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Exclusive:France’s Pyramide International is launching sales on Pascal Bonitzer’s Maigret And The Dead Lover starring Denis Podalydes as the renowned French police inspector.

The film, now in post, marks a new direction for the well-known IP after disgraced actor Gerard Depardieu notably starred as the same character in Patrice Leconte’s 2022 film Maigret.

The character is based onis based on Georges Simenon’s series of 75 best-selling Belgian books about a Parisian detective solving crimes.

Maigret And The Dead Lover isproduced by Sbs Productions and is about the death of a former ambassador whose long romance with a princess leads to a suspense-filled investigation.

The Taliban’s sweep to power in Afghanistan in 2021 serves as the backdrop to “Kabul,” one of France’s most ambitious international thriller dramas to date.

The six-part geopolitical show, which is world premiering today at Series Mania in Lille, emerged from the first-hand experience of producer Fabienne Servan-Schreiber who played a direct role in the chaotic evacuation efforts.

While vacationing in Greece with her son (and fellow producer) Matthias Weber, Servan-Schreiber heard of the situation in Kabul and got fully involved in efforts to rescue multiple families of Afghan artists and doctors.

Speaking to Variety along with Weber on the eve of “Kabul”‘s presentation at Series Mania, Servan-Schreiber says she was initially contacted by Jean-Michel Frodon, a film historian and journalist, who was looking for help to raise funds to buy plane tickets for a group of Afghan artists.

“I sent the email to everyone in my address...

Catherine Breillat‘s psychosexual reckless return to form is here. Her acclaimed latest film, “Last Summer” (Sideshow/Janus), will premiere on the Criterion Channel on November 21 with a live-streaming event, as IndieWire announces exclusively. The “Last Summer” live-stream, happening that evening at 6 p.m. Pt/9 p.m. Et, is in line with Criterion’s new tradition of launching the Sideshow/Janus titles early — the streamer similarly launched Bertrand Bonello’s “The Beast” that way over the summer.

“Last Summer” also joins the Criterion Channel as a retrospective of provocative filmmaker Breillat’s oeuvre streams on the platform, including “Fat Girl” and “Anatomy of Hell” and “Sex Is Comedy.” Starring Léa Drucker in one of the year’s best performances, “Last Summer” earned raves earlier this year and at Cannes and other festivals in 2023. The streaming premiere is good cause to remember “Last Summer” for your year-end lists. Bonus features accompanying...

The Other Laurens is a 2023 neo-noir mystery directed by Belgian filmmaker Claude Schmitz. It stars Olivier Rabourdin in a layered dual role as Gabriel and François Laurens, twin brothers who find their fates intertwined even after one of them meets an untimely end. Rabourdin leads a cast that also includes Louise Leroy as Jade, the daughter of one of the twins, and Kate Moran as François’ widow Shelby.

The film opens with François’ apparent death in a car accident. Gabriel, a small-time detective in Brussels, is drawn back to his deceased brother’s lavish home in southern France when Jade arrives at his door, convinced the crash was no accident. As Gabriel delves deeper into François’ affairs to help find answers for his troubled niece, he discovers many disturbing secrets – and grows increasingly uncertain of his own identity and its boundaries.

Schmitz explores intricate themes of doubles, deception, and the...

A project initially scheduled for a 2023 shoot has finally been greenlit, with Cineuropa confirming that Meryem Benm’Barek has been filming her sophomore feature since midway point last month. Behind the Palm Trees stars Sara Giraudeau and Driss Ramdi in leading roles, with strong support from Carole Bouquet, Olivier Rabourdin, Rachel O’Meara, and Nadia Kounda. Benm’Barek’s debut feature Sofia was a 2018 Cannes Un Certain Regard selection – winning the Best Screenplay in the section. Production is taking place in Tangier and Benm’Barek has re-teamed with her cinematographer Son Doan. A project was part of the 2022 Atlas Workshops in Marrakech, Tessalit Productions’ Jean Bréhat is producing.…...

There’s no one with the first name Lauren in “The Other Laurens,” but there are twin brothers: François and Gabriel Laurens (Olivier Rabourdin), one of whom is dead. Claude Schmitz’s twisty neo-noir — the original French title, “L’Autre Laurens,” is pleasing to the ear in a way its English translation is not — is a thriller of identity, both in terms of how it’s mistaken and how it’s created. For the downtrodden private detective at its center, that entails disentangling his sense of self from that of his not-so-dearly departed twin — a more difficult task than figuring out what became of the deceased.

François perished in a car accident, which would appear to make his passing an open-and-shut case. But the first question in any detective drama is whether the accidental death that sets the narrative in motion was indeed an accident, and the answer is usually the same.

The Other Laurens offers a twisty neo-noir with unexpected comedic elements. The film is filled with dense, blink-and-you-miss-it mini-twists, and the plot may be hard to follow, especially if you aren't great with subtitles. While the pacing can be slow, the visuals and dry humor make for a fresh and enjoyable twist on the European thriller.

