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Law and order is the cornerstone of any nation’s stability. But when the very guardians of the system start beefing with each other instead of protecting the citizenry, it betrays not only the people’s trust but also undermines the integrity of the entire institution. Known for his strikingly unsettling approach to the horror genre, Belgian filmmaker Fabrice Du Welz now turns his gaze toward a real-life tragedy. Inspired by the chilling crimes of Marc Dutroux, the notorious Belgian serial killer and child molester, Du Welz’s latest film, Maldoror, is a tense, atmospheric thriller that probes into the topic of human obsession, systemic failure, and the price one has to pay to confront darkness head-on. The first half really pulls you in, even throwing in a bit of romance on the side. But later on, all the conspiracy threads start to pile up, which might make your head spin,...

Arrow has revealed its June slate, and it’s a characteristically eclectic mix of the brutal, the bizarre and the barely-seen. From grisly Korean thrillers and resurrected Japanese ghost tales to European horrors and cult cinema favourites, the curated streaming platform continues to expand its niche appeal with a line-up tailored to lovers of the extreme and unconventional.

Kicking off the month is Devils, a slick South Korean thriller featuring a body swap between a detective and the serial killer he has spent years chasing. It arrives alongside Body Parts, a five-part anthology soaked in ritualistic horror and dread, both streaming from 6 June. Together, they lead Arrow’s newly launched Killer K-Horror season, a collection that also includes the underseen zombie satire Zombie for Sale.

From 9 June, viewers can return to Takashi Miike’s gonzo Western Sukiyaki Western Django, the 2007 cult mash-up that blends Leone-styled shootouts with operatic samurai drama.

Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardennes have settled into a comfortable niche over the course of 13 feature films. Well-researched social-realist depictions of marginalized people butting up against intransigent institutions is the way the record goes. To be fair to les frères Dardennes, there is a reliable level of unshowy competence as well as an integrity to their insistence on embedding with unglamorous, recognizable people.

All the while, they facilitate other filmmakers in bringing related French and Belgian slice-of-life visions to fruition. They helped to produce one of the best debuts of last year, “Julie Keeps Quiet” by Leonardo Van Dijl. At this edition of Cannes alone there are two films to bear their names as producers: “Enzo” by Laurent Cantet and Robin Campillo opened Directors Fortnight and, neatly enough, “Adam’s Sake” by Laura Wandel opened Critics’ Week.

Earnest force-for-cinema credentials established, how does “Young Mothers” fit into their body of work?...

Exclusive: WTFilms has unveiled a slew of deals on Fabrice du Welz’s thriller Maldoror, inspired by the 1990s case of infamous Belgian pedophile and serial killer Marc Dutroux, as the movie releases in France ahead of its theatrical launch in Belgium next week.

In Europe, the movie has sold to the Nordics (Njutafilms), German-speaking territories (Capelight Pictures), Italy (Movies Inspired), Spain (La Aventura), Poland (Velvet Soon), Cis, Baltics, Ukraine (Exponenta), and Greece (Femeway Limited).

In the rest of the world, Film Movement has taken U.S. rights while the picture has also sold to Japan (Pflug) and Latin America (California).

The Jokers Films, which also produced the movie with Belgian company Frakas, has launched Maldoror theatrically in France today while O’Brother Distribution is gearing up for its release in Belgium on January 22. Gusto Entertainment has a set an April launch for the Netherlands.

The thriller is inspired by the...

The Cairo International Film Festival (Ciff) has unveiled the line-up for its comeback 45th edition, taking place from November 13-22.

The world premiere of Palestinian filmmaker Rashid Masharawi’s Passing Dreams will open the festival, as part of a focus on Palestinian cinema.

Passing Dreams is a drama about a 12-year-old boy who embarks on a journey across Palestine, while chasing a carrier pigeon, convinced it has returned to its original owner.

The line-up includes three Palestinian feature documentaries competing for the best Arab film awards in the Horizons of Arab Cinema programme, and the best Palestinian film award.

Carol Mansour...

Belgian filmmaker Fabrice du Welz brings us back to 1995 with Maldoror, drawing loose inspiration from the harrowing Marc Dutroux case that rocked his home country. Two young girls have gone missing in Charleroi under murky circumstances, with the police investigation stalled. Enter earnest rookie officer Paul Chartier, assigned to the secretive Maldoror task force tailing chief suspect Marcel Dedieu.

Played with compelling intensity by Anthony Bajon, Chartier throws himself into the case with a determination bordering on obsession. As leads dry up and his superiors counsel patience, frustration mounts in our headstrong protagonist. Offscreen parallels to real failings of the Belgian authorities only fuel Chartier’s crusade for justice. But with corruption proving more deeply rooted than expected, how far will he go to challenge the damaging status quo?

Du Welz establishes a brooding atmosphere through unflinching depictions of a societal ill far graver than initially meets the eyes. Bajon...

Belgium is approaching the 30th anniversary of the start of a dark chapter in its history in which pedophile Marc Dutroux abducted six young girls from June 1995 to August 1996.

