It’s the end of the world and the Cannes Film Festival does not feel fine

CANNES, France (AP) — “Is this what the end of the world feels like?”

So asks a character in one of the most-talked about films of the 78th Cannes Film Festival: Oliver Laxe’s “Sirât,” a Moroccan desert road trip through, we come to learn, a World War III purgatory.

It’s well into “Sirât,” a kind of combination of “Mad Max” and “The Wages of Fear,” that that reality begins to sink in. Our main characters — Luis (Sergi López) and his son Esteban (Brúno Nuñez) — have come to a desert rave in search of Luis’ missing daughter. When the authorities break it up, they join up with a bohemian troupe of ravers who offroad toward a new, faraway destination.

Thumping, propulsive beats abound in “Sirât,” not unlike they do at Cannes' nightly parties. In this movie that jarringly confronts the notion of escape from harsh reality, there are wild tragedies and violent plot turns. Its characters steer into a nightmare that looks an awful lot like today’s front pages.

“We wanted to be deeply connected to this day and age,” Laxe said in Cannes.

As much as Cannes basks in the Côte d’Azur sunshine, storm clouds have been all over its movie screens at the festival, which on Monday passed the halfway point. Portents of geopolitical doom are everywhere in a lineup that’s felt unusually in sync with the moment. Tom Cruise, in “Mission: Impossible – Final Awakening,” has battled the AI apocalypse. Raoul Peck, in “Orwell: 2 + 2 = 5,” has summoned the author’s totalitarianism warnings for today. Even the new Wes Anderson (“The Phoenician Scheme”) is about an oligarch.

If the French Riviera has often served as a spectacular retreat from the real world, this year’s Cannes abounds with movies urgently reckoning with it. It’s probably appropriate, then, that many of those films have been particularly divisive.

“Sirât” is laudable for its it's-time-to-break-stuff attitude to its characters, even if that makes for a sometimes punishing experience for the audience. This is a love-or-hate-it movie, sometimes at the same time.

Ari Aster’s “Eddington,” perhaps the largest American production in recent years to sincerely grapple with contemporary American politics, was dismissed more than it was praised. But for a good while, “Eddington” is breathtakingly accurate in its depiction of the United States circa 2020.

In “Eddington,” the conservative, untidy sheriff Joe Cross (Joaquin Phoenix) runs for mayor against the liberal incumbent, Ted Garcia (Pedro Pascal), partly over disagreements on mask mandates. But in Aster’s small-town satire, both left and right are mostly under the sway of a greater force: social media and a digital reality that can wreak havoc on daily lives.

“I wrote this film in a state of fear and anxiety about the world,” Aster said in Cannes. “I wanted to try and pull back and just describe and show what it feels like to live in a world where nobody can agree on what is real anymore.”

It’s been striking how much this year’s Cannes has been defined by anxious, if not downright bleak visions of the future. There have been exceptions — most notably Richard Linklater’s charming ode to the French New Wave “Nouvelle Vague” and Anderson’s delightful “The Phoenician Scheme.” But seldom has this year’s festival not felt like an ominous big-screen reflection of today.

That’s been true in the overall chatter around the festival, which got underway with the new threat of U.S. tariffs on foreign-produced films on the minds of many filmmakers and producers. Rising geopolitical frictions led even the typically very optimistic Bono, in Cannes to premiere his Apple TV+ documentary “Bono: Stories of Surrender,” to confess he had never lived at a time where World War III felt closer at hand.

Other films in Cannes weren’t as overtly about here and now as “Eddington,” but many of them have been consumed with the recurring traumas of the past. Two of the most lauded films from the beginning of the festival — Mascha Schilinski’s “Sound of Falling” and “Two Prosecutors,” by the Ukrainian filmmaker Sergei Loznitsa — contemplated intimate cases of history repeating itself.

“Two Prosecutors,” set in Stalin’s Russia, captures the slow-moving crawl of bureaucratic malevolence by adapting a story by the dissident author and physicist Georgy Demidov, who spent 14 years in the gulag. Loznitsa said his film is “not a reflection of the past. It’s a reflection of the present.”

