News

With antisemitism in France escalating since the Oct. 7 massacre in Israel and the ensuing war in Gaza, a short film portraying a Jewish family grappling with fear will be broadcast on every French TV network ahead of the UEFA Euro Championship Final on July 14, Bastille Day.

Directed by Katia Lewkowicz (“French Dolls”), the short film captures the many ways in which the rise of antisemitic hate incidents has affected the everyday lives of Jews living in France. The film revolves around the Cohen family and shows how each of its members is affected. They begin hiding their Judaism and are compelled to remove their last name everywhere they can, take out the mezuzahs from their door frames, pull the curtains when they gather for Jewish holidays and avoid saying anything suggesting they are Jewish while in public. A friend of the family, who is a young Black French man, witnesses...

Amazon Prime has scooped French Svod rights to Matteo Garrone’s “Pinocchio” with Roberto Benigni which will be debut on the streamer in France on May 4.

The streaming service acquired “Pinocchio” from Jean Labadie’s distribution company Le Pacte, which had to cancel the film’s theatrical release on March 18 as cinemas shuttered on March 15 due to the coronavirus crisis.

Le Pacte had spent a large sum in P&a to promote the film on the heels of its world premiere out of competition at the Berlinale. The deal with Amazon Prime is believed to have covered those costs and was approved by right holders. Meanwhile, Le Pacte is still committed to releasing Jean-Paul Salomé’s “Mama Weed,” a crime comedy starring Isabelle Huppert, in theaters later this year.

“Pinocchio” is the second European movie picked up by Amazon Prime from a French company during the shutdown of theaters. Amazon...

French sales company TF1 Studio has clinched key territory sales on Donato Carrisi’s anticipated crime thriller “Into the Labyrinth” (L’uomo del Labirinto) starring Dustin Hoffman and Tony Servillo (“The Great Beauty”).

A highlight on TF1 Studio’s roster, “Into the Labyrinth” has been picked up for Germany (Koch Media), Spain (La Aventura Audiovisual), Greece (Spentzos), Portugal (Nos Lusomundo), Cis (Russian World Vision), Poland (Best Film), former Yugoslavia (Fox Vision), the Middle East (Italia Films), Brazil (Pandora Filmes), Japan (Kino Films), Taiwan (Movie Cloud) and South Korea (Entermonde). TF1 Studio is hosting market screenings of the film at Afm.

“Into the Labyrinth” was adapted from the 2017 novel “L’Uomo Del Labirinto” by bestselling author Carrisi, who has sold over 3 million books worldwide and won Best New Director at the David di Donatello awards for his 2017 hit “The Girl in the Fog” which also starred Servillo.

“Into the Labyrinth,” which shot in Italian and English,...

TF1 Studio has scored several pre-sales on Ludovic Colbeau-Justin’s “The Lion,” the anticipated action comedy starring Dany Boon and Philippe Katerine.

Currently in post-production, “The Lion” has been picked up for Canada (Tva films), Spain (Dea Planeta), Benelux (Alternative Films), Switzerland (Pathe Films), Greece (Spentzos Film), Portugal (Nos Lusomundo Audiovisuais), Cis (Top Film), Poland (Monolith), Former Yugoslavia (Blitz Film), Middle East (Italia Films), Morocco (Megarama), South Korea (Cree Pictures), China (Heyday Investments) and for airlines (Skeye).

TF1 Studio, whose international sales team is headed by Sabine Chemaly, will unveil the opening sequence of “The Lion” at the Afm this week and has released the first still (pictured) of the film which will be released in France on Jan. 29. Monkey Pack Films is producing “The Lion.”

The movie follows Romain, a psychologist who is fascinated by his patient, Leo Milan, who claims to be a highly-trained international spy, code-named The Lion.

Hovering around the twenty-one to twenty-four feature film mark with at least a quarter of those films belonging to first time filmmakers, the Quinzaine des Realisateurs (a.k.a Directors’ Fortnight) has in the past couple of years, counted on a healthy supply of French, Spanish and Belgium produced film items, and has been geared towards the offbeat genre items as with last year’s edition curated by Edouard Waintrop and co. To be unveiled on the 22nd, as we attempted with our Critics’ Week predix, Blake Williams, Nicholas Bell and I (Eric Lavallee) are thinking out loud and hedging our bets on what the section might look like or what the programmers might be looking at for 2014. Here is our predictions overview:

Alleluia

Six years after presenting Vinyan at the Venice Film Festival, Fabrice Du Welz finally returns with potentially not one, but a pair of works for the ’14 campaign.