Imprisoning them in the basement of his house in the former coal-mining town of Marcinelle, the convicted sex offender tortured and sexually abused his young victims, killing four of them.

Mélissa Russo and Julie Lejeune, who were just eight years old, died of starvation and dehydration, while An Marchal, 17, and Eefje Lambrecks, 19, were buried alive. Sabine Dardenne, 12, and Laetitia Delhez, 14, were freed following Dutroux’s arrest in August 1996.

In a bold cinematic move, Belgian director Fabrice du Welz revisits the case in high-octane crime thriller Maldoror, which weaves in details of the real affair with the fictitious journey of a young police officer played by Anthony Bajon.

“I was about 20 when the Marc Dutroux Affair broke in Belgium,...

Anthony Bajon in Maldoror. Fabrice du Welz: 'Believe me, it's very close to the case' Photo: Sofia Gheysens The latest film from Belgian director Fabrice du Welz is a crime thriller that draws on the real case of serial killer Marc Dutroux, and the scandal that surrounded it with regard to the way the police handled the case. Maldoror adopts the perspective of young police officer Paul Chartier (Anthony Bajon). About to be married to Gina (Alba Gaïa Bellugi), Paul, who is volatile as a result of his troubled past, becomes increasingly obssessed with a case in which two girls have been abducted. The film premiered in Venice, and is currently on the festival circuit, stopping off in London, Beyond Fest and Sitges. We caught up with du Welz to talk about the challenges of bringing a true story to the screen and his hopes of opening up a debate in his homeland.

An immense yet slinking police procedural that slips with disturbing ease into its audiences’ subconscious, Fabrice Du Welz’s Maldoror owes a debt to many contemporary serial killer creepers to come before it but comes together as a formidable, restrained, uniquely resonant work that finds the director at the height of his powers in telling a story at once hauntingly personal and broad in scope.

In early ‘90s Belgium, impulsive young police officer Paul Chartier (Anthony Bajon) is preparing to marry his sweetheart, Gina (Alba Gaïa Bellugi) but is soon distracted when he’s tapped by his superior, Hinkel (Laurent Lucas) to participate in Maldoror – a secret operation to monitor a dangerous sex offender named Marcel Dedieu (Sergi López) and investigate the abduction of two pre-teen girls. But, as Chartier gets closer to uncovering the truth, he grows increasingly erratic and frustrated with the calcified bureaucracy of his department, jeopardizing...

French-speaking Belgium hit a high-water mark at the Cannes Film Festival in May, with 11 Belgian co-productions claiming accolades and acclaim across the Croisette. Alongside Critics’ Week opener “Ghost Trail” and the Cannes jury and best actress prize-winner “Emilia Pérez,” eight of those co-productions received support from Belgium’s Federation Wallonie-Bruxelles, while just as many shared a proud Francophone voice.

At Venice, industry delegates built on that robust show of force, touting home-grown projects like Fabrice Du Welz’s police thriller “Maldoror” and co-productions like Aude Léa Rapin’s sci-fi drama “Planet B” and Marie Losier’s music doc “Peaches Goes Bananas,” while young producers took to the Lido to forge new partnerships beyond the traditional mold.

“We’re trying to diversify as much as possible,” says French-speaking Belgium’s Cinema and Audiovisual Center director Jeanne Brunfaut. “Though we tend to partner with [other Francophone countries], we want to encourage our producers to look further afield,...

A crime thriller shot through with a character study, Fabrice du Welz draws loosely on the true crime story of Belgian serial killer Marc Dutroux for his latest outing. Du Welz comes at the story from the perspective of baby-faced but volatile cop Paul Chartier (Anthony Bajon), who we understand isn’t scared to take the law into his own hands from the opening minutes.

The idea of ‘seeing red’ isn’t just an emotion but a visual motif employed by the director and his cinematographer Manuel Dacosse, from the crimson distortion of the credits to the flicker of red lights at a celebration and light saturation that gives the film the look of an old polaroid at one point.

Although this is set in the Nineties, the gritty feel makes it redolent of Seventies-set thrillers, a mood reinforced by the way that du Welz embeds us in Paul’s life from the start.

A crime thriller shot through with a character study, Fabrice du Welz draws loosely on the true crime story of Belgian serial killer Marc Dutroux for his latest outing. Du Welz comes at the story from the perspective of baby-faced but volatile cop Paul Chartier (Anthony Bajon), who we understand isn’t scared to take the law into his own hands from the opening minutes.

The idea of ‘seeing red’ isn’t just an emotion but a visual motif employed by the director and his cinematographer Manuel Dacosse, from the crimson distortion of the credits to the flicker of red lights at a celebration and light saturation that gives the film the look of an old polaroid at one point.

Although this is set in the Nineties, the gritty feel makes it redolent of Seventies-set thrillers, a mood reinforced by the way that du Welz embeds us in Paul’s life from the start.

