This story about “The Story of Film: A New Generation” first appeared in TheWrap’s special digital Cannes magazine.
It’s hard to envision a more appropriate movie for the opening night of the 2021 Cannes Film Festival than Mark Cousins’ “The Story of Film: A New Generation.” The two-hour-and-40-minute documentary is a vast but idiosyncratic examination of the cinema of the 21st century, beginning with the unusual juxtaposition of Joaquin Phoenix’s stairway dance in “Joker” with the song “Let It Go” from “Frozen.” From there, the survey jumps across genres and countries, with Cousins discussing around 90 different films as he examines the way cinema has extended its language and gone in new directions over the last two decades.