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French actor-writer-director was released from custody yesterday after an incident in a Parisian nightclub.

French actor-writer-director Nicolas Bedos is to stand trial for alleged sexual assault after being released from police custody on Thursday (June 22) evening following an incident in a Parisian nightclub.

Bedos entered police custody on Wednesday (June 21) after a woman filed a complaint claiming that Bedos drunkenly touched her inappropriately during a night out in early June.

According to his lawyer Julia Minkowski, Bedos has no memory of the incident. She said in a statement to press that “such a gesture, which he has no recollection of,...

Nejc Gazvoda, whose previous films include “A Trip” and “Dual,” has started shooting “Father Figure” in his home town, Novo Mesto, Slovenia. The film will be shot in 25 days and is expected to be completed in the spring of 2023, online news service Film New Europe reports.

“Father Figure” is an absurdist tale, written by Gazvoda, which follows a mother and her son who move from Ljubljana to a small town after the mother’s divorce. Jan is in his final year of elementary school, and Maja is a psychologist at the same school. The film begins with the reopening of schools after the end of the pandemic, but things do not seem to be the way they were before.

“ ‘Father Figure’ is a film about a particular period (the middle of 2021), set in an elementary school, and all the issues it deals with are concrete: peer violence, loneliness, dignity. At the same time,...

"I'm a spy, not a nanny." Madman Films in Australia has debuted an official trailer for the French comedy Oss 117: From Africa with Love, the third movie in the Oss 117 series starring Jean Dujardin. This series is a French riff on James Bond, but with a much dumber agent, and with more crass humor. This sequel originally premiered as the Closing Night film at the 2021 Cannes Film Festival this year, which seems like a very odd choice. From Africa with Love is set in 1981, 14 years after Lost in Rio, and follows Oss 117 on a mission in Black Africa ("Afrique Noire" - a made-up country in Africa) where he teams up with a much younger agent, Oss 1001. In addition to Jean Dujardin, the comedy co-stars Pierre Niney, Fatou N'Diaye, Natacha Lindinger, Habib Dembélé, Pol White, Gilles Cohen, Alex Lutz, and ...

The French box office, hampered by an increasingly rigorous series of Covid health protocols, took a plunge in recent months, resulting in week-to-week falls of up to 41%. But for all their caveats, industry analysts talk about the current landscape in tones of cautious optimism.

In France, a growing number of commercial spaces are prohibited from those without proof of double anti-covid vaccinations.

“The sanitary passport had a pronounced effect in depressing the market,” says Comscore France’s Eric Marti. “There was a lot of uncertainty this summer, and we saw that once there’s a hint of confusion, the impact is immediate.” But at the same time, those same local audiences disproved the most pessimistic prognoses that came from during the lockdowns. “Viewers have displayed a real willingness” to return to the theaters, Marti says. “Remarkably, the market was able to absorb the [escalating restrictions], and, despite them, to pick back up.

The cluelessly arrogant secret agent with a name as silly as his retrograde attitudes — Hubert Bonisseur de la Bath, aka agent Oss 117 — is back in Oss 117: From Africa With Love. Everybody loves a secret agent, even a demonstrably buffoonish one, and versatile Jean Dujardin is a deadpan delight as the staunchly patriotic Frenchman whose adventures were last on the big screen in 2009’s Oss 117: Lost In Rio and 2006’s Oss 117: Cairo, Nest Of Spies.

Michel Hazanavicius — for whom Dujardin starred in 2011’s five-time Oscar winner The Artist — directed the previous Oss entries. Taking the reins here is talented multi-hyphenate Nicolas Bedos (La Belle Epoque), and while the result is not consistently as funny as the first two installments, this is an entertaining popcorn movie that’s also a healthy satire of imperialist self-assurance, perhaps best summed up by Hubert’s sincere belief that everybody on Earth wishes they were French.

French movie theaters, which reopened their doors mid-May after a six-month shutdown, have seen admissions fall by 41% over the last week (Aug. 11-18), according to the national exhibitors guild (Fncf).

Most exhibitors and distributors are blaming the steep decline in moviegoing on a Covid health pass that came into effect on Aug. 9 and requires every patron to show proof of a Covid-19 vaccination or a negative Pcr test in order to access cinemas and other cultural venues, as well as restaurants, bars and other public venues.

Admissions were down 34% the week of Aug. 4 and fell by 41% the following week, explained Stephane Landfried of the Fncf.

“That’s significant because we can see the impact of the health pass law which came into effect, and every single cinema, from multiplexes to arthouse theaters, now have to apply it, whereas previously only the big chains such as Gaumont-Pathe, Ugc and Cgr were obligated to enforce it,...

Update, writethru: After debuting to $6.7M from five overseas markets last weekend, Warner Bros/DC’s The Suicide Squad moved into wide offshore release this session, taking $35M from 69 total international box office markets. This is a touch below the like-for-like opening of 2020’s disappointing Birds Of Prey ($36.6M at today’s rates) and under the $40M we were seeing coming into the frame. The offshore cume is now $45.7M and the global total, with domestic’s debut, is $72.2M.

