Author: Ali Azarnivand

It is recorded in the history of the Cannes Film Festival that on a night in May 1960, audiences booed L’Avventura (The Adventure), directed by Michelangelo Antonioni. The film’s unconventional narrative and its hypnotic visual language unsettled many viewers that evening. Yet during those same days it captivated members of the jury, including Georges Simenon, Grigori Kozintsev, and Henry Miller. The film ultimately received the Jury Prize (Prix du Jury), a special distinction awarded by the festival. The uproar of spectators unfamiliar with this new cinematic language faded into the corridors of history, but the light Antonioni cast from that…