Kir­ill Sere­bren­nikov had a film in com­pe­ti­tion for the Palme d’Or at three of the first four Cannes Film Fes­ti­vals post-COVID, a peri­od imme­di­ate­ly fol­low­ing his unjust con­vic­tion, in his native Rus­sia, on trumped-up charges of embez­zle­ment from the state-fund­ed the­atre of which he was pres­i­dent — wide­ly under­stood to be polit­i­cal­ly moti­vat­ed per­se­cu­tion of a dis­si­dent artist.

Then came Russia’s inva­sion of Ukraine and Serebrennikov’s self-imposed exile to Berlin. As a gad­fly fig­ure in Russ­ian cul­ture, he was known for tak­ing on pro­tag­o­nists with knot­ty, oppo­si­tion­al pol­i­tics, por­tray­ing Sovi­et-era rock punks, flu-strick­en com­ic artists, delu­sion­al spous­es and rad­i­cal poets as flawed anti­heroes tear­ing through the fab­ric of soci­ety — often lit­er­al­ly, in strut­ting, rock-and-roll track­ing shots across elab­o­rate sets that were liable to col­lapse mid­way through the scene, break­ing the fourth wall and pierc­ing the veil.

Sere­bren­nikov is back in Cannes with his first Ger­man-lan­guage film and the first to com­plete prin­ci­pal pho­tog­ra­phy since he left Rus­sia; it’s about a Ger­man anti­hero this time. The Dis­ap­pear­ance of Josef Men­gele, which cov­ers the life of Auschwitz’s ​“angel of death” in hid­ing in South Amer­i­ca in the decades after the fall of the Reich, is a study of a fel­low exile, but one still loy­al to his home­land, and who moved, before then at least, in lock­step with his gov­ern­ment and with his his­tor­i­cal moment.

Per­haps it’s Serebrennikov’s con­tempt for a pro­tag­o­nist he has every claim of supe­ri­or­i­ty to; per­haps it’s in def­er­ence to what is still a sore sub­ject in his adopt­ed home­land and beyond, but in com­par­i­son to his recent work, the film’s pol­i­tics are more leg­i­ble and respectable — and its style more staid.

“We can learn a lot from these bones,” says an avun­cu­lar med­ical school instruc­tor in mod­ern-day Brazil in the film’s first scene, invit­ing his stu­dents to think about foren­sics – and his­to­ry – while con­tem­plat­ing the remains of a doc­tor whose spir­it of inquiry was far less sci­en­tif­ic: Dr. Men­gele, who sort­ed arrivals at Auschwitz for the gas cham­bers and con­duct­ed sadis­tic exper­i­ments, like attempt­ing to pro­duce blue eyes by inject­ing chem­i­cal dyes, in sup­port of Nazi race theories.

Large­ly his­tor­i­cal­ly accu­rate in its out­lines, the film fol­lows Mengele’s life in Argenti­na, Paraguay and Brazil, under a series of alias­es and in decreas­ing com­fort and health, from bour­geois ease to hard­scrab­ble rus­tic­i­ty to decrepit pover­ty. The chronol­o­gy hop­scotch­es around; as Men­gele, August Diehl grows con­tort­ed with age (at the end of his character’s life he looks and moves much old­er than 67) in the kind of showy per­for­mance Sere­bren­nikov favours, one that spans impos­si­ble changes in cir­cum­stance with the help of stage makeup.

Shoot­ing in widescreen and black and white, with a score of noir sax­o­phone and Jok­er cel­lo, Sere­bren­nikov gives Mengele’s sto­ry the high-gloss, high-con­trast look of a noir; though he still prefers to work in long takes, his per­spec­tive feels coiled, aligned with a char­ac­ter who paces like a caged ani­mal. The cin­e­matog­ra­phy is most­ly not showy, except at Mengele’s 1950s wed­ding (divorced from his first wife by proxy, he mar­ried his brother’s wid­ow in Uruguay), the best scene of the film, which is cov­ered in a sin­gle Steadicam mov­ing from the par­lour where wed­ding guests in Iron Cross­es Sieg Heil for the bride and groom, to the kitchen, where the ser­vants stick a swasti­ka flag into the wed­ding cake and play ​“Here Comes the Bride” (Wag­n­er, of course) on the phonograph.

