Presented in the Un Certain Regard section of the Cannes 2026 film festival, “Ulya” marks the latest feature by Latvian filmmaker Viesturs Kairiss. The film is a co-production involving Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia and Poland, and focuses on the early years of legendary basketball player Ulyana Semyonova, one of the most dominant athletes in women’s basketball history.

Set in Soviet Latvia in 1964, the film follows teenage Ulya, an Old Believer girl growing up in a remote rural community. Nearly two meters tall, she struggles to find her place in a world that sees her only through her physical difference. When a school photograph reaches basketball scouts in Riga, she is brought into the Soviet sports system and pushed toward a destiny she never fully chose for herself.

For Kairiss, however, the film was never intended as a conventional sports biopic. “I’m not interested in legends in that sense,” the director explained. “I wanted to make a film about a human being and about how difficult it is to accept yourself when the world constantly asks you to conform.”

One of the most striking aspects of “Ulya” is the decision to cast Latvian actor Kārlis Arnolds Avots in the role of Ulya. According to Kairiss, the idea did not emerge from a conceptual provocation but directly from the actor himself.

The director recalled that Avots had long been obsessed with the idea of portraying Semyonova, initially imagining the project for the stage. Only later did Kairiss realise the cinematic potential of such an approach. “In theatre, a male actor playing a female role is something familiar,” he said. “In cinema it felt almost impossible. That impossibility immediately attracted me.”

The choice became central to the film’s emotional and thematic identity. Rather than focusing on realism or imitation, Ulya explores the universal feeling of being perceived as different, alien or excessive within society.

For Kairiss, the character’s struggle transcends gender or sport. “Every person has an inner giant or an inner freak,” he noted. “At some point in life, you have to decide whether to hide it, destroy it or accept it.”

While deeply intimate, “Ulya” also carries a strong political dimension. Set during Latvia’s occupation by the Soviet Union, the film portrays a society shaped by ideological control and cultural suppression.

Kairiss stressed the importance of revisiting this historical context today, particularly against the backdrop of the ongoing war in Ukraine and renewed fears across the Baltic region. The director described Semyonova as a symbolic figure for Latvians of that era because, despite being Russian, she publicly embraced the Latvian language and identity at a time when Soviet authorities encouraged cultural assimilation.

“For Latvians, she represented a possibility of remaining ourselves,” the filmmaker explained. “Even small gestures carried political meaning during those years.”

Rather than reconstructing history as distant memory, the director approached the period through contemporary resonance. Themes of visibility, exclusion and social pressure remain central to the film’s emotional landscape.

Unlike traditional sports dramas built around victories and championships, “Ulya” deliberately avoids triumphalist storytelling. The narrative remains anchored in the protagonist’s adolescence and emotional development rather than her future fame.

According to Kairiss, this decision allowed the film to escape familiar genre clichés and move closer to an arthouse sensibility focused on vulnerability and identity. Ulya’s central conflict is not whether she can become a champion, but whether she can exist beyond the expectations imposed on her body.

The film gradually frames basketball not simply as competition, but as the only space where Ulya’s physicality acquires meaning rather than shame. Yet even success cannot entirely resolve her desire for ordinary human connection.

Reflecting on the film’s deeper message, Kairiss said that Ulya ultimately taught him the importance of recognising one’s own path in life. “You must understand your destiny and follow it,” he observed. “Sometimes instinct is the only thing guiding you.”

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Ganadora del Premio del Público en la sección Panorama de la Berlinale, donde tuvo su estreno mundial, “Sorda” es la ópera prima de la directora española Eva Libertad. Protagonizada por Miriam Garlo, actriz sorda y hermana de la directora en la vida real, la película cuenta la historia de Ángela, una mujer sorda que va a tener una hija con Héctor, su pareja oyente. La llegada de la niña sacude los cimientos de la relación y obliga a Ángela a enfrentarse a la crianza en un mundo que no está hecho para ella. Nacida de un cortometraje homónimo y sostenida por los testimonios reales de madres sordas, la película se ha vendido a más de 40 países y llega a los cines italianos el 28 de mayo distribuida por Lucky Red con el titulo Il silenzio degli altri. En Italia, Sorda ha sido presentada también en el Bif&st de Bari, donde ha recibido dos premios, y en el festival Nueva Ola de Roma.

