Directed by Ramin Bahrani from a screenplay by Ramin Bahrani & Amir Naderi, the drama is based on Ray Bradbury’s dystopian novel of the same name, depicting an alternate tomorrow in which media are an opiate, facts and history are rewritten, and “firemen” burn books.

Jordan portrays Montag, a young fireman who begins to question his beliefs and turns against his friend and mentor, Captain Beatty, played by Shannon. Sofia Boutella stars as Clarisse, an informant who becomes newly politicised through her interactions with Montag.

“I have always loved Ray Bradbury’s prophetic novel,” says Bahrani. “The concept is so provocative. Three years ago, I started to think about it again, because the world was frighteningly catching up to what he had envisioned. Bradbury said that we demanded, we elected, for the world to become this way. That’s different than having a totalitarian government take over. I found that to be true, because we have willingly given up our knowledge, identity, books, history, dreams, culture – everything – to tech companies, big business and politicians.”

The film follows Montag, the most popular fireman in his district, with a mandate to achieve happiness and social harmony by burning books, physical or electronic, deleting and altering history, art, photos and facts, and replacing words with simplistic emojis. “Natives”, or citizens, mainly stay home, happily interacting with screens and getting anything they need from “Yuxie,” an advanced AI personal assistant that listens to and watches them at all times. “Eels” fight to save books, knowledge and culture. When firemen catch them, they punish Eels in public burnings, which are broadcast to the city on giant building-screens; the Eels’ digital identities and histories are wiped clean and they are banished to Talay City, a poor slum with very little technology.

Captain Beatty (Michael Shannon) is Montag’s mentor and friend, and the head of the regional fireman brigade. He is grooming Montag to take his place, but Beatty also harbours a secret: a desire for knowledge and books, exactly what he trains Montag to burn. Beatty manages to ride a fine line of contradiction to survive within the Ministry. He finds himself losing control of Montag, his prized student, who is haunted by dreams and increasingly questioning his beliefs. Interacting with Clarisse (Sofia Boutella), an Eel-turned-informant, Montag is drawn to forbidden knowledge. The turning point comes when an old woman burns herself alive, in front of Montag, for her books. Now, Montag must know why.

His first step: steal a book. Next: find Clarisse to explain it to him.

Through Clarisse, Montag connects with rebel Eels who are preserving books by memorising one author’s work and “becoming” that novel. They have developed OMNIS, a way to store all of humanity’s art, history and literature in a microscopic strand of DNA – an advanced form of a technology that exists today. The Eels need Montag to use his status as a fireman to protect OMNIS.

Conflicted and suspicious Beatty realizes that Montag has aligned himself with Clarisse, betraying him and the Ministry. Beatty confronts Montag, resulting in a series of fiery standoffs in which Beatty tries to bring his apprentice and only friend back into the fold. But Montag can’t be saved. He has a goal: save the OMNIS. Mentor and apprentice will have to face the inevitable tragedy that neither friend wants: One of them will have to be destroyed.

“This is a good time for “Fahrenheit 451” to come out, because it seems like we are drifting away from pure information as a society. Everything now is more oriented to opinion and propaganda, and the technology that’s available is allowing us to create a dangerous non-reality,” Shannon says.

“For my character Beatty, it’s not even important whether something is a lie or the truth. That’s an antiquated notion, and that’s something we’re seeing in our culture today. But my own personal mantra is ‘pay attention’ – we think we’re getting all the information and facts, but often you can’t rely on the validity of what you’re reading or seeing these days.”

Says Michael B. Jordan of his character, “He’s the golden boy, you know? And with that type of pressure on him, there’s also a pressure to continue down that path – not to go back, not to turn left, not to make any mistakes. I think the message of the film and the book is very important today, when our freedom of choice and freedom of speech – our rights as human beings – are being tested. Don’t always do what you’re told. Do what you feel is right. That’s something my character Montag learns as he starts to question what the Ministry taught him and slowly but surely begins to think for himself. Know that you have freedom of choice. Don’t rely on someone else to tell you what is true or what your reality is.”