In the period political thriller “The Secret Agent,” Brazilian filmmaker Kleber Mendonça Filho turns to not a real historical tale but a fictional one, set in 1977 during Brazil’s military dictatorship.

Wagner Moura brings a natural movie-star cool to the role of Marcelo, a technology expert returning to his hometown of Recife where government corruption is rife and hitmen are on his tail. Vividly textured, with absurdist touches (the hairy leg of a corpse plays as a colorful metaphor for the dictatorship), “The Secret Agent” seeks, and sometimes finds, its own logic of political resistance.

“I really believe that some of the most heartfelt texts come not necessarily from fact but from the logic of what is happening,” Filho said in an interview. “Right, now the world seems to be running on some kind of new logic. Ten or 15 years ago, some of these ideas would be completely dismissed, even by the most conservative politicians. I think ‘The Secret Agent’ is a film full of mystery and intrigue but it does seem to have a certain logic which I associate with my country, Brazil.”

In nonfiction filmmaking, no one may be better today than Peck (“I Am Not Your Nego,” last year’s “Ernest Cole: Lost and Found” ) in connecting historical dots. “Orwell: 2 + 2 = 5” marries George Orwell’s words (narrated by Damian Lewis) on totalitarian states that demand “the disbelief of objective truth” with the actions of contemporary governments around the world, including Russia, Myanmar and the United States. Images of a bombed-out Mariupol in 2022 runs with its official description: “Peacekeeping operations.”

It’s not just geopolitical tremors quaking on movie screens in Cannes. Climate change and natural disasters are on the minds of filmmakers, too, sometimes in the most unlikely of movies.

The French animated film “Arco,” by illustrator Ugo Bienvenu, is about a boy from the distant future who lives on a “Jetsons”-like platform in the clouds. He travels back in time to another future-time, 2075, where homes are bubbled to protect them from fire and storm, and robots do all of the parenting for working parents who appear to their children only as digital projections.

It’s a grim future, particularly so because it feels quite plausible. But the strange charm of “Arco,” a brightly colored movie with a whole lot of rainbows, is that is offers a younger generation a dream of a future they might make. A relationship between the boy from the future and a girl who finds him in 2075 sparks not just a friendship but a nourishing vision of what’s possible.

“Arco,” in that way, is a reminder that the most moving movies about our current doom offer a ray of hope, too.

“People are feeling disenchanted with the world, so we have to re-enchant them,” said Laxe, the “Sirât” director. “Times are tough but they’re very stimulating at the same time. We’ll have to look deeply into ourselves. That’s what we’re forced to do because it’s a tough world now.”

Jake Coyle has covered the Cannes Film Festival since 2012. He’s seeing approximately 40 films at this year’s festival and reporting on what stands out.

For more coverage of the 2025 Cannes Film Festival, visit: https://apnews.com/hub/cannes-film-festival

Zoey Deutch, from left, director Richard Linklater, Michele Halberstadt and producer Laurent Petin pose for photographers upon arrival at the premiere of the film 'Nouvelle Vague' at the 78th international film festival, Cannes, southern France, Saturday, May 17, 2025. (Photo by Joel C Ryan/Invision/AP)

Pedro Pascal, from left, director Ari Aster and Joaquin Phoenix pose for photographers at the photo call for the film 'Eddington' at the 78th international film festival, Cannes, southern France, Saturday, May 17, 2025. (Photo by Scott A Garfitt/Invision/AP)

Stella Maxwell poses for photographers upon arrival at the premiere of the film 'The Phoenician Scheme' at the 78th international film festival, Cannes, southern France, Sunday, May 18, 2025. (AP Photo/Natacha Pisarenko)

