Cannes Film Festival 2016

Just a quick note that we are currently in Cannes, France, covering the Cannes film festival. Our unstoppable and talented writer/photographer Moland Fengkov is there to bring you reviews, pictures and commentaries about the movies presented in the official selection as well as sidebars such as Certain Regard. You can follow our coverage in this blog, including commentary and pictures about the movies presented in competition. In addition, exclusive movie reviews will be posted on our Cannes festival page.

AFI Fest 2015 Full Lineup and Free Tickets

The lineup for AFI Fest 2015 has been announced and there are plenty of goodies including new movies by Werner Herzog, Michael Moore, Marco Bellocchio, Jacques Audiard and much more.

Since yesterday, you can also get free tickets online at the AFI Fest website but be aware that pretty much everything is already sold out. They usually release more tickets during the course of the festival though.

Plume Noire will cover the festival, focusing on a few handpicked foreign films - we already have a few reviews of movies that will screen at the festival including Tale of Tales, Son of Saul and The Lobster, with more to come.

Click here for more information about AFI Fest 2015's lineup, movies, reviews and our blog.

Looking Back at the Cannes Film Festival 2015

Mad Max: Fury Road's Tom Hardy in Cannes

A few updates regarding our coverage of the 2015 Cannes film festival:

We've posted a recap which you can find in our Cannes festival blog here. This post includes our final thoughts about the festival and its awards, some choices being surprising while others were disappointing. While visiting our blog, have a look at all the gorgeous pictures our Cannes expert brought back from the festival's red carpet and press conferences.

We've also started posting trailers for the movies we covered at Cannes. You can watch all these Cannes movie trailers here and we will be adding more as other reviews get published.

Our 2015 Cannes film festival coverage also keeps getting updated. Including the full film line-up, all the awards winners and our blog entries, it most importantly features our exclusive reviews. So far the following movie reviews are available: Love (trailer), Son of Saul (trailer), The Measure of a Man (trailer), Standing Tall (trailer), Tales of tales (trailer), Mad Max: Fury Road.

Of course, more reviews are coming soon. After spending 10 days mostly surviving on Nespresso shots, our critic is finally getting some well-deserved rest for a few days so stay tuned for more content ...

2015 Cannes Film Festival

The Cannes film festival just started today, and as usual Plume Noire is in Cannes to cover the festival's movies and red carpet highlights.
We will bringing you exclusive reviews as well as photos and commentary pieces which will be included in our festival blog.

We are more particularly looking forward to seeing the 5 following films:

• The Sea Of Trees (Gus Van Sant)
• Love (Gaspar Noé)
• Dheepan (Jacques Audiard)
• Carol (Todd Haynes)
• Yakuza Apocalypse: The Great War of the Underworld (Takashi Miike)

Stay tuned for more updates and visit Plume Noire's 2015 Cannes Film Festival coverage here ...

AFI Fest 2014 Awards and Recap

Here are all the 2014 AFI Fest award winners:

• New Auteurs Critics’ Award: Self Made

• VIZIO Visionary Special Jury Award: The Tribe

• Special Jury Mention for Screenwriting: Güeros (read our Güeros review)

• Special Jury Mention for Cinematography: Violet

• Grand Jury Award for Live Action Short: Buffalo Juggalos

• Grand Jury Award for Animated Short: Yearbook

• Special Jury Mention for Collection: David O’Reilly for Children’s Songs

• Special Jury Mention for Breakthrough Filmmaker: Joe Callander – Gary Has An Aids Scare

• Special Jury Mention for Vision: Kevin Jerome Everson – Sound That

• Special Jury Mention for Outstanding Achievement in Direction: Morgan Knibbe – Shipwreck

• World Cinema Audience Award: Red Army

• New Auteurs Audience Award: Güeros

• American Independents Audience Award: 10,000 Km

• Breakthrough Audience Award: The Midnight Swim

Also, there was some cool events such as the Sophia Loren tribute and we are in the process of posting reviews from the festival - we've already reviewed the Dardenne Brothers'Two Days, One Night, Quentin Dupieux's Reality and Tommy Lee Jones' The Homesman, which is already playing in theaters in limited release. 

AFI Fest 2014's French movies

This year will be a great edition for French cinema aficionados as the AFI Film festival will be showcasing a pretty extensive selection of French films, including a few Cannes 2014's contenders. 


Works by major filmmakers such as Olivier Assayas, the Dardenne brothers (with this year's Palme d'Or), Bertrand Bonello and Quentin Dupieux will be presented while we will also get the chance to discover entries from a few newcomers who not that known on our shores.


For more information, read about AFI Fest's French movies here ...

AFI Fest 2014 Lineup Announced

The full lineup for AFI Fest, which will take place once again at Hollywood and Highland in Hollywood, has been announced.

The festival will feature a a special homage to Italian actress Sophia Loren as well as plenty of great international movies, some of them having already been shown on the festival circuit, including at this year's Cannes edition.

Plume Noire will once again cover the festival, focusing on international films, documentaries and of course French movies. We will bring you some exclusive reviews as well as a few blog posts, pictures and videos.

Stay tuned for more updates. In the meantime, check out AFI Fest's full lineup here ...

LA Film Festival Awards & Picks

Here are the LA Film Festival Award Winners:

• Narrative Award: The Man from Reno
• Documentary Award: Stray Dog
• Honorable Mention: Walking under Water
• LA Muse Award: Los Ángeles
• Best Narrative Short Award: The Runway
• Best Documentary Short Award: The Queen
• Best Animated Short Award: Butter Lamp
• Audience Award for Best Narrative Feature: The Young Kieslowski
• Audience Award for Best Documentary Feature: Meet the Patels
• Audience Award for Best International Feature: Someone You Love
• Audience Award for Best Short Film: The Gunfighter
• Audience Award for Best Music Video: Turn Down For What: Lil John and DJ Snake

Here are Plume Noire's top 3 picks:

• Los Ángeles
• Jimi: All Is by my Side
• Frank

2014 LA Film Festival

Haven't been posting here for a while but since the LA film festival has officially started last night (it's running until the 19th at Nokia Live, Downtown LA), we just wanted to confirm that we will be covering it as usual. Please visit our new site to read our fest coverage.

Not only will we be reviewing films and documentaries but we will be commenting on the festival in our blog and post pictures.  Make sure to visit our festival page for more updates as content will be added during the next 7 days.

Plume Noire 2.0 is Here

For those of you who might have missed it, I just wanted to let you know that after 13 years, Plume Noire relaunched with a new look.

Started in 1998 - and yes we were one of the first online magazines about films - Plume Noire went under a much-needed revamp. Instead of just one big site for both the American and French market, we are now offering two new sites. The original Plume-Noire.com remains online, acting as an archive for the first decade (1998 - 2011) while PlumeNoire.com is now the official home for our Los Angeles site (in english only); As for LaPlumeNoire.com it is the home for our Parisian site (in French only).

Also the other big change is that we are now only focusing on movies. You can find Plume Noire's movie reviews here and Plume Noire Cinema here.

AFI Fest 2013 coming soon

Just a reminder that we will once again cover the AFI film festival, which will take place in November from the 7th to the 14th.

We will update our festival section as news are coming in, whether it's in terms of film program or tickets.

For the time being, we know that French filmmaker Agnes Varda (Cleo de 5 a 7) will be the guest director and will present 4 films.

For more information, go to http://www.plumenoire.com/afi-fest-2013/