Cannes 2024: China & India Back In Action; Saudi Debut; Taiwan & Vietnam Rising

Although this year’s Cannes line-up is one of the most commercial in a while, it’s also one that highlights how much cross-cultural collaboration we still have in international cinema, and how borders continue to blend and shift, despite the divisions thrown up by politics, war and pandemic.

There are examples of this cultural synthesis throughout the selection. Competition includes a film by a Denmark-based Iranian filmmaker, about one of the most divisive figures in US politics, in Ali Abbasi’s Donald Trump biopic The Apprentice.

Critics Week has programmed Jonathan Millet’s Ghost Trail, a film from a French director about a Syrian man pursuing war criminals, starring French-Tunisian actor Adam Bessa. Directors Fortnight has Matthew Rankin’s Universal Language, a Persian and French-language film from a Canadian director that is set between Tehran and Winnipeg.

Many of the films in this year’s selection are tales of migrants, and if the characters and story-telling aren’t crossing borde…