Among friends, the wed­ding par­ty, which includes mem­bers of the rat­lines who got the Nazis out of Europe, speak Ger­man in front of the help, who only speak Span­ish, and exult in the reminders of their glo­ry days as the cam­era roams from out­build­ing to man­sion and room to room in one of Serebrennikov’s charis­mat­ic track­ing shots.

For the most part, though, the film­mak­ing is restrained by the director’s stan­dards, stay­ing close on Men­gele as he busts in and out of hid­ing, even return­ing to West Ger­many in the mid-1950s, where his wealthy fam­i­ly, tak­ing stock of the promi­nence of for­mer Nazis in post­war gov­ern­ment and soci­ety, sug­gest he comes back. ​“No one cares,” he’s told, not even the Amer­i­cans, but either through ego or guilt, he remains para­noid about poten­tial con­se­quences for his crimes, intu­it­ing that Eich­mann is being indis­creet even before his kid­nap­ping by Mossad.

As the polit­i­cal regimes in South Amer­i­ca become less favourable to for­mer Nazis — the ouster of Perón in the 1950s is a turn­ing point — his per­se­cu­tion com­plex sharp­ens as his body dete­ri­o­rates. The film returns repeat­ed­ly to 1977, when a vis­it from the doctor’s estranged son Rolf brings forth undi­min­ished invec­tive against the Jews and rag­ing ratio­nal­i­sa­tions. With­in the rel­a­tive­ly slick and safe Roma-lite visu­al scheme, Diehl’s ful­mi­na­tions, about the forth­com­ing film of The Boys from Brazil or the hypocrisy of the post­war soci­ety that sin­gles out him for deprav­i­ty above and beyond oth­er Nazis (“and they call me the angel of death!”), approach camp in their extremes of its delud­ed self-pity, with­out a mad mise en scène to match the Wag­ner­ian performance.

In his two-han­der with Rolf, Men­gele ham­mers again and again at the acknowl­edged patholo­gies of the Nazi era, the nation­al­ism and natal­ist race pseu­do­science, a fla­gel­lat­ing aware­ness of which is the para­dox­i­cal source of many of con­tem­po­rary Germany’s most trea­sured moral cer­tain­ties. When Rolf — who came to despise his father, but refused to reveal his where­abouts to Nazi hunters — final­ly gets Men­gele to dis­cuss Auschwitz, the film launch­es a cen­tre­piece flash­back, and switch­es from black and white to colour. Any­one won­der­ing why the new film from Com­pe­ti­tion reg­u­lar Sere­bren­nikov has been shunt­ed off to Cannes Pre­mieres will fig­ure out why at this spe­cif­ic moment, as the Auschwitz sequence opens with a shot of Nazis at leisure, pic­nick­ing by a riv­er and frol­ick­ing in the long grass, with a bla­tant, unavoid­able resem­blance to the open­ing of Zone of Inter­est; the com­par­i­son does not flat­ter the new­er film. Next to the fixed dis­tance, omi­nous ambi­ent sound design, and fear­some­ly chilly rigour of Glazer’s film, this is pat bucol­ic irony.

Sere­bren­nikov strains to avoid the gener­ic in depict­ing the death camp, reach­ing about halfway down his bag of tricks in film­ing it in the style of a Super 8 home movie, with Nazis includ­ing Men­gele mug­ging for the cam­era in between assign­ing new arrivals to labour or death, tak­ing rel­ish in sep­a­rat­ing fam­i­lies and pick­ing out spe­cial cas­es for med­ical exper­i­ments. Like a hack hor­ror movie direc­tor, Men­gele was par­tic­u­lar­ly inter­est­ed in twins and peo­ple with dwarfism and oth­er phys­i­cal defor­mi­ties, and that’s duly empha­sised here, as a per­for­mance by an orches­tra of lit­tle peo­ple is inter­cut with the cru­el exam­i­na­tion, bru­tal exe­cu­tion, and grotesque dis­sec­tion and dis­pos­al of a man with exag­ger­at­ed kypho­sis. In cheery sub­ti­tles (not, odd­ly, silent-movie inter­ti­tles; you’d expect a flour­ish like that) Men­gele dis­cuss­es the best way to sep­a­rate tis­sue from bone, whether through chem­i­cals, or boil­ing down bones like in a stew. The aim is for dis­gust and vis­cer­al shock, but it’s hard to find unclaimed aes­thet­ic ter­ri­to­ry when depict­ing the Holo­caust, and I’m frankly skep­ti­cal of the pur­pose being served here.

