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Cutscenes explores—and blurs—the intersection of cinema and video games.Eat the Night.The world outside is a gamespace that appears as an imperfect form of the game. —McKenzie Wark, “To the Vector the Spoils,” Cabinet, no. 23 (Fall 2006) In the work of French filmmaking duo Caroline Poggi and Jonathan Vinel, there is no clear divide between online and offline spaces, virtual and real life, physical body and digital avatar. Instead, as Alenda Y. Chang writes in an essay on their career to date, “a strange but also redemptive continuity between the virtual and the real” can be found.1 Born in 1990 and 1988 respectively, Poggi and Vinel are of a generation that came of age online; computers, video games, and digital technologies are central to their understanding of what constitutes culture and where it can be located. It is no surprise, then, that their ever-expanding catalog of work—which spans films of all lengths,...

Berlinale alumni in Park Chan-wook, Justine Triet and the Eat The Night tandem of Caroline Poggi and Jonathan Vinel have been selected to present their latest works in the Berlinale Shorts 2025 – To Be in This World. As we await Park Chan-wook’s next feature film (currently in production) No Other Choice, he re-teamed with Park Chan-kyong for Paranmanjang (aka Night Fishing). It’s coined as a fairy tale about death and reincarnation, transmigration and the sounds of music. From Palme d’Or winning director for Anatomy of a Fall, we find Triet re-teaming with actress Laetitia Dosch (2013’s Age of Panic) for Vilaine fille mauvais garçon (Two Ships).…...

Last year, Jane Schoenbrun publicly contemplated the mediated self with their astounding genre effort “I Saw the TV Glow.” The buzzy Sundance entry imagined a monster-of-the-week TV show literally connecting two realities: a fantastical narrative bridge that allowed Schoenbrun to theorize at length about the fictional worlds we love when we’re young and the real people they can help us turn into.

The economic interest in our culture’s most aspirational identity is ever-increasing. Attention is a competitive social marketplace as hell-bent on fostering self-fabulation as it is normalizing the microtransaction (and for what it’s worth, both things happen for the same basic reason). In “Eat the Night,” co-directors Caroline Poggi and Jonathan Vinel take a less literal but decidedly more cynical approach than Schoenbrun’s earlier gender-centric film — exploring instead adjacent themes of contemporary identity and spotlighting defiance in the face of oppression by class. It’s...

Over more than half a century on the market, video games have achieved true cultural ubiquity — arguably more than narrative filmmaking in the current day. How wrong it is, then, that movies have largely continued to show gaming in a shallow, nonliteral manner, portrayed as thoughtless joy buzzers, rather than indicating how a title handles or commands attention. Caroline Poggi and Jonathan Vinel don’t take such shortcuts with their thriller “Eat the Night.” Though the narrative spine is a turf war between small-time drug dealers, the Cannes-launched French feature searches for its big emotions in the digital realm, with long in-game sequences that follow a teenager compelled to escape the bleak world around her.

On the cusp of adulthood, the pale Apolline (Lila Gueneau) spends her days roaming the lands of “Darknoon,” a “World of Warcraft”-like massive multiplayer online sandbox. With her avatar’s oversized sword and comically skimpy battle armor,...

Near the end of Caroline Poggi and Jonathan Vinel’s (Jessica Forever) initially promising, ultimately disappointing feature-length film, Eat the Night, a virtual screen within a screen — an Mmorpg (massive multiplayer role-playing game) — hundreds, if not thousands, of digital avatars fall from a virtual sky, their virtual lives permanently extinguished as the game’s servers shut down, casualties of dwindling interest and ruthless, profit-oriented corporate decision making. The images of lifeless avatars and a blank screen also signal not just the end of the game that connects Pablo (Théo Cholbi), a disaffected, low-level drug dealer, and his younger, teenaged sister, Apolline (Lila Gueneau), but also the end of a chapter in their respective lives. For Pablo, always recklessly, thoughtlessly looking forward, the end of...

