News

Juliette Binoche, Pedro Almodóvar and Mohammad Rasoulof have joined a campaign in support of persecuted Iranian filmmakers Maryam Moghadam and Behtash Sanaeeha.

The wife and husband directorial duo have been in the crosshairs of Iran’s authoritarian Islamic Republic regime since 2023 over their feature film My Favourite Cake, which world premiered at the Berlin Film Festival in 2024.

The heartwarming story of love and loss revolves around 70-year-old widow, played by Lily Farhadpour, who reconnects with life’s small pleasures in the face of solitude, following her husband’s death.

The Iranian authorities are unhappy with the film because it flies in the face of their sexist, draconian laws around what women should wear and how they should act, with the protagonist seen without a hijab head covering, sharing a drink with a suitor and dancing.

The Islamic Republic government slapped a travel ban on Moghadam and Sanaeeha, preventing any travel for the last two years,...

Cannes Critics’ Week has appointed French producer Sylvie Pialat as president of the jury for its upcoming edition after Spanish director Rodrigo Sorogoyen, who was originally announced for the role, was forced to cancel for personal reasons.

French director Iris Kaltenbäck has also been been named as a new jury member. Her first film The Rapture premiered to acclaim in Critics’ Week last year. The drama, starring Hafsia Herzi as a midwife who passes off her best friend’s newborn child as her own, won the Prix Sacd.

Previously announced members of the jury include Rwandan actress Eliane Umuhire (Augure by Baloji, My New Friends, Haven of Grace), Belgian cinematographer Virginie Surdej (The Blue Caftan, Our Mothers, Casablanca Beats), and Canadian film critic and journalist Ben Croll.

Producer Pialat spent the first part of her cinema career collaborating with her husband Maurice Pialat, co-writing the screenplays for a number of...

Festival’s future seemed to hang in the balance after council funding was halved in May

France’s Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival has confirmed that, despite severe budget cuts, it will take place in February but with a reduced programme.

The organisers of the world’s biggest short film festival have reduced the number of shorts selected in two of its competition programme and have increased ticket prices.

The festival’s future seemed to hang in the balance in May after the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes regional council voted to cut its funding by half from €210,000 to €100,000 for the 2023 financial year.

The...

Festival’s future seemed to hang in the balance after council funding was halved in May

France’s Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival has confirmed that, despite severe budget cuts, it will take place in February but with a reduced programme.

The organisers of the world’s biggest short film festival have reduced the number of shorts selected in two of its competition programme and have increased ticket prices.

The festival’s future seemed to hang in the balance in May after the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes regional council voted to cut its funding by half from €210,000 to €100,000 for the 2023 financial year.

The...

Like writers penning their memoirs, making movies about making movies is a rite of passage for many a director. Fellini famously did it with 8 ½, Truffaut with Day for Night, Godard with Contempt and Fassbinder with Beware of a Holy Whore. More recently, Tarantino gave us Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, Spielberg The Fabelmans, Michel Hazavanicius made Final Cut and Damien Chazelle, Babylon.

Almost all behind-the-scenes movies share the same theme: Filmmaking is tough, high-stress work that weighs heavily on everyone involved, especially the directors themselves. That’s certainly one of the main takeaways from Cédric Kahn’s very French variation on the subject, Making Of, which premiered out of competition in Venice.

Kahn is both an actor (he played the douchey Gallic lover in Pawel Pawikowski’s Cold War) and talented director, with a series of strong features under his belt that include hard-hitting thrillers like L’Ennui,...

The man is not in black. He is in nothing at all. Wearing his nakedness calmly, like a fact so obvious it requires no explanation, an 86-year-old Chinese male stands up slowly in the otherwise empty gallery of Paris’ famous Bouffes du Nord theatre. The artfully peeling, faded-grandeur interior, dim but for gathered pools of warm light, booms with the sound of his wooden seat swinging back into place, then with the creaks of the floorboards under his bare feet. This is the arresting opening to Chinese documentarian Wang Bing’s other Cannes 2023 film, “Man in Black,” a project so diametrically different from his Competition entry “Youth: Spring” that it feels hard to credit them both to the same person. Perhaps we shouldn’t. This brief but profoundly moving film represents such a consummate collaboration between director, cinematographer, editor and subject that its authorship could be recorded as a four-way tie.

The U.S. lineup for films coming to Mubi this September has been announced, featuring some of my personal favorites of the last few years, notably Philippe Lesage’s severely overlooked coming-of-age drama Genesis, John Gianvito’s Helen Keller documentary Her Socialist Smile, Joe DeNardo, Paul Felten’s formally thrilling Slow Machine, and Robert Greene’s documentary Bisbee ’17, as well as Jia Zhangke’s latest release Swimming Out Till the Sea Turns Blue.

Also in the lineup is Bill Forsyth’s delightful Gregory’s Girl, Ari Folman’s hybrid feature The Congress, and Manoel de Oliveira’s Visit, or Memories and Confession, which was made in 1982, and only allowed to screen after his death.

See the lineup below and get 30 days free here.