Investigation of a Citizen Under Suspicion: Du Welz Revisits Bungled Belgian Murder Case

“It is grand to contemplate the ruins of cities; but it is grander still to contemplate the ruins of human beings!,’ wrote Comte de Lautreamont, aka Isidore Lucien Ducasse, the French poet famed for his Surrealist poetic novel Les Chants de Maldoror. It’s perhaps one of the less sensational or bizarre phrases from Lautreamont, the menacing essence of his iconic protagonist hanging like a slinky subtextual shadow over Maldoror, the latest narrative film from Belgium’s foremost arthouse genre auteur, Fabrice du Welz. But it’s the sentiment at the heart of his latest film, which most certainly deals with human ruination.…...

Inspired by a notorious real-life case, Fabrice Du Welz’s film starts strong but gets lost in the murky waters of conspiracy

Fabrice Du Welz began the century as a master of Belgian gothic, riding the wave of Euro-extreme cinema. Calvaire, or The Ordeal, from 2005, was a gruesome gripper. Since then, in a chequered career, he has more or less maintained his stride, and now he comes to Venice as director and co-writer of an initially promising true-crime horror procedural. It is loosely inspired by the serial killer and child rapist Marc Dutroux, whose case enraged the Belgian public when it became clear the country’s various quarrelling law-enforcement authorities, hampered by bureaucracy, incompetence and turf-war disputes, had in effect allowed Dutroux to go free for years.

It’s an intriguing premise and this baggy, free-ranging movie presents a tonal range of sour acrimony, anxiety and occasional flourishes of nauseous black comedy.

We’re just about five weeks away from the opening of the 81st Venice International Film Festival, the oldest such celebration of international cinema and the official kickoff to awards season in earnest. A gondola loaded with news about this year’s titles washed up on our shores this morning, and this year’s competition slate is packed.

It’s no surprise that Todd Phillips will bring his “Joker” sequel, “Joker: Folie à Deux,” back to the late-summer Italian event. The first dark comic book film won the top prize there in 2019, slapping a huge international halo on it released to the public, eventually netting Joaquin Phoenix the Best Actor Oscar, as well as a Best Original Score trophy for Hildur Guðnadóttir and nine other nominations, including Best Picture. The sequel, which was not a foregone conclusion when the first movie was made, but a Mack truck of Warner Bros....

Just a day after New York Film Festival and Toronto International Film Festival made major announcements, Venice Film Festival is here with their full lineup ahead of the festival taking place August 28 through September 7.

Highlights include Pedro Almodóvar’s The Room Next Door, Luca Guadagnino’s Queer, Brady Corbet’s The Brutalist, Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s Cloud, Alex Ross Perry’s Pavements, Harmony Korine’s Baby Invasion, Pablo Larraín’s Maria, Takeshi Kitano’s Broken Rage, Errol Morris’ Separated, Lav Diaz’s Phantosmia, Thomas Vinterberg’s Families Like Ours, Dea Kulumbegashvili’s April, and more.

Check out the lineup below with a hat tip to Cineuropa.

Competition

The Room Next Door – Pedro Almodóvar

Campo di battaglia – Gianni Amelio

Leurs enfants après eux – Ludovic & Zoran Boukherma

The Brutalist – Brady Corbet

Jouer avec le feu – Delphine & Muriel Coulin

Vermiglio – Maura Delpero

Iddu (Sicilian Letters) – Fabio Grassadonia & Antonio Piazza

Queer – Luca Guadagnino

Love – Dag Johan Haugerud...

Venice Film Festival has revealed the programme for its 81st edition, featuring a 21-strong Competition that includes new films from Todd Phillips, Pedro Almodovar, Luca Guadagino, Pablo Larrain, Brady Corbet and Justin Kurzel.

Scroll down for full line-up

The selection was unveiled by festival president Pietrangelo Buttafuoco and artistic director Alberto Barbera. It marked Buttafuoco’s first time at the annual press conference, after replacing Roberto Cicutto in October 2023.

Further filmmakers in Competition include Wang Bing, Luis Ortega, Dea Kulumbegashvili, Dag Johan Haugerud, Athina Rachel Tsangari and Walter Salles.

The line-up also includes Jon Watt’s Wolfs, starring Brad Pitt and George Clooney,...

It’s busy and Twister-y at the box office this weekend, but a few indies are hoping to catch a breeze with very well-reviewed Oddity looking to expand the market for high-end horror and Widow Clicquot to attract fans of good period films and bubbly.

Oddity from IFC Films, is a supernatural home-invasion horror from writer-director Damian McCarthy (Caveat). It opens on 790 screens, the widest new indie release this week. Carolyn Bracken stars as Dani, who is restoring an old castle in rural Cork County, Ireland, with her husband Ted (Gwilym Lee), a doctor at a facility for the criminally insane. When Dani is brutally murdered, her blind occultist twin sister Darcy (also Bracken) goes after those responsible using inherited haunted items as her tools of revenge. Premiered in SXSW’s Midnighter section, taking the Audience Award. At 98% with critics on Rotten Tomatoes.

