Author: Ali Azarnivand

The 1976 film Who Can Kill a Child? (¿Quién puede matar a un niño?), directed by Narciso Ibáñez Serrador—the Spanish filmmaker, actor, and screenwriter—was released in the United States under the title Island of the Damned. It tells the story of a foreign couple who travel to a small, seemingly peaceful island off the coast of Spain for a holiday. At the beginning, everything about their trip is pleasant and inviting. But gradually they realize that no adults live on the island; only children wander through it, behaving in strange and disturbing ways. At first this seems merely puzzling, but…

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…