Everybody Knows

Iranian master Asghar Farhadi kicks off the festival with a psychological thriller about a family reunion going awry, featuring Spanish stars Penelope Cruz and Javier Bardem. While Farhadi, 45, won an Oscar and the Golden Bear at Berlin for his 2011 breakthrough film, “A Separation”, he is yet to take home the coveted Cannes prize.

BlacKkKlansman

US director and activist Spike Lee’s drama is based on the real-life story of an African-American police officer who infiltrated the Ku Klux Klan in 1978. John David Washington plays him with Adam Driver as his Jewish police partner. The film will open in the US on the first anniversary of a white supremacist march in Charlottesville where an anti-racism activist was killed.

Under the Silver Lake

Four years after giving Cannes audiences nightmares with his thriller “It Follows”, David Robert Mitchell returns with another spine-chiller, this time about the mysterious murder of a billionaire.

Dogman

Italian director Matteo “Gomorra” Garrone’s new work is not for the faint-hearted. Dubbed an “urban Western”, the film is inspired by the gruesome murder by dog groomer and cocaine addict Pietro De Negri in the late 1980s.

Three Faces

Little is known about this portrait of three women by the Iranian dissident Jafar Panahi, who is banned from travel by Tehran. The festival and US director Oliver Stone have pleaded with the authorities to let the director, who has faced years of harassment and arrest, fly to Cannes to show his film.

Leto

Russia’s Kirill Serebrennikov is another director who may not be able to present his work at Cannes. Under house arrest over highly disputed allegations of embezzlement, his film focuses on Soviet rock star Viktor Tsoi and the birth of Russian underground music in the 1980s.

At War

As France grapples with rail strikes and student protests, French director Stephane Brize’s gritty drama about factory workers battling to keep their jobs may hit a timely nerve.

Cold War

Amazon Studios is pinning its hopes on this tender black-and-white period romance set among the members of a touring folk group in the Eastern Bloc in the 1950s from Oscar-winning Polish-British director Pawel Pawlikowski.

The Image Book

Cinema’s oldest and most enigmatic rebel, French-Swiss legend Jean-Luc Godard, has let little slip about his new film other than this enigmatic synopsis: “Nothing but silence, nothing but a revolutionary song, a story in five chapters like the five fingers of a hand.”

Girls of the Sun

Kurdish women fighters battling the Islamic State are at the centre of French actor-director Eva Husson’s new film. Iranian star Golshifteh Farahani plays Bahar, the leader of the Yazidi Sun Brigade, who hunts down the extremists who had earlier captured her.

The Wild Pear Tree

Turkish auteur Nuri Bilge Ceylan, who won the Palme d’Or four years ago for “Winter Sleep”, is back with another Anatolian talkie, this time about a young provincial writer raging at his father.

Ayka

Kazakh Sergey Dvortsevoy — who won many fans and prizes for his 2009 debut “Tulpan” — was a late entry with his new docu-drama about a young homeless single mother adrift in the post-Soviet Central Asian state.

Capernaum

Lebanese actress-turned-film-maker Nadine Labaki’s third film is set in a Middle Eastern town. Her previous film “Where Do We Go Now?” premiered at Cannes in the Un Certain Regard section in 2010.

Burning

South Korean auteur Lee Chang-dong’s new mystery drama is drawn from a short story by Japanese master Haruki Murakami, “Barn Burning”, about a writer who becomes fascinated by a woman whose boyfriend burns barns. His first film in eight years, the cult director of “Oasis” and “Secret Sunshine” has an almost fanatical following.

Knife + Heart

French singer and actress Vanessa Paradis stars in the latest tale from Yann Gonzalez, who had a hit on the festival circuit with his quirky orgy drama, “You And The Night”, with Beatrice Dalle and former footballer Eric Cantona.

Asako 1 & 2

In this Japanese drama by Ryusuke Hamaguchi, a young woman meets her first love in Osaka. When he disappears without a trace, she moves on — until his perfect double shows up two years later.