Just when you thought sun-drenched noirs got their modern-day fix with last week's release of Skincare, the subgenre marches forth with The Other Laurens. There are glorious visuals aplenty in this flashy new neo-noir, but don't let the film's 'White House' setting fool you. This twisty and surprisingly comedic feature from co-writer and director Claude Schmitz takes place overseas in Europe.

From Yellow Veil Pictures, The Other Laurens also keeps you guessing and even tests your patience at times. While it's not Gerry, this is hardly Jason Statham territory and will frustrate anyone looking...

Two very different indies circling a cantor and slasher debut in moderate to wide release along with a handful of limited openings from Close Your Eyes to Paradise Is Burning on this late summer weekend with the fall festival season about to kick off.

Sony Pictures Classics launches Jason Schwartzman and Carol Kane-starring Between The Temples on 576 screens. Directed by Nathan Silver, written by Silver and C. Mason Wells with Schwartzman as a cantor losing his voice, and maybe his faith. His world turns upside down when his grade school music teacher (Kane) re-enters his life as his new adult Bat Mitzvah student. SPC acquired the thoughtful comedy out of Sundance. Also stars Robert Smigel (Leo), Madeline Weinstein (Beach Rats), and Matthew Shear (Mistress America). It played Sundance and Berlin to strong reviews (sits at 87% with critics on Rotten Tomatoes) and made its New York debut at Tribeca.

Veteran...

"You're a real sicko, aren't you?" Yellow Veil Pics has posted an official trailer for an indie French thriller called The Other Laurens, made by quirky Belgian filmmaker Claude Schmitz. This originally premiered at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival in the Directors' Fortnight sidebar, and it also played at Fantastic Fest in the fall. Gabriel Laurens is a private detective. When his niece, Jade, asks him to investigate her dad's death, Gabriel must confronts the ghosts of his past... He finds himself caught up in a strange investigation mixing pretense, fantasy, and drug trafficking. It's described as a "deadpan detective story" in which he "is mistaken for his shady twin brother in this absurdist comedy." Starring Olivier Rabourdin, Louise Leroy, Kate Moran, Marc Barbé, Tibo Vandenborre, and Edwin Gaffney. The filmmaker explains: "To me, true freedom lies in the fact of freeing oneself from the boundaries that are specific to genres.

Two Indian films flexed at the domestic box office — and when they hit they really do hit, buoying exhibitors through good times and bad — with Kinds Of Kindness hitting no. 10 in a major expansion and Thelma not far behind.

Kalki 2898 Ad, a Telugu sci-fi epic from Prathyangira Cinemas, is looking at an estimated $5.4 million on 1,049 screens for the three-day weekend, at no. 5. It’s also approaching a cume of $11 million including Wednesday previews and Thursday opening day, one of the best ever openings of an Indian film in North America.

Written and directed by Nag Ashwin, Kalki is toplined by superstars Prabhas with Deepika Padukone and Amitabh Bachchan. As Deadline has reported, this is India’s most expensive film ever.

Jatt & Juliet 3, the latest instalment of the Punjabi romantic comedy franchise, from White Hill Studios, is at no. 9 with $1.8 million for the weekend at just 143 locations, and a $1.9 million cume,...

From her controversial 1976 directorial debut “A Real Young Girl” to even more confrontational later works like “Romance” (1999) and “Anatomy of Hell” (2004), French auteur Catherine Breillat has long been one of the cinema’s premier chroniclers of desire in all its complexities and contradictions. Her latest film, “Last Summer,” is one of her best, a riveting and nuanced portrayal of an affair between an attorney (Léa Drucker) and her 17-year-old stepson (Samuel Kircher) that’s paced like a languorous Éric Rohmer dramedy but grips the audience like a thriller. It’s a remake of the Danish movie “Queen of Hearts,” and while the script by Breillat and Pascal Bonitzer provides “Last Summer” with meticulously crafted dialogue, characterizations, and situations, it’s only a starting point; the greatness of the film is in the visual execution, which is just as Breillat intended.

“One mistake that people often make is they confuse the script with the film,...

The indie market is feeling pretty good. A big film from India Kalki 2898 Ad may unseat Rrr’s North American opening weekend. June Squibb-starrer Thelma is blowing through midweek shows and stands at $3.75 million heading into week 2 steady at 1,280 theaters. Searchlight Pictures Kinds Of Kindness by Yorgos Lanthimos (Poor Things) starring Emma Stone and Jesse Plemons jumps to 500 screens from five after the best limited opening of the year last weekend.

Annie Baker’s Janet Planet from A24 goes from 2 screens to 300 and a handful of interesting indies open in limited release from Catherine Breillat‘s Last Summer to Jake Paltrow’s June Zero. Things are still quite tough but there’s room for optimism. Not clear if that will last, but it’s nice..

New: Telugu sci-fi epic Kalki 2898 Ad on 900+ screens is rivaling crossover blockbuster Rrr as distributor Prathyangira Cinemas said the film grossed $5.56 million in...