Short­ly before Sere­bren­nikov left Rus­sia, in 2022, he trav­eled to Cannes to present his film Tchaikovsky’s Wife — a revi­sion­ist take on the nation­al icon and clos­et­ed homo­sex­u­al, which was insuf­fi­cient­ly respect­ful of Russ­ian cul­ture accord­ing to the Rus­sians, and insuf­fi­cient­ly forth­right in its con­dem­na­tion of it accord­ing to (some) West­ern­ers. He and his cast, espe­cial­ly those still liv­ing and work­ing in Rus­sia, were pained and self-cen­sor­ing through­out the fes­ti­val, fore­shad­ow­ing Serebrennikov’s depar­ture from his author­i­tar­i­an native land for lib­er­al West­ern Europe. But free speech has its lim­its in Ger­many, too, par­tic­u­lar­ly on issues touch­ing, as The Dis­ap­pear­ance of Josef Men­gele does, on Zion­ism. A polite guest in an artis­tic and polit­i­cal cli­mate which is flam­boy­ant­ly hos­tile to any crit­i­cism of Israel — which is some­thing like the struc­tur­ing absence of the film — Sere­bren­nikov is cir­cum­spect on the subject.

Jew­ish ​“boys will grow into men” who want revenge on the Nazis, Men­gele rages at one point — a jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for geno­cide which has some con­tem­po­rary echoes. But this is an excep­tion. Men­gele also rants and raves about the influ­ence of Israel, as you’d expect from a Nazi, and lives in fear of Mossad, with the even­tu­al abduc­tion, tri­al and exe­cu­tion of Eich­mann hang­ing over him as a memen­to mori, as you’d also expect from a Nazi.

But in fact, after the huge­ly sym­bol­ic Eich­mann tri­al, Mossad chose not to pur­sue Men­gele despite pos­sess­ing promis­ing and, as it turned out, accu­rate intel­li­gence on his where­abouts, focus­ing their efforts, instead, on Israel’s com­pe­ti­tion with its Arab neigh­bours. Meir Amit, head of Mossad in the ear­ly 1960s, specif­i­cal­ly gave the direc­tive to ​“stop chas­ing after ghosts from the past and devote all our man­pow­er and resources to threats against the secu­ri­ty of the state,” ie, Egypt’s mis­sile pro­gram, and lat­er Pales­tin­ian mil­i­tants. The evi­dence sug­gests that Mossad in those years was not adverse to recruit­ing ex-Nazis to help with these aims.

The film, which includes one last Auschwitz flash­back dur­ing Mengele’s death, at age 67, from drown­ing, posits the Jew­ish state, or the threat of it, as the aveng­ing con­science of the six mil­lion. The film’s view of Israel is fil­tered through the aware­ness of its pro­tag­o­nist, which is hard to fault as a for­mal choice, hard to sec­ond-guess as a sketch of the flail­ing, haunt­ed and hate­ful con­science of an evil man, and even hard to cri­tique as por­trait of at least one facet of a gov­ern­ment which, with the Holo­caust very much fresh in its mind, brought Eich­mann to jus­tice despite Argentina’s refusal to extra­dite him.

Yet this time last year, Sere­bren­nikov was in Cannes with Limonov: The Bal­lad, a sprawl­ing almost-musi­cal that exult­ed in the defi­ant, inco­her­ent, inter­mit­tent­ly gal­van­ic and ulti­mate­ly vile ethos of the Russ­ian lit­er­ary gad­fly and even­tu­al nation­al­ist mili­tia founder Eddie Limonov, played with bil­ious insou­ciance by Ben Whishaw. A self-impli­cat­ing por­trait of artis­tic ego and the urge to pro­voke, which can lead equal­ly down avant-garde and reac­tionary paths, the film looked at Limonov with min­gled loathing and fas­ci­na­tion, and had con­tra­dic­to­ry, con­fus­ing, risky things to say about the rela­tion­ship of indi­vid­u­als to the state and its pieties.