September 1 | Yellow Cat | Adilkhan Yerzhanov | Festival Focus: Venice

September 2 | Visit, or Memories and Confessions | Manoel de Oliveira | Rediscovered

September 3 | Slow Machine | Joe DeNardo, Paul Felten | Mubi Spotlight

September...

The 1978 theft of Charlie Chaplin’s coffin from its rural Swiss resting place was the kind of bizarre case — equal parts absurd caper and poignant story of human desperation, escalating wildly and ending with peace restored — that you’d expect to have been the subject of at least one hefty true-crime movie. Instead, it seems to keep inspiring curious sideways riffs on history.

In 2014, French auteur Xavier Beauvois heavily fictionalized the identities and motives of the grave-robbers for his sweetly mournful “The Price of Fame,” attempting to channel some of Chaplin’s sentimental underdog spirit in lieu of factual fidelity. Yet that film was a veritable documentary compared to “Stealing Chaplin,” a broad, shaggy farce with an opening title card that claims “inspired by a true story” credentials, and a title that represents the full extent of that inspiration.

In this parallel universe, the Little Tramp was buried not in...

Moritz Borman is producing with Karl Spoerri and Philip Schulz-Deyele.

Robert Schwentke, the German director of US films including Flightplan, Red and The Time Traveller’s Wife, is attached to direct a film about the collapse of German firm Wirecard in 2020. It was the result of the biggest corporate fraud scandal in the country’s history.

The as-yet-untitled film will be based on a tell-all expose called ‘Bad Company’ by Jörn Leogrande, a former top executive at the company.

It is being developed by Karl Spoerri’s Zurich and Los Angeles-based SPG3 Entertainment with Moritz Borman and Philip Schulz-Deyle’s German-based development company Pier 89 Content.

Bye Bye Birdie: Beauvois Bears Burdens in Old-Fashioned Melodrama

The albatross, a large white seabird with a significant wingspan, has been a symbol of a burden for paying penance ever since the 1798 poem The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge depicted this helpful avian creature leading a ship out of a jam only to be murdered by the titular sailor. As the title of the latest film from Xavier Beauvois suggests, Alabatros is also a narrative marrying oceanic themes and the impossibility of atonement for murdering another living thing. The English language title, Drift Away, divorces itself from such metaphorical obscurity to convey something a bit more basic (as is often the case for international titles being rebranded for easier marketing), but Beauvois finds himself adrift in what amounts to a somewhat stagnant, old-fashioned melodrama about grief and redemption.…...

With Drift Away, director Xavier Beauvois––known internationally for his masterful monastery-set Of Gods and Men––juxtaposes the picturesque scenery of northern France with a policeman’s inner turmoil, and the community’s social unrest lying beneath the surface, in an intriguing if frustrating policier.

Jérémie Renier plays Laurent, a police officer in Normandy, and sturdy figurehead of the community, soon to be married to his long-term girlfriend Marie (co-writer Marie-Julie Maille). We ride along with the veteran member of the Gendarmerie’s tight-knit team, including Laurent’s partner Quentin and principled new recruit Carole (Iris Bry) as they patrol the area. Countryside disputes and drunk bar patrons (including director Beavois in a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it cameo) paint a documentary-like picture of small-town life.

But it’s not just a rustic slice of France’s profonde. The area’s picturesque white cliffs overlooking the Atlantic are a regular spot for suicides,...

Xavier Beauvois’s tenderly drawn film sees a French policeman abandon all his certainties after a tragic misjudgment

Xavier Beauvois is the actor-turned-director whose Of Gods and Men in 2010 is one of the great French movies of the 21st century; he also has the honour of a cameo, as himself, in the final series of the Netflix comedy Call My Agent. His new film is really intriguing, a film deeply rooted in a close-knit community, with excellent performances, a sophisticated control of narrative tempo and – at least initially – a tragic force that could almost be compared with Elia Kazan. Yet I have to say that this power is dissipated by a disappointing ending in which the film, as its English title warns us, drifts away.

Jérémie Renier plays Laurent, a small-town cop in Normandy in northern France, devoted to his partner, Marie, played by Marie-Julie Maille – Beauvois’s own partner...

The French sales agent will wager on Golden Bear contender Drift Away and on projects including the two-part adaption of The Three Musketeers and upcoming Stephen Frears and Emanuele Crialese titles. French sales group Pathé International is making its final preparations before making an appearance at the 71st Berlinale's European Film Market (unfolding online 1 -5 March) with a very well-stocked movie armoury.Standing out in the group’s festival showcase is the French-Belgian co-production Drift Away by Xavier Beauvois, which is the 8th feature-length work to come courtesy of the French filmmaker who will be battling it out for the Golden Bear for the very first time, having already been selected to compete twice in Cannes and twice in Venice (in 2000 and 2014). Notably...

The titles for the 71st Berlin International Film Festival are being announced in anticipation of the event running March 1 - March 5, 2021. We will update the program as new films are revealed.IntroductionCOMPETITIONAlbatross (Xavier Beauvois): Laurent, a young police officer in a small town in Normandy, plans to marry Marie, with whom he has a daughter nicknamed Poulette. He loves his job despite the social misery he witnesses on a daily basis. Then one day, his life is thrown into turmoil when he accidentally kills a farmer threatening to commit suicide…Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn (Radu Jude): Emi is a schoolteacher, whose career is threatened when a clip of her having sex with her spouse is uploaded on a adults-only site. When she is forced to face a group of furious parents asking for her dismissal, she clashes with them over their morality concerns, resulting in a debate that exposes the hypocrisy,...

