Television may be in a new golden age, but the 69th Cannes Film Festival (May 11–22) proved that the big screen is nowhere close to death. Standouts from this year’s strong slate:
• Jeff Nichols’ beautifully restrained Loving, featuring sterling performances from Joel Edgerton and Ruth Negga as Richard and Mildred Loving, the interracial couple whose nine-year struggle led to the landmark 1967 civil rights decision Loving v. Virginia.
• In Jim Jarmusch’s radiant Paterson, Adam Driver is marvelous as a New Jersey bus driver who writes poetry in his spare moments, holding his own against a taciturn, scene-stealing bulldog.
• If there were a Palme d’Or for sheer awesomeness, it would go to Kristen Stewart, featured in both Woody Allen’s period comedy Café Society and Olivier Assayas’ shimmering, shivery ghost story Personal Shopper. At once laid-back and ablaze, Stewart (below) is also one of the great cool-girl actors of our time.
–S.Z.
This appears in the May 30, 2016 issue of TIME.
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