposition with that one for sure so yeah that jumped out of the top of my list always welcome to see Hirokazu Koreeda back in the competition lineup he's been there once since winning with Shoplifters or twice actually no he had Broker and then more recently and more strongly had Monster and now he's back with Sheep in the Box which sounds like his version of AI not the concept but the Steven Spielberg film and it's one of two films this year we have Ryusuke Hamaguchi with all of a sudden another case of a director working outside of their native language.

3:43That film is set in France. I don't know. There's a lot of stuff here. I know you're a big Zabigensiv man, are you not?

3:51Ryan Lattanzio:Yeah, I love that guy who has made only one hopeless movie after another basically at this point. And he was quite ill from COVID complications in 2021 through he was basically hospitalized for almost a year. And so there was a question if he was even going to survive. So this is really his first movie since Loveless, which was at Cannes in 2017. It's actually one of my favorite movies ever. And speaking of hopeless, it is truly devastatingly, there is not a glimmer of hope in that movie. And he tends to work in these political allegories that are grounded in a real emotional state. But there is a glimmer of hope in the competition lineup, namely Na Hongjin's film Hope, which has been in the works for a long time and does bring some commerciality, if you want to call it that, to the competition slate.

4:44I mean, he has not made a feature since The Wailing, the Korean filmmaker, and The Yellow Sea before that. I've been following his career since The Chaser. I think it was in 2008. And with Hope, he returns with a cast that includes Alicia Vikander and Michael Fassbender. What are the odds you'll ever see those two together? And also Taylor Russell. And the rest of the cast is led by Korean actors. It is a genre story set along the DMZ in a village called Hope Harbor. The story begins with a tiger who is suspected to have appeared. And the police chief is alerted. I don't know. I'm clearly reading the Wikipedia for the first time live on air here.

5:26So I'll stop doing that. But I'm assuming that the title is couched in some degree of irony, but maybe an answer to the hopelessness that we see from not just some of the other filmmakers here, but I don't know, life itself in the year of our Lord 2026. But I have hope for some other movies. I mean, Ira Sachs, again, he's the sole American filmmaker represented in the competition right now. And there was a lot of scuttlebutt about whether James Gray and his film Paper Tiger was going to be in the lineup. When I talked to James about this in January, he was suggesting that Venice may be more likely.

6:05But rumors have surfaced in the last couple of weeks that the film was submitted to the festival. I cannot corroborate those rumors, but I'm hopeful that that will be one of the films that is added to the competition lineup down the line. I think there's at least room for one more, although this is an unusually. Usually when Terry Fromeau unveils the lineup in early April, it's like 15, 16, 17 titles in competition with room to add four or five more. And this year, I believe he came right out of the game with 21. So there's not too much room to grow.

6:36Ryan Lattanzio:yeah in the announcement he did hint that there is one film that will be announced that we were all expecting to show up and not to worry that it will definitely be there so i have to imagine that it's probably the james gray movie it's certainly not going to be the terrence malick movie that continues to be on these lists every year that probably doesn't even exist at this point but james gray i don't maybe he's gone to venice i can't pull that fact off the top of my head but almost all of his movies and he has he was there with ad astra of all films oh okay yeah So that was the one that didn't go there.

7:07Ryan Lattanzio:And Little Odessa, I think, once upon a time. All right. So he's a he's a mainstay of the Lido in some ways, but more likely to be at Cannes. Another one that is normally in competition that was put out of it is Nicholas Winding Refn. And I don't know if that bodes well that the movie was not put in competition. He's done a couple series since last putting the neon demon in the competition. That was like 2013. But to be I mean, for me, he's kind of been on a downward slope since Drive, which was the movie that made him a household name. I mean, yeah, as far as I'm concerned, the most exciting thing he's done in the last 13 years is to lend his likeness to Hideo Kojima's games, Death Stranding.

7:45And so that was a welcome place to see him. But yeah, I mean, I'm excited to have him back in the feature space. I think the idea of him making something in Tokyo, being sort of outside of his comfort zone or his usual milieu, whatever that might be. I mean, he's got his movies all over the place. It could be interesting. But I don't think that the competition environment has served him particularly well. I think people expect a certain kind of movie. I think that sometimes things that are a little bit more transgressive, a little bit more aggressive in their aesthetic. They can be, competition is a difficult place for polarizing films.