An arthouse-orientated Berlin line-up could ultimately reveal some pleasant surprises.

“Apprehension” was the word used by artistic director Carlo Chatrian to describe the mood of the films at the Berlinale 2021. Given the precarious state of the world this pandemic midwinter, that’s possibly the best we could expect as he announced the titles under the gaze of the festival’s stern, bespectacled black bear..

But there was a sense of resilience as well. Chatrian and his co-chief, the festival’s managing director Mariette Rissenbeek, have responded to lockdown constraints with their second selection planted firmly in the European arthouse. It...

Berlinale Executive Director Mariette Rissenbeek and Artistic Director Carlo Chatrian were determined to be in a cinema today when broadcasting the lineup for this year’s Competition program.

“It is meaningful to be in a movie theater, this is where the films we select are meant to be shown,” Chatrian commented when unveiling the selection, which features a solid showing of arthouse fare.

Due to the ongoing pandemic, the fest will not be able to show these films on the big screen for now. Instead the selection will be viewable online during the European Film Market (March 1-5) to accredited delegates.

The only people who will see the films on the big screen next month will be the festival’s international jury, composed of past Golden Bear winners, whom the festival are planning to fly into Berlin, authorities allowing, to view the program in a cinema and then debate their...

New films by Celine Sciamma, Hong Sangsoo, Xavier Beauvois, Radu Jude, and the directorial debut of German actor Daniel Brühl were unveiled as part of the 15 competition titles at the 2021 Berlin Film Festival today.

Read More: The 100 Most Anticipated Films Of 2021

The festival’s 71st edition will take place in two stages. The Industry platforms European Film Market, Berlinale Co-Production Market, Berlinale Talents, and the World Cinema Fund will be online March 1-5.

Continue reading 2021 Berlin Competition LineUp: New Films By Celine Sciamma, Hong Sangsoo, Daniel Brühl, & More at The Playlist.

This year’s Berlin International Film Festival will look a bit different this year, with a virtual edition taking place March 1-5 for industry and press, then a public, in-person edition kicking off in June.

The complete lineup has now been unveiled, including Céline Sciamma’s highly-anticipated Portrait of a Lady on Fire follow-up Petite Maman, a surprise new Hong Sang-soo feature, the latest work from Ryūsuke Hamaguchi, along with new projects by Radu Jude, Xavier Beauvois, Dominik Graf, Pietro Marcello, Ramon Zürcher & Silvan Zürcher, and more.

Check out each section below.

Competition Tiles

“Albatros” (Drift Away)

France

by Xavier Beauvois

with Jérémie Renier, Marie-Julie Maille, Victor Belmondo

“Babardeală cu buclucsau porno balamuc” (Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn)

Romania/Luxemburg/Croatia/Czech Republic

by Radu Jude

with Katia Pascariu, Claudia Ieremia, Olimpia Mălai

“Fabian oder Der Gang vor die Hunde” (Fabian – Going to the Dogs)

Germany

by Dominik Graf

with Tom Schilling,...

The Berlin International Film Festival has set its full slate for the upcoming 2021 edition. Berlinale usually follows Sundance with a February festival, but the pandemic has forced organizers to develop a new festival format for 2021. The 71st Berlin International Film Festival is set to take place with the “Industry Event” from March 1 to 5, which will include the European Film Market (EFM), the Berlinale Co-Production Market, the Berlinale Talents, and the World Cinema Fund in online forms. From June 9 to 20, 2021 the Berlinale will launch a “Summer Special” with numerous film presentations in Berlin, both at indoor and outdoor cinemas.

Included in the March event is the traditional film festival slate, which includes the main Berlinale Competition lineup as well as sidebar sections such as Berlinale Special & Berlinale Series, Encounters, Berlinale Shorts, Panorama, Forum & Forum Expanded, Generation, Perspektive Deutsches Kino, and Retrospective. With the exception of the Retrospective, the films will be shown at the March event.

The likes of Céline Sciamma, Radu Jude and Xavier Beauvois will be vying for this year's Golden Bear. Before announcing the titles in Berlinale Special and the gathering’s International Competition, Berlinale executive director Mariette Rissenbeek welcomed her online audience. “I’m glad to be standing here today – on the day when we had originally planned to open the 71st Berlinale. At the end of last year, it certainly didn’t look like I’d be able to do so. Now, with the 2021 Berlinale, we are breaking new ground: something like this has never taken place before.” With the Industry Event scheduled to take place from 1-5 March, selected films will then be shown in Berlin during the so-called Summer Special (9-20 June). “We want to hold a big celebration for film fans, enchant the audience with cinema once again and offer them a feast for the senses,” she added,...

This week of Berlin International Film Festival announcements comes to a close with the main course – the Competition and Special Screenings programs. Scroll down for the full lists.