Todo empezó con una conversación entre hermanas. Cuando Miriam Garlo comenzó a plantearse la maternidad, compartió con Eva Libertad sus miedos, sus inseguridades, las preguntas que se hacía al pensarse como madre sorda en un mundo de oyentes. De ahí nació el cortometraje, que abarcaba solo el momento en que la pareja pensaba en tener una criatura, sin que esta llegara. Pero al terminar el corto, la directora se quedó con la necesidad de ir más allá. “Me di cuenta de que quedaba mucho más por contar. Estaba con la duda de: ¿qué pasa si la criatura es oyente? ¿Qué pasa si es sorda? ¿Qué le pasa a esta madre?”. Para adentrarse en un terreno que no era el suyo, Eva Libertad no es sorda ni ha sido madre, y Miriam Garlo finalmente decidió no serlo, la directora entrevistó a madres sordas que le compartieron sus vivencias durante el embarazo, el parto y la crianza.

De todas las entrevistas, un dato se repetía sin excepción: el parto había sido traumático para cada una de aquellas mujeres. Eva Libertad supo muy pronto que esa escena tenía que estar en la película. “Todo lo que sucede cuando le quitan la mascarilla, cuando apartan a Héctor, todo lo he cogido de partos reales que me contaron esas madres sordas”. Es la única secuencia del film donde no hay nada ficcionado, y es también, probablemente, la más difícil de olvidar.

Lo que más ha sorprendido a Eva Libertad en el recorrido de la película es la cantidad de mujeres oyentes que se han reconocido en Ángela. Madres que le escriben diciendo que no son sordas pero que se han sentido exactamente así: solas, inseguras, perdidas ante la llegada de una criatura que lo mueve todo. “Al final los miedos, las inseguridades, nuestros sentimientos son mucho más parecidos de lo que pensamos. El problema es que muchas veces los vivimos en soledad y creemos que son solo nuestros. Nos iría muy bien si viésemos nuestros miedos como algo mucho más comunitario”.

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Presentada en la Competición de la 79ª edición del Festival de Cannes, “Amarga Navidad“ es la nueva película de Pedro Almodóvar, producida por El Deseo. En ella, un director de cine llamado Raúl, transparente alter ego del propio Pedro Almodóvar, interpretado por Leonardo Sbaraglia, intenta volver a filmar tras cinco años de silencio creativo, mientras lidia con las heridas que la ficción le inflige a la vida y la vida a la ficción. La película se mueve entre dos tiempos: 2004, cuando Elsa (Bárbara Lennie), una directora de publicidad, se refugia en el trabajo tras la muerte de su madre, y 2026, cuando Raúl escribe una película inspirada en esa historia. Con un reparto que incluye también a Aitana Sánchez-Gijón, Victoria Luengo, Patrick Criado, Milena Smit y Quim Gutiérrez, “Amarga Navidad” prosigue lo que Pedro Almodóvar ha definido como su díptico de dolor y creación, iniciado con “Dolor y gloria”.

Leonardo Sbaraglia cuenta que lo primeiro que hizo al recibir el papel fue volver a ver toda la filmografía de Pedro Almodóvar, intentando entender algo de su ánima, de su alma. Pero la indicación más importante llegó directamente del director, en forma de advertencia. “Lo primero que me dijo cuando me ofreció el rol fue: “no quiero un retrato amable, quiero un retrato”. Es difícil para cualquier persona ponerse en un lugar de autointerpelación, de autoflagelación, de autocuestionamiento; esa era su intención”. Todo el trabajo del actor, dice, consistió en colaborar con ese proceso de exposición radical que el propio Pedro Almodóvar estaba atravesando.

Uno de los ejes de “Amarga Navidad” es la tensión entre la creación artística y la vida de quienes rodean al creador. Leonardo Sbaraglia distingue entre el trabajo del actor, que observa e imita para dar vida a un personaje, y el del director o escritor, que toma directamente de lo real. “Puede hasta tomar el dolor y la agonía de alguna persona para que una escena funcione mejor. Ahí está la discusión casi filosófica de la película: estoy tomando tu vida, pero al mismo tiempo estoy inspirando y transformando los corazones de millones de personas a través de una obra de arte”. Para Raúl, el personaje, la vida sin filmar no tiene sentido: cinco años de inactividad han sido una verdadera agonía.

