Cannes 2024 week one roundup – the jury’s out, the sun isn’t…

The weather didn’t play ball, but Magnus von Horn’s fierce fairytale and Andrea Arnold’s kitchen-sink take on English mysticism should count among the first-week highlights for Greta Gerwig’s jury

‘Exhausting and extremely dangerous’: Mohammad Rasoulof on his escape from Iran

Exclusive: The director of The Seed of the Sacred Fig details how he discarded electronic devices and fled over the mountains on foot after authorities sentenced him to eight years in prison and flogging

Slow: the Lithuanian asexual romcom that raises ‘a lot of questions’

Marija Kavtaradze’s new film is a love story with a truly radical approach to intimacy. She reveals how she made a will they/won’t they tale that strays into little-known territory

The Girl With the Needle review – horrific drama based on Denmark’s 1921 baby-killer case

Loosely based on fact, Magnus van Horn’s fictionalised true crime nightmare leaves you with a shiver of pure fear

Wild Diamond review – French social-realist drama fuelled by TikTok energy

First-time actor Agathe Riedinger is a wannabe influencer from the wrong side of the tracks in this forthright and fluent film

Rome, Open City review – Rossellini’s blazingly urgent masterpiece from a city in ruins

Roberto Rossellini’s 1945 neorealist drama is unsparing in its depiction of the heavy price of both resistance and collaboration with the Nazi occupation

The Second Act review – Quentin Dupieux’s likable meta comedy of actors’ private lives

With help from an A-list cast, Dupieux brings his customary mischief to an amiable tale of imposture and role play

Our Mothers review – intimate drama exploring the legacy of Guatemala’s bloody civil war

Director César Díaz’s award-winning debut powerfully confronts his country’s past

La Chimera review – Josh O’Connor dazzles in brilliant tale of Italian tomb-raiders

Torn between lost love and a gang of rowdy grave-robbers, the actor digs deep for one of his finest performances in Alice Rohrwacher’s dazzling caper

Mambar Pierrette review – big-hearted parable of women’s resilience in Cameroon

Pierrette is beset with troubles, from a robbery to a house flood and more, but the neorealist drama comes with solidarity and surprising humour

Iranian director Mohammad Rasoulof sentenced to eight years in prison and flogging

Rasoulof is one of Iran’s leading directors and his film The Seed of the Sacred Fig is due to premiere at Cannes film festival

Blackbird Blackbird Blackberry review – a beguiling tale of midlife love from Georgia

Eka Chavleishvili is superb as an unmarried fortysomething woman whose life is turned upside-down by romance in Elene Naveriani’s handsome drama

Nezouh review – magic realism amid the ruins of Damascus under siege

Soudade Kaadan’s poetic tale of family life in the bombed-out Syrian capital is visually poetic, if a touch too theatrical

Nezouh review – magical realism under shelling during Syria’s civil war

Soudade Kaadan’s second feature is a sweet-natured and beautifully photographed portrait of a grumpy middle-aged guy, his sceptical wife and their teenage daughter

The Animal Kingdom review – Romain Duris leads post-Covid fantasy of virus-triggered mutants

Duris stars as a father protecting his son, who may or may not be mutating, in Thomas Cailley’s well-crafted thriller