--- title: Cannes Reviews: 3 Faces and Leto, From Exiled Directors description: Iranian director Jafar Panahi and Russian director Kirill Serebrennikov couldn't travel to Cannes, but their films certainly made an impact. canonical: https://time.com/5275701/cannes-review-3-faces-and-leto/ author: Stephanie Zacharek article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2018-05-14T18:10:25.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-02-23T20:15:42.634Z article:section: Entertainment og:title: Cannes Review: Two Films from Directors in Exile og:description: Jafar Panahi's '3 Faces' and Kirill Serebrennikov's 'Leto' og:url: https://time.com/5275701/cannes-review-3-faces-and-leto/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt385a2981396364e1/69893050096a9481706a2653/leto-cannes.jpg?branch=production&width=3840&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: Teo Yoo, Irina Starshenbaum and Roma Zver attend the photocall for "Leto" during the 71st annual Cannes Film Festival on May 10, 2018 in Cannes, France. og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Cannes Review: Two Films from Directors in Exile twitter:description: Jafar Panahi's '3 Faces' and Kirill Serebrennikov's 'Leto' twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt385a2981396364e1/69893050096a9481706a2653/leto-cannes.jpg?branch=production&width=3840&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Cannes Reviews: Two Films from Directors in Exile, Jafar Panahi's _3 Faces_ and Kirill Serebrennikov's _Leto_ > Sponsored content. 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Terms and conditions apply. * Savings buckets are a feature of Ally Bank's Savings Account. * No ATM fees from Ally Bank at Allpoint and Moneypass ATMs plus we reimburse for fees charged by other ATM owners nationwide up to $10 per statement cycle. * Early direct deposit offers eligible direct deposits up to two days sooner. * Spending buckets are a feature of Ally Bank's Spending Account.  by [Stephanie Zacharek](https://time.com/author/stephanie-zacharek/)  ## Stephanie Zacharek Film Critic May 14, 2018 6:10 PM UTC  Teo Yoo, Irina Starshenbaum and Roma Zver attend the photocall for "Leto" during the 71st annual Cannes Film Festival on May 10, 2018 in Cannes, France. Teo Yoo, Irina Starshenbaum and Roma Zver attend the photocall for "Leto" during the 71st annual Cannes Film Festival on May 10, 2018 in Cannes, France.Dominique Charriau—WireImage/Getty Images  by [Stephanie Zacharek](https://time.com/author/stephanie-zacharek/)  ## Stephanie Zacharek Film Critic May 14, 2018 6:10 PM UTC The right to make any film you want, any way you want is something filmmakers in most countries take for granted. But no one can afford “It can’t happen here” complacency, and this year, the Cannes competition slate includes films from two directors whose home countries have prevented them from traveling to attend the festival, despite appeals from festival director Thierry Fremaux. Russian director Kirill Serebrennikov’s wistful and exhilarating _Leto_ (or _Summer_) premiered on the festival’s second day. Jafar Panahi’s gracefully made but only modestly engaging _3 Faces_ was presented Saturday evening. Serebrennikov was arrested in August on charges of corruption and has since remained under house arrest in Russia. Panahi, the Iranian director who was sentenced to six years in prison in 2010—and who served several years of that term under house arrest—is now allowed to move more freely within Iran, though he is still barred from making films. If anything, these restrictions have spurred him on: _3 Faces_ is the fourth film he’s made under the ban. An absence can be a kind of presence, and although _3 Faces_ is far from Panahi’s best work, it’s still a solid primer on how much a skilled filmmaker can achieve with very few resources. In the story, the principal actors play themselves, or versions of themselves. Young Iranian actress Marziyeh Rezaie plays a woman whom we first see in a small film-within-a-film that kicks off the story. She’s distressed because she wants nothing more than a career as an actress, and she has a chance to study at a prestigious drama school in Tehran, but her parents refuse to give their consent. She has appealed to Behnaz Jafari—a famous Iranian actress in real life, as in this film—for help, but Jafari hasn’t responded. Razaie records all of this on a cellphone video. The end of it shows Marziyeh slipping a noose over her head and hanging herself. The video reaches Panahi, and he brings it to Jafari’s attention. Together, they set off in Panahi’s SUV to see if they can verify that the desperate young girl is really dead—or, if she isn’t, to find her. _3 Faces_ is the gentlest of road movies, seemingly a nod to the films of Abbas Kiorastami. (Panahi served as his assistant director early in his career.) Panahi’s camera lens soaks in the landscape—its chief feature is a narrow, dusty, seemingly endless swerving road—but conversation is the chief feature here: He and Jafari needle and quiz one another, each unsure of the other’s motives and true thoughts as they argue over the veracity and intent of the girl’s video. The “three faces” of the title refer to three generations of Iranian actresses—Rezaie, Jafari and an older, retired actress and dancer named Shahrazade, who never