Leonardo Sbaraglia reconoce en la necesidad de crear una forma de adicción compartida por todos quienes trabajan en el oficio. Una vida de exigencia y exposición que, detrás del glamur, deja poco espacio para otra cosa. “La gente que trabajamos en esta profesión tenemos una vida de mucha exigencia y mucha exposición. Es un trabajo hermoso pero muy atípico, donde a veces no tienes mucho tiempo para vivir otra vida que no sea esta”.

Si “Dolor y gloria” hablaba del sufrimiento físico y del alma, “Amarga Navidad” se adentra en el dolor vinculado a la creación misma. Leonardo Sbaraglia describe la película como un nuevo giro en la espiral de autoficción que Pedro Almodóvar lleva explorando desde hace años, inspirado, entre otros, por Emmanuel Carrère. “Está dejando entrar al espectador en sus vulnerabilidades más profundas. Me preguntaban qué era más importante, si el dolor o la gloria, y yo creo que van de la mano y conviven todo el tiempo”. En “Amarga Navidad” hay ficción y realidad, hay apuesta por la creación a cualquier precio, caiga quien caiga.

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Winner of the People’s Choice Award at the Directors’ Fortnight of the 79th Cannes Film Festival, “I See Buildings Fall Like Lightning“ is the fifth feature by BAFTA-nominated British director Clio Barnard, adapted by Enda Walsh from Keiran Goddard‘s novel of the same name. Set in Birmingham, the film follows five friends who have known each other since childhood, now turning thirty and navigating the distance between the lives they imagined and the ones they have. Among them are Rian, played by Joe Cole, a property developer who left for London and built a successful career but lost himself in the process, and Oli, played by Jay Lycurgo, the life and soul of the group who is battling addiction as he crosses the threshold into adulthood.

Joe Cole describes Rian as a man who has everything on paper: money, a career, a London life and nothing where it counts. He is lonely, stuck at a crossroads, and the only way forward is to go back to Birmingham and reconnect with the people who know him best. “He’s dealing with a loneliness and a crossroads in his life where he doesn’t quite know who he is or what he wants from it. He has to go back to his friends to understand who he truly is”. Jay Lycurgo‘s Oli is Rian’s opposite in almost every way, rooted in Birmingham, proud of where he comes from, the glue that holds the group together. But beneath the warmth there is fragility. “He’s the life and soul of the party, the puppy of the group. But he has got an addiction. He’s very lost as he turns 30, trying to find responsibility in his life and purpose”.

Both actors arrived at the project through Enda Walsh‘s script rather than Keiran Goddard‘s novel, though the book quickly became an essential resource. Joe Cole, already a devoted admirer of Enda Walsh‘s theatre work, was struck by the ingenuity of the adaptation: the novel is written entirely as individual monologues, and Enda Walsh found a way to intertwine those first-person voices into a single, flowing narrative.

Building the familiarity of a group that has known each other since childhood required a lot of work. Clio Barnard brought in an acting coach who led the cast through games, emotional recall exercises and improvised conversations about their own pasts. Then came a ritual that sealed the bond: a group dance to The Streets’ “Don’t Mug Yourself,” rehearsed and performed together every morning before shooting. Joe Cole credits that routine with breaking down barriers. “You kind of have to leave your inhibitions at the door. Once we’d done that, we felt very safe with one another and we all enjoy the process of improvisation and play and being free within the characters”. Clio Barnard rarely called action or cut, locals from Birmingham joined the cast through open calls, and the line between film set and real life dissolved. Jay Lycurgo recalls moments where the cast simply forgot the camera was there. It was, both actors agree, exactly the kind of filmmaking they wanted to be part of.

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Winner of the People’s Choice Award at the Directors’ Fortnight of the 79th Cannes Film Festival, “I See Buildings Fall Like Lightning”is the fifth feature by BAFTA-nominated British director Clio Barnard, adapted by Enda Walsh from Keiran Goddard’s novel of the same name. Set in Birmingham, the film follows a close-knit group of five friends who have known each other since childhood, now turning thirty and trying to find their footing in a country where the old promise work hard, rise above your class no longer holds. Among them are Patrick, played by Anthony Boyle, and Shiv, played by Lola Petticrew, a couple raising two children while navigating the gap between what life was supposed to look like and what it actually is.