New York audiences might be the luckiest cinephiles this summer: French legend Catherine Breillat’s newest gem of a film Last Summer not only opens theatrically this weekend, but they were treated to a retrospective of the director’s work at Film at Lincoln Center. A very rare occasion, unfortunately, for the rest of the world––the reputation of Breillat’s earlier films precede her. Romance and Anatomy of Hell were both associated with the New French Extremity, considered provocative and often inappropriate for their explicit sex scenes and violent ways in which they frame male-female relationships. However, if you look at Breillat’s oeuvre as a whole, you’d find a strong thread of idealism, even hope her characters try to own up to (unsuccessfully).

Last Summer is a close remake of May el-Toukhy’s 2019 film Queen of Hearts, where a successful lawyer begins an affair with her stepson.

Nothing in this sick, sad world is simpler or more complicated than sex, a principle that helps to explain why the ever-provocative Catherine Breillat — whose films so often consecrate female desire by rendering it violently indefinable — was drawn to remake a 2019 Danish movie about a middle-aged lawyer who dedicates her life to defending young rape victims, only to begin a torrid affair with her own 17-year-old stepson.

May el-Toukhy’s “Queen of Hearts” spun that stark hypocrisy into a melodrama ridden with shame and secret darkness. Breillat’s “Last Summer” is much lighter in every way, and all the more revealing as a result; it leverages the same premise into a rich exploration of the inadequate judgment such a premise exists to invite.

Seductively empathetic without absolving its heroine or trolling the audience into aligning themselves with her, this adaptation bypasses any sort of moral binary in order to make...

A little silly to say about a movie that premiered in competition at Cannes and had the much-desired fall-festival run, but there should’ve been a little more excitement about Last Summer, which deserves much celebration for its own merits but stands all the more notable for being among the best films in the decades-long career of Catherine Breillat, who returned to feature filmmaking ten years after Abuse of Weakness. With the work now allowed to present a bit more on its own––and not as, say, the third viewing on a sleep-deprived day fueled by a Quest bar / Celsius lunch––I suspect its merits are about to really sing, ereceded by Film at Lincoln Center’s essential retrospective with the too-good-to-pass-up title “Carnal Knowledge.”

Ahead of a Janus-Sideshow release that kicks off on June 28, we have a trailer playing the brief, broad strokes. It nicely rhymes with Savina Petkova...

Producer Patrick Sobelman and Ariane Toscan du Plantier, director of Cinema Distribution France and International at film and TV company Gaumont, have been voted in as president and vice-president of France’s César Academy.

Their mandate begins on July 16 for two years. Sobelman was previously vice-president of the César Academy alongside outgoing president Véronique Cayla.

The president and vice-president, the members of the executive Academy Office, who assist them in their work, as well as the heads of the 22 professionals chapters were voted on by the 176 members of the general assembly of the Association for the Promotion of Cinema, the umbrella body overseeing Cesar Academy. The general assembly members are in turn voted in by the some 4,700 members of the academy.

Since 2020, the Apc has stipulated gender parity across the César Academy’s Presidency, Academy Office and different chapter representatives, following accusations of lack of gender equality within its ranks...

Franklin is a biographical drama miniseries based on a 2005 novel titled A Great Improvisation: Franklin, France, and the Birth of America by Stacy Schiff and adapted for television by Kirk Ellis and Howard Korder. The Apple TV+ series follows the story of the Founding Father of the United States Benjamin Franklin as he spends eight years in France trying to convince King Louis XVI to support the United States in the American Revolutionary War.

Franklin is a political thriller with some of the most interesting historical moments dramatized for our entertainment backed by some powerful performances. So, if you love the history lesson and want to continue the class, here are the dates for the series’ upcoming episodes.

Franklin – Episode Guide (When Will The New Episodes Air?) Credit – Apple TV+

Franklin consists of eight episodes in total. The historical drama series premiered on Apple TV+ with its first three episodes...

Michael Douglas shines as Benjamin Franklin in Apple TV+ drama Franklin, based on a crucial period in American history. Rising talent Noah Jupe impresses as Franklin's grandson, adding depth to the historical narrative. Franklin features a diverse ensemble cast, including acclaimed actors like Eddie Marsan and Ludivine Sagnier.

The latest historical drama from Apple TV+, Franklin, delves into the exploits of the famous diplomat and inventor Benjamin Franklin and his grandson as they negotiate on behalf of the United States in Europe, and in the process introduces many other historical figures from that time period. While the cast includes noteworthy names that will be immediately recognizable to North American audiences, the largely French ensemble cast features several lesser-known actors and actresses as well. While the iconic Michael Douglas is pivotal as Benjamin Franklin, some of the most significant players in the drama are rising talents.

Franklin is based on...