The 15-strong Competition – all world premieres – includes titles from filmmakers including Celine Sciamma, Daniel Bruhl and Xavier Beauvois.

Celine Sciamma is following on from her Golden Globe-nominated Portrait Of A Lady On Fire with her next movie, Petite Maman, which only went into production in November; plot details are hush but it is understood to star two eight-year-olds.

Actor-turned-filmmaker Bruhl also plays the protagonist in his directorial debut, Next Door, which centers on a film star and his troublesome neighbor.

Xavier Beauvois, whose credits include the Cannes Grand Prix winner Of Gods And Men and the 2017 film The Guardians, presents his eighth work, Albatros, which follows a police captain whose life goes into a tailspin.

Romanian filmmaker Radu Jude will also present his latest work,...

Mariette Rissenbeek and Carlo Chatrian also unveiled Berlinale Special features.

A 15-title Competition line-up including new films from Céline Sciamma and Radu Jude has been unveiled for the 2021 Berlin International Film Festival.

The festival’s executive director Mariette Rissenbeek and artistic director Carlo Chatrian unveiled the complete Competition strand along with Berlinale Special titles at a virtual press conference today (February 11), from an empty cinema.

Scroll down for the full list of titles

This year’s edition will take place in two parts; an industry-focused, online-only event running March 1-5, and a Summer Special event featuring physical screenings, planned for June 9-20.

The Panorama,...

Actor Daniel Bruhl’s directorial debut and new titles from Radu Jude, Celine Sciamma, Hong Sangsoo and Xavier Beauvois are among the 15 competition titles in the Berlin Film Festival, all of which were revealed Thursday.

Five of the titles are from female filmmakers (some of whom are co-directors on titles), on par with last year’s competition, when six of the 18 competition titles were helmed by women.

The festival also revealed the 11 titles in the Berlinale Special strand.

Festival executive director Mariette Rissenbeek introduced the format of this year’s festival, after which artistic director Carlo Chatrian presented the films selected.

As first revealed by Variety, the festival’s 71st edition will take place in two stages. Industry platforms European Film Market, Berlinale Co-Production Market, Berlinale Talents and the World Cinema Fund will be online March 1-5. Meanwhile, June 9-20 will see a physical summer public event, pandemic permitting.

Explaining the rationale,...

The Berlin Film Festival on Thursday unveiled the titles that will compete in the 2021 Berlinale as well as the high-profile features screening out of competition in Berlin’s Berlinale Specials section.

Albatross from French director Xavier Beauvois (Of Gods and Men), Introduction by acclaimed Korean director Hong Sangsoo (The Woman Who Ran), Petite Maman from Portrait of a Lady on Fire director Céline Sciamma; and I’m Your Man, described as a sci-fi romantic comedy starring Toni Erdmann’s Sandra Hüller, from German filmmaker Maria Schrader (Emmy winner for Netflix’s Unorthodox) are among the high-profile arthouse titles that will have their world premieres in competition in ...

The Berlin Film Festival on Thursday unveiled the titles that will compete in the 2021 Berlinale as well as the high-profile features screening out of competition in Berlin’s Berlinale Specials section.

Albatross from French director Xavier Beauvois (Of Gods and Men), Introduction by acclaimed Korean director Hong Sangsoo (The Woman Who Ran), Petite Maman from Portrait of a Lady on Fire director Céline Sciamma; and I’m Your Man, described as a sci-fi romantic comedy starring Toni Erdmann’s Sandra Hüller, from German filmmaker Maria Schrader (Emmy winner for Netflix’s Unorthodox) are among the high-profile arthouse titles that will have their world premieres in competition in ...

Albatros

Director Xavier Beauvois will be ready with his eighth feature, Albatros in 2021. Produced by Sylvie Pialat and Benoit Quainon via Les Films du Worso, this stars stars Jérémie Renier, Victor Belmondo, Olivier Pequery, Madeleine Beauvois, and a pair from his 2017 The Guardians cast, Marie Julie Maille and Iris Bry. Beauvois received a Cesar nomination for his 1993 debut Nord, he went straight to the Cannes competition in 1995 with Don’t Forget You’re Going to Die, which received the Jury Prize. He returned to Cannes competition in 2010 with Of Gods and Men, which took home the Grand Prize and won the Cesar for Best Film.…...

Courtesy of Enormous, the filmmaker joins the ranks of previous auteurs rewarded for originality, while Arnaud and Jean-Marie Larrieu scoop an Honorary Jean Vigo. Intended to pay tribute to filmmakers’ independence of mind, originality and the quality of their work, the 68th Jean Vigo Prize has been awarded to Sophie Letourneur for her film Enormous (unveiled early this year in Rotterdam), "for the unapologetic way in which it overturns clichés, inverts genres and allows comedy to rub shoulders with the documentary form; for its everyday tenderness and its refreshing rawness." The director notably joins the ranks of Jean-Luc Godard, Maurice Pialat, Alain Resnais, Claude Chabrol, Philippe Garrel, Olivier Assayas, Bruno Dumont, Laurent Cantet, Xavier Beauvois, Alain Guiraudie, Mathieu Amalric and last year’s victor Stéphane Batut. It’s the 6th time a woman has won the Jean Vigo Prize, following in the footsteps of Anne Fontaine, Noémie Lvovsky, Patricia Mazuy,...