The familiarity between Anthony Boyle and Lola Petticrew on screen is not manufactured. The two Northern Irish actors have been close friends since they were eleven years old, performing together in plays, TV shows and films long before Clio Barnard‘s project came along. Anthony Boyle recalls their earliest collaboration with characteristic self-deprecation: a Romeo and Juliet seen by five people, four of whom left, leaving Lola Petticrew‘s father clapping alone. But beneath the jokes lies something essential to how the film works. “We don’t have to try. We see each other, trust each other so much that I know I’m in a safe pair of hands and Lola knows that they’re in a safe pair of hands. Every time I get to work with them it’s just a dream come true”.

Both actors speak with deep admiration for Enda Walsh‘s screenplay. Anthony Boyle calls him one of the best writers in Ireland and recalls that they had nearly collaborated before, on a stage production of Enda Walsh‘s Disco Pigs that fell through. When Enda Walsh offered them this project, they were overjoyed. The novel, written entirely as internal monologue, presented a particular challenge in adaptation, and Enda Walsh‘s ability to externalise that inner life was crucial. Lola Petticrew, who read Keiran Goddard‘s book after the script, describes it as a constant resource. “Keiran wrote such a beautiful novel that I’m such a massive fan of. It’s exactly the kind of project that I’ve always been interested in making”.

The film is set in Birmingham but speaks to something far broader: the sensation of reaching thirty and discovering that the rules have changed. Anthony Boyle recalls a conversation with Keiran Goddard himself: at any other point in British history, a character like Patrick would have gone to university, found a job, become a success story. “But now because of the current socioeconomic state of the world, he can’t do that. In England you used to be able to rise above your class but not with your class. He says now that’s not possible”. Lola Petticrew offers the counterpoint through Shiv, a character who, unlike the men around her, is already capable of seeing the beauty in the life she has: in the mornings, the breakfasts, the flat, the relationship. “Shiv is a seer”, Lola Petticrew says simply.

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Presented as a world premiere in the Quinzaine des Cinéastes at the 2026 Cannes Film Festival, “Death Has No Master” marks a new return to Venezuela for director Jorge Thielen Armand. The film centres on Caro, a woman who travels to Venezuela to sell her late father’s cacao plantation and finds the family mansion occupied by its former staff.

Jorge Thielen Armand explains that the film was shot in Venezuela in 2025, with production ending in September of that year. At the time, the country’s political climate was already shaping the atmosphere around the shoot. “There were already the American aircraft boats on the shores,” says Jorge Thielen Armand. “That was creating a climate of uncertainty, fear.”

The director underlines that later events are not directly part of the film, but he acknowledges that audiences may now read the work through Venezuela’s more recent political tensions. For him, that connection is less a matter of topical reference than of atmosphere: a pervasive instability that enters the behaviour of authorities, institutions and private citizens.

The family house is not only a setting in “Death Has No Master”. It functions as a character, a repository of memory and a physical embodiment of decay. Jorge Thielen Armand says this idea runs through all his films, where the house, or the absence of one, becomes a central dramatic force.

For this film, he imagined the walls themselves as unstable. “I always envisioned seeing the walls moving,” says Jorge Thielen Armand. That sensation is created not only through images, but also through sound. The director used material from a 1970s magnetic tape belonging to his family, digitising it and spreading those sounds across the film. The result is a sonic texture that suggests the characters’ psychology and the secret life of the house itself.

The film’s visual identity was developed with cinematographer Luis Armando Arteaga, whom Jorge Thielen Armand describes as more than a director of photography. Their collaboration was not based only on technical decisions, but on conversations about life, cinema and literature. Luis Armando Arteaga was involved at every stage of the process, including the script and subtitles.

The director says the film’s style emerged while they were making it. There were initial ideas, including lens choices and a decision to embrace visual noise, but the cinematography remained open to discovery. The main rule was to shoot largely on a tripod or rails, with exceptions for selected handheld scenes. “The film was guiding us how to shoot it,” says Jorge Thielen Armand, describing a process that combined formal control with a desire for freedom.

The choice of Asia Argento as Caro came first from intuition, not familiarity. Jorge Thielen Armand had not seen her work extensively when her name was suggested, but a photograph was enough to trigger a response. Something in her eyes, he says, convinced him that she could carry the role.

What interested him was not only her acting experience but the history she would bring with her. Asia Argento’s biography, her relationship to cinema, her public life and her personal baggage gave Caro dimensions that could not be written in conventional script terms. “I was especially interested in who she is as a person,” says Jorge Thielen Armand.