appears on camera but who has lived an independent life that seems dangerously defiant in the context of modern-day Iran. Her absence is also a kind of presence, a ghost from the past who also represents a possibility for the future. _3 Faces_ isn’t an overtly political film; its boldness lies in the fact that it got made at all. And Serebrennikov’s _Leto_ doesn’t seem like the sort of thing that would ruffle official feathers; in fact, it’s soon to open theatrically in Russia. But Serebrennikov’s colleagues in the Russian artistic community—in addition to making films, he was formerly the director of the Gogol Center, a Moscow experimental theater, and has been vocal in his criticism of Vladimir Putin—have stated their certainty that his arrest is politically motivated. The cast of _Leto_ held up a “Free Serebrennikov” banner at the film’s premiere. But even if _Leto_ doesn’t trumpet any obvious political agenda, it still feels dangerous, like a sidelong glance that shoots daggers. The movie is a fictionalized reverie about the life of Russian rock star Victor Tsoi (played, with slouchy charisma, by the German-born actor Teo Yoo), who died in a car crash in 1990\. Set in Leningrad in the 1980s—a time when Soviet musicians were deeply in love with the likes of T. Rex, David Bowie and Iggy Pop, and eager to translate those influences into their own language of sound—it’s a movie about the optimism of cynicism, as a blunt force that keeps pushing forward. Shot mostly in scruffy-elegant black-and-white—with some exhilarating fantasy segments enhanced by animation that mimics the effect of film stock with the emulsion scratched off—_Leto_ is one of those movies that whisks us into a world that feels both familiar and fresh, like a sense memory of a life we might have lived if we’d been born in another decade or on another continent. In mood and tone—and as a depiction of the beginning of something big, and of the need to shout, if not twist-and-shout—it resembles Iain Softley’s marvelous and largely forgotten 1994 Beatles origin story, _Backbeat_. _Leto_’s plot, if you could even call it that, goes every which-way: There’s a love triangle between Victor, Mike (Roman Bilyik)—the slightly older, more established musician who takes him under his wing—and Natasha (the radiant Irina Starshenbaum), Mike’s wife and the mother of his child. But the movie also details the ins and outs of making rock’n’roll in the latter days of the old Soviet Union: To become a member of a music “club,” and to be allowed to perform in public, Victor has to submit his song lyrics to an appointed official, who scrutinizes them for any hidden political content—or malcontent. _Leto_ is a marvelous document not just of a time and a place but of a mode of being. In the ‘80s, those of us who loved Talking Heads and Blondie and Lou Reed knew that people all over the world loved them too, even though there was no social media to tell us so. Sure, you could figure it out from reading magazines or watching television or talking to friends in other countries. That’s logical. But I prefer to think of that shared love as a kind of telepathy between young people all over the world. (The movie also features some of Victor Tsoi’s original music, which most Americans aren’t likely to know.) In that sense, _Leto_ is simply about youth, which is so obvious a subject—and so easily confused with that other, coarser notion, nostalgia—that you might think it’s not enough to hang a whole movie on. On the other hand, maybe it’s everything. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/5275701/cannes-review-3-faces-and-leto/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/5275701/cannes-review-3-faces-and-leto/"},"headline":"Cannes Reviews: Two Films from Directors in Exile, Jafar Panahi's 3 Faces and Kirill Serebrennikov's Leto","datePublished":"2018-05-14T18:10:25.000Z","dateModified":"2026-02-23T20:15:42.634Z","description":"One from a Russian director on house arrest, another from an Iranian filmmaker barred from making films","url":"https://time.com/5275701/cannes-review-3-faces-and-leto/","keywords":["movies"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt385a2981396364e1/69893050096a9481706a2653/leto-cannes.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Stephanie Zacharek","jobTitle":"Film Critic","url":"https://time.com/author/stephanie-zacharek/"}],"articleSection":"Entertainment","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt385a2981396364e1/69893050096a9481706a2653/leto-cannes.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"Teo Yoo, Irina Starshenbaum and Roma Zver attend the photocall for \"Leto\" during the 71st annual Cannes Film Festival on May 10, 2018 in Cannes, France.","caption":"Teo Yoo, Irina Starshenbaum and Roma Zver attend the photocall for \"Leto\" during the 71st annual Cannes Film Festival on May 10, 2018 in Cannes, France.","creditText":"Dominique Charriau—WireImage/Getty Images","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/entertainment/","name":"Entertainment"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/movies/","name":"movies"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/5275701/cannes-review-3-faces-and-leto/","name":"Cannes Reviews: Two Films from Directors in Exile, Jafar Panahi's 3 Faces and Kirill Serebrennikov's Leto"}}]}] ```