Still, this well-reviewed James Gunn-helmed franchise entry had a strong -25% hold in its already opened overseas markets, and notably landed No. 1 bows in Russia, Mexico, Brazil, Spain and Italy (Japan is due to release on August 13). Nevertheless, and despite positive reactions, hopes were higher for The Suicide Squad and there are several factors contributing to the lackluster start.

Closures in Australia and Mexico and the introduction of the...

While the delta variant continues to be a stumbling block for the overseas box office, it’s not entirely certain that’s the continuing case at the domestic box office as more people become vaccinated.

Despite comfort levels for moviegoing being down over the last three weeks per Nrg, it’s not all doom-and-gloom with such parameters on par with mid-May, just prior to the successful theatrical windowed launch of A Quiet Place Part II ($57M 4-day). Analysts tell me that if the delta variant was indeed crimping the domestic box office, we wouldn’t have seen an overindexed domestic debut of Disney’s the Jungle Cruise this past weekend which beat its $25M projection with $35M; or the previous launch of Warner Bros.’ Space Jam: A New Legacy which outstripped its $20M forecast with a $31M stateside start. In addition, if the delta variant was such a monkey wrench to the box office,...

French film exhibitors, producers and distributors will benefit from a €90 million ($106 million) rescue plan from the National Film Board (Cnc) to compensate for revenue loss caused by the six-month shutdown of theaters.

The scheme that was approved Thursday had been pushed by film guilds since May, when theaters reopened with an audience capacity limited at 65% and a 9 p.m. curfew, after being closed down since Oct. 30.

The country’s film sector is now grappling with strict July 21 requirement that patrons show a EU Digital Covid Certificate — commonly called a “health pass” — with proof of vaccination or a recent negative Pcr test in order to access cultural venues including movie theaters. Since Macron’s announcement of this new bill on July 12, the vaccine rollout has accelerated at an unprecedented pace, but as of July 25, only 49.3% of the population in France is fully vaccinated, according to the Agence France-Presse.

As France is...

The French box office has taken a big hit and dropped 70% this week due to the new sanitary measures enforced on July 21 which require a proof of vaccination or a recent negative Pcr test to enter cultural venues, including movie theaters.

French President Emmanuel Macron announced on July 12 that the EU Digital Covid Certificate — commonly called “health pass” — would be mandatory at all cultural venues. The new measure — which has sparked protests across the country with some people calling Macron a dictator — is meant to help contain the spread of the Delta variant of Covid-19 in France, as well as push people to get vaccinated. Starting on Aug. 1, the health pass will also be mandatory in cafes, shops, restaurants, as well as trains and planes, among other places.

On Wednesday (July 21), the day that the measure kicked off, theatrical admissions fell 60% to 280,000 compared with the previous day.

“It’s a dramatic situation — on Tuesday,...

The Cannes Film Festival is looking to end on a light note, with French spy spoof Oss 117: From Africa With Love to close the 74th Film Festival on July 17.

Jean Dujardin, Nicolas Bedos and Pierre Niney star in Oss 117, which is directed by Nicholas Bedos, whose crowdpleaser La Belle Époque premiered in Cannes 2019.

The film is the third installment in the popular Oss franchise, a Gallic twist on James Bond by way of Pink Panther.

Oscar-winner Jean Dujardin (The Artist) stars as Hubert Bonisseur de La Bath, alias Oss 117, a French spy with an over-the-top libido and self-regard. Fatou N’Diaye, Natacha ...

Now in post-production, this Ciné@ film distributed by Universal sees Jean Dujardin and Grégory Gadebois step into lead roles as Nicolas Sarkozy and François Hollande. The only former presidents of the French Republic who are still alive today, Nicolas Sarkozy and François Hollande will find themselves re-incarnated on the big screen in Présidents, Anne Fontaine’s 18th feature film, on which filming wrapped towards the end of November. Jean Dujardin is stepping into the shoes of Nicolas Sarkozy, while Grégory Gadebois (nominated for the 2014 Best Actor César via One of a Kind, as...

Leading the cast are Pierre Niney, Emmanuelle Bercot and Gilles Lellouche. A Single Man production sold by StudioCanal. Revealed with SK1 (nominated for the Best Feature Debut and Best Adaptation César awards in 2016) followed by Through the Fire (1 million tickets sold in France in 2018), Frédéric Tellier began filming his third feature, Goliath on 24 August. The cast of this politically engaged thriller, at the crossroads of environmental issues, politics and lobbying, the result of an investigation into GMOs and pesticides, includes Pierre Niney (in competition in Venice next week in Lovers and on screens in early 2021 in Black Box and Oss 117: Alerte rouge en Afrique noire), Emmanuelle Bercot and Gilles Lellouche (recently nominated for a Best Actor César award for In Safe Hands; in French cinemas on 10 November in Farewell Mr...