Once Asia Argento joined the project, the character changed. The original Caro had been imagined as more delicate, while Asia Argento brought a sharper force to the film. “Asia brought a certain toughness and a certain rock and roll vibe,” says the director. That energy helped him recognise the film’s gothic potential, something he connects to a harsher, almost Goya-like darkness.

“Death Has No Master” originated in part from a recurring dream of an abandoned house or building. For Jorge Thielen Armand, the dream did not provide a simple plot. Instead, it opened a question: what fear was he trying to excavate? The film became a way to enter that fear, rather than explain it.

“I don’t choose the films I make,” says Jorge Thielen Armand. “They choose me.” His return to Venezuela is described as both a curse and a blessing, a compulsion that gives the work its urgency. The journey of making the film, like Caro’s, becomes a descent into a place of pleasure, vice, decay, and catharsis.

Class injustice is central to the film, and Jorge Thielen Armand situates it within Venezuela’s racial and social history. He connects contemporary classism to the caste system imposed during Spanish colonial rule, officially abolished after independence but still present, in his words, in the collective soul of the country.

“Death Has No Master” examines how inherited hierarchies continue to shape relationships, property and violence. For the director, the film is about “the murderous quality of classism” and how inequality can turn people against one another. The conflict around the house and the plantation is therefore not only personal but also historical.

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At the Festival de Cannes 2026, Asia Argento returns with “Death Has No Master”, the new feature by Venezuelan filmmaker Jorge Thielen Armand, presented as a world premiere in the Quinzaine des Cinéastes. The film, also titled “La muerte no tiene dueño”, follows Caro, a woman who travels to Venezuela to sell her late father’s cacao plantation, only to find the family mansion occupied by its former staff.

Asia Argento describes the experience as both destabilising and artistically necessary. Acting in Spanish and spending two months in Venezuela, one dedicated to preparation and one to shooting, placed her in a state of vulnerability that became part of the role. “It made me feel very insecure, not speaking the language,” says the actress. “I used that frustration for my character.”

For Asia Argento, Caro is not simply a woman reclaiming property. She is someone already close to collapse, forced to confront what land, inheritance and family history can conceal. The actress describes the character as marked by entitlement, colonial memory, and an unresolved relation to Venezuela.

“There is this primal animal in me,” says Asia Argento, reflecting on how the film explores the instinctive violence attached to home, property and bloodline. In her reading, “Death Has No Master” examines a basic human impulse: the transformation of grief and inheritance into conflict. The mansion becomes more than a location. It is a place where buried histories return through bodies, rooms, sounds and gestures.

The film’s official synopsis frames this struggle as one that unearths violence embedded in the land and its memory, and Asia Argento connects that idea to a more intimate performance process. She explains that she built an entire past for Caro, including details never shown on screen, to inhabit her instability with precision.

The shoot in Venezuela became, in Asia Argento’s words, an experience of self-imposed isolation. She says she did not go to the beach, restaurants or leisure spaces, choosing instead to remain in her hotel room and reread the script obsessively. “I’m not gonna miss this chance,” says Asia Argento. “So I gave it my all.”

That intensity shaped a performance she now recognises as disturbing and deliberately unguarded. “When I looked at the movie, I was like, wow, I looked really deranged,” she says. The language barrier amplified the unease, the constant evolution of the script, and the atmosphere of the house where rehearsals took place, which she describes as charged with dark energy.

Although Asia Argento initially approached “Death Has No Master” as a political film, she only fully understood its genre dimension after seeing the completed work. With its sound design, photography, blood, tension and psychological disturbance, the film revealed itself to her as a horror-inflected thriller with a 1970s sensibility.

“I had no idea the movie was horror,” says Asia Argento. “When I saw it with the music, with the lights, I understood it’s my turf.” The actress, whose career is deeply connected to genre cinema, identifies the film’s paranormal and psychological texture as part of her own artistic heritage.

The film brings together professional and non-professional performers, a working method familiar to Jorge Thielen Armand. Asia Argento recalls a month of rehearsals in the house, shared meditations and a process that helped the group reach a common rhythm. She was especially struck by Dogreika Tovar, whose natural presence pushed her to find a balance between technique and instinct.