Shoplifters

Japanese master Hirokazu Kore-Eda, a longtime sweetheart of the Cannes jury, returns with a tale of a family of small-time crooks who take in a child they find on the street.

Yomeddine

A Coptic leper and his orphaned apprentice leave the confines of their colony for the first time and embark on a journey across Egypt to search for what is left of their families.

Happy as Lazzaro

Rising star Italian director Alice Rohrwacher, already a prize winner at Cannes, is back with a time-travelling story which takes in the fascist 1930s.

Sorry Angel

The new film by Christophe Honore, the man behind the charming French musical “Love Songs”, is a gay love story when the AIDS epidemic was at its height.

Ash is Purest White

Chinese director Jia Zhangke’s new film is a story of “violent love” between a mobster and a dancer starring Zhao Tao and Liao Fan. It is a follow-up to his “Mountains May Depart”, which also competed for the Palme d’Or in 2015.

With the industry still reeling from the Harvey Weinstein scandal, and Cannes under fire for its dearth of women directors, Cate Blanchett and Kristen Stewart are likely to join actresses and women directors Saturday in a protest in support of the #MeToo and Time’s Up movements.

The new “Star Wars” spin-off, “Solo”, is the only Hollywood blockbuster in a slightly less starry line-up than usual.

But with no less than a dozen films with LGBT themes, and others tackling child abuse, male prostitution and an eye-watering DIY sex change, it has all the makings of a vintage year for scandal and controversy.

A new documentary about the tragic singer Whitney Houston by Oscar winner Kevin Macdonald reportedly includes a devastating revelation about the demons that dogged her short life.

“Black Panther” director Ryan Coogler — whose film is breaking box office records — is also likely to tackle the lack of black faces in Hollywood in a Cannes masterclass.

– Lesbian film banned –

With Monty Python’s Terry Gilliam fighting in the French courts to have his disaster-plagued “The Man Who Killed Don Quixote” shown, the first Kenyan movie to be selected for the world’s top festival has already been banned in its homeland for daring to depict a lesbian romance.

Despite a plea by US director Oliver Stone, Tehran has refused to lift a travel ban on Iranian master Jafar Panahi, whose “Three Faces” is in the running for the top Palme d’Or prize.

The dissident director made it clandestinely after being banned from making films for 20 years for his activism after the “stolen election” of 2009.

Appeals to bail Russia’s Kirill Serebrennikov, under house arrest in Moscow on embezzlement charges his supporters claim are political, have also fallen on deaf ears.

Festival director Thierry Fremaux told reporters Monday that it was ironic that both Iran and Russia should be “punishing the directors when neither film is political”.

Serious doubts also hang over whether Gilliam’s Pythonesque movie will be allowed to close the festival after it became embroiled in a bitter legal battle over who owns the rights.

Judges in Paris will decide Wednesday whether the film, which Gilliam has laboured on for nearly two decades, can be shown.

– ‘Problem with women’ –

But it is Cannes’ “dismal” record on female directors, and Saturday’s red carpet protest led by A-list stars, which may generate the most political heat.

Long before Weinstein had been accused of attacking four women at the festival, Cannes had been under fire for a “problem with women”.

Women have been stopped on the red carpet in previous years for not wearing high heels, and its dress code has been condemned as sexist.

But the Weinstein scandal has given its critics further ammunition, with screenwriter Kate Muir of Women and Hollywood lacerating the festival as “a two-week celebration of male brains and female beauty”.

The fact that only three out of 21 directors in the running for the top prize are women — the same number as last year — has also rankled.

While admitting that Cannes “will never be the same again” after the Weinstein scandal, Fremaux said he was against quotas.

Instead he put Hollywood star Blanchett — one of the first to call out Weinstein — at the head a majority-female jury alongside another of Weinstein’s victims, French “Bond” actress Lea Seydoux.

But Fremaux’s surprise decision to lift the festival’s seven-year ban on Danish director Lars von Trier has stoked feminist ire.

The ageing provocateur has been accused of sexual harassment by the singer Bjork, and his production company has been hit by multiple similar claims.