One the one hand: yes, of course, the first thing Kir­ill Sere­bren­nikov would do upon arrival in Ger­many is to make a movie about a Nazi. But on the oth­er hand, in zero­ing in on an oft-repeat­ed nar­ra­tive of nation­al shame, he han­dles a char­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly inflam­ma­to­ry sub­ject with unchar­ac­ter­is­tic inof­fen­sive­ness, yield­ing lim­it­ed insight.

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Death seems to be an omni­scient spec­tre and peren­ni­al fas­ci­na­tion for promis­ing film­mak­er Chie Hayakawa. In her debut Plan 75, Japan’s elder­ly are encour­aged to sign up for a euthani­sa­tion pro­gramme in an attempt to curb the country’s aging pop­u­la­tion. Dying is sold and com­mod­i­fied, and is as nor­malised as gro­ceries. Though not remote­ly as dystopi­an, there’s a through­line to Hayakawa’s fol­low-up in its rela­tion­ship with mor­tal­i­ty: that death has become so embed­ded in every­day life that it’s almost unremarkable.

For 11-year-old Fuki (Yui Suzu­ki), she’s lack­ing the road map for grief when time is run­ning out for her ter­mi­nal­ly ill father (a lit­tle-seen but always dev­as­tat­ing Lily Franky). Her moth­er (Hikari Ishi­da) is so occu­pied with her busy career dur­ing 1980s Japan’s eco­nom­ic boom that she approach­es funer­al arrange­ments with the casu­al­ness of a busi­ness call. In one qui­et­ly dev­as­tat­ing scene, Fuki’s father turns on the light of a clos­et to see mourn­ing clothes hang­ing by the door­way. It’s as if his fam­i­ly is already so pre­pared for his immi­nent pass­ing that he’s already gone.

Cru­cial­ly, Renoir is framed through Fuki’s per­spec­tive, car­ried by the rev­e­la­to­ry new­com­er Suzu­ki. Grief is a dif­fi­cult feel­ing to process, espe­cial­ly for a young child, and with­out any­one to lean on, she retreats to her own fan­tasies. Dreams col­lide with real­i­ty so fre­quent­ly that it’s hard to parse what’s real in Fuki’s world – and Hayakawa’s restrained mode of film­mak­ing doesn’t dif­fer­en­ti­ate between the two either. Inspired by a magi­cian on TV, Fuki even begins test­ing her abil­i­ties in telepa­thy and hyp­no­tism: per­haps mag­ic can make sense of her situation.

Fuki’s own feel­ings about death seem almost apa­thet­ic – her teacher alerts her moth­er that she’s writ­ten an essay titled ​“I Want to be an Orphan” – but even then, she doesn’t want to expe­ri­ence it alone. Left to her own devices almost every­day, Fuki search­es for con­nec­tion in ways that swing from inno­cent to dan­ger­ous. She looks to class­mates, neigh­bours, and art from the tit­u­lar French impres­sion­ist. Lat­er, she strikes up a con­ver­sa­tion with a groomer over a dat­ing phone line. Hayakawa treats it all with such a del­i­cate hand that it can verge on becom­ing too light a touch. The film’s heavy ideas can feel like they’re not being giv­en the weight they need, always keep­ing the emo­tion at a distance.

Still, few films have depict­ed com­ing of age quite like this. The first pro­mo­tion­al stills released in the lead-up to Cannes are a clever mis­di­rect: one fea­tures Fuki smil­ing and danc­ing against a clear blue sky, and you’d be for­giv­en for believ­ing you’re in for a sweet jour­ney of self dis­cov­ery. Renoir does retain that sum­mery bright colour palette, cre­at­ing a star­tling con­trast to the core dark­ness that per­me­ates Fuki’s iso­la­tion. It’s a strange and often­times bru­tal por­trait of a sin­gu­lar­ly curi­ous child, left to wres­tle with grief in her imag­i­na­tion when real life can’t pro­vide the answers.