Bond villain and The Day Of The Jackal star Michael Lonsdale: “It was a great experience to make a very popular film” he said of his experience on Moonraker Photo: Agence Aartis

A veteran with one of the most familiar faces and distinctive lugubrious tones, Michael Lonsdale, who soared to international recognition as the villain Hugo Drax in the James Bond film Moonraker and the detective Claude Lebel in The Day Of The Jackal, has died in Paris at the age of 89.

His Anglo-Saxon demeanour came from his English father while his Gallic and Celtic influence came via his Irish-French mother. He spent his childhood in London, moved briefly with his parents to Jersey and then Morocco finally returning to live in Paris in 1947.

Michael Lonsdale … cultivating orchids in Bouli Lanners’ The First, The Last Photo: UniFrance

There he started studying painting before being drawn in to the world of acting,...

Paris-born actor was best-known internationally for Moonraker and Of Gods And Men.

French-British actor Michael Lonsdale, who is best known internationally for his role as the James Bond villain Hugo Drax in Moonraker, has died at his home in Paris at the age of 89.

Lonsdale was born in Paris to an English army officer and French-Irish mother and spent his childhood in Guernsey and then Morocco, where his father was interned during World War Two.

Upon returning to Paris after the war, Lonsdale took acting classes and broke into theatre and then cinema and TV, working prodigiously in all three arenas thoughout his career.

French actor Michael Lonsdale, who was known internationally for his roles as the villain Hugo Drax in the 1979 James Bond film “Moonraker” and detective Claude Lebel in “The Day of the Jackal,” has died. He was 89.

Afp confirmed news of the actor’s death, via his agent, on Monday.

Lonsdale won France’s Cesar for best supporting actor in 2011 for his role in Xavier Beauvois’ “Of Gods and Men.” His performance in “The Day of the Jackal” earned him a supporting actor BAFTA nomination.

Lonsdale was born to an English father and a French mother in Paris in 1931. He marked his acting debut in 1956 with “It Happened in Aden.” In a long and distinguished career, the actor amassed more than 200 credits, working with some of the greats of cinema.

More to come.

Un petit-fils

Director Xavier Beauvois will be ready with his eighth feature, Un petit-fils (A Grandson) in 2020. Sylvie Pialat (we featured the producer as part of our The Conversation series) and Benoit Quainon are producing through Les Films du Worso and the project is being shot by Julien Hirsch. Beauvois’ latest starts Jeremie Renier, Victor Belmondo, Olivier Pequery, Madeleine Beauvois, and a pair from his 2017 The Guardians cast, Marie Julie Maille and Iris Bry. Beauvois also scripted with his Guardians writers Maille and Frederique Moreau.…...

Tout Le Monde M’appelle Mike

Guillaume Bonnier makes his directorial debut Tout Le Monde M’appelle Mike in 2020, produced by Eric Neve and co-produced by Charles Walter. Bonnier’s script received funding from the Gans Foundation for Cinema in late 2018 and his cast includes Abderissaak Mohamed, Daphne Patakia and Pierre Lottin. For the past two decades, Bonnier has worked as Assistant Director on a number of notable projects for some of France’s most renowned auteurs, including Patrice Chereau, Philippe Garrel (In the Shadow of Women), Xavier Beauvois (Of Gods and Men), Rachid Bouchareb (Days of Glory), Hiner Saleem, Bruno Podalydes and Jean-Pierre Mocky.…...

Jérémie Renier toplines the cast of this production being staged by Les Films du Worso and set to be sold by Pathé. On 14 October, Xavier Beauvois will be in Normandy to kick off the shoot for Un petit-fils, his eighth feature, following North (nominated for the César Award for Best First Feature Film in 1993), Don’t Forget You’re Going to Die (Jury Prize at Cannes in 1995), To Matthieu (in competition at Venice in 2000), The Young Lieutenant (Giornate degli Autori in 2005), Of Gods and Men (Grand Prize at Cannes in 2010 and César Award for Best Film in 2011), The Price of Fame (in competition at Venice in 2014) and The Guardians (unveiled at Toronto in 2017). Among the cast are Belgium’s Jérémie Renier (set to grace screens next year in Slalom and Justice), Marie Julie Maille (The Guardians), Victor Belmondo (Sweetheart,...

The Cnc is also throwing its weight behind films helmed by Julia Ducournau, Emmanuelle Bercot, Xavier Beauvois, Thierry de Peretti, Jean-Paul Civeyrac and Mehran Tamadon. Seven projects have been accepted during the third 2019 session of the Cnc’s second advance on receipts committee. Standing out among them is Viens je t’emmène by Alain Guiraudie, which will be produced by CG Cinéma and which is slated to begin principal photography at the end of the year. This will be the sixth feature by the filmmaker, following No Rest for the Brave (Directors’ Fortnight in 2003), Time Has Come (2005), The King of Escape (Directors’ Fortnight in 2009), Stranger by the Lake (Best Director Award in Un Certain Regard at Cannes in 2013) and Staying Vertical (in competition at Cannes in 2016).A young female filmmaker is also among the batch of directors selected, as the Cnc will also be throwing its weight...