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

The Sway of the Sword: Reality Bytes in Poggi/Vinel’s Bleak Online/Offline Portrait

Caroline Poggi and Jonathan Vinel‘s sophomore feature outing pulses with the heartbeat of survival, where a side passion becomes a lifeline and a main, risky hustle can be quickly yanked away for good. Depicting a tale of navigating off the grid while remaining firmly entrenched in the game regardless of the dwindling days ahead, factoring in a bit of queer, night fever bait and video0-game violence, Eat The Night tries its best while working on a mostly empty stomach. In the duo’s most accomplished work to date in their early career, while some genuinely solid passages a la Dardenne Bros.…...

Cannes Directors’ Fortnight Video Game World Queer Thriller Eat The Night Opening January 10 in Select Cities from Altered Innocence The newest stylish cinematic vision from Caroline Poggi & Jonathan Vinel (Jessica Forever), a bittersweet apocalyptic love story with a modern Mmorpg twist Caroline Poggi & Jonathan Vinel’s striking sophomore feature Eat The Night world …

The post Out Next Week: Eat The Night, Cannes Directors’ Fortnight Video Game World Queer Thriller appeared first on Horror News | Hnn.

It’s the start of a new year, which means much of the month’s attention will go to expanding December releases, including Nickel Boys, The Brutalist, The Room Next Door, Vermiglio, and a few films mentioned below that only got awards-qualifying runs in December. For new releases, though, January isn’t all cinematic doldrums if one digs deep enough, and we’ve collected the titles to have on your radar.

10. Eat the Night

One of the most distinctly directed debut films of recent years was Caroline Poggi & Jonathan Vinel’s strange sci-fi wonder Jessica Forever. Six years later, the duo finally return with Eat the Night, a thriller that premiered in Directors’ Fortnight at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival and will now arrive in the U.S. to kick off 2025. Alistair Ryder said in his BFI London review, “Jane Schoenbrun didn’t invent movies exploring teenage malaise and identity through the lens of pop culture,...

"Why are you doing that? Inevitably, it will backfire. Altered Innocence has revealed an official trailer for Eat the Night, a French crime thriller from the filmmaking duo Caroline Poggi & Jonathan Vinel. This one first premiered at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival earlier this year in the Directors' Fortnight section, and it played at the London Film Fest. The newest vision from Caroline Poggi & Jonathan Vinel (known for Jessica Forever) is a bittersweet apocalyptic love story with a modern Mmorpg twist. Young drug dealer Pablo and his sister Appoline bond over an online role playing game called Darknoon (which looks quite similar to World of Warcraft but isn't the same). Suddenly Pablo falls for the mysterious Night, neglecting his sister and the game. While Appoline finishes the game, Pablo and Night become embroiled in a dangerous gang conflict, upending their reality. Starring Théo Cholbi & Lila Gueneau as Pablo & Apolline, with Erwan Kepoa Falé as Night,...

One of the most distinctly directed debut films of was Caroline Poggi & Jonathan Vinel’s strange sci-fi wonder Jessica Forever. Six years later, the duo finally return with Eat the Night, a thriller that premiered in Director’s Fortnight at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival and will now arrive in the U.S. to kick off the New Year. Ahead of Altered Innocence’s January 10 release beginning at New York’s IFC Center, we’re pleased to exclusively debut the new U.S. trailer and poster.

Here’s the synopsis: “Pablo, a small-time drug dealer, and his teenage sister Apolline have forged an unbreakable bond through their shared obsession with the online video game Darknoon. When Pablo falls for the mysterious Night, he gets swept up in their liaison, abandoning his sister to deal with the impending shutdown of their digital haven alone. As Pablo’s reckless choices provoke the wrath of a dangerous rival gang,...

Except perhaps Souleymane’s Story‘s Abou Sangare biking away with the European Actor award (beating out Conclave‘s Ralph Fiennes) there were no surprises at last night’s European Film Awards with Jacques Audiard‘s Emilia Pérez winning four of the five prizes it was nominated for. Karla Sofía Gascón won Best Actress, Audiard won Best Screenwriter and Director while the film the top prize of the evening. Yuval Abraham, Rachel Szor, Basel Adra and Hamdan Ballal’s No Other Land continues to dominate the docu awards circuit which means here is a legit shot at a future Oscar. Here are the noms and winners:

European Director:

Winner: Jacques Audiard for Emilia PÉREZ

Andrea Arnold for Bird

Pedro Almodóvar for The Room Next Door

Mohammad Rasoulof for The Seed Of The Sacred Fig

Maura Delpero for Vermiglio

European Screenwriter:

Winner: Jacques Audiard for Emilia PÉREZ

Magnus von Horn & Line Langebek...