Auction director/screenwriter Pascal Bonitzer at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York exhibition Look Again: European Paintings 1300–1800 Photo: Anne Katrin Titze

On the afternoon of the Rendez-Vous with French Cinema première in New York of Auction, starring Alex Lutz and Louise Chevillotte with Léa Drucker and Olivier Rabourdin of Catherine Breillat’s incomparably daring Last Summer, the director/screenwriter joined me at The Metropolitan Museum of Art to check out Women Dressing Women at the Anna Wintour Costume Institute, before we strolled through the visionary exhibition Look Again: European Paintings 1300–1800.

Inês de Medeiros with Laurence Côte in Jacques Rivette’s La Bande Des Quatre, co-written with Pascal Bonitzer and Christine Laurent

In the second installment with the prolific and acclaimed director, screenwriter, actor, and former film critic for Cahiers du Cinéma, we discuss working again with Laurence Côte (seen as Ginette Kolinka in Olivier Dahan’s all-embracing portrait [film id=41673]Simone: Woman Of.

Aurore (Louise Chevillotte) with André Masson (Alex Lutz) at Scottie’s in Pascal Bonitzer’s mysterious and witty Auction (Le Tableau Volé)

Catherine Breillat’s incomparably daring Last Summer starring Léa Drucker, Samuel Kircher, and Olivier Rabourdin has received four César nominations: Best Director and Adapted Screenplay, Actress (Léa Drucker), Male Revelation (Samuel Kircher in competition with his brother Paul Kircher for Thomas Cailley’s The Animal Kingdom). In the first installment with Pascal Bonitzer, we start out discussing his work on Last Summer which is based on May el-Toukhy’s 2019 film Queen of Hearts and then delve into his latest film, Auction (Le Tableau Volé).

Pascal Bonitzer with Anne-Katrin Titze on Scottie’s in Auction: “It’s an allusion to Vertigo because it’s a great movie. Scottie’s, yes, it’s Sotheby’s, it’s Christie’s, it’s a big auction house.”

Pascal Bonitzer, who put a...

Kim Gordon, founding member of Sonic Youth and Body/Head on Catherine Breillat and the music with Anne-Katrin Titze and 99 Records founder Ed Bahlman: “It was a real honour of my life to be in one of her films.”

In the first instalment with Kim Gordon on Catherine Breillat, we discuss the songs in Last Summer (L'Été Dernier) - Body/Head’s Tripping (Bill Nace and Kim Gordon), Sonic Youth’s Dirty Boots, and Léo Ferré’s Vingt Ans, and we are joined by music producer and 99 Records founder Ed Bahlman. Kim’s initial encounters with Breillat films are A Real Young Girl (Une Vraie Jeune Fille) and then 36 Fillette. We also touch on Kim’s latest work with French choreographer Dimitri Chamblas, Ed’s copy of the mastered cassette of their second album Bad Moon Rising Sonic Youth dropped off at 99, and a word on Brooks Headley’s Superiority Burger.

Catherine Breillat on Léa Drucker in Last Summer (L’Été Dernier) and Alfred Hitchcock’s heroine wardrobe: “I said to Léa, think about Vertigo and Kim Novak! But then I think she is more Tippi Hedren.”

Catherine Breillat’s Last Summer stars Léa Drucker and Samuel Kircher with Olivier Rabourdin, Clotilde Courau, Serena Hu, and Angela Chen. The film is based on May el-Toukhy’s 2019 Queen of Hearts, starring Trine Dyrholm, Gustav Lindh, and Magnus Krepper. Last Summer shares a theme with the NYFF Opening Night Gala selection, Todd Haynes’s May December, where a reversal of age also takes central stage.

Catherine Breillat, with Anne-Katrin Titze, reveals the Christophe Honoré, Winter Boy, Paul Kircher and Samuel Kircher connection for Last Summer

Breillat, incomparably daring as ever, tells the story of Anne (Drucker), a successful lawyer, who lives with her businessman husband Pierre (Rabourdin) and their two headstrong, adopted daughters,...

Yellow Veil Pictures, the U.S.-based arthouse genre distribution company, has acquired North American rights to Belgian director Claude Schmitz’s deadpan detective thriller “The Other Laurens.”

The feature debut world premiered at Cannes’ Directors’ Fortnight and will have its North American Premiere at Fantastic Fest which kicks off Sept. 23 in Austin, Texas. Yellow Veil Pictures plans for a theatrical release in 2024.

“The Other Laurens” follows a private detective, Gabriel, who has been asked by his niece to investigate her father’s death. Gabriel must confront the ghosts of his past and finds himself caught up in a strange investigation mixing fantasy and drug trafficking.

“‘The Other Laurens’ stands beside films like ‘The Big Lebowski’ and ‘The Long Goodbye’ in melding a level of absurdism into Neo-noir, revealing something darker beneath the surface,” said Joe Yannick at Yellow Veil Pictures.

The deal was negotiated by Hugues Barbier, Justin Timms...