Her relationship with Jorge Thielen Armand was based on hierarchy and trust. After more than 70 films, Argento says she needs a director who knows where the film is going. “He’s the director, I’m the actress,” she says, describing him as precise, opinionated and able to contain her own need for control.

For Asia Argento, returning to Cannes carries personal weight. She admits she thought she might never return, making this invitation a significant moment. The Quinzaine des Cinéastes, she says, remains one of the sections where she looks for the pulse of contemporary cinema.

“I feel in the right place,” says Asia Argento. “I really love directors and art movies. I feel at home.”

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Screening in the Un Certain Regard section of the 79th Cannes Film Festival, “Titanic Ocean” is the new feature by Greek director Konstantina Kotzamani. Set in a Japanese boarding school where teenage girls train to become professional mermaids, performing in aquariums and becoming stars under silicon tails and invented names, the film follows 17-year-old Akame as she learns to hold her breath, discovers first love and undergoes a transformation that goes far beyond performance. What sounds like pure invention is rooted in reality: the schools exist, the trend is massive across Asia, and Kotzamani spent ten years turning this world into a film that weaves together questions of identity, beauty standards, eating disorders and abuse without ever settling into judgement. The result is  a coming-of-age story told through the mythology of sirens.

The project began a decade ago with an article and a photograph: five Japanese girls wearing silicon mermaid tails during a training class. Konstantina Kotzamani was immediately captivated, and as she researched further she discovered an entire universe: girls who train to become mermaids, choose new names, new colors, new personas, and build careers as performers. What drew her in was not the spectacle but the psychological dimension beneath it. “These girls are really creating another identity where they feel much safer. They choose another name, they choose colours, they choose another character, they magnify their body and it’s as if they’re living a parallel virtual reality for who they are”. She wanted the film to explore that fantasy without condemning it.

For Konstantina Kotzamani, the mermaid school is a magnifying glass on something much broader: the condition of contemporary adolescence. The moment of leaving home, she says, can feel like pure freedom but also like hostility, depending on how much confidence you have been given. She recognizes the feeling in her own past, but sees it amplified in today’s young people. “Nowadays young people are even more trapped into this feeling that everything seems unsettling and the world seems dangerous, so people are trapped and a bit more introvert even if they show that they are extrovert”. Social media has doubled the phenomenon, the construction of a public self that bears little relation to the private one is no longer a metaphor. It is daily life.

The sirens of Greek mythology, creatures whose haunting voice lures men into the abyss, gave Konstantina Kotzamani the key to her protagonist’s arc. Akame begins the film unable to speak loudly, unable to voice her needs, her love, her friendships. The entire journey becomes a search for that voice. “I felt that searching for your inner voice could be so powerful. Finding a voice as a girl today, it’s a very nice metaphor. This is what we try to do now: to speak for ourselves and speak loud and have somebody listen to us”.

Setting the film in Japan was the obvious choice, but it came with enormous challenges. It took ten years to finance the project, and Japan’s film industry is not easily open to international co-productions. Once on set, Konstantina Kotzamani had to navigate a culture built on rigid hierarchies where women, she says, are almost always at the lowest part of the scale. “It’s almost unbelievable for a woman to have power in Japan. I had to question many ways myself and how I can exist and persist and insist on what I want as a vision there”. The connection with her lead actress, however, was immediate: a chemistry built on the young performer’s willingness to let go.

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Winner of the L’Œil d’Or for best documentary at the 79th Cannes Film Festival 2026, where it premiered as a Special Screening, Rehearsals for a Revolution is the debut feature by Iranian actress and director Pegah Ahangarani. Built entirely from personal archives, home videos, protest footage, animations and voice recordings, the film traces over four decades of Iranian history through five portraits of people who shaped Pegah Ahangarani‘s life, relatives and mentors whose individual stories mirror the cycles of repression and resistance that have defined the country since 1979. Sentenced to eighteen months in prison in 2013 and a refugee in the United Kingdom since 2022, Pegah Ahangarani turns her own biography into a lens through which a nation’s unfinished revolution comes into focus.

The idea for “Rehearsals for a Revolution” goes back six years, but Pegah Ahangarani knew from the start that she wanted a film made entirely of narration and archival material, with no conventional on-camera interviews. To test whether that approach could sustain itself, she made a short film, “I’m Trying to Remember”, which premiered at IDFA. “That project was successful, and then I made the first chapter of this feature, which premiered at IDFA. Gradually, I gained the confidence that I could carry a 90-minute film forward using this subjective approach of voice and archive as image”.

