'Armageddon Time,' portrait of white privilege, stirs Cannes
ABC News
James Gray’s autobiographical coming of age film “Armageddon Time,” starring Anthony Hopkins, Anne Hathaway and Jeremy Strong, has made the biggest splash of an American film not starring Tom Cruise at the Cannes Film Festival
CANNES, France -- When the Cannes Film Festival audience stood to applaud James Gray's richly observed autobiographical drama “Armageddon Time," about the director's own 1980s childhood in Queens, Gray's voice quivered as he addressed the crowd.
“It’s my story, in a way,” said Gray. “And you guys shared it with me.”
“It took every last bit of control not to burst out into tears," Gray said, still recovering the next day in Cannes. “It’s been a really strange journey making the film and my father died two months ago of COVID. The whole process has been fraught and filled with emotion.”
“Armageddon Time,” starring Anthony Hopkins, Anne Hathaway and Jeremy Strong, has stirred Cannes like no other American film at the festival this year. Gray's movie, which Focus Features will distribute in the U.S. later this year, has been received as a tender triumph for the New York filmmaker of “The Immigrant” and “Ad Astra" not just for his detailed excavation of his childhood but for how the film reexamines his own white privilege growing up — how race and money can tip the scales in the formative years of young people.