8:26And so maybe an out of competition slot, which is a step above, so to speak, from like Cannes premiere or something, if there's still some respect to it, could serve him well. You know, I'm looking at the out of competition lineup and it does feel like, you know, a Guillaume Canet movie, a movie directed by Andy Garcia. I mean, I think Nicholas Winding Reppin will probably be the main attraction in that sidebar.

8:49Ryan Lattanzio:uh yeah actually finally in the announcement terry firmeau described the canned premiere section as movies we felt like showing so that doesn't really bode well for john travolta's directorial debut propeller one-way night coach nor does that title really bode well for anyone's seo plans in terms of writing about the movie well i mean who among us who among us uh in on this world does not remember the world premiere in i think this was before the official introduction of the cam premiere section, but for all intents and purposes was the same thing, of Gaudi starring John Travolta, which I had the honor of attending in person.

9:29And that really opened my eyes to the fact that not all cam premieres are created equal. And I think that given our financial and time-related budgets at the festival, it is entirely possible, if not extremely likely, that we will sadly return home to the United States having not seen Propeller One Way Night Coach. But it'll be on Apple TV a week later.

9:53Ryan Lattanzio:So not to worry, you can watch it when you get home. But I will be making every effort to see Kiyoshi Kurosawa's The Samurai and the Prisoner, which is in that same section. And I can't speak to why that film is not elsewhere in the lineup, but there's also a Volker Schlondorf film in the same. So, you know, these things should be seen and judged on their own merits. But there's a part of me that's like, the competition lineup is robust, but a Kyoshi Kurosawa movie, especially coming off the highs of Cloud and Chime, to have that in that section is curious. So what about Unsearch and Regard? For the most part, I don't know who most of these people are, and I'm excited to get to know them.

10:35Ryan Lattanzio:But a couple things that stood out, Jordan Firstman, a comedian and actor, is making his directorial debut with something called Club Kid, which is shot by a Nora producer, Alex Coco, of all people, as the director of photography. And then we have Jane Schoenbrunn, finally at Cannes, with their film Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma. And then the only other one that I'm interested in is a film by Sandra Vollner called Every Time, which I don't really know much about, but I saw her last film, which is called The Trouble with Being Born. I don't know if you saw that, but it's a very disturbing movie about a man who is having sex with his robot child, which is really a sex doll.

11:16So it was really that last word that brought home the disturbing element to it. You know, for the most part of that sentence, I was like, this is not so bad. Yeah. Who among us? But yeah, you know, the beauty of the uncertain regards section is that, you know, yes, it's top line by a handful of familiar names, at least familiar to us. But this is really the discovery section for me. I mean, I tend to feel even though the director's Fortnite lineup, which has not yet been announced, is often maybe more esoteric and less and more financially challenging, let's say. I feel like I am more familiar with the filmmakers who are programmed over there for the most part than I am with the international lineup who appear in a certain regard.

12:01And there's a real anxiety over the course of the festival, similar to being at a festival more bent towards discoveries like Sundance, where you're always sort of keeping tabs on how these movies are received because they can be some real discoveries that you don't want to miss. So I'm perfectly happy not knowing too much about any of these movies at the moment, but looking forward to keeping my eyes on them. Obviously, Jane Schoenbrun's film, the very top of my list, you know, for the festival as a whole. And I thought that movie might be in director's Fortnite, but I see it as a real vote of confidence that it's in certain regard.

12:36and Jordan Firstman who I only really know from Rotting in the Sun and to a lesser extent I Love LA is you know this movie just based on the one screenshot I've seen and the premise gives me real party monster vibes which are not vibes that I'm usually hungry for but I think again Jordan Firstman making a movie that is accepted to play in uncertain regard is again a vote of confidence and so one that I'm excited to see yeah and then the uh the full fill with quentin quentin depew who is someone that i uh you know i'm glad he exists i tend to find his films more amusing in theory i thought you know when his films are opening the festival or you know in sort of more in your face slots it can be a little bit of a chore fulfill is probably the film of his that i've been most excited to see just based on the premise and the strength of its cast, but that's in the midnight screenings, which is always difficult to get to a can.

13:37But I think we might be making an effort to check that one out.

13:40Ryan Lattanzio:Yeah, I'll do my best. You know, he churns out a movie or two every year and I tune in now and again. But so we will see about this one. The other totally just back to the competition for a second. The one that was totally not on my radar, which means I wasn't doing my job very well was another laszlo nemesh film and once we if we thought we were done with um world war ii dramas from this filmmaker he's got yet another one so i don't know if you saw orphan that was at venice last year but that was quite dark even for my taste so uh yeah i did not i am i feel like a couple of films behind on laszlo nemesh i uh i'm current unfortunately i had i was not moved by Son of Saul.