The European Film Awards is taking place in the Swiss city of Lucerne tonight (December 7) and Screen is revealing the winners live from the ceremony, which kicked off at 20.00 Cet.

Scroll down for winners

To read the winners as they are announced, you can refresh the page and scroll down to the full list below.

The ceremony is also being live-streamed below.

Emilia Pérez and The Room Next Door are the front-runners for this year’s awards with four nominations apiece.

Fifteen features compete for the best European film prize, up from five last year. This follows a recent rule...

Jane Schoenbrun didn’t invent movies exploring teenage malaise and identity through the lens of pop culture, but in the opening moments of Caroline Poggi and Jonathan Vinel’s Eat the Night, echoes of their two acclaimed features immediately rise to the surface. Much like the protagonist of We’re All Going to the World’s Fair, 17-year-old Apolline (Lila Gueneau) is entirely immersed in an online gaming community, her only contact with an emotionally distant father coming when he tries to dissuade her from spending so much time on it. And, in an unintentional similarity with I Saw the TV Glow––which premiered while this movie was in post-production––Apolline begins interrogating how the fantasy game Darknoon has shaped her identity as she discovers it will soon be terminated without warning.

But this examination of a lonely, disaffected teen––and how she uses a video game to bond with both her...

Exclusive: Altered Innocence has picked up U.S. rights to Caroline Poggi and Jonathan Vinel’s (Jessica Forever) second feature film Eat the Night, which had its world premiere in Cannes’ Directors’ Fortnight section.

The crime-drama, which mixes in video game elements, is due to tour at film festivals throughout the fall and winter and will then be released across the U.S. beginning at the IFC Center in January 2025.

Théo Cholbi, Erwan Kepoa Falé and Lila Gueneau star. You can check out a trailer below. The deal was negotiated between Frank Jaffe from Altered Innocence and Quentin Bohanna from mk2 Films.

The synopsis reads: “Pablo, a small-time dealer, and his teenage sister Apolline have forged an unbreakable bond through their shared obsession with the online video game Darknoon. When Pablo falls for the mysterious Night, he gets swept up in their liaison, abandoning his sister to deal with the...

From Sept. 25 to Oct. 2, the 20th edition of Mexico’s Monterrey Film Festival will screen nearly 100 films, culled from world-class festivals, including Cannes, Sundance, Tribeca and SXSW. The festival will stage Mexican, Latin American and world premieres of fiction and documentary features, many by first-time film directors. Below are 10 outstanding titles:

“The Blue Star,” Javier Macipe, Spain, Argentina (Mexican premiere)

An Ibero-American co-production between Fernando Bovaira’s Mod Producciones of Spain (“Biutiful”), Macipe’s El Pez Amarillo, Cimarrón (“Society of the Snow”) and Prisma, Argentina, the 90s-set film centers on Mauricio, a famous Spanish rock musician who decides to travel across Latin America in a bid to reconnect with his roots. He meets Don Carlos, an aging musician who’s struggling despite having composed some of his country’s most famous folk songs. Carlos, like a musical Master Miyagi, takes in the visitor, and together they form a quirky, Quixote-like duo destined for commercial failure.

Sarajevo Film Festival has selected 18 titles for its Kinoscope strand and seven for its In Focus section, including a range of 2024 festival hits from Berlin and Cannes.

The Kinoscope selection consists of 12 Kinoscope films, and six titles in genre strand Kinoscope Surreal.

Scroll down for the full list of titles

Titles include Payal Kapadia’s All We Imagine As Light, which won the Grand Prix in Cannes Competition this year; and Santosh, the debut feature of 2023 Screen Star of Tomorrow Sandhya Suri, which debuted in Un Certain Regard.