If cinema often attempts to stoke our erotic fantasies with soft lighting and rehearsed movements that have little to do with sex as many of us experience it, Catherine Breillat’s films serve as a counterpoint. The French filmmaker and novelist is less concerned with eroticism than with the power that sex represents, and her most intimate scenes are often so unpleasurable as to be as unrealistic in their own way as conventionally arousing sequences. Watching movie sex that isn’t meant to be a turn-on can push one to contemplate what else is going on between the people in the frame. And in Last Summer, her remake of the 2019 Danish film Queen of Hearts, Breillat brings her icy, unwaveringly sober sensibilities to one of the most common of American pop cultural sex fantasies: a teenager’s tryst with a Milf.

Perhaps only Breillat would open a film about an...

Last Summer.Catherine Breillat holds eye contact with such intensity that it’s difficult not to feel a little intimidated in her presence. It’s an apt trait for a filmmaker of equally, and brilliantly, intimidating films. Unafraid, even eager, to cause discomfort, Breillat has dedicated her career to the cinematic excavation of taboo subjects and liberating female desire onscreen.With her first film in ten years, Last Summer, Breillat presents a reworking of May el-Toukhy’s 2019 film Queen of Hearts in which a lawyer, predominantly working on sexual assault cases, has an affair with her 17-year-old stepson. The project is challenging in the ways you might expect from the filmmaker, but somehow tamer, too; the sex is not explicit in the manner of Romance (1999) or Anatomy of Hell (2004), nor are the shocks quite as violent as they are in her widely celebrated Fat Girl (2001). Her approach here feels more...

Sideshow and Janus Films have acquired all North American rights for Catherine Breillat’s explosive drama “Last Summer” which competed at the Cannes Film Festival.

Produced by Said Ben Said at Sbs, the film stars Léa Drucker as Anne, a brilliant lawyer who lives in perfect harmony with her husband Pierre and their six and eight‐year‐old daughters in the suburbs of Paris. One day, Theo, 17, Pierre’s son from a previous marriage, moves in with them. Anne is troubled by Theo and gradually engages in a passionate relationship with him, putting her career and family life in danger.

Drucker stars opposite Samuel Kircher and Olivier Rabourdin. Breillat wrote the film with the collaboration of Pascal Bonitzer. It’s an adaptation of May el-Toukhy’s “Queen of Hearts” which won the Audience Award at Sundance in 2019. Sideshow and Janus Films are planning a theatrical release following fall festivals.

“Catherine...

Sideshow and Janus Films have snatched up another of this year’s Cannes Festival favorites, picking up rights in North America for Catherine Breillat’s Last Summer.

The feature, which premiered in the Cannes competition lineup, is a French adaptation of May el-Toukhy’s Danish drama Queen of Hearts, which won the Sundance Grand Jury Prize in 2019. In the French version, Léa Drucker stars as Anne, a brilliant lawyer with a seemingly perfect husband and family film who puts everything at risk when she starts up a passionate love affair with her teenage stepson. Samuel Kircher and Olivier Rabourdin co-star. Last Summer was produced by Saïd Ben Saïd for Sbs production. The film is Breillat’s first feature in a decade, since Abuse of Weakness in 2013.

“Catherine Breillat is one of the boldest and most thought-provoking directors on the subject of desire,” said Sideshow and Janus Films in a statement.

Deal follows acquisition of Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s About Dry Grasses.

Sideshow and Janus Films have acquired all North American rights from Pyramide International to Catherine Breillat’s Cannes Competition selection Last Summer (L’été Dernier).

‘Last Summer’: Cannes Review

Breillat’s first film in a decade since 2013 TIFF entry Abuse Of Weakness tells of Anne, a brilliant lawyer whose harmonious Paris life with husband Pierre and their daughters is thrown into disarray when she has an affair with her stepson.

Léa Drucker, Samuel Kircher and Olivier Rabourdin star in the Sbs production produced by Saïd Ben Saïd. Breillat and...

Sideshow and Janus Films have acquired all North American rights for “Last Summer,” directed by Catherine Breillat, her first film in a decade, the companies announced on Friday.

The film, which just screened In Competition at the Cannes Film Festival to rave reviews, tells the story of Anne, a brilliant lawyer who lives in perfect harmony with her husband Pierre and their six and eight‐year‐old daughters in the suburbs of Paris. One day, Theo, 17, Pierre’s son from a previous marriage, moves in with them. Anne is troubled by Theo and gradually engages in a passionate relationship with him, putting her career and family life in danger. It stars Léa Drucker, Samuel Kircher and Olivier Rabourdin.

“Last Summer” is an Sbs production and is produced by Saïd Ben Saïd. It’s written by Breillat with the collaboration of Pascal Bonitzer and adapted from the film “Queen of Hearts...

Like some of her most memorable films, including 36 Fillette, Romance, Sex is Comedy and Anatomy of Hell, French writer-director Catherine Breillat’s new feature, Last Summer (L’Été dernier), dangerously straddles borders between unnerving drama, dark comedy and erotic exploitation — which is precisely the place the director wants to be.

