KARIATA N°3

Kariata numéro 3

An Inspiration Drawn from the World’s Showcase 

Between Shot and Reverse Shot

By Marie Ange Barbancourt

Editor‑in‑Chief and Director of Development, Diamond History Group

A Festival is fertile ground for stories that make us dream, reflect, or laugh. A temporal voyage that allows us to absorb the essential memory of peoples.

KARIATA N°3

Each of us has the privilege of placing every universe into its own carefully arranged chamber, where we may return at will to retrieve fragments—shards that help us shape our own story, our own vision of things. We carry within us the colors of the world, the madness of a dance, the spark of a glance, the first tremor of an impossible love. We try to untangle infernal tales, rituals of expiation, or simply plunge into fantasy. It is, in short, a rite of passage—one that frees a mind too congested. That, too, is the purpose of cinema.

I love the idea of dissecting, imagining what each spectator—slouched in the dark—receives when the only task of the eye is to catch the light of images wrapped in a powerful or simple narrative. Protagonists offer us their souls through characters shaped by the vision of a filmmaker. It reminds me that cinema knows no true failure: artisans pour themselves into it, and whatever the outcome, the effort is worthy. To complete a film is already a triumph. For that alone, every maker of images deserves a benevolent gaze—even if it means saying, “Next time.”

Kariata draws inspiration from the world’s showcase—its diffuse glow that brings us textures, nuances, complexities, movements of audacity and genius, as well as its shadows and illuminations. It highlights styles, resonances, and the play of interpretation.Face to face, shot and reverse shot, we present an issue that reflects the many territories we explored for you.

Here’s to the artists brought into the light by those who work tirelessly behind it.Long live cinema in all its corners.Long live those who inhabit the off‑screen.Welcome to the 79th Festival de Cannes.