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It’s now 25 years since Fly 180 depart­ed JFK air­port bound for Paris and prompt­ly blew up above the New York sky­line. In the inter­im, count­less unfor­tu­nate souls have per­ished at the hands of the Final Des­ti­na­tion fran­chise in myr­i­ad cre­ative ways. Logs, lifts, pool drains and tan­ning beds are just a few of the unlike­ly cul­prits for some of the most mem­o­rable on-screen deaths in New Line Cinema’s long-run­ning death-obsessed series, which last received an instal­ment in 2014. But the sick souls who love watch­ing death at work can final­ly rejoice: he’s back and more blood­thirsty than ever.

Zach Lipovsky and Adam Stein serve as co-direc­tors – a duo hith­er­to best known for their work of 2018’s indie thriller Freaks and, er, the live-action Kim Pos­si­ble film. But they’re joined by Guy Busick and Lori Evans Tay­lor on script duties, with Busick hav­ing had a hand in numer­ous recent hor­ror smash­es includ­ing Ready or Not, the 2022 Scream reboot, and last year’s vam­pire home inva­sion break­out Abi­gail. But for all the slight unknown quan­ti­ties at play with Blood­lines, there was one green flag from the off: the return of fran­chise totem Tony Todd, who sad­ly passed away in 2024 from can­cer, after pro­duc­tion had wrapped.

Todd returns as William Blud­worth, the bari­tone coro­ner who has a sto­ried his­to­ry with death, one of the few peo­ple with­in the Final Des­ti­na­tion uni­verse who under­stands the rules of the sick and twist­ed game. His role here is small, but brings with it a sense of poignan­cy, not least because it seems like a fit­ting trib­ute to a hor­ror icon (and decid­ed­ly more than he was afford­ed by the Acad­e­my dur­ing this year’s Oscars In Memorium).

But from the old to the new: Blood­lines opens on a sky-high restau­rant in 1968, as a young cou­ple attempt to score a table. If you know any­thing about Final Des­ti­na­tion, it’s that the open­ing scene of the film will always unrav­el into gory chaos, and that’s very much the case here. (No prizes for guess­ing how a restau­rant with a glass floor atop a nee­dle-thin tow­er might be a prime set­ting for some carnage.)

We smash cut to the present, as col­lege stu­dent Ste­fani Reyes (Kait­lyn San­ta Jua­na) awak­ens scream­ing from a recur­ring night­mare. Deeply dis­turbed by her hyper­re­al­is­tic gory dreams, she sets out to uncov­er some trag­ic famil­ial his­to­ry, along­side her younger broth­er Char­lie (Teo Briones) and cousins Erik (Richard Har­mon), Julia (Anna Lore) and Bob­by (Owen Patrick Joyner).

Let’s not beat around the bush. If you’ve seen any (or all) of the Final Des­ti­na­tion films, you prob­a­bly know that they fol­low a cer­tain for­mu­la. The per­verse plea­sure that comes from these films is root­ed in their famil­iar­i­ty. Death is always com­ing, when just don’t know how or when. As the Final Des­ti­na­tion films have piled up like so many bod­ies, so has the Rube Gold­berg machine qual­i­ty of their exe­cu­tions. Here even a hum­ble leaf blow­er becomes a har­bin­ger of doom.

There’s no hope of Final Des­ti­na­tion: Blood­lines con­vert­ing any fran­chise agnos­tics – this is a super­size por­tion of what fans have come to know and love. Yet some­how, where fan ser­vice is usu­al­ly con­sid­ered a neg­a­tive, here it feels affec­tion­ate and sat­is­fy­ing. There’s no Mar­vel-esque attempt to spin Final Des­ti­na­tion out into var­i­ous sub brands, and the humour remains as sick and twist­ed as ever. The act­ing too is ropey at best (aside from stand­outs Todd and Richard Har­mon, as the sar­don­ic tat­too artist Erik) but even that seems to work with­in the con­text of this schlocky delight. Be warned, though: you may nev­er look at an MRI machine in the same way again.

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