French producer Sylvie Pialat at Les Films du Worso is teaming up with Palme d’Or winning director Cristian Mungiu on “To the Edge of Sorrow,” a drama based on Holocaust survivor Aharon Appelfeld ‘s book.

“To the Edge of Sorrow” inspired by a true story, follows a intrepid Jewish teenager who managed to escape from the Nazis and found refuge in the mountains where he took part in an organized resistance movement along with other Jewish of diverse backgrounds and generations. The film will be directed by Michel Spinosa (“Enchanted Interlude”). The script of the film was written in collaboration with Valérie Zenatti, Appelfeld’s French translator.

Les Films du Losange, the banner behind Michael Haneke’s films, has taken French rights to the project and is handling international sales. The film is co-produced by Belgian coproducer Patrick Quinet (Artemis) and David Silber from Israeli company Metro Communication.

The...

Producer Pascal Caucheteux has long been a fixture of French cinema (though in his early days he was an executive producer of Gregg Araki’s work) and has fostered the careers of two reigning French auteurs: Arnaud Desplechin and Jacques Audiard. He’s often a presence at Cannes, and has also worked with Christophe Honore, Claire Denis, and Jean-Francois Richet.

Caucheteux has also been a growing presence on international projects, besides continuing to work with Araki adding Ken Loach on several features, Cristian Mungiu, Andrey Zvyagintsev and Bohdan Slama. His projects have twice won Cesars for Best Film (Audiard’s A Prophet and Xavier Beauvois’ Of Gods and Men) while Zvyagintsev’s Loveless nabbed a Cesar for Best Foreign Film.…...

A different version of “The Sower,” Marine Francen’s poised and petite freshman feature, might have included the extended, rather remarkable story behind its literary source. Aged 84, former village schoolteacher Violette Ailhaud wrote her autobiographical short story “L’homme semence” in 1919, passing it to an attorney with clear instructions that it be given to her eldest female descendant in 1952, a full century after the events it documents; a curious, bittersweet tale of lost innocence and sexual conspiracy in a community of women, it remained in the family for half a century before being published, to steadily building acclaim, in 2006. Some manner of film adaptation was inevitable. Francen’s, however, honors Ailhaud by telling only the story she wrote, albeit with subtly modernized language and aesthetics, underlining its enduringly provocative gender politics in the process.

The resulting film is so delicately wrought and exquisitely visualized that the harsher, eerier details of...

You want an old fashioned drama? Look no further, The Guardians is here.

The Guardians (Les Gardiennes) is a film set during World War I about love and loss. While the men are out fighting the war, the women of the Paridier farm have to maintain the land as they also have to worry if their husbands, brothers and sons will return home. The drama begins to pick up when an outsider, Francine (Iris Bry), comes in to help with the workload and the men come home for a short leave.

To get this out of the way, I usually do not watch many subtitled films. I’m just a slow reader and I can’t keep up with reading the subtitles while trying to watch what is going on. That being said, I did not have a problem with keeping up with this film.

For being a two hour plus film,...

Title: Les Estivants (The Summer House) Director: Valeria Bruni Tedeschi Cast: Valeria Bruni Tedeschi, Pierre Arditi, Valeria Golino, Noémie Lvovsky, Yolande Moreau, Laurent Stocker de la Comédie Française, Riccardo Scamarcio, Bruno Raffaelli de la Comédie Française, Marisa Borini, Oumy Bruni Garrel, Vincent Perez, Stefano Cassetti, Xavier Beauvois. Valeria Bruni Tedeschi keeps making the same film, […]

The post 75th Venice Film Festival: Les Estivants (The Summer House) Movie Review appeared first on Shockya.com.

Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again hits £54.5m in the UK.

Today’s Gbp to Usd conversion rate - 1.28

RankFilm / DistributorThree-day gross (Aug 17-19) Running gross Week 1 Christopher Robin (Disney) £2.4m £2.5m 1 2 Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again (Disney) £2.2m £54.5m 5 3 The Meg (Warner Bros) £2.1m £8.5m 2 4 The Equalizer 2 (Universal) £1.9m £2m 1 5 Incredibles 2 (Disney) £1.4m £48.6m 6 Disney

Christopher Robin, director Marc Forster’s film based on A. A. Milne’s classic Winnie-the-Pooh children’s novels, starring Ewan McGregor alongside a CGI Winnie (voiced by Jim Cummings) got underway in the UK with a £2.4m weekend from 658 sites, an average of £3,647. With previews,...

‘The Festival’ comes from the team behind ‘The Inbetweeners’.

With Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again moving to the cusp of £50m in UK box office receipts after just four weeks, the film faces fresh competition this weekend in the form of The Festival, which Entertainment Film Distributors released into cinemas from Tuesday (Aug 14).

The film comes from director Iain Morris, whose credits include The Inbetweeners TV series and its two spin-off feature films, and stars The Inbetweeners breakout Joe Thomas alongside Hammed Animashaun (Black Mirror). It tells the story of a young man’s trip to a UK music...