Guan Hu’s Black Dog, winner of the Un Certain Regard prize,...

Building on strong notices out of Sundance and Berlin, Saoirse Ronan has now won the Biarritz Nouvelles Vagues Festival’s top acting honor for her role in “The Outrun.”

Directed by Nora Fingscheidt and adapted from an acclaimed memoir by Amy Liptrot, “The Outrun” follows a young woman emerging from the throes of addiction, intercutting timelines and locales to track a downward spiral in London and the unsteady steps towards recovery along the rugged Scottish coast.

Ronan’s acute and flinty lead performance has earned the four-time Oscar nominee some of the highest praise of her career, possibly heralding another awards run should “The Outrun” land a U.S. release date. This recent reception in Biarritz — where Ronan, in absentia, won the festival’s sole acting trophy while the film also took home the Culture Pass jury prize — might help on that front.

The festival’s grand prize went to...

Matt Dillon, Alice Diop and Karla Sofia Gascon will bring their springtime spirit to this month’s Nouvelles Vagues Film Festival, now running from June 18 – 23 in Biarritz. Launched last year with the support of Chanel, the nascent festival invites both established and emerging talents to share an expansive vision of youth, hosting a competition dedicated to young adult stories overseen by a jury all under the age of 35.

“Across all sections, this festival shines the spotlight on younger generations and celebrates young characters on screen,” says programing director Lili Hinstin. “We wanted to look to the future through the prism of the next generation, and to interrogate the questions and contemporary issues important to them.”

To that end, this sophomore edition kicked off with the world premiere of “Night Call,” a Brussels-set thriller, taking place over the course of one heated night, foisting an unsuspecting locksmith into a criminal underworld...

IndieWire has published its Cannes 2024 Cinematography Survey. We analyzed the data to explore (again and again) that the nine-year-old camera, Arri Alexa Mini, is the most popular camera among Cannes filmmakers. Furthermore, interestingly, in its first appearance on the Cannes Cinematography Chart and jumped straight to second place, is the Arri 35.

The main cameras of Cannes 2024 are the Arri Alexa Mini and the 35. Cannes 2024 cinematography

The 77th annual Cannes Film Festival is taking place from 14 to 25 May 2024. IndieWire has reached out to the filmmakers behind 59 films screened in various categories in the festival. The DPs elaborated on the tools they utilized to tell their stories. Read the entire survey here.

Official poster of the 77th Cannes Film Festival featuring a still image from the movie Rhapsody in August by Akira Kurosawa (1991)

As the tradition calls, we took the data and filtered it to the cameras used, to explore tendency. Based on the info,...

Cannes Competition titles Bird by Andrea Arnold and Emila Perez by Jacques Audiard are among the films eligible for the Queer Palm at this year’s festival.

Any title playing in Cannes which deals in anyway with Lgbtqiaa+ themes is eligible for the Queer Palm, whose jury this year will be presided over by Belgian filmmaker Lukas Dhont. Competing films are drawn from all Cannes selections: Official Selection, Un Certain Regard, Critics’ Week, Directors’ Fortnight and Acid.

Bird centres on a 12-year-old who lives with her single father and brother in a squat and seeks attention and adventure elsewhere; among...

France’s mk2 Films will kick off sales in Cannes for Caroline Poggi and Jonathan Vinel’s apocalyptic teen adventure Eat The Night, set to world premiere in Directors’ Fortnight.

The second feature from the directing duo following 2019 debut Jessica Forever is set in the French city of Le Havre and follows a small-time dealer and his teenage sister who share an obsession with an online video game. When one sibling’s reckless choices provoke the wrath of a dangerous rival gang, their virtual life and reality collide.

It is produced by Thomas Verhaeghe and Mathieu Verhaeghe of France’s Atelier de Production,...

Following the main lineups for the 2024 Cannes Film Festival, a handful of sidebar slates have been unveiled, featuring Directors Fortnight, Critics Week, and Acid. Notable highlights include the Sundance favorite Good One (read our review here), Tyler Taormina’s Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point starring Michael Cera, the first film in over a decade from James White director Josh Mond, the Christopher Abbott-led It Doesn’t Matter, Eat the Night from Jessica Forever duo Caroline Poggi & Jonathan Vinel, Carson Lund’s Eephus, Patricia Mazuy’s Visting Hours, The Hyperboreans, a new film from The Wolf House directors Cristobal Leo & Joaquin Cocina, Matthew Rankin’s The Twentieth Century follow-up Universal Language, and more.