Vertical’s Indie drama Widow Cliquot is...

Taking place August 7-17, the official selection for the 77th Locarno Film Festival has been unveiled, featuring a stellar-looking slate of highly anticipated films. Highlights include Hong Sangsoo’s second feature of the year, By the Stream, starring Kim Minhee, Kwon Haehyo, and Cho Yunhee; Ramon Zürcher’s The Sparrow in the Chimney, Wang Bing’s second part of his Youth trilogy, Youth (Hard Times), as well as new films by Radu Jude, Bertrand Mandico, Courtney Stephens, Ben Rivers, Gürcan Keltek, Denis Côté, Kevin Jerome Everson, Fabrice Du Welz (featuring Abel Ferrara!), and many more. Also of particular note is the world premiere of Tarsem Singh’s restored cut of The Fall, which features a slightly different edit as he recently noted.

Giona A. Nazzaro, Artistic Director of the Locarno Film Festival said, “We are very excited and happy with our selection for Locarno’s 77th edition, which we believe...

The Locarno Film Festival (August 7-17) has revealed the line-up for its 77th edition, with directors including Hong Sangsoo, Wang Bing and Ben Rivers world premiering their latest films in its international competition.

Playing out of competition at Locarno are world premieres from directors including Radu Jude, Fabrice du Welz, Aislinn Clarke, Bertrand Mandico, and Marco Tullio Giordana. Locarno’s famed Piazza Grande screenings include world premieres from Paz Vega, César Díaz and Gianluca Jodice.

Locarno’s international competition comprises 17 films, all of them world premieres, which will vie for the coveted Golden Leopard awards.

Scroll down for full line-up...

The Locarno International Film Festival in Switzerland has unveiled an eclectic lineup for its 77th edition, taking place Aug. 7-17. The fest will screen 225 total films, including 104 world premieres, five international premieres and some debut features, including new films from such directors as Hong Sang-soo, Spanish actress Paz Vega and Radu Jude. Gianluca Jodice’s Le Déluge, starring Mélanie Laurent and Guillaume Canet, will also world premiere and open the fest, with Locarno on Wednesday unveiling that the two French stars will receive the Excellence Award Davide Campari on the fest’s opening night.

Beyond new fare, some of this season’s film festival favorites and classics will screen in Locarno’s main Piazza Grande section, taking place on the town’s main square set up with 8,000 seats. Films to be screened include Cannes hits such as Laetitia Dosch’s Dog on Trial, Mohammad Rasoulof’s The Seed of the Sacred Fig,...

French film finance, production and distribution group Logical Pictures is out in force in Cannes this year with connections to 11 films, including Competition titles Emilia Perez, Limonov and Parthenope.

The company helped bankroll the Palme d’Or contenders through its three-year co-production and co-financing deal with French major Pathé, which was announced in early 2023 and involves its Logical Content Ventures fund.

Matthieu Delaporte and Alexandre De La Patellière’s The Count of Monte Cristo, which world premieres Out of Competition later this week, was also partly financed under the deal.

Logical Pictures President Frédéric Fiore and COO Yannick Bossenmeyer co-founded Logical Pictures in 2016 with a focus on film finance as well as digital innovation around blockchain and rights management.

Early investments included Coralie Fargeat’s first feature Revenge, Ninja Thyberg’s Pleasure as well as Julien Maury and Alexandre Bustillo’s The Deep House.

Less than a decade later, the...

Warsaw-based sales agency New Europe Film Sales has teamed up with Spade, the production arm of the French genre label The Jokers, and leading German distribution company Plaion Pictures to create Cherry, a development fund for edgy films with crossover potential.

The partners declined to reveal any figures but emphasised Cherry was a development rather than production fund

The three companies previously worked together on Valdimar Jóhannsson’s folk horror hit Lamb, and will now tighten their collaboration and enter projects at an earlier stage.

Cherry will focus on finding edgy, auteur -driven projects with breakout possibilites. The fund will...

The film is directed by five rising female directors.

Six rising female directors from around the world have joined forces for the animation anthology Animal Tales Of Christmas Magic which is being launched by The Bureau Sales at this week’s Rendez -Vous With French Cinema in Paris this week.

Caroline Attia, Ceylan Beyoglu, Olesya Shchukina, Haruna Kishi, Camille Almeras and Natalia Chernysheva have used uses poetry and humour to tell five Christmas stories that take place across the globe from Japan to the Far North and the Northern Lights.

The stories are all told in 2D digital animation, and...

WTFilms will be at the Rendez-Vous with a genre-focused slate.

Paris-based sales outfit WTFilms has taken on Fabrice du Welz’s Belgian crime thriller Maldoror and unveiled a first look at the film inspired by a true story.

The film stars Anthony Bajon as an impulsive police recruit tasked with a secret mission to track a dangerous sex offender. But when the operation fails, he goes rogue to hunt down the culprits. Now in post, the film is produced by Belgium’s Frakas Productions, with The Jokers Films’ production arm.