14:24That was not my cup of tea as far as Holocaust cinema goes. And he, I don't know, he's never really done it for me. Maybe this will be a grand return. But yeah, I also don't know if I knew that he had another one in the can. But there are other filmmakers who have been at other film festivals who have been at Venice like him, who have been in lesser sections of can and are returning to competition like Koji Fukada, whose Love Life is one of my favorite and most devastating films in the last like five years or so, is returning with Nagi Notes, which I know absolutely nothing about. And Arthur Harari, who's the co-writer of Anatomy of a Fall, is here with his neon-acquired directorial debut, The Unknown.

15:07So that's another thing to keep an eye on for. You got the Pedro Almodovar film, which is already open in Spain and drawing pretty positive reviews. One outlet whose track record I cannot speak to, I saw called it his best film. but I think it was El Mundo. Yeah, yeah.

15:25Ryan Lattanzio:No, he's given up on English language movies, which maybe is - I think maybe for the best. Yes. You know, it's funny because we, there's so many filmmakers now in this competition, especially who are, as we said, operating outside of their native tongue, often in English. And that is like a, it's a very, it's very rare that that pans out and vice versa, that English language filmmakers do well making movies in other languages. It has certainly happened. I think of a certified copy one of my ten favorite movies ever made falling into that category but yeah it's funny that you have so many filmmakers going one direction and Pedro Moldovar going the other back to his native language here so there's a lot to look forward to Valeska Grisbach who made Western as another movie Marie Kreitzer and Paul Polakowski who made Aida and what was the other one?

16:19Cold War. Cold War, right. It's back with Fatherland, which I believe was formerly titled, the working title was 1947.

16:28Ryan Lattanzio:1949. Whatever, it's irrelevant now. You know, this is the confusion. This is like, we've got to take the numbers of it. And then Rodrigo Sorrigoyan is a name that I know and we'll have to Google right now to remember why I know that name. Oh, he made The Beast. Okay. Yeah, he also did a movie called Madre that I think I had to review for IndieWire during the lockdown. That actually was quite good. So yeah, I'm curious about that one. How do you feel, just sort of your general temperature relative to how you felt the morning of the lineup announcement in the past? How do you feel going into the festival?

17:04Ryan Lattanzio:This one I'm pretty excited about just because I am someone who is bent mostly toward European and other global art house kind of names that aren't really familiar to a lot of people in the U.S. that are not, you know, beyond casual readers of IndieWire. So to me, I'm very excited about this lineup, but I am curious about what that 22nd movie will be, which I have to imagine will be some sort of American entry. Yeah, I think Paper Tiger is a good guess. But I also think what you're seeing is that, you know, there's been a lot of trepidation. I know this from talking, you know, at length to distributors recently about some of the poorly received festival premieres that American films have had in recent years and how it's been perceived to have dinged their movies, sometimes in unrecoverable ways.

17:49And I think that that sensitivity doesn't quite extend to international cinema in the same way, for whatever reason. I mean, I don't think the knives are out anymore, but it's just, I don't know. There's a feeling that American films in particular can really sort of die on the vine at these major festival premieres. And so maybe this is the beginning of a trend where people pull away but also at the same time uh can in particular has become so much more crucial to the awards system that whole song and dance and um you know an invaluable way of getting movies into that conversation to the pipeline so it is a real push and pull but you know i think you'll see that whichever of these films are coming to the festival with uh distribution in place are really just going to put their best foot forward and only submit the films that they are confident are going to have a warm reception.

18:46So how that plays out, we shall see. But yeah, I think it's an exciting lineup. And I look forward to Director's Fortnight and fingers crossed for James Gray.

18:55Ryan Lattanzio:Well, on that note, David, thank you for coming on the podcast today. And obviously I'll see you in the office before Cannes, but I certainly will see you there. Indeed. In the meantime, we are going to seg into my interview with Christopher Abbott. And then Anne will be back on the podcast next week. So thank you, David. My pleasure. Today on the Screen Talk podcast, I have Christopher Abbott with us. And he is, I think, one of the best actors of his generation and has been giving really fascinating, complex performances for more than a decade. Like a decade and a half now, I think. And I'm not just talking about Girls, which is what many people know him from, but other films like James White, I was a really big fan of.