Von Trier sparked outrage during a 2011 Cannes press conference by saying that he was a Nazi who understood Hitler and sympathised “with him a little bit”.

But Michel Hazanavicius, the Oscar-winning director of “The Artist”, who is on the festival’s board, insisted von Trier was joking, while Fremaux said Monday that the Dane was not an anti-Semite.

Pointedly, however, he has not risked giving von Trier a press conference this time for his new serial killer flick, “The House That Jack Built” with Uma Thurman and Matt Dillon.

Hazanavicius said the veteran Swiss-French director Jean-Luc Godard, whose latest film is also at Cannes, has also said “much worse things than Lars von Trier on this very same topic”.

But that “doesn’t mean we have to condemn them” as artists, he added.

“It’s very difficult for people to accept the idea that you can be a jerk in your personal life and a great artist.”

The three-day take by the Marvel superhero epic gave it the second-highest second weekend of all time, behind only “Star Wars: The Force Awakens.” Only five movies have hit the $100 million mark in their second weekends.

“Avengers” sees a veritable army of superheroes — including Dr. Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch), Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson), Ironman (Robert Downey Jr.) and Black Panther (Chadwick Boseman) — joining forces to save the universe from powerful purple alien Thanos (Josh Brolin).

Globally, “Avengers” has hit the $1 billion mark in just 11 days — the fastest ever — and it has yet to open in China.

But with its enormous success, “Avengers” has left little oxygen for its competitors. The second-highest North American grosser, new rom-com “Overboard,” trailed in its distant wake at just $14.7 million. Anna Faris and Eugenio Derbez star in the Lionsgate remake of a 1987 movie about a struggling single mother who persuades a rich playboy with amnesia that they are married.

In third spot was Paramount’s sci-fi horror film “A Quiet Place,” at $7.8 million. The near-wordless production stars actor-director John Krasinski and his real-life wife Emily Blunt as a couple silently struggling to protect their family from blind aliens that track their prey by sound.

STX comedy “I Feel Pretty,” starring Amy Schumer as a self-conscious woman who suffers a head injury and then sees herself as ravishingly beautiful, was fourth at $5.1 million.

And in fifth was “Rampage,” from Warner Bros., at $4.6 million. The film follows Dwayne Johnson as a primatologist who befriends an albino gorilla, which grows to enormous size after a rogue experiment before teaming up with Johnson against invading monsters.

Rounding out the top 10 were:

“Tully” ($3.28 million)

“Black Panther” ($3.25 million)

“Truth or Dare” ($1.89 million)

“Super Troopers 2” ($1.87 million)

“Bad Samaritan” ($1.76 million)

Classifying “Busted”, the first South Korean variety show created by Netflix, is hard.

“Busted! I Know Who You Are”, to give it its full name, is billed as a reality variety show but, assuming the first two episodes were not a fluke and the series will carry on in the same vein, it seems to blend drama, reality television and variety show all in one sitting. What is certain though is that the K-wave is washing over global audiences through the streaming platform. From the movie “Okja” to Korean dramas and even one stand-up comedy show, “Busted!” is already the most-anticipated series for fans of Korean entertainment.

“Busted!” is a mystery variety show that follows seven celebrities playing bumbling detectives who are charged with solving fictional crimes that involve hunting down stolen treasure or getting to the bottom of mysterious events. The programme’s star-studded cast is made up of K-variety veterans, namely Yoo Jae-suk, Lee Kwang-soo and Kim Jong- min, serious actors Ahn Jae-wook and Park Min-young and K-pop stars Sehun of Exo and Sejeong of Gugudan. The show also features guest appearances by other well-known |individuals who help complete the story in each episode.

And while the plots are provided, there’s no script, just plenty of chuckles. There are 10 episodes in the season, with two airing every week and the first shown last Friday.

To prepare the series Netflix teamed up with producers Cho Hyo-jin and Kim Joo-hyung of Company SangSang, all of whom have a successful track record in the K-variety scene having on put on such popular shows as “Running Man” and “X-Man in Korea”.