Maldoror also stars Alexis Manenti, Béatrice Dalle, Sergi Lopez, Laurent Lucas...

Jonas Govaerts's Cub (or Welp) might just be the nastiest backwoods slasher to come creeping out of Belgium since The Ordeal by Fabrice Du Welz traumatized moviegoers in 2004. In Govaert's 2014 directorial debut, a group of unfortunate cub scouts find themselves in the crosshairs of a demented father/son duo with a proclivity for corpse hoarding and hunting humans in the French countryside. Viewers expecting a slasher flick in a similar vein to Friday the 13th need to look elsewhere. Govaerts’s Cub is a brutally original movie with a clear identity. Yes, there are a ton of little nods to Sleepaway Camp, The Final Terror, and Just Before Dawn scattered throughout, but Cub’s direction and writing are a cut above these films. The director never resorts to the tactics we’ve come to expect from these slashers. The first thing that marks a significant departure is that he...

As Phoebe Cates’ character Kate Beringer in Gremlins famously monologued, the holidays tend to drudge up painful memories and sorrow for many. In the spirit of unhappy holidays, the 4th day of Creepmas is dedicated to Christmas horror movies that aren’t afraid to showcase the grimmer side of the holiday season.

Forget about holiday cheer; these holiday horror movies – in order from somber to soul-crushing (and skin-crawling)- will make you give thanks that you’re not in the protagonists’ shoes.

The 12 Days of Creepmas continues on Bloody Disgusting, this time with 4 grim Christmas horror movies that will leave you feeling hopeless for the unhappiest of holidays.

Keep track of the 12 Days of Creepmas here.

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This anthology features four segments of horror, but only the first is holiday-related. Jovanka Vuckovic’s “The Box,” based on Jack Ketchum’s short story of the same name, sees a family stricken...

This article contains discussions of suicide and violence.

The horror genre is a box of surprises, and quite often, these movies will not deliver what everyone else expected. Some will say a movie lacked scares or relied too much on comedy; others will say a movie's atmosphere could be darker or was simply too bleak. Of all the movie genres, horror consistently has the most difficult task of appeasing everyone's tastes. However, time tends to do movies that were initially poorly received justice.

The 2000s was a period of intense transformation in the horror genre as filmmakers began to embrace the digital and the peculiar features that came along, resulting in a boom of found footage movies as well as a wave of horror movies with a distinctively digital-looking aspect. In such a period of transition, some movies feel merely like products of their time, while others remain underrated hidden gems that deserve more love.

Blue Finch Film Releasing will release Calvaire on Digital Platforms from 19th September 2023. Synopsis: Marc Stevens is a travelling singer in rural Belgium. At the nursing home where he is performing, the concert has ended, and Marc takes to the road. Shortly afterwards his car breaks down in the middle of nowhere. He is taken in by Bartel, an innkeeper who became psychologically fragile after his wife Gloria left him. This is how Marc’s ordeal begins… Re-released on UK Digital Platforms from 19th September 2023, director Fabrice Du Welz’s unrelenting modern horror classic Calvaire, considered a key part of the New French Extremity movement of bold and challenging horror cinema, was shot by cinematographer Benoît Debie (Gaspar Noé’s Irréversible) and stars Laurent Lucas (Raw), Philippe Nahon and Jackie Berroyer.

The post Extreme modern horror classic Calvaire – on Digital Platforms from 19th September 2023 appeared first on Horror Asylum.

Isolation isn't just about physical location; it can be cultural, social, and psychological. It can come as much from class, or strange arbitrary social constructs, as well as those roles set by a patriarchal society whose rules are so convoluted and complex that they are obeyed without reason or forethought. Scratch the surface of most places where people have little contact with people outside their small circle, and you'll find some rather strange beliefs and equally often unfathomable behaviour. Belgian filmmaker Fabrice du Welz's feature film debut Calvaire is a film that still provokes not only great praise, but also some trepidation and disconcertion, and understandable so. Even almost 20 years after its release, it's a deeply disturbing film, equal parts black comedy and horror...

[Read the whole post on screenanarchy.com...]...

Fabrice du Welz’s Acclaimed Debut Calvaire Returns to Theaters February 24 With New HD Remaster, On Digital March 3 Opening in NY, LA, Chicago, Columbus, New Orleans, and more! Fabrice du Welz’s 2004 New French Extremity classic Calvaire opens in select theaters next week, beginning February 24th, followed by a release on Digital Platforms on March 3, 2023. A …

The post HD Remaster of Fabrice du Welz’s French Extremity Horror Calvaire — In Theaters 2/24 & Digital 3/3 from Yellow Veil Pics appeared first on Horror News | Hnn.

Although hailing from Belgium, Fabrice du Welz’s debut Calvaire has been considered a staple of New French Extremity, as coined by James Quandt around the turn of the 21st century. Now, nearly two decades after its initial release, a new HD remaster of the film is arriving. Courtesy of Yellow Veil Pictures, it’ll arrive in theaters on February 24 and digitally on March 3 followed by a collector’s edition Blu-ray.

