It’s 10 p.m. along the Croisette at the afterparty for “Lawless,” and a new side of Cannes is revealing itself.

It’s not the star-studded Armani-Chopard-Haiti benefit on Friday night, where $100,000 at auction bought you three days in Haiti with Sean Penn. 

And it’s not the exclusive A-list gathering at the Hotel du Cap down the coast, where Graydon Carter of Vanity Fair is having his annual affair.

It’s a different kind of party and a different kind of exclusive, where a new blend of filmmakers, stars and high net worth producers is gathering to celebrate the premiere of John Hillcoat’s “Lawless.”

Who’s here? The people up to their elbows in making the movies that you’re likely to care about. Most are barely over 30. Everybody's smoking, and very good looking.

Also...

Qwerty Films and Focus Features International have added Elias Koteas, Tom Cullen, Johnny Harris and Yusra Warsama to the cast of "Last Days on Mars," a sci-fi drama now shooting in Jordan and the UK with a cast that also includes Liev Schreiber and Olivia Williams.

Focus is currently selling rights to the film in the Cannes marketplace for all territories except the UK, where Universal Pictures will handle the release.

"Last Days on Mars" is based on a short story by Sydney J. Bounds about a group of astronauts who discover colonies of bacteria living on the red planet. The story was adapted by Clive Dawson and will be the feature debut of Irish director Ruari Robinson, who won an Oscar nomination for his animated short "Fifty Percent Grey" in 2001.

The project was originally announced at the American Film Market in the fall of 2011...

For those who’ve been waiting for Tom Hardy to become a movie star, this may be his year.

The British actor stars as a moonshine bootlegger in the Prohibition-era drama “Lawless,” which screened at the Cannes Film Festival on Saturday, and plays the villain Bane in the much-anticipated Batman epic, “Dark Knight Rises,” this summer.

Also read: Cannes Review: ‘Lawless’ Draws Great Performances From Prohibition Violence

At  the news conference following the screening on Saturday, Hardy – seated beside costar Jessica Chastain and director John Hillcoat – was asked about being compared to Marlon Brando.

“I haven’t even seen...

Recently, a petition was circulated that upwards of 1,200 people have already signed, taking the Cannes Film Festival to task for not including any films by women directors in the main competition category. This omission offended me, too, until I started seeing some of the films that were included.

Lo and behold, the rarest of all things: movies about women that didn't have anything to do with the men they were sleeping with or marrying. All but one of the films I've seen so far in competition have had strong female storylines, and the one that hasn't still had many well-drawn female supporting players.

Also read:...