On the surface, the plot seems to come right out of a softcore stepmom flick, following a successful lawyer, Anne (Léa Drucker), having an illicit affair with her stepson, Théo (Samuel Kircher), a rebellious 17-year-old who looks like a camera stand-in for Timothée Chalamet. But while the film might follow that template at first blush, including a handful of rather direct sex scenes, Breillat is after something other than mere Skinemax fodder, probing the depths of desire among a bourgeoisie constrained to live out dull, cold existences, and the manipulation that can happen between two lovers with a significant age gap.

Anne (Léa Drucker) is an esteemed lawyer: as uncompromising as she is in her line of work, she is free to enjoy her private life. In her ’40s she has it all, the job and the family she never thought would come. So begins Catherine Breillat’s newest film, Last Summer, which may be a remake of May el-Toukhy’s 2019 adulterous drama Queen of Hearts, but yields to the French filmmaker’s every wish. Even though we never get any backstory to Anne’s character, it’s hinted that her youth was not a pleasant one, as an early abortion took away the possibility to have children of her own. But now, in the summer of her life, she is a mother of two adopted girls and stepmother to an unruly teenager named Théo (Samuel Kircher), from her husband Pierre’s (Olivier Rabourdin) previous marriage. Amidst the idyllic rituals of daily life in the countryside,...

The title of Belgian writer-director Claude Schmitz’s new film noir, The Other Laurens (L’Autre Laurens), seems like an obvious homage to The Two Jakes, the somewhat forgotten Jack Nicholson sequel to Roman Polanski’s classic of the genre, Chinatown.

Both the latter movie and such existential 1970s neo-noirs as Robert Altman’s The Long Goodbye and Arthur Penn’s Night Moves loom large over Schmitz’s third feature, which follows a down-and-out private eye investigating the death of his twin brother. Starring the scrappily engaging Olivier Rabourdin (also in Catherine Breillat’s Cannes competition title, Last Summer), The Other Laurens weaves an intriguing little family mystery filled with bits of dark comedy and weirdness — this is a Belgian movie after all — and just enough of a plot to sustain the viewer over a rather stretched two hours.

Schmitz’s first feature, the tiny 2018 heist flick Carwash, applied a similar mix of crime and comedy,...

Breillat’s remake of Queen of Hearts rather pointlessly draws the sting from a mother’s affair with her teenage stepson

Catherine Breillat has made a hot – or rather tepid – mess of this remake of the very recent Danish erotic thriller Queen of Hearts, and it’s not immediately clear why exactly she felt she needed to direct her own moderate version. The changes amount to smudging the original’s icy Scandi sheen, decreasing its erotic excitement, making the performances more laboured and thus leaving the story’s essential preposterousness dangerously exposed.

The first film, from writer-director May el-Toukhy, featured Trine Dyrholm as an elegant career lawyer specialising in representing rape victims who has a passionate affair with her teen stepson; that is, her husband’s moody son by his first marriage. Now the action is transplanted from chilly Denmark to sunny, summery France and Léa Drucker plays legal high-flyer Anne,...

Still breaking boundaries at the age of 74, French filmmaker Catherine Breillat returns to the Cannes competition with a film that squarely confronts the one taboo that is still ring-fenced from liberal tolerance: sex between adults and children. In the past, she has worked with porn stars, was one of the first to show an erection in an arthouse film and earned herself the moniker “porno auteuriste.”

Last Summer is less graphic, but just as disquieting – not simply for the fact that a woman in early middle-age has an explosive affair with her teenage stepson, but for the way Breillat shows a bourgeois family fracturing, papering over the cracks with lies and ultimately repairing itself, the salves of silence and hypocrisy ensuring that nothing unpleasant is exposed and nothing changes. A highly politically charged film, therefore, even though it mostly concerns itself with a woman and a boy having sex behind the woodshed.

It began in the son’s room, when the father was away on business. L’enfant thought it was l’amour, but for her, 30-odd years his senior, the sex, lies and audiotape were a mistake. Wild at heart, she’d yielded to the taste of … oh, never mind. Competing for the Palme d’Or at Cannes, Catherine Breillat’s “Last Summer” echoes films that have come before — most notably, 2019 Danish drama “Queen of Hearts,” on which it’s based — but it proves most daring in the ways the film departs from its more conventionally moralistic source, and especially in Breillat’s refusal to call either party a parasite.

Yes, the affair between a lawyer and her 17-year-old stepson is a betrayal — of her marriage, of her parental responsibilities, of everything she stands for as an attorney — but that’s nothing compared with how the 50-ish woman deals with it...

Here’s something to ponder through the lulls of “Last Summer:” Can a film without much spark really be said to fizzle? Such thoughts danced across many a mind at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, where Catherine Breillat’s scandal-courting transgression drama mostly inspired yawns.

More inert than inept, “Last Summer” arrived in Cannes with fraught expectations: This is Breillat’s first film in a decade and a faithful remake of May el-Toukhy’s acclaimed “Queen of Hearts” — and within the Venn diagram of cinephiles who impatiently awaited Breillat’s follow-up to 2013’s “Abuse of Weakness,” and journalists who reviewed and celebrated that 2019 Danish drama you could probably fit the entire Palais.