Producer Lucas Schmidt, from left, producer Maren Schmitt, Luzia Oppermann, Laeni Geiseler, Susanne Wust, from sixth left, Hanna Heckt, director Mascha Schilinski, Lena Urzendowsky, Lea Drinda, Luise Heyer, writer Louise Peters and cinematographer Fabian Gamper pose for photographers upon arrival at the premiere of the film 'Sound of Falling' at the 78th international film festival, Cannes, southern France, Wednesday, May 14, 2025. (Photo by Lewis Joly/Invision/AP)

Bono poses for photographers at the photo call for the film 'Bono: Stories of Surrender' at the 78th international film festival, Cannes, southern France, Saturday, May 17, 2025. (Photo by Scott A Garfitt/Invision/AP)

Director Oliver Laxe, from left, Bruno Nunez, and Sergi Lopez pose for photographers at the photo call for the film 'Sirat' at the 78th international film festival, Cannes, southern France, Friday, May 16, 2025. (Photo by Lewis Joly/Invision/AP)

Director Wes Anderson poses for portrait photographs for the film 'The Phoenician Scheme' at the 78th international film festival, Cannes, southern France, Saturday, May 17, 2025. (Photo by Scott A Garfitt/Invision/AP)

Bono poses for photographers at the photo call for the film 'Bono: Stories of Surrender' at the 78th international film festival, Cannes, southern France, Saturday, May 17, 2025. (Photo by Joel C Ryan/Invision/AP)

Tom Cruise poses for photographers upon arrival at the premiere of the film 'Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning' at the 78th international film festival, Cannes, southern France, Wednesday, May 14, 2025. (Photo by Joel C Ryan/Invision/AP)

NEW YORK (AP) — There was a time when Donald Trump was just another celebrity sitting courtside at New York Knicks games. He was famous, but not yet flanked by Secret Service agents or defined by the politics that have left him deeply unpopular in his hometown.

Now, more than a decade after attending his last Knicks game at Madison Square Garden, Trump is making a rare trip back to New York City as president to cheer for them in Game 3 of the NBA Finals against the San Antonio Spurs on Monday night. Invited by Knicks owner James Dolan, he will be the first sitting president to attend an NBA Finals game.

The Knicks are seeking their first championship since 1973, when Trump was 26 and a relative newcomer to the family real estate business that vaulted him to wealth and fame. Two years after that triumph, the team’s owners at the time hired him as a consultant as they looked to sell the arena.

Trump has been to more major sporting events than any of his predecessors, including the Super Bowl and Daytona 500, golf's Ryder Cup in the New York City suburbs, where he was cheered, and last year's U.S. Open men’s tennis championship in Queens, where he was booed and blamed for long security lines.

On June 14, when he turns 80 while wrestling with myriad crises including the war with Iran, economic unease and court rulingsblunting his agenda, he will host a UFC fight on White House grounds. Trump also has expressed interest in attending soccer's World Cup, which kicks off this week across the United States, Mexico and Canada.

Trump is an avid sports fan, but the affinity he professes for the Knicks is different.

It speaks to the Republican president’s identity as a New Yorker and harkens to a bygone era where a front-row seat at a Knicks game was a chance for him and other boldface names to see and be seen.

In a city whose wealthy gatekeepers largely turned their noses at Trump's brash personality and playboy image in the 1990s and 2000s, the Garden’s Celebrity Row was one club where he felt at home.

“I’ve been a Knick fan for a long time,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office last week, a day after New York rallied to win Game 1. “I watched that end of the game and they were dominant — really amazing.”

After another win Friday in San Antonio, the Knicks head home with a 2-0 lead in the best-of-seven series. They have won a remarkable 13 straight playoff games and last lost on April 23, uniting the city in a way unseen since the Knicks went to the NBA Finals twice in the 1990s.

Enter Trump. He returns to the Knicks zeitgeist not as the tabloid curiosity who once sat shoulder to shoulder with the late John F. Kennedy Jr. at a game in 1999, but as a president who is disliked by a majority of the city's Democratic voters.

