And what if all the rumours about the golden 20s in Hollywood were true? It would have looked like Damien Chazelle staged it in "Babylon - In the Ecstasy of Ecstasy": Wild parties, brilliant ideas, drugs and megalomania, glitz, glamour and a bit of lofty art. In a three-hour epic, Chazelle celebrates the silent film era, only to let it sink with bravura morals and sound. Anyone who needs a cinematic bedtime treat after 189 minutes of picture frenzy in the cinema should reach for the DVD of the Gene Kelly classic "Singin' in the Rain".

Damien Chazelle

Either film or jazz - for Damien Chazelle, born in Providence, Rhode Island in 1985, anything else is out of the question. In high school, it was drums, but after graduating, he studied Visual and Environmental Studies at Harvard. He used his experiences on the drums in the 2014 film "Whiplash", which won three Oscars. Jazz also plays a major role in his Hollywood musical "La La Land". Of the six Oscars won by the 2017 film, two went to composer Justin Hurwitz and one to Chazelle for Best Director.

Rolling heads and blood spraying in all directions. Screaming women running through the picture, followed by swaying, green zombies. The first half hour of "Final Cut of the Dead" is something you simply have to sit through stoically. What then follows is an endearingly crazy look behind the scenes of a horror film set with all its hecticness, hysteria, helplessness and sheer ingenious talent for improvisation. Michel Hazanavicius' comedy is the French remake of a Japanese low-budget film that has become a cult film among genre fans worldwide since 2017.

Michel Hazanavicius

For many of the celebrity guests, it bordered on blasphemy when "Final Cut of the Dead" opened the artistically valuable Cannes Film Festival in May 2022. Michel Hazanavicius is a permanent guest there, for example in 2017 with the romance "Godard Mon Amour", in 2014 with the fugitive drama "The Search" and, last but not least, the internationally acclaimed "The Artist". Out of 10 Oscar nominations, the black and white, almost completely silent Hollywood drama won five trophies in France in 2012, including for Best Film and Best Director. However, there were no Palme d'Or for it.

In the spirit of Edgar Allan Poe - with an oppressive atmosphere instead of gruesome effects - director Scott Cooper ("Hostiles", 2018) has staged this crime thriller in a historical setting. The truth about "The Remarkable Case of Mr Poe" is that Poe was actually a cadet at West Point, a military academy famous for its rigour and severity, at the beginning of the 19th century. Whether this is where he collected the material for his darkly grotesque horror stories is unknown, but it fits in with the mystery that Cooper is creating with Christian Bale at the head of a large international cast of stars.