In Xavier Beauvois’ fierce, compassionate drama, the first world war casts a terrible shadow over a farming community

The gender divide of this movie, and its whole point, are clearer in the original French title: Les Gardiennes, the female guardians, the women who worked the land in France during the first world war. This richly compassionate, fiercely acted and beautifully shot period drama is about the second conflict, the battle of wills on the home front, as its characters struggle to maintain a family farm in the Deux-Sèvres region of western France.

A way of life, with its Hardyesque seasonal rhythms of sowing and reaping, is minutely, sumptuously depicted. But all the time in the background – in the letters home, in the muttered hints of the grim-faced men on leave and their shellshocked dreams – is the horror of war. Those seasonal rhythms come to include regular visits from officials with telegrams.

Music Box Films has acquired U.S. rights to Christian Petzold’s “Transit,” which world-premiered in competition at Berlin and is set to play at the Toronto and New York film festivals.

“Transit,” which stars Franz Rogowski (“In the Aisles”) and Paula Beer (“Frantz”), was adapted from Anna Seghers’ World War II novel of the same name. An examination of modern France, it takes place in Marseilles just after the German invasion and follows Georg, a German refugee who takes on the identity of a recently deceased author, Weidel. Variety called it a film of “piercing emotional acuity.”

A well-established German filmmaker, Petzold also directed “Barbara,” which won the Berlinale’s Silver Bear in 2012; “Phoenix,” which won the Fipresci Prize at San Sebastian; and “Yella.”

“We are great admirers of Christian’s films, and are thrilled to finally be working with him,” said Music Box Films President William Schopf, who...

Juliette Binoche as Isabelle in Claire Denis’ Let The Sunshine In. Courtesy of Sundance Selects. A Sundance Selects release.

Legendary French director Claire Denis teams with legendary star Juliette Binoche for a tale of Parisian artist who is searching for true love at middle age, in the French-language Let The Sunshine In (Un Beau Soleil Interieur).

Claire Denis takes us on as emotional journey with Binoche, one that leads more to self-discovery and insights than romance, as her character explores romantic possibilities. Surprisingly, this is the first film collaboration of these two giants of French cinema. The film is billed as romantic comedy but the comedy is both subtle and very French. Also very French are the conversations, which often tend towards the philosophical and world-weariness, but with a dash of idealistic hope.

Along her journey in search of true love, Binoche’s Isabelle tests the romantic waters with a varied series of men,...

There’s something quintessentially French about a couple, having only met very recently, who argue their way from the “drop off car” scene to the “nightcap” to the bedroom. At least, that’s what Let the Sunshine In unwittingly relays, because while it is delivered as a sequence of events that is perhaps humorously outside the realm of what we should be hoping for to kick off a relationship, it isn’t offered up as atypical in any sense that might detract from its realism. French or not, by this point in the film we are solidified in an understanding that the requisite perspective needed to facilitate this sort of exchange is exactly who Isabelle (Juliette Binoche) is at this point in her life. An aging artist in a relationship with a married man (Xavier Beauvois), Isabelle is looking for more out of life… and love. When a dalliance with...

Updated at 10:55Am Pt with more numbers and analysis. Magnolia and Participant’s Sundance documentary Rbg opened in 34 locations Friday with momentum behind it and it delivered a solid start.

Directed by Julie Cohen and Betsy West, the feature spotlighting U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg grossed 560,000, or $16,471 per location, making it one of the top non-fiction releases of the year. The headway was all the more impressive given the long shadow of The Avengers.

Music Box Films opened The Guardians in a single location, grossing $7,199 over the weekend, while French-Dutch crime-drama Racer And the Jailbird bowed in two theaters, taking in $2,222. Bleecker Street’s Disobedience by Sebastián Lelio continued to lure audiences in a second-week expansion, grossing $310,272 from 31 runs, averaging $10K. Sundance Selects’ Let The Sunshine In by Claire Denis also flexed muscle in its second weekend, taking in $66,754 in seven locations.

Sony Classics added runs...

While Cannes may supply some oxygen to its most export-worthy titles before they reach cinephiles stateside, the current scene is in dire need of new titles. Magnolia’s “Rbg,” a documentary about Ruth Bader Ginsberg, stands out as a major new specialty opening, with a robust per-theater-average for a multi-city release.

Last week’s top opener “Disobedience” (Bleecker Street) expanded to continued good response in new cities; its crossover potential is enhanced by name stars in a sexy story as well as little competition.

Opening

Rbg (Magnolia) – Metacritic: 77; Festivals include: Sundance, Miami, San Francisco 2018

$560,000 in 34 theaters; PTA (per theater average): $16,471

Magnolia could replicate its “I am Not a Negro” triumph early last year. That documentary about the iconic James Baldwin grossed over $7 million after it also launched with a strong multi-big city debut. This Sundance-debuted film about the life and career of the Supreme Court Justice notched an even...