Check out the lineups below.

Cannes Directors Fortnight

Feature films:

“Ma Vie Ma Gueule,” Sophie Fillieres (France) – opening film

“A Son Image,” Thierry de Peretti (France)

“Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point,” Tyler Taormina (USA)

“Desert of Namibia,...

This year’s edition of the Directors’ Fortnight will begin with Barbie and end with…plastic. Julien Rejl‘s selection committee have lassoed a total of twenty-one features for a slate that will bookend with Sophie Fillières‘ final feature (she passed away shortly after filming) in Ma Vie Ma Gueule which is selected as the section’s opener (Agnès Jaoui’s character’s nickname is that of the plastic doll) and the closing film honors will go to Bloody Oranges director Jean-Christophe Meurisse‘s comedy about a road-trip gone wrong titled Plastic Guns. Adding to the red, white and blue of France, we find high profile items in Patricia Mazuy‘s La Prisonnière De bordeaux (stars Isabelle Huppert and Hafsia Herzi), Caroline Poggi and Jonathan Vinel‘s Eat The Night and Thierry de Peretti‘s À son image.…...

The Cannes Directors’ Fortnight section has unveiled its lineup for the 2024 festival, which will open with This Life of Mine, the final feature from the late French director Sophie Fillières. The drama features Agnès Jaoui as a woman whose identity starts to unravel when she turns 55. Fillières died shortly after wrapping principal photography on the film and her children finished post-production.

There are four U.S. titles in the feature section of the non-competitive sidebar: Tyler Taormina’s Christmas Eve In Miller’s Point, Carson Lund’s Eephus, India Donaldson’s Good One and Gazer from Ryan J. Sloan.

Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point, starring Michael Cera, Elsie Fisher, Francesca Scorsese. Ben Shenkman, Gregg Turkington, Sawyer Spielberg, Maria Dizzia and newcomer Matilda Fleming, follows four generations as they gather for what might be their last Christmas in the family home. Lund, who lensed Christmas Eve, makes his feature debut with Eephus,...

The 77th edition of Cannes’ Directors’ Fortnight will kick off with “This Life of Mine,” a dramedy directed by Sophie Fillières, a renowned French filmmaker who died last year. Presented posthumously, the film is headlined by French stars including Agnès Jaoui, Philippe Katerine and Valérie Donzelli. The independent selection, which has recently gone through a rebranding and is now spearheaded by artistic director Julien Rejl, will close with another French film, Jean-Christophe Meurisse’s “Plastic Guns,” an offbeat crime comedy headlined by popular actor Jonathan Cohen.

The lineup includes as many as four U.S. features, three of which are feature debuts, including India Donaldson’s coming-of-age film”Good One” which premiered at Sundance and garnered solid reviews. Set in upstate New York, “Good One” follows 17-year-old Sam as she joins her father and his oldest friend, Matt, on their annual backpacking trip in the Catskill Mountains. “Good One” has...

Directors’ Fortnight has unveiled the selection for its 56th edition heavy on films from first-time US filmmakers, South American titles, and talent including Isabelle Huppert, Michael Cera and Agnès Jaoui.

Artistic director Julien Rejl revealed the line-up at a press conference in Paris on Tuesday (April 16) for the Cannes parallel section run by French directors guild the Srf.

Scroll down for the full selection

After undergoing a complete rebranding for last year’s edition complete with new artistic director Rejl and a new more inclusive female-forward name in French to La Quinzaine des Cinéastes, this year’s selection includes eight...