The first part of the director’s Ardennes trilogy, the film follows a traveling entertainer who falls victim to a dangerously unhinged innkeeper determined to keep him captive. “A lucid nightmare… A dark absurdist descent into hell… Calvaire’s meditation on identity, possession, and cruelty remains horribly vivid,” said Guillermo del Toro.

See the trailer and poster below for the film starring Laurent Lucas, Jackie Berroyer, Philippe Nahon, and Brigitte Lahaie.

Calvaire opens in theaters on February 24 and arrives...

As we do every year, after we’ve unveiled our massive top list for the upcoming year (check out our Top 200) we like to shake the magic eight ball and peer into the future and what we find are likes of Jacques Audiard, Kantemir Balagov, Audrey Diwan, Fabrice Du Welz, Valeska Grisebach, Payal Kapadia, Dea Kulumbegashvili, Joshua Oppenheimer, Lynne Ramsay and Kirill Serebrennikov.

…...

Bloody Disgusting has learned this afternoon that the HD remaster of Fabrice du Welz’s 2004 Belgian horror movie Calvaire will be re-released in theaters February 24 followed by VOD and a limited edition Blu-ray release this spring from Yellow Veil Pictures.

Released at the height of the New French Extremity movement, Calvaire follows a traveling entertainer who falls victim to a dangerously unhinged innkeeper determined to keep him captive.

Oscar-winning director Guillermo Del Toro called Calvaire “a lucid nightmare,” further describing it as “a dark absurdist descent into hell… Calvaire’s meditation on identity, possession, and cruelty remains horribly vivid.”

As du Welz’s first feature, Calvaire would go on to become the first part of his thematic Ardennes Trilogy (alongside 2014’s Alleluia and 2019’s Adoration) and immediately define the young director as a voice to watch in Belgium. Calvaire takes its cues not only from the contemporary extreme cinema of France and Belgium,...

La Fille qu’on appelle

Who knew that a tale about a ski instructor and favored skier narrative that teeters into power-struggle and examines sexual exploitation would be such a stellar debut. Unfortunately, Charlène Favier didn’t get to have an in-person premiere but nonetheless 2020’s Slalom (Cannes Label) played especially well internationally. The French filmmaker moved into her sophomore feature this past July in Marseille on a project based on Tanguy Viel’s novel of the same name. Alba Gaïa Bellugi (Fabrice Du Welz’s Inexorable) toplines La Fille qu’on appelle, and Jean-Pierre Martins, Pascal Gregory and Anne Suarez co-star.

Gist: When he is not in a boxing ring, Max Le Corre is a driver for the mayor of the city.…...

Everyone remembers the old Stouffer's commercials. A nice American family sits down for some kind of baked casserole or microwaved TV dinner while a soft guitar thrums in the background, urging them to reprioritize family time. In truth, it's not an especially bad sentiment. Interpersonally speaking, the dinner table is as good an opportunity as ever to connect to the people one loves most, sharing notes on respective days — the good, the bad, and everything in between.

As an opportunity to unwind and connect, it's priceless, though if horror movies have taught audiences anything, it's that the dinner table can be one of the scariest places to be. It's par for the course, with scary movies frequently exploiting quotidian fears to terrifying, remarkable success. The dinner table is perhaps one of the scariest, however, largely because it's so intimate. At the table, guards are down and closeness is elevated. It's...

The distrib behind Gaspar Noé’s Lux Æterna, the re-issue of Fabrice Du Welz’s Calvaire and upcoming Ashkal by Youssef Chebbi have landed the breakout Charlotte Le Bon debut from this year’s Directors’ Fortnight. After important premieres at Deauville and TIFF (it was just released domestically in Canada), Variety reports that Yellow Veil Pictures will showcase Falcon Lake in 2023. The actress turned filmmaker worked on 35mm and used a backdrop that was already familiar to her. Here is our review:

“Mixed in with the sounds of the cicadas and lakeside lay of the land, in the graphic novel adaptation of Une soeur by Bastien Vivès we find a highly rousing discourse on sufferance, sexuality and the exploration of self and power dynamics by way of the gaze.…...

Bloody Disgusting has learned this afternoon that Yellow Veil Pictures have acquired all distribution rights in North America for the HD remaster of Fabrice du Welz’s 2004 Belgian horror movie Calvaire. Released at the height of the New French Extremity movement, Calvaire follows a traveling entertainer who falls victim to a dangerously unhinged innkeeper determined to keep him captive. The U.S. premiere of the remaster will take place next month as part of the Brooklyn Horror Film Festival.

As du Welz’s first feature, Calvaire would go on to become the first part of his thematic Ardennes Trilogy (alongside 2014’s Alleluia and 2019’s Adoration) and immediately define the young director as a voice to watch in Belgium. Calvaire takes its cues not only from the contemporary extreme cinema of France and Belgium, but also from iconic works like The Texas Chain Saw Massacre to create a poetically brutal study of human nature.