“Busted” will air in more than 190 countries and territories, reaching virtually all 117 million Netflix members around the world.

Like K-pop, movies and TV dramas, the K-variety show has proved popular with overseas viewers who enjoy watching celebrities, generally emcees, comedians, actors, K-pop stars and entertainers, perform in loosely scripted reality shows. Part of the popularity stems from the cast coming up with some entertaining improvisations to win the game, often revealing a side of themselves not known to the audience.

“Busted!” has all those ingredients but adds another layer, adding drama to the plot, using a regular cast and enhancing the show with different guests for every episode.

“At first, we weren’t really thinking about how to turn this into a global project. Our intention was to make it fun and entertaining,” says the producer Cho Hyo-jin.

“Creating a variety show that included reality and drama aspects was our initial focus and that led to the mysteries. Now we are hoping it will appeal as much to a global audience as the domestic one. I hope we have a great result and I am looking forward to it. Netflix gives us freedom without any language and cultural barriers,” he adds.

Leading emcee Yoo, who has fronted such smash hits as “Running Man”, “Infinite Challenge” and “Happy Together”, says he’s enjoyed being part of “Busted!”

“It’s my first time going international and I’m thrilled. I love trying something new and different. “Running Man” has a huge audience and I’m grateful for that. On the flip side it’s also a bit of a worry as “Busted!” will be watched all over the world. We don’t know how is will do but expectations are high.”

Both Yoo and Lee Kwang-soo of “Running Man” are already popular with international fans of K-variety shows. Lee, nicknamed Giraffe in reference to his height, is a born comic and keeps viewers giggling throughout the shows with his unexpected responses.

Veteran actor Ahn and actress Park are complete rookies to the variety show experience

“From my perspective, it wasn’t really much of a burden but more whether I would be able to fit in. But it worked out well and I was more confident by the end of the second episode. The team has a special layout system and that’s where you have to work your hardest. The ambience is great and we all had a lot of fun. The younger cast members were hard working and that prompted me to work harder too,” says Ahn, who has appeared in countless movies, TV dramas and musical plays.

The 10 episodes take the intrepid detectives across Korea from Seoul to Jeju Island and further afield as they hunt for treasure, solve crimes, battle vampires and more.

Cho says proudly that it’s the biggest production in Korea with more than 100 cameras capturing all aspects all the situation and requiring more than 400 crewmembers for the pre-production of all episodes, making it stand out from the conventional working of Korean productions. Each character uses his or her real name and is not asked to assume a different character, in short playing themselves as they really are. That’s not the same for the 56 guest actors appearing throughout the entire series, who are given scripted roles and whose faces will no doubt be familiar to anyone who watches South Korean TV dramas and movies.

“It’s my first variety show too,” says actress Park. “I liked the idea of showing the audience what I’m really like as a person. It was a little nerve-wracking at first because I’m not used to working without a script. But I got used to it after a while and just went with the flow. I did tell the producer before we started that I’m not physically strong and asked him not to put me in physically challenging positions. Of course, he did exactly that! And I complained.”

Park adds that she never thought about how she would act in her detective role. “I didn’t want to act but maybe one of the benefits of being an actress is I could get accustomed and adjust to the situation a little bit faster. It’s my first programme and it’s given me confidence. And maybe if I’m offered another variety programme, I’ll take it,” she adds.

The inclusion of Sehun, the young heartthrob of boy band Exo, is the magnet to attract young fans to watch the show. It’s his first variety show too but he had no problem fitting in thanks to the support of his senior colleagues.

“There’s lots to learn from them,” he says. “But if I had to pick just one thing, it would be professionalism. One mission took much longer than expected and everyone was tired. The producer said, okay, we’ll just do it quickly and get it over with but Yu said no, let’s try it again and do it this way.”

“Busted!” is also one of the few Netflix shows that doesn’t lend itself to binge watching. The streaming service will upload two new episodes weekly for five weeks, each with a new mission and each running for 100 minutes.