Do Not Expect Too Much Of The End Of The World (Radu Jude).The lineup for the 76th edition of the festival has been announced, including new films by Eduardo Williams, Leonor Teles, Lav Diaz, Radu Jude, and others.Concorso INTERNAZIONALEAnimal (Sofia Exarchou)Critical Zone (Ali Ahmadzadeh)Essential Truths of the Lake (Lav Diaz)Home (Leonor Teles)The Human Surge 3 (Eduardo Williams)The Invisible Fight (Rainer Sarnet)Do Not Expect Too Much Of The End Of The World (Radu Jude)Lousy Carter (Bob Byington)Manga D’Terra (Basil Da Cunha)Nuit Obscure – Au Revoir Ici, N’Importe Où (Sylvain George)Patagonia (Simone Bozzelli)The Permanent Picture (Laura Ferrés)Rossosperanza (Annarita Zambrano)Stepne (Maryna Vroda)Sweet Dreams (Ena Sendijarević)The Vanishing Soldier (Dani Rosenberg)Yannick (Quentin Dupieux)Excursion (Una Gunjak).Concorso Cineasti Del PRESENTECamping du Lac (Eléonore Saintagnan)Ein Schöner Ort (Katharina Huber)Excursion (Una Gunjak)Family Portrait (Lucy Kerr)Dreaming...

Eat the Night

Prior to premiering their feature debut Jessica Forever (TIFF Platform followed by a showcase at the Berlinale), Caroline Poggi and Jonathan Vinel were lighting it up with their shorts in 2014’s “As Long as Shotguns Remain” (Berlinale) and 2017’s “After School Knife Fight” (Critics’ Week). With the backing of Agat Films’ Juliette Schrameck (The Worst Person in the World) they moved into the saddle for their sophomore feature – Eat the Night. Production began in November of last year in the Havre with what is considered a film noir, blind romance, video game addiction and hip hop culture amalgamation.…...

Juliette Schrameck, the well-respected former managing director of MK2 Films who joined Paris-based collective banner Agat Films in September 2020 as partner and producer, has already assembled a strong roster of international projects, including the next film by Lukas Dhont, the helmer of Cannes’ Golden Camera winning “Girl,” and Jenny Suen’s “Peaches.”

Other projects on Schrameck’s development slate include “Eat the Night,” a genre film by Caroline Poggi and Jonathan Vinel, “We Are All Strangers” by Anthony Chen and “Holly” by Fien Troch.

“Peaches,” a Hong Kong-set remake of “Daisies,” the 1966 Czech political comedy drama by Věra Chytilová, is being co-produced by Cate Blanchett and Coco Francini at Dirty Films U.S. and U.K. and Justine O in Taiwan. Suen is a Hong Kong filmmaker who made her feature debut with “The White Girl” (co-directed by Christopher Doyle), which premiered at the BFI fest.

“Peaches” will be set...

Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.NEWSAbove: Joaquin Phoenix in Joker (2019). The first few details have emerged regarding Ari Aster's next feature, with Joaquin Phoenix in talks to star. Tentatively titled Beau is Afraid, the film (previously a 2011 short film by Aster) involves an anxious man's surreal and nightmarish trek to his overbearing mother's home following her death. Meanwhile, Spike Lee has announced his plans to direct a musical about the launch of launch of Pfizer’s erectile dysfunction drug, Viagra. Recommended VIEWINGNew York's Screen Slate and Collaborative Cataloging Japan recently hosted a Twitch discussion with legendary filmmaker Masao Adachi on Gewaltpia: Motoharu Jonouchi and the Japanese Avant-Garde. The stream will remain online through tomorrow, and then will be available to Screen Slate's Patreon supporters. Omelia Contadina, by Jr and Alice Rohrwacher in collaboration with the inhabitants of the Alfina plateau,...

Looking for horror to love this February? Shudder has you covered with their eclectic lineup of original series, new releases, and totally rad films from the VHS era, including Night of the Comet, Child's Play (1988), The Dead Lands, 3 From Hell, My Bloody Valentine (2009), the Horror Noire: Uncut podcast, a "Love Sick" collection that's perfect for Valentine's Day, and much more!

Below, you can check out the full list of titles coming to Shudder in the Us in February, and visit Shudder online to learn more about the streaming service.