The second and final wave of The Brooklyn Horror Film Festival have been announced and it's filled with horror movie premieres, special events, and much more!

The Brooklyn Horror Film Festival announces today the second and final wave of titles for their upcoming 2022 edition, presented by Shudder, running October 13th to the 20th with screenings held at Nitehawk Cinema Williamsburg and Williamsburg Cinemas.

The 7th edition of New York City’s celebrated genre event will close with the U.S. Premiere of the “straight cut” of Gaspar Noé’s Irreversible, also a highlight of the festival’s Fear In Focus: French Extremity sidebar, coinciding with the film’s 20th anniversary, and will spotlight Charlotte Le Bon’s supernatural coming-of-age feature debut Falcon Lake — hot off of its North American premiere at TIFF — as Centerpiece. In addition, Bhff is proud to host a special event screening of the new genre anthology Give Me An A.

The Brooklyn Horror Film Festival announced today an impressive second wave of titles for their explosive 2022 edition running from October 13th to the 20th with screenings held at Nitehawk Cinema Williamsburg and Williamsburg Cinemas. Following last year’s return to theaters, BHFFs presents its most robust slate to date.

From the press release:

The 7th edition of New York City’s celebrated genre event will close with the U.S. Premiere of the “straight cut” of Gaspar Noé’s Irreversible, also a highlight of the festival’s Fear In Focus: French Extremity sidebar, coinciding with the film’s 20th anniversary, and will spotlight

Charlotte Le Bon’s supernatural coming-of-age feature debut Falcon Lake — hot off of its North American premiere at TIFF — as Centerpiece. In addition, Bhff is proud to host a special event screening of the new genre anthology Give Me An A. Executive produced by Natasha Halevi, member...

Exclusive: Following the premiere of his latest film, Inexorable, earlier this year at TIFF, Fabrice du Welz has inked with Verve for representation. The filmmaker continues to be managed by Grandview.

du Welz has directed a number of award-winning films that have premiered at festivals internationally, including his 2014 film, Alleluia, a dark lovesick horror film inspired by the real-life criminal duo, the Lonely Hearts Killers. Alleluia premiered at Cannes’ Directors Fortnight, as well as TIFF, and won both Best Picture and Best Director at Austin Fantastic Fest that year.

He then directed the 2016 Netflix film, Message for the King, starring the late Chadwick Boseman, which also premiered at TIFF. His 2019 movie Adoration premiered at Locarno Film Festival, where it was nominated for Variety Piazza Grande Award. It also premiered at Sitges, where it won the Special Jury Prize, before it went on to win the Andre Cavens Award for Best...

Belgian director Fabrice Du Welz is no stranger here at ScreenAnarchy, as the man has made quite a few eye-catching genre films in the past two decades. His films tend to start as regular thrillers or dramas, but will at some point leave the safe path and go into very uncomfortable territories. From his well-titled feature debut The Ordeal onward, his lead characters always have quite a bumpy road ahead of them. In his newest film Inexorable it is no different. We follow the successful novelist Marcel, who is married to the extremely rich Jeanne. His wife is also his publisher, and the couple have just moved into a gigantic old mansion with their daughter Lucie, in the hope that the new environment will inspire...

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Answering the SunInternational Film Festival Rotterdam have announced the full lineup for their "scaled-down" 51st edition, which will take place online between January 26 — February 6. As part of a full, nationwide lockdown, cinemas will remain closed in the Netherlands until at least 14 January. Tiger COMPETITIONAchrome (Maria Ignatenko)The Cloud Messenger (Rahat Mahajan)The Child (Marguerite de Hillerin/Félix Dutilloy-Liégeois)Eami (Paz Encina)Excess Will Save Us (Morgane Dziurla-Petit)Kafka for Kids (Roee Rosen)Malintzin 17 (Mara Polgovsky/Eugenio Polgovsky)Met mes (Sam de Jong)The Plains (David Easteal)Proyecto Fantasma (Roberto Doveris)Le rêve et la radio (Renaud Després-Larose/Ana Tapia Rousiouk)Silver Bird and Rainbow Fish (Lei Lei)To Love Again (Gao Linyang)Yamabuki (Juichiro Yamasaki)Big Screen COMPETITIONAssault (Adilkhan Yerzhanov)Broadway (Christos Massalas)Third Grade (Jacques Doillon)Daryn’s Gym (Brett Michael Innes)Drifting Petals (Clara Law)The Harbour (Rajeev Ravi)The Island (Anca Damian)Kung Fu Zohra (Mabrouk El Mechri...

French sales companies are getting behind Mia’s film and TV market in Rome this week.

French sales companies will be out in force at Rome’s Mia film and TV market (October 13-17) as the global film and TV market circuit continues to shift due to the pandemic Covid-19.