The Magnolia Pictures-Participant Media documentary Rbg already has lured crowds with targeted buyout screenings and looks ready for a strong debut as it begins its regular run in theaters this weekend. Julie Cohen and Betsy West’s Sundance premiere about U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is opening Friday in nearly three dozen locations, ready to peel off some audiences looking for an alternative to the second weekend of Avengers: Infinity War and other big holdovers. New limited releases this weekend also include foreign-language fare. Music Box Films is opening The Guardians, a drama starring Nathalie Baye from French filmmaker Xavier Beauvois that begins its stateside run with an exclusive showing in New York this weekend before heading to select markets. And KimStim is opening Vivian Qu’s Angels Wear White at New York’s Metrograph before heading to other cities. The film was the only feature...

How many films about World War I have omitted female characters, or else relegated them to the margins, reduced to a face in a worn photograph or the scrawl in a tattered love letter? An austere corrective to more than a century of under-representation, “The Guardians” tells the other side of the story, focusing on the home front and the women — characters so often defined in relation to male soldiers, as mothers, wives, girlfriends, and children — who shouldered the burden of keeping French farms running while the men were away.

Inspired by prize-winning French author Ernest Pérochon’s 1924 novel, director Xavier Beauvois’ emotionally devastating adaptation — which some may find as arduous as the wartime chapter it depicts — dispenses with a fair amount of the suffering to be found in the book, forgoing the contemporary tendency toward gritty, handheld realism in favor of a more timeless, almost painterly aesthetic. Set in the Limousin region of France,...

Claire Denis’ loopy, tongue-in-cheek romantic comedy “Let the Sunshine In” stars Juliette Binoche as Isabelle, a contemporary French artist who becomes nearly obsessed with her search for love. Or lust. Whichever is within reach.

Isabelle jumps from one lover’s arms to another’s like there’s hot lava on the floor, and they are her safehaven of dry land. And dry so many of them are. The first is Vincent (actor-filmmaker Xavier Beauvois), a married banker with a jealous streak who negs Isabelle like he took a weekend course from The Pickup Artist. In one scene at a bar, he fills her up with backhanded compliments about how great it is that she feels comfortable doing such frivolous things like making art, while he tasks the bartender with completing arbitrary requests, like setting down a bottle of Perrier in exactly the right way.

Luckily, Isabelle ditches this guy, but she’s not single for long. Another lover — also married — quickly gets under her skin when what begins as an artists’ work meeting turns very personal very quickly. The guy (Nicolas Duvauchelle, Denis’ “White Material”) is an actor and is consistently referred to as simply “L’acteur.” Over the course of a single beer, he delivers an unprompted and seemingly endless monologue about all of his violent fugue states and “bad-boy” tendencies as Isabelle just waits for her turn to talk.

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This multi-scene courtship is painful to watch, because both characters neurotically dance around their attraction to one another in a manner that manifests itself into hostility and anger, and so both won’t shut up, even though they’re not really saying anything at all, until they finally ravage one another, and Isabelle says what I was feeling myself: “God, I thought the talking would never end.”

But L’acteur is no good, either. Isabelle longs for something real but continually seeks out the fiction, the relationship that’s bound to blow up in her face. She’s got a perfectly good choice of a man in Francois (Laurent Grévill, Denis’ “Bastards”), with whom she has a child, but this is a woman whose enemy is perfection; she’s addicted to the beginning of a relationship but instinctively runs at the first sign of trouble, even if the trouble is something she’s manufactured herself. Isabelle is the friend you must convince that every happy couple endures hard times.

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The cracks begin to show in Isabelle’s pleasant façade when she accepts an invitation for a trip into the country. In one pivotal moment, she loses it on an hours-long property tour, screaming and howling for the inane conversation to stop, but nobody seems to care, as they all have a great time later at the bar. She’s mercurial, and this film is as much a statement about the temperament of artists as it is about love. An artist can fly off the handle in rage, and yet her friends think nothing of this emotion, which is sure to be as fleeting as her romances.

The only cardinal sin an artist can commit, according to Isabelle’s artist friends, is being with someone who is not also an artist, who would never understand this impetuous lifestyle. When Isabelle sleeps with a man who sweeps her off her feet at a bar and then has him move in with her, the artist community is in a panic: Has this guy even painted anything before?

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And though Gérard Dépardieu only shows up for the finale of the film, as a psychic truth-teller, he’s the perfect tag to this story, this personal quest of Isabelle’s that shows absolutely no signs of ending anytime soon. Of course she goes to the psychic. Of course she wants him to give her an easy answer (one she will inevitably ignore or contradict after a while anyway), a way to predict the future and cut out the hard parts of learning and growing.

Binoche being in her 50s also brings more meaning to this film, which showcases the fact that the manic search for connection one feels in their 20s doesn’t just disappear with age. There’s no magical time when a person suddenly feels satisfied and does not wonder if possibly there is more to life and love than the day-in, day-out doldrums.

When films are made about straight men in this predicament, they’re often considered explorations of a “midlife crisis,” but Denis’ film poses the questions: What if crises aren’t limited to a certain age, and what if love itself is the crisis?



Read original story ‘Let the Sunshine In’ Film Review: Juliette Binoche Looks for Love With All the Wrong Men At TheWrap...