Like a cover song that follows the same notes but changes the emphasis, “Last Summer” tracks a high-powered juvenile rights attorney who begins a taboo fling with her underage stepson. The lawyer here is Anne, a...

Thriller is directed by Claude Schmitz.

Screen can reveal the first trailer for Claude Schmitz’s debut feature The Other Laurens, which plays in Directors’ Fortnight at Cannes.

Set on the French-Spanish border, The Other Laurens follows a private detective forced to face the ghosts of his past when his niece asks him to investigate her father’s death.

The film stars Olivier Rabourdin, Kate Moran, Marc Barbé and newcomer Louise Leroy.

It is produced by Benoit Roland for Belgium’s Wrong Men and Jérémy Forni for France’s Chevaldeuxtrois.

Brussels–based Best Friend Forever (Bff) handles international sales.

The...

Catherine Breillat’s erotic drama is a remake of May el-Toukhy’s Queen Of Hearts.

Paris-based Pyramide International has closed deals in key territories for Catherine Breillat’s erotic thriller Last Summer ahead of the film’s world premiere in Competition at Cannes later this month.

Pyramide has sold the film to September Films in Benelux, Potential Films in Australia and New Zealand, Nk Contents in South Korea, Xenix Film in Switzerland, Hooray Films in Taiwan, Estinfilm in the Baltics and Nashe Kino in Russia.

Last Summer stars Léa Drucker as a lawyer who develops a relationship with her 17-year-old...

The sidebar unveiled its 55th selection under new artistic director Julien Rejl on Tuesday (April 18).

Films from Michel Gondry, Hong Sangsoo and Cédric Kahn are among the 19 features set to world premiere at the 55th Cannes Directors’ Fortnight, running May 17-26.

Scroll down for the full selection

Incoming artistic director Julien Rejl unveiled the line-up at a press conference in Paris on Tuesday (April 18) for the non-competitive Cannes parallel section run by French directors guild the Srf.

Rejl said he and his committee chose the films from nearly 4,000 submissions and travelled to more than 20 countries to meet filmmakers and professionals across the globe.

The sidebar unveiled its 55th selection under new artistic director Julien Rejl on Tuesday (April 18).

Projects from Michel Gondry, Hong Sang-Soo and Cédric Kahn are among the 19 features set to world premiere at the 55th Cannes Directors’ Fortnight, running May 17-26.

Scroll down for the full selection

Incoming artistic director Julien Rejl unveiled the line-up at a press conference in Paris on Tuesday (April 18) for the non-competitive Cannes parallel section run by French directors guild the Srf.

Rejl said he and his committee chose the films from nearly 4,000 submissions and travelled to more than 20 countries to meet filmmakers and professionals across the globe.

The film stars Olivier Rabourdin, Kate Moran, Marc Barbé and newcomer Louise Leroy and is now in post.

Brussels–based Best Friend Forever (Bff) has boarded Belgian thriller The Other Laurens, a first feature from Claude Schmitz with a starry European cast and is kicking off sales at the European Film Market.

Set on the French-Spanish border, The Other Laurens follows a private detective forced to face the ghosts of his past when his niece asks him to investigate her father’s death. The film stars Olivier Rabourdin, Kate Moran, Marc Barbé and newcomer Louise Leroy and is now in post.

Paris-based sales company beefs up slate ahead of Berlinale market.

Paris-based sales company Pyramide International has boarded Anna Novion’s Le Théorème de Marguerite and Marie Garel-Weiss’s Sur La Branche and will kick off pre-sales for the French dramas at the upcoming EFM.

Novion’s Le Théorème de Marguerite stars Ella Rumpf as the titular character, a brilliant mathematics student at France’s top university the Ecole Normale Supérieure. On the day of her thesis presentation, a mistake shakes up all the certainty in her planned-out life and she decides to quit everything and start afresh.

Rumpf notably starred...

Passages Review — Passages (2023) Film Review from the 45th Annual Sundance Film Festival, a movie directed by Ira Sachs, starring Franz Rogowski, Ben Whishaw, Adèle Exarchopoulos, Theo Cholbi, Tony Daoud, Sarah Lisbonis, Anton Salachas, Thibaut Carterot, William Nadylam, Caroline Chaniolleau, and Olivier Rabourdin. Ira Sachs’ Passages is a keen look into the discovery, [...]

Continue reading: Film Review: Passages [Sundance 2023]: A Fateful Foray into a Filmmaker’s Sexuality...

There are unlikable protagonists, and then there’s Tomas, the tragicomically insufferable narcissist at the center of Ira Sachs’ Passages. A German film director living in Paris, Tomas is, to borrow an overused term, “toxic” — a guy who lies and leeches, connives and cajoles, fucks and finagles his way through the world, his talent and impish, overcaffeinated magnetism clearing the path.

The most endearing thing about Tomas is how utterly decipherable his awfulness is. The fragility of his ego and his insatiable need to be not just desired, but revered, coddled, stimulated — you name it — are so evident as to be almost touching. (If it wasn’t clear: Folks who require niceness in a main character, this one’s not for you.)