And that, along with the new guest stars, is what makes the show so exciting.

The three-day take by the Disney/Marvel superhero epic gave it the second-highest second weekend of all time, behind only “Star Wars: The Force Awakens.” Only five movies have hit the $100 million mark in their second weekends, according to Variety.com.

“Avengers” sees a veritable army of superheroes — including Dr. Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch), Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson), Ironman (Robert Downey Jr.) and Black Panther (Chadwick Boseman) — joining forces to save the universe from powerful purple alien Thanos (Josh Brolin).

Globally, “Avengers” has hit the $1 billion mark in just 11 days — the fastest ever — and it has yet to open in China.

But with its enormous success, “Avengers” has left little oxygen for its competitors. The second-highest North American grosser, new rom-com “Overboard,” trailed in its distant wake at just $14.8 million. Anna Faris and Eugenio Derbez star in the Lionsgate remake of a 1987 movie about a struggling single mother who persuades a rich playboy with amnesia that they are married.

In third spot was Paramount’s sci-fi horror film “A Quiet Place,” at $7.6 million. The near-wordless production stars actor/director John Krasinski and his real-life wife Emily Blunt as a couple silently struggling to protect their family from blind aliens that track their prey by sound.

STX Films’ comedy “I Feel Pretty,” starring Amy Schumer as a self-conscious woman who suffers a head injury and then sees herself as ravishingly beautiful, was fourth at $4.9 million.

And in fifth was “Rampage,” from Warner Bros., at $4.6 million. The film follows Dwayne (The Rock) Johnson as a primatologist who befriends an albino gorilla, which grows to enormous size after a rogue experiment before teaming up with Johnson against invading monsters.

Rounding out the top 10 were:

“Tully” ($3.2 million)

“Black Panther” ($3.1 million)

“Truth or Dare” ($1.9 million)

“Super Troopers 2” ($1.8 million)

“Bad Samaritan” ($1.8 million)

The series revolves around high-school student, Clay Jensen (Dylan Minnette), and his friend Hannah Baker (Katherine Langford), a girl who takes her own life after suffering a series of demoralising circumstances brought on by certain individuals at her school.

The first season began when Clay Jensen returns home from school to find a mysterious box lying on his porch. Inside, he discovers seven double-sided cassette tapes recorded by Hannah Baker, his classmate and unrequited love, who tragically took her own life two weeks earlier. On the tapes, Hannah unfolds an emotional audio diary, detailing the 13 reasons why she decided to end her life. Her instructions are clear: each person who receives the package is one of the reasons why she killed herself.

Season 2 picks up in the aftermath of Hannah’s death and the start of the characters’ complicated journeys toward healing and recovery. Liberty High prepares to go on trial, but someone will stop at nothing to keep the truth surrounding Hannah’s death concealed. A series of ominous polaroids lead Clay and his classmates to uncover a sickening secret and a conspiracy to cover it up.

Established in 1999 as the biggest showcase of Asian cinema in Europe, the Udine Far East Film Festival has long drawn industry people and film fans to this smallish city in Italy’s Northeast.

Now celebrating its 20th anniversary, this year’s event closed last Sunday with the screening of a restored version of Johnny To’s 2004 movie “Throw Down”, with the director himself turning out for the closing ceremony before the announcement of the films that had won prizes. The Golden Mulberry audience award and the Black Mulberry Critic’s Choice award went to South Korean director Jang Joonhwan’s political drama, “1987: When The Day Comes”, while the White Mulberry award, which recognises first or second-time director, went to “Last Child” by filmmaker Shin Dong-Seok.

Three Thai films were screened at the festival, namely Sophon Sakdapisit’s horror “The Promise”, Nattawut Poonpiriya’s hit “Bad Genius” and “Sad Beauty”, the first feature film as solo director of Bongkod Bencharongkul. The well-known actress came with her husband, tycoon Boonchai, to present the film, which had its theatrical release in Thailand last February.