Press Release: Good thing 2020 is a leap year, since you’ll need to find room to stream all the amazing movies, series and podcasts we’re serving up this month: new episodes of supernatural mythic adventure series, The Dead Lands; must-see Shudder original/exclusive movies Rob Zombie’s 3 From Hell, Fantastic Fest Best Picture winner Dog’S Don’T Wear Pants,...

Guillaume Nicloux’s “To the Ends of the World,” Erwan Le Duc’s “The Bare Necessity” and Caroline Poggi & Jonathan Vinel’s “Jessica Forever” are among the ten French and French-language films set to compete at the 10th edition of MyFrenchFilmFestival, the online film showcase created by UniFrance.

Ira Sachs, the American director whose latest film “Frankie” competed at Cannes, will preside over the international jury which will comprise of the French actress Agathe Bonitzer (“Isadora’s Children”), Guatemaltec director Jayro Bustamante (“Ixcanul”), American actor-turned-director Brady Corbet (“Vox Lux”), Belgian director Judith Davis (“My Revolution”) and Czech director Michaela Pavlatova (“My Sunny Maad”). The other jury is made up of members of the international press.

“To the Ends of the World,” which world premiered at Cannes Directors’ Fortnight last year, stars Gaspard Ulliel (“Saint Laurent”) as a young French soldier in Indochina, in 1945, who survives a brutal massacre in which...

Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.NEWSLate last month, we were saddened by the death of Jean Douchet, whose criticism as co-editor-in-chief of Cahiers du cinéma and as a mentor figure for many in the French film community was invaluable. Recommended VIEWINGKino Lorber's first trailer for Kantemir Balagov's Beanpole, which follows the bond between two women in post-wwii Leningrad. Read Ela Bittencourt's Close-Up on the film, which received its online premiere in the UK on Mubi earlier this fall. Corneliu Porumboiu's The Whistlers, a crime thriller about a cop, a mob in the Canary Islands, and El Siblo, an intricate indigenous language that involves whistling. Recommended READINGMichael Cimino and Robert De Niro on the set of The Deer HunterThe Guardian has published an excerpt of One Shot: The Making of The Deer Hunter, which includes exclusive photos from Robert De Niro's personal collection.

Caroline Poggi and Jonathan Vinel's Jessica Forever, which is receiving an exclusive global online premiere on Mubi, is showing from December 4 – January 2, 2019 in Mubi's Debuts series.We have wanted to write this film to put into image the atmosphere that we felt during our teenage years. We have always felt close to those who sink into cold, inexplicable violence. This frightens and fascinates us in equal measure. To understand that violence is not always gratuitous and isolated but that it arrives at a moment when it isn’t possible to speak anymore, when words are lacking. A violence that is directed against a world which appears in many shapes, cold, excluding, uninhabitable. A violence against a world we do not want to save but to destroy. Of course, to understand does not mean to legitimize. But we have never looked to position ourselves as judges with our films. Our...

Close-Up is a feature that spotlights films now playing on Mubi. Caroline Poggi and Jonathan Vinel's Jessica Forever, which is receiving an exclusive global online premiere on Mubi, is showing from December 4 – January 2, 2019 in Mubi's Debuts series.In the opening sequence of Jessica Forever there is a brief segment which zooms in on a scrunched adolescent body, a forehead adorned with ash-blond hair tightly pressing on to bloody knees, staining the tidy grey sweatpants the young boy is wearing. Suddenly, a hand slides into the frame, fingers and palm caressing the wounded body part, rearranging the frame according to a center of intimacy. Lingering attentively on the oozing injury opens up a space for the viewer’s empathy, while the camera brings into focus a visual metaphor that sits at the heart of the film as a hymn of love and vulnerability. The story of Jessica Forever, the debut...

It’s time for genre lovers to converge on Montreal for one of the best film festivals, pound for pound, in North America: Fantasia International Film Festival. With over 130 features from all across the globe, their 23rd year of fun has something for everyone.

Twenty years after Fantasia debuted Ringu to North American audiences, director Hideo Nakata returns to the franchise’s iconic character for an Opening Night celebration (July 11) with his latest J-horror Sadako. Combine that with a Special Screening of Fox Searchlight’s Ready or Not (July 27) and Closing Night film Promare (August 1) for a trio of hotly-anticipated films spanning the entire three-week event.