Trump, who gave up his lifelong New York residency for Florida in 2019, is making his first trip to New York City since he spoke at the United Nations in September. In 2024, he went on trial in the city and was convicted of 34 felony counts related to hush money paid on his behalf during his 2016 campaign.

Knicks fans, though, do not seem to be concerned so much with his politics, but that his attendance — and the hoopla accompanying it — could mess up the team’s momentum. The Knicks said people going to the game should arrive at least two hours before tipoff for airport-style security screening.

“Why does Donald Trump always have to ruin a good thing?” U.S. Rep. Hakeem Jeffries of New York, an avid Knicks fan and the House Democratic leader, told CNN. “Like, literally, the Knicks haven’t been in the NBA finals for 27 years. The city is trying to celebrate this. We’ve embraced this team, and this guy has to inject himself.”

Mayor Zohran Mamdani, a Democrat who struck up a cordial relationship with Trump after the two met in November, was more inviting.

“We’re excited to welcome anyone and everyone who’s rooting for the Knicks in this moment," said Mamdani, who will also be at the game — albeit, not with Trump.

Last week, as Trump began floating the idea of attending a game, New York magazine published an article, “Is Trump Really a Knicks Fan? An Investigation.” The story, filled with pictures of Trump at Knicks games from 1991 to 2014, described him as a “textbook example of a celebrity bandwagon fan."

NBA Commissioner Adam Silver disagrees.

“Before he ever ran for office, he was a big Knicks fan,” Silver told reporters last week. “I’ve been with the league for a long time. I was there at many Knicks games with him in the old days.”

Trump and the Knicks came into existence the same year, 1946.

His affiliation with the team — at least in the public record — dates to 1975 when he acted as a real estate adviser to the then-owners of the Knicks and Madison Square Garden, who were looking to sell the building known in a bit of Trump-style branding as “The World’s Most Famous Arena."

Trump claimed to reporters at the time that two groups of “Arab oil interests” were interested in paying $50 million to $75 million. But the arena’s leadership passed on the idea, saying it was “not conceivable” to make such a deal during the Middle East oil crisis raging at the time.

Trump was not much of a known entity when the Knicks won their only championships in 1970 and 1973.

By the time they rebounded in the 1990s, Trump was front and center, taking his then-wife Marla Maples to Game 3 of the NBA Finals in 1994 and his current wife, first lady Melania Trump, to Game 2 of the Eastern Conference Finals in 1999. In between, he added to his Knicks fan bona fides with a cameo in the Knicks-themed Whoopi Goldberg film “Eddie” in 1996.

Back then, Trump was a more of a mythic figure than a consequential one, known as much for the women he dated and married as the buildings he built.

But just as those Knicks came up short in the NBA Finals against Hakeem Olajuwon and the Houston Rockets and David Robinson and the Spurs, Trump was running into problems of his own. His business empire was in disarray after his casinos fell into financial trouble and his airline, Trump Shuttle, went out of business.

Like the Knicks, Trump went into rebuilding mode and charted a new course: reality TV with NBC's “The Apprentice” and “Celebrity Apprentice,” and then, politics. On a Knicks TV broadcast in 2010, he hinted at a possible presidential run.

That same year, as the Knicks struggled to recapture the magic of the 1990s, Trump recorded a video trying to persuade LeBron James to join the team.

“The real winners of the world want to be here," Trump told him.

FILE - President Donald Trump watches Derrick Lewis fight Blagoy Ivanov, right, at UFC 244 at Madison Square Garden, Nov. 2, 2019, in New York. (AP Photo/ Evan Vucci, File)

FILE - Donald Trump, right, talks to an unidentified man from the stands at Madison Square Garden during the New York Knicks game against the Dallas Mavericks on Jan. 11, 2006, in New York. (AP Photo/Kathy Willens, File)

FILE - Actor Elliott Gould, left, joins Donald Trump, center, and Marla Maples at courtside during an NBA basketball game between the Phoenix Suns and the New York Knicks at Madison Square Garden, in New York, March 6, 1991. (AP Photo/Steve Freeman, File)