When the project began, Pegah Ahangarani had no children. Midway through the edit, she discovered she was pregnant, and something shifted. She told her editor, Arash, in secret, and proposed a new dimension for the film. “I told him, ‘I have a secret to confess: I’m pregnant… maybe the film could turn into a sort of letter to my child.’ I didn’t want it to be explicitly a ‘letter-film,’ but I wanted to convey the idea that these are all stories we must tell the next generation”. That impulse, the need to pass memory forward, became the emotional spine of the entire project.

Asked whether the future of Iran lies with its women, Pegah Ahangarani does not hesitate. She points to the “Woman, Life, Freedom” movement as something unprecedented in the country’s history. “People took to the streets with a clear demand and brought what they wanted for the future into the present moment. They took off their veils and burned them that very night”. What struck her most was the movement’s intelligence: rather than describing a desired future, the protesters enacted it. Pegah Ahangarani sees this as the most progressive chapter in forty years of uprisings, and she is unequivocal about what it means: if Iran changes, it will be because of its women.

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Presented at the 79th Cannes Film Festival, “Che Guevara: The Last Companions” is the debut feature by Christophe Dimitri Reveille, a documentary that took over twenty years to complete. The film reconstructs the untold aftermath of Che Guevara’s execution in Bolivia in 1967, when his last surviving companions, three Cuban guerrilla fighters, undertook a gruelling 2,400-kilometre escape across Bolivia, hunted by thousands of soldiers. Through rare archival footage, animation and exclusive interviews with the protagonists themselves, as well as members of the Bolivian army and a CIA operative, Christophe Dimitri Reveille pieces together a story that has remained largely invisible for sixty years. At its core, the film asks what revolution means for those who live in its shadow, the people who followed, protected and ultimately lost the man they believed in.

Christophe Dimitri Reveille‘s journey into this story began with a book and a single encounter. In 2004, he met Benigno, one of Che’s closest companions, and spent over two years co-writing his biography. A graphic novel followed, then the idea of a documentary, initially just about Benigno. It was a conversation with Benicio del Toro, who had played Che in Steven Soderbergh‘s film and knew Benigno personally, that shifted the scale of the project. “He was like, ‘You met Benigno, but you’re doing a documentary about Benigno? You should do a documentary about all of them.’ But it’s impossible to meet all of them because even meeting one is hard. But then he put a seed in my brain”. From that point on, Christophe Dimitri Reveille began tracking down every surviving companion, one by one.

To ask the right questions, Christophe Dimitri Reveille immersed himself in every available account of the Bolivian campaign: biographies, military histories, previous interviews. At each stage of the guerrillas’ journey from the death of Guevara to their return to Cuba, he found specialists who had spent a decade or more on a single episode. “I met someone who did huge work about the Bolivian army for 15 years. At each step of the journey, I was able to find five or six people like me who worked 10 years on that specific moment”. Their knowledge helped Christophe Dimitri Reveille to build a fuller picture with every conversation.

In the film, Christophe Dimitri Reveille draws a distinction between what the Bolivians lost and what the Cubans lost when Che was killed. The Bolivian fighters lost a commander. The Cubans lost something far more intimate, a man who had given them purpose when they had nothing, who had been at their side for a decade, and whom they had been sent to protect. “When he died, they fell. They fell politically. They had to go back to Cuba and say to Castro, ‘Sorry, we were supposed to protect him and we failed'”. That first night in the forest after the execution, Christophe Dimitri Reveille says, the Cubans were not just escaping an army, they were walking away from the centre of their lives.

One of the film’s most striking qualities is its refusal to settle on a single version of events. Each companion carries his own Che, his own reading of the revolution, his own account of what went wrong. Christophe Dimitri Reveille embraces this multiplicity without pretending to resolve it. When asked during a funding meeting whether he had found the truth, he answered honestly: “I’m not pretentious. I don’t know the truth, but I can say the truth is somewhere here”. At the end of twenty years, Christophe Dimitri Reveille says, “I have many more questions than answers”.

Asked whether “The Last Companions” is an homage to the unseen figures behind every revolution, Christophe Dimitri Reveille confirms. The film, he says, is for everyone who works in the shadow.

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