"The San Francisco Film Society's annual French cinema roundup stretches its national mandate a bit this year," writes Max Goldberg in the Bay Guardian, noting the inclusion of The Kid with a Bike by Belgian brothers Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, "one of the best films of the year regardless of country of origin," and Finnish director Aki Kaurismäki's Le Havre. "Also worth checking out is Pierre Schöller's fascinating train wreck of an information age political thriller, The Minister, starring longtime Dardennes player Olivier Gourmet as a compromised bureaucrat. The Long Falling [image above], Martin Provost's second match up with actress Yolanda Moreau after Séraphine (2008), purposefully shuttles from a hardened Belgian village to an unmoored Brussels and features Agnès Godard's characteristically probing camerawork, itself a pride of French cinema."

From the lineup of eleven films, the Chronicle's Mick Lasalle picks out six to highlight, including Katia Lewkowicz's Bachelor Days Are Over,...

Le Pacte are spread across the Croisette this year with three films in competition including Kamen Kalev's The Island.  Ave by Konstantin Bojanov - Completed Bachelor Days Are Over (Pourquoi Tu Pleures?) by Katia Lewkowicz - Completed The Island by Kamen Kalev - Completed Amazonia - Pre-Production Land Of Oblivion (La Terre Outragee) by Michale Boganim - Production Last Winter (L'hiver Dernier) by John Shank - Production Of Women And Horses (Sport De Filles) by Patricia Mazuy - Completed The Day Of The Crows (Le Jour Des Corneilles) by Jean-Christophe Dessaint - Production The Screen Illusion (L'illusion Comique) by Mathieu Amalric - Completed...

Updated through 4/28.

La Semaine de la Critique, known in the English-speaking world as Critics' Week, is celebrating its 50th year, and festivals and institutions from all over — and we at Mubi are excited to be among them — are chiming in with special series and retrospectives saluting some the greatest film that have premiered at this parallel section of the Cannes Film Festival. Watch this space for upcoming details. Meantime, here's the lineup for Critics' Week 2011.

Feature Films

Hagar Ben Asher's The Slut. This debut feature "will tell of a woman (Ben Asher herself) drifting away from one sexual encounter to another," writes Eithan Weitz at Ioncinema. Tamar’s behavior is fixed. One man after another, a hand job, a blow job, and so on. But she is also the mother of Mika and Noa, 12 and 8. She no longer seeks redemption, until Shai arrives. He comes in order to handle his dead mother’s property.

Programme includes veteran film-maker André Téchiné, plus 14 female directors – but English-language cinema is sidelined

The lineup for the Cannes film festival has been finalised with the announcement of the Directors' Fortnight and Critics' Week programmes. The two strands operate independently of the Palme d'Or competition that was announced last week.

Few of the selected film-makers look likely to excite the paparazzi on the Cannes red carpet. The best known name in the Directors' Fortnight selection is probably veteran French film-maker André Téchiné with an adaptation of Philippe Djian's novel Impardonnables, about a writer whose daughter disappears, while the Critics' Week finds room for new films by Shotgun Stories director Jeff Nichols and Jonathan Caouette, maker of Tarnation.

One title that seems likely to spark controversy, however, is the Critics' Week selection Hanotenet (aka The Slut), directed by and starring Israeli Hagar Ben Asher, about a woman compulsively seeking sexual gratification.

Tune in alert for TV5MONDE USA for French films shown in the USA and Canada. How Time Flies | Comme Le Temps Passe Tuesday, October 19 at 10:03pm|7:03pm Et/Pt A thirty-something Parisian, Baptiste (Renan Carteaux), takes his wife Carole (Katia Lewkowicz) to the country to stay with friends he hasn't seen for six years. Time has passed and despite shared memories it is hard to hide the different lives they have all chosen... This comedic drama was awarded the "Prix du public" and the "Prix du rire Fernand Raynaud" at the 2010 Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival. The Hearts of Men 2 | Le C.ur Des Hommes 2 Sunday, October 24 at 8:30pm|5:30pm Et/Pt Alex, Antoine, Jeff and Manu are...