As an actress, Bongkod has starred in many successful films like “Bang Rajan” (2001), “Kunpan: Legend of the Warlord” (2002), “The Judgement” (2004), “Tom Yum Goong” (2005) and “Jan Dara: The Beginning” (2012), but her path as director has not been quite so rosy.

“It started when my mother asked me what I would do if my career as a film actress was over. She knew I didn’t want to sign a contract with a television channel to star in soaps, so I told her that I wanted to be a film director. I love writing stories, and I tried to direct short films with the help of Phi Pued (Tanit Jitnukul, director of “Bang Rajan”). And I fell in love with filmmaking,” Bongkod tells XP.

Those shorts included an episode for “Pai in Love” (2009) and “Plian” (Change), one of the 12 short films made for the Office of the Prime Minister to promote the so-called “Twelve Values”.

“I started to practise screenwriting by learning from the screenplays of the films I acted in,” she says.

Bongkod took her first steps into full-length features in 2013, co-directing “Angels” with Viroj Srisitsereeamorn.

“The idea for the film was kindled when a friend asked me to lend her money for an abortion. That led to my thinking about women and babies – that there must be some women who want to have a baby, but can’t, and what if a baby were raised by a transgender? I wanted to direct the film on my own, but the studio insisted I work with another director. It was a good decision to make this film as I learned a lot during the production and that was great experience for me.”

Like most other countries, Thailand has only a few female filmmakers and those it has such as Anocha Suwichakornpong, Pimpaka Towira and Ing K have to make their films independently, while on the mainstream side, there are no female filmmakers at all.

“I told the owner of a major film production company that I wanted to direct, but he told me I can’t be a director,” Bongkod says. “He said it would be too tiring, and it’s better for me just to be an actress. It was much the same reaction I’d experienced a long time ago when I said wanted to be a star and a neighbour said it was impossible. ”

“Sad Beauty” had been in the making for six years but didn’t come to fruition until last year as an independent film.

“At first my husband Boonchai didn’t want me to make it, but I felt that a film about women should be directed by a woman. I told him that if it wasn’t successful, I would make it my last film as director. I sent Boonchai, as the executive producer, the script but he wasn’t happy with it until I included the thriller part,” she explains.

“The filming didn’t go smoothly either. I had to change the production team three times. After the problems with the first and second teams, I called Phi Khome [Kongkiat Khomesiri], who I’d known since ‘Bang Rajan’. He told me once that investors tend to be stingy and he had to write a script that would save them money! At first he told me this film was not his style.”

“Sad Beauty” is a road movie about two friends, Yo (Florence Faivre) a famous actress and fashion model who always has problems with the media, and Pim (Pakkawadee “Am” Pengsuwan) an ordinary woman who is dying of cancer. At some point, they commit a serious crime together and are forced to make a journey to solve the problem, which becomes the turning point in their friendship.

“I met Am when I went to the shrine of Mae Nak. For Florence, I thought of her when I was writing the screenplay. She has an aura and I knew that would help the film. She also understands this kind of role with love scenes and drugs.

While the film didn’t do particularly well at the Thai box office, its selection for the Udine Far East Festival raised Bongkod’s spirits.

“At first I thought it was over, then I received the good news from Udine,” she says. “I felt that we were not totally hopeless. There are still people who want to watch Thai films. If we make it through, eventually we’ll be happy.”

And make it through they did, with “Sad Beauty”, which screened on April 28, playing to a packed house and the appreciative audience applauding the director when the end credits rolled.

“I was so excited that I almost couldn’t speak”, says Bongkod of her first experience at a film festival as a director.

“The audience here are real film lovers, and Sabrina [Baracetti, the festival director] is a very nice person.”

“Sad Beauty” is now continuing its journey on the festival circuit, with a tentative screening scheduled for June.

The Embassy of Hungary is sponsoring and catering the event and Ambassador Peter Jakab will personally introduce the movie.

Directed by Gabor Herendi, the film is based on the famed racehorse Kincsem and has as its backdrop the Hungarian Revolution of the 1870s. It was the most expensive film made in the country, but recouped the costs many times over at the box office.