19:35Ryan Lattanzio:And things like Possessor, Vox Lux, Poor Things. Last year in Testament of Anne Lee and Wolfman. And now you are on Broadway with Death of a Salesman playing Biff Loman. And so you've done Sam Shepard. You've done Annie Baker, John Patrick Shanley. And now this is your first time doing Arthur Miller, right? In a production level. I mean, I've worked on it in class, you know, back in the day. But yeah. Yeah. What was your relationship to the play before starting in this version? Well, I'd only worked on it in school. When I was in school, I worked on the, you know, the first scene in the play between the two brothers.

20:10A lot of guys work on that scene. But I'd never seen a live production of Death of the Salesman. And Laurie Metcalf, who's in the show, we sort of both hadn't seen it for similar reasons. I think we both do this thing where if we think there's a time in the future where we may do said play, you sort of hold off on seeing that play, just in case so you're not influenced by it. But I've seen the movie, the Dustin Hoffman movie. So otherwise, I knew the play, read it, but I had never seen a production of it.

20:45Ryan Lattanzio:It's funny. And I think other people have this experience. I almost like Mandela Effect convinced myself that I had seen it or read it before. And I really haven't. So to me, it was really entirely new. And obviously - You hadn't read it either. I hadn't read it. No, no. I'm sure it was like on a syllabus somewhere. And I just didn't. I skipped it. I have plenty of those from school. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. And this one's directed by Joe Mantello, who is someone who, when his name is attached to anything, I feel like you know you're in pretty sure hands. So tell me how you got cast in the show and what the audition process was like.

21:17Ryan Lattanzio:I mean, you're not a stranger to theater, but it has to be somewhat different as auditioning for a film. Yeah. Well, I mean, I was lucky I didn't audition for this. But, you know, I've done, like, readings with Joe. And, you know, he had seen my work and I had just gotten asked to do it, which was really – I was lucky. for that. So there was no audition process. There was for The Happies, Ben Aylers, who plays my brother. I got to read with him and some other guys. So I sort of had the experience of, I wasn't auditioning for myself, but I sort of had a little bit of that process for auditioning The Happies.

21:55Ryan Lattanzio:So this play, it's been around since 1949, and it's one that maybe some audiences feel they're familiar with. So what what is relevant or interesting about revisiting this play now? Obviously, there is a lot of thematics in it about sort of the crush of capitalism on this family, disillusionment with the American dream, all of those things that are timeless in a way. But, you know, why? I don't know why I'm not this. Yeah, well, I mean, like the bigger overarching themes like, you know, the the fall of the American dream, you know, it's it was relevant then and is still relevant today but i think just in a very different um just through a different lens you know what i mean what what what the fall of the american dream sort of looked like you know i'm back in the 50s which i was i wasn't around for um uh you know i guess you would call it like the shrinking of the middle class really which is like continuing to happen but you know i mean you can even relate it to nowadays to like whether it's ai taking over jobs and like you know You know, you're just just the feeling of one being expendable is I think is all has always been a theme that people can relate to.

23:09But, you know, what's beautiful about this play is those themes are always stand true. But the writing and the interplay between what this family is, you know, especially father and sons, you know, that that theme is always going to be relevant. and um i've noticed that this is a play where like a lot of grown men cry you know what i mean because of because of that the father and son theme you know like i've walked outside after a play often and you know grown men are sort of still like tearing up and that's um you know i think i think that says something it's like it's probably the hardest demographic to to get a squeeze a tear out of, you know?

23:56So, yeah, I think those very human themes play true.

24:03Ryan Lattanzio:Well, this character of Biff is very restless, and he showed a lot of promise early, and then that sort of collapsed for various reasons. I mean, he finds his father in a very compromising position. There are all these things that just don't really go well for him. You're talking about grown men crying, but how do you feel at the end of doing this show every night is it is it emotionally depleting in this way it is yeah yeah i mean it it definitely is i'm not i'm not one that like you know once i'm done with the play or movie or whatever i like once i'm done with it shake it off and you go home but the thing with this play in this part the thing that you it's that is hard to shake is what you're you know you're i'm i'm my job i'm trying my best to um completely believe in the story that's happening on stage while doing it so you you you know you're acting quote unquote but you know you're still putting your body through you know even though if you're drumming it up and you're making it up those are those sort of emotional you know big emotional swings so it is it is depleting because you know your body doesn't know the difference you know what i mean so it is after after every show i am i am pretty just depleted yeah uh one creative choice well there's a couple really interesting creative choices about the show.