Trump biopic hits Cannes Film Festival

"Emilia Perez", a musical about a narco boss having a sex change, is the audacious frontrunner so far, after 11 of the 22 entries for the top prize Palme d'Or have been seen.
The festival -- considered the film industry's foremost get-together --concludes with its award ceremony on Saturday, with "Barbie" director Greta Gerwig heading the jury.
But two more buzzy entries arrive on Monday.
"The Apprentice" is a biopic of Trump's formative years from Iranian-borndirector Ali Abbasi -- bound to stir up controversy in an election year for the United States.
It stars Sebastian Stan, best-known for playing the Winter Soldier in Marvel films, though he also won best actor at this year's Berlin Film Festival and widespread acclaim for his part as rocker Tommy Lee in series "Pam and Tommy".
Later, Cronenberg -- director of many body-horror classics like "The Fly", "Crash" and "Videodrome" -- returns to the Cote d'Azur festival with "The Shrouds".
Billed as his most personal film yet, it tells the story of a widowed businessman (Vincent Cassell) who invents a machine to monitor the dead intheir graves, reports BSS.
It was partly inspired by the death in 2017 of Cronenberg's wife of 43 years.
"I don't really think of art as therapy," the Canadian director told Variety."Grief is forever, as far as I'm concerned. It doesn't go away. You can havesome distance from it, but I didn't experience any catharsis making themovie."
Among entries to score well with critics during the first week was "Bird", agritty but sweet and fantastical tale about a young girl in working-classEngland from director Andrea Arnold.
"Kinds of Kindness", the latest bizarro team-up between Emma Stone and YorgosLanthimos, featured some ultra-dark comedy moments, including a thumb-and-cauliflower dinner.
"Megalopolis", the decades-in-the-making epic from Francis Ford Coppola, hasperhaps been the most divisive entry, with some reviewers finding it aprofound end-of-life work of philosophy, and others a barely comprehensiblemess.
But the one to beat so far is "Emilia Perez", which has won a lot of acclaimfor stars Zoe Saldana, Selena Gomez and trans actor Karla Sofia Gascon in thetitle role, as well as its risk-taking French director, Jacques Audiard, whoalready has a Palme d'Or under his belt.
- Sagas -
The festival has also seen glitzy out-of-competition launches for twoHollywood blockbusters that fancy themselves as "sagas".
The action-packed "Furiosa: a Mad Max Saga" received largely strong reviews,while Kevin Costner returned to his favourite Western genre with the three-hour "Horizon: An American Saga", just the first of four mooted chapters.
Like Coppola, Costner put millions of his own fortune into the decades-longpassion project.
"At a certain moment I just said OK, I'm going to do this myself. And so Imortgaged property, I raised the money," he told AFP at the festival.
The early reviews were decidedly mixed, with The Hollywood Reporter deridingit as a "clumsy slog".
But Costner says he is unconcerned about losing his money.
"If they take it away from me, I still have my movie. I still have myintegrity. I still listened to my heart," he said.