French sellers have been busy networking at the Venice and San Sebastian film festivals this autumn, but Mia represents the first physical market since Cannes in July for most after only a handful of European professionals made the trip to Toronto in September.

Mia will also be the last opportunity...

The Hand that Mocks the Cradle: Du Welz Finds an Interloper in Vintage Throwback

Long before a lithesome ingenue shows up to ruin a wealthy couple’s idyll in Fabrice du Welz’s Inexorable, we know one thing for certain – she’s no good. The seventh feature from the Belgian provocateur (including his disowned 2014 feature Colt 45) is surprisingly his most straightforward exercise to date, recalling a sweet spot of American adult thrillers from the late 1980s to mid 1990s, and more successful in its reclamation of these energies than recent English language exercises attempting to tread the same murky waters.…...

  The 27th edition of the L'Etrange Festival came to a close last weekend in Paris, France. For twelve days more than twenty-two thousand attendees took in a diverse program made up of feature length and short films.    With safety measures in place the festival carried on without a hitch. Guests included Fabrice du Welz and Rob Jabbaz. The cherry on top was of course the attendance of Donnie Yen at the screening of Raging Fire, at the close of the festival.    Eskil Vogt's The Innocents took home the coveted Canal+ Grand Prize, which means that the film will be acquired by the French premium pay channel for a future broadcasst.    The Audience Choice Award went to animator Phil Tippet's Mad God,...

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The U.S. lineup at Mubi next month has been unveiled, featuring films by Claude Chabrol, Paulo Rocha, Ulrich Köhler, and more. Notable new releases include Pedro Costa’s striking Locarno winner Vitalina Varela as well as the Julia Fox-led Pvt Chat (check out our extensive interview with director Ben Hozie here.).

As part of their series Thrills, Chills, and Exquisite Horrors, the Martin Scorsese favorite Wake in Fright joins Mubi, along with Fabrice Du Welz’s Alleluia, Nicolas Winding Refn’s underseen Fear X, and Ben Wheatley’s trippy A Field in England.

Check out the lineup below and get 30 days free here.

October 1 | Alléluia | Fabrice Du Welz | Thrills, Chills, and Exquisite Horrors

October 2 | Styx | Wolfgang Fischer

October 3 | The Green Years | Paulo Rocha | Double Bill: Paulo Rocha

October 4 | Change of Life | Paulo Rocha | Double Bill: Paulo Rocha

October 5 | Your Day Is My Night | Lynne Sachs

October 6 | Hey, You!

Fabrice du Welz, whose latest film “Inexorable” (pictured) played at Toronto, is reteaming with his Belgian producer Jean-Yves Roubin at Frakas Production on his next project, “Maldoror.”

Inspired by a true story, “Maldoror” follows Paul Chartier, a young policeman who became obsessed with a case involving a notorious child abuser after coming close to catching him. Popular Belgian actor Benoit Poelvoorde, the star of “Inexorable,” is part of the cast of “Maldoror.”

Roubin, who is attending San Sebastian with Lucile Hadzihalilovic’s “Earwig,” as well as “Titane” (which he co-produced), described “Maldoror” as a mix of thriller and film noir in a similar vein to David Fincher’s “Zodiac.” He said the film, now in development, was inspired by a notorious crime case that shook Belgium in the 1990s, known as the Affaire Dutroux.

Marc Dutroux was a convicted Belgian serial killer, rapist, and child molester who was sentenced to...

While handsomely shot, well-cast, and occasionally atmospheric, the latest from Belgian director Fabrice Du Welz qualifies as a watchable disappointment. Inexorable reaches for the somber allure of Claire Denis’ Bastards and instead has the psychological force of a particularly rote ’90s thriller. A shame when all the ingredients are in place for something deeper and more unsettling.

Benoît Poelvoorde, so memorable as the lead in 1992’s Man Bites Dog—streaming on Criterion Channel, still a must-watch—is Marcel Bellmer, a novelist moving into a gob-smackingly large country estate with his wife and young daughter. Said wife is Jeanne (Mélanie Doutey), and the estate was the home of her late father, a noted publisher. The giant mansion goes oddly unexplored in Inexorable, and that is a literal waste of space. We never get a sense of its geography or feel any sense of its hidden corridors.

Into this environment comes Gloria...

A usurper melodrama by any other name is still a usurper melodrama, and Fabrice du Welz’s latest doesn’t really try to cloak its genre conventions: “Inexorable” might just as well be titled “Single White Female Nanny” or “Fatal Domestic.” Still, if this isn’t the most surprising or original among the Belgian helmer’s character-driven thrillers to date, it does compel attention with its elegantly crafted tale of a wealthy family infiltrated by a young woman with a hidden agenda. The mix of art-house bona fides and pulp satisfactions should put the Toronto fest world premiere in a position to attract sales in various formats around the globe.

Having appeared in the director’s last film “Adoration,” Benoit Poelvoorde (still best known to many from his feature debut in 1992’s notorious serial-killer mock-doc “Man Bites Dog”) is back, as the central figure this time. His Marcel is a...