Andy Hazel

Cannes might be ‘useless and wonderful’ but this year’s crop of films offers the chance to find the next cinematic hit and celebrate some of the greats.

Screenwriter and director Paul Schrader created some of the most acclaimed films of the 1970s and 1980s, and as he releases his new film, Master Gardener, it’s clear age hasn’t wearied him.

A lifetime of chronic pain has shown celebrated singer-songwriter Martha Marlow the real meaning of beauty.

Ruben Östlund’s Triangle of Sadness, which just earned the director his second Palme d’Or, builds on a reputation for satirising the social elite that he’s carefully cultivated in earlier works.

Many travellers may see nothing of Singapore beyond its famously pristine airport – but this visitor ventured slightly beyond for a special local dish.

Director Goran Stolevski, whose film Of an Age opened the Melbourne International Film Festival, is having a dream year.

Long overlooked outside Indigenous communities, the native food industry is poised to transform what is considered Australian cuisine.

The film director has never aimed small – and few figures are bigger than Elvis Presley.

Amid the Hollywood glamour, the 75th Cannes Film Festival features its best selection of cinema for years.

For his leading role in Denis Villeneuve’s Dune Timothée Chalamet has been charged with ‘saving the film industry’, but he wears the mantle modestly.

As Isabelle Huppert marks 50 years in front of the camera, her latest film, The Godmother, offers her the chance to create another layered, complex character.

For a visitor to Marrakech, one good trick deserves another, but the lesson learnt when dealing with the locals is sometimes it pays to walk away – especially when scissors are involved.

Tilda Swinton has often been drawn to roles that explore transformation – a fascination that led her to become one of the world’s finest actresses. She speaks about her unconventional career, her love for Scotland and her upcoming trip to Australia, where her mother was born. “For me, the whole joy is working in collaboration, working in conversation … I love dreaming things up with my friends and I’ve always been lucky enough to work with people who are interested in this stuff and continue to find new people who are interested in this sort of shapeshifting.”

Drawing on his recent experience of a heart attack, as well as his decades-long friendship with director Pedro Almodóvar, Antonio Banderas has produced what may be his finest performance in Pain and Glory. “We hadn’t worked together in eight or nine years, but suddenly he calls me and says, ‘Hey, I’m gonna send you something. You’re going to find a lot of references to people that you and I know.’ And I received Pain and Glory. I couldn’t believe it. I couldn’t believe it because he was there, it was such an opportunity. So, I went to him as a soldier, as a very, very plain soldier, ready to listen. Really listen.”

After releasing three successful albums and winning an ARIA award, indie rock band Art of Fighting all but disappeared. Having returned with their first record in 12 years, Luna Low, they discuss their thoughtful brand of songwriting, their collaborative process and their long hiatus. “Maybe we felt like we’d run our creative course to a point,” says Ollie Browne, “and there was a fear of eroding the artistry even more.”

Rather than worrying about the nuclear threat from his homeland’s northern neighbour, South Korean director and screenwriter Bong Joon-ho has used his latest Palme d’Or-winning film, Parasite, to home in on the country’s increasing economic divide. “Of course we do worry about North Korea and want peace to come and our relationship to improve, but it’s not something that happens right next to me. What we really feel with our skin are economic issues.”

Travelling north from California to Oregon on the Coast Starlight rail line, the traveller observes the fade of Los Angeles’ pressing population until the forests part for a moment’s glimpse of smalltown USA.

As The Native Cats, Julian Teakle and Chloe Alison Escott make poetic and unusually stripped-back music that riffs on gender and sexuality by way of a James M. Cain pulp novel. “Life after transitioning is the closest that you ever get to time travel, in a way,” Escott says. “You try to be somebody that you wish was there in the past. You see people who remind you of yourself at a certain time, so you think, ‘What’s the thing that I can say or do for this person?’”

Spike Lee’s new film BlacKkKlansman tells a true story of an African–American policeman infiltrating the Ku Klux Klan. Its themes of blaxploitation, racism and oppression, says the filmmaker, perfectly reflect the political climate we live in now. “When Kevin [Willmott, the film’s co-writer] and I came on board, our No. 1 concern, as storytellers, was to connect this period piece to present day. We had to con-nect. So, we did our research.”

He trained for a career in British theatre, but Gary Oldman has since appeared in some of Hollywood’s top-grossing film franchises and played some of history’s most famous men. Here, the Oscar winner opens up about learning his craft and the value of insecurity. “It would be a sad day to really be able to sit there and watch yourself and go, ‘Wow, I’m fantastic in this.’ You should always be questioning and pushing yourself, and having doubt and insecurity is a good thing, but it can’t immobilise you.”

The windswept Shetland Islands harbour a culture equal parts Norse and Scottish, leaving English-speaking visitors feeling always on the edge of something familiar.

The tidiness and folksy veneer of Portland, Maine, lends a Truman Show feel to the seaside city they call ‘Vacationland’.

To get a table at quintessential New York Italian restaurant Rao’s you need to have got your name in the book in 1977 – or know someone who did. Yet the warm welcome you’ll get once inside, will stave off the winter cold.

Camp Cope’s frank and confessional lyrics – and their campaign against sexual harassment at gigs – have won them dedicated fans who feel a personal relationship to the trio.

Visitors to North Korea’s state-run restaurant franchise in Shanghai might second-guess the polished smiles of the all-singing staff.

Brisbane teenagers The Goon Sax are getting all the right attention, here and abroad, for their deceptively simple and heartfelt pop. Fans of The Go-Betweens might recognise a pattern.

Visiting set locations of a favourite TV show or film can feel like entering an out-of-kilter dream – all the more so when the show is David Lynch’s Twin Peaks.

The cliffside houses of sun-kissed Positano, Italy, don’t so much command Mediterranean views as welcome them to stop by for the perfect aperitif.