Fill out the rest of your schedule with a stellar line-up including the Imogen Poots and Jesse Eisenberg-starring Vivarium, the world premiere of Hirotaka Adachi’s Stare, an advance screening of Abner Pastoll’s A Good Woman Is Hard to Find, Gabriela Amaral...

Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.NEWSWanuri Kahiu on the set of RafikiRafiki director Wanuri Kahiu has announced her latest project, an adaptation of Octavia Butler's 1980 Wild Seed, produced by Viola Davis and written by novelist Nnedi Okorafor. Butler's novel follows two immortal African beings whose tumultuous rivalry takes them across pre-colonial West Africa to a plantation in the American South. Recommended VIEWINGFrom March 20–April 2, Vdrome is screening Adam Khalil and Zack Khalil's documentary Inaate/Se/ [it shines a certain way. to a certain place/it flies. falls./]. The film "imagines new indigenous futures, looking simultaneously backward and forward." The new trailer for Hong Sang-soo's Grass is at once simple and cryptic, conveying one of many mysteries encountered by a young writer observing intimate interactions in a bustling cafe. The dreamy, video game-inspired images of Caroline Poggi and Jonathan Vinel's Jessica Forever come to life in a new trailer.

NEWSCarolee Schneemann by Lynne SachsThe great Carolee Schneemann has died, gifting us with an inimitable legacy as a trailblazing avant-garde feminist filmmaker, painter, cat lover, performance artist, and much more. Lynne Sachs's 2017 documentary, Carolee, Barbara and Gunvor, previously screened on Mubi in partnership with the International Short Film Festival Oberhausen. Read Sachs's introduction of the short film, and recollection of a life's friendship with Schneemann, here.The master film editor Thelma Schoonmaker has announced plans to publish the diaries of her late husband, filmmaker Michael Powell (The Red Shoes). "I want people to be able to read about all the great movies we lost," she states. "The ones he had hoped to make.” Recommended VIEWINGOlivier Assayas's satirical comedy on book publishing, the changing media landscape, and, of course, romantic coupling get a U.S. trailer.In the event of its new restoration, the controversial British dancehall cult-classic Babylon has a shining new trailer.

Exclusive: Here’s some distinctive first footage of sci-fi-thriller Jessica Forever, which is getting its European premiere in Berlin’s Panorama strand after closing Toronto’s Platform section last year.

The English and French-language film from first-time directors Caroline Poggi and Jonathan Vinel centers on a woman and her makeshift family of rehabilitated marauders fighting for peace in a dystopian world where violent misfits reign supreme.

Shudder, the AMC Networks genre streaming service, picked up North American and Australia/New Zealand rights last year. International sales rep MK2 has also closed deals for China with DDDream International, Japan with Klockworx and Mexico with Canibal Networks. Le Pacte will release in France.

The pic drew praise from critics out of Tiff last year and looks to bring an auteur take to a tried and tested genre premise. Aomi Muyock (Love), Sebastian Urzendowsky (The Counterfeiters), Lucas Ionesco and Paul Hamy star. Emmanuel Chaumet produces.

Ghost Town AnthologyThe titles for the 69th Berlin International Film Festival are being announced in anticipation of the event running February 7-17, 2019. We will update the program as new films are revealed.COMPETITIONThe Ground Beneath My FeetThe Golden Glove (Faith Akin, Germany/France)By the Grace of GodThe Kindness of StrangersI Was at Home, but A Tale of Three SistersGhost Town Anthology (Denis Côté, Canada)Berlinale SPECIALGully Boy (Zoya Akhtar, India)BrechtWatergate (Charles Ferguson, USA)Panorama 201937 Seconds (Hikari (Mitsuyo Miyazaki), Japan)Dafne (Federico Bondi, Italy)The Day After I'm Gone (Nimrod Eldar, Israel)A Dog Called Money (Seamus Murphy, Ireland/UK)Waiting for the CarnivalChainedFlatland (Jenna Bass, South Africa/Germany/Luxembourg)Greta (Armando Praça, Brazil)Hellhole (