Kincsem (the name translates as “My Treasure”) was Hungary’s most famous thoroughbred racehorse, becoming a national icon. It won every one of its 54 races, a global record that still stands. Kincsem became known the world over as “the miracle horse”.

Many books have been written about the horse and it took Herendi seven years to complete his script. Within the thrilling portrayal of horse racing is a story of the stormy love between two rivals, woven into the political fabric of the country.

The riveting opening scene sees aristocratic horse trainer Sando Blaskovich shot dead by a former military comrade, Count Otto von Oettingen, after the revolution. Blaskovich’s young son Erno witnesses the murder and loses everything, including his palatial family home, to his father’s slayer.

Jumping ahead 20 years, Erno has become a dandy and womaniser frequenting posh brothels. He is happy-go-lucky despite being chronically short of money.

Erno’s life changes when he encounters Kara, Count Oettingen’s tough and spirited daughter, and Kincsem, a horse that refuses to be tamed. The movie depicts Erno’s mastery of the thoroughbred and success at making him a world champion, Erno’s love for Klara and the revenge he plots over his father’s death.

In the stirring final scene, Erno and Klara, faced with a life-threatening situation, have to make choices.

Admission is Bt20. Book in advance at https://goo.gl/forms/qBu5wxtZhn6up8F22.

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“The latest Marvel juggernaut… opened with $630M worldwide, making it the largest global weekend tally in the history of film, and this was done without China,” which has a later opening, industry tracker Exhibitor Relations said.

That topped “The Fate of the Furious,” the eighth installment of the high-octane action series starring Vin Diesel, Dwayne Johnson and Michelle Rodriguez that opened with more than $530 million globally in 2017.

“Infinity War,” which features more than two dozen superheroes fighting to save the universe, also broke the record for highest North American opening weekend, raking in $250 million at US and Canadian box offices.

That beat “The Force Awakens,” the seventh film in the long-running “Star Wars” space saga that made $248 million in its opening weekend in 2015.

Saving the universe

“Infinity War” is the 19th film in the so-called Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), combining a whopping nine franchises and a cast list that reads like a who’s who of Hollywood’s A-list.

Robert Downey Jr dons the red and gold metal suit once again as Iron Man; Benedict Cumberbatch is Doctor Strange; Scarlett Johansson is back as Black Widow; and Australia’s Chris Hemsworth is Thor.

Also back for more?

Black Panther — the Marvel breakout of the year after the standalone pic’s massive opening in February, Captain America, the Hulk, Spider-Man, Hawkeye, the Guardians of the Galaxy and their assorted allies.

Their mission is to prevent the powerful purple alien Thanos (Josh Brolin) from destroying the universe.

“We took a picture of every single person whose character has been in the MCU. We hung it up on a wall all around us,” co-director Anthony Russo, who helms the film with his brother Joe, told reporters ahead of its release.

“We basically spent months and months and months talking about where we could go with each character, how we could draw them through the story,” he added.

“Every one of these characters… has been on a very specific journey through the MCU to arrive at this moment.”

This is the third “Avengers” film, before the final, untitled saga set for next year.

‘North Star’

An important source of inspiration is the Marvel canon — the storylines developed over decades in the original comic books.

“Infinity War” is drawn from the “Infinity Gauntlet” series of the early 1990s.

“It starts with those comics and us beginning to rip pages out or rip copies of pages out and put them on the walls and start to be inspired,” explains Kevin Feige, the president of Marvel Studios, which is owned by Disney.

“It’s a North Star for us as we lead these giant productions into reality.”

In the movie’s trailer, Gamora (Zoe Saldana) — Thanos’s daughter, of sorts — explains that the villain believes that if he annihilates half of the universe, he can save the other half.

He needs the so-called Infinity Stones to do it. So, the heroes need to keep him from getting them.

The film cost an eye-watering $300 million to make, according to Hollywood media.

“It was about the most fun creative exercise I think I’ve ever been through in my life,” said Anthony Russo. “We thought about everybody in the MCU.”