Played by a sensational Franz Rogowski (Transit, Great Freedom), Tomas is also an undeniable force of nature. That goes a long way toward explaining the grip he has...

L’été dernier

After almost a decade away from the camera, Catherine Breillat makes her return behind the camera working on a remake of Queen of Hearts by Denmark’s May el-Toukhy. Saïd Ben Saïd got behind this project which features the likes of Léa Drucker, Olivier Rabourdin, Clotilde Cournau and Samuel Kircher. Production took place in June of last year in Paris with Jeanne Lapoirie enlisted as the cinematographer. We imagine this will cross moral lines, disturb some auds and we’re curious to see how much Breillat diverges from the original.

Gist: Co-written by Breillat and Maren Louise Käehne, the story revolves around a lawyer who’s a mother to two little girls and who welcomes her husband’s 17-year-old son from his first marriage into her home before going on to have an affair with him.…...

Pyramide International has boarded “Last Summer,” an erotic thriller by daring French director Catherine Breillat, which is being produced by Sbs Productions, the leading French banner behind Paul Verhoeven’s Oscar nominated “Elle.”

“Last Summer” boasts a strong cast led by Léa Drucker (“Custody”), Olivier Rabourdin (“Benedetta”), Clotilde Courau (“In The Shadow of Women”) and newcomer Samuel Kircher.

The Paris-based company, whose sales team is headed by Agathe Mauruc, is teasing the project with a three-minute promo at the Unifrance Rendez-vous taking place in Paris this week.

Drucker stars as Anne, a brilliant lawyer who lives happily in Paris with her husband Pierre and their 6- and 8-year-old daughters. One day, Theo, 17, Pierre’s son from a previous marriage, moves in with them. Anne is unsettled by Theo’s presence and gradually engages in a passionate relationship with him, putting her career and family life in danger.

A master at...

Cartas desde el país de los Tarahumaras

Mexican filmmaker Federico Cecchetti was one of the lucky half-dozen filmmakers to participate in the Cannes The Residence (32nd edition) with his sophomore project then titled “Letters from the Land of the Tarahumara” and currently known as Journey to the Land of the Tarahumara. After a long gestation period, Cecchetti landed Sylvie Testud, Olivier Rabourdin and François Négret for a meeting of the minds set in 1936 in the Tarahumara mountains backdrop type of drama. Produced by Machete, L.A.-based Amplitud and France’s Thierry Lenouvel, Cecchetti first got noticed with his Ariel Awards (Mexico’s Oscars) nominated with El Sueño del Mara’akame in 2017.…...

Following on “Huesera,” a double Tribeca winner, Mexico’s Machete, headed by Edher Campos, is returning to female filmmaker social issue genre with “Cachorra,” a darkly humoured horror thriller set on the Mexico-u.S. desert border.

The feature debut of Madrid-based genre scribe and consultant Elisa Puerto Aubel, who penned Sitges Audience Award winner. “La venganza de Jairo,” “Cachorra” is one of the newest additions to a five movie 2002-23 slate at Machete, producer of Cannes Festival winners “Leap Year” and “La Jaula de Oro.” It forms part of a robust lineup at this week’s Sanfic-Mórbido Lab, which packs many of Sanfic Industria’s most commercial propositions,

All of Machete’s films, three now in post-production, carry social point. A trio – “Huesera,” “Pups” and “The Path of Silence” – show Machete driving into genre and LGBTQ themes, fast emerging as the cutting edge focuses for many of the most exciting of Latin America movies.

Finally it will be Léa Drucker in the driver’s seat (and not the originally attached Valeria Bruni Tedeschi) in Catherine Breillat‘s now titled L’été dernier(which translates as Last Summer). Drucker, who will next be seen in Cannes Comp selected Lukas Dhont’s Close, is surrounded by thesps Olivier Rabourdin and Clotilde Cournau – both have remained on the project since the first announcements were made last year when the project was floating around as “Inavouable.” We expect there to be one more casting announcement for the lead antagonist – if you want to call it that in the film.…...

Buckle up. “Black Box” is the kind of smart, taut conspiracy thriller Hollywood used to consistently make, only this one hails from France, which has been beating the American studios at their own game lately in the good-movies-for-grown-ups department. Centered on the eponymous device, recovered from a freak airplane accident, this engaging if slightly overlong film stars Pierre Niney as an obsessive forensic analyst who hears the words “Allahu Akbar!” on a recovered cockpit voice recorder and can’t quite believe his ears.

If the setup sounds a bit like Brian De Palma’s “Blow Out,” that’s hardly a bad thing, except “Black Box” centers on high-altitude hijinks, rather than a Chappaquiddick-like car crash. Opening the movie in mid-air, director Yann Gozlan leaves the crisis mostly up to the imagination, firing our neurons rather than our adrenaline receptors as he dollies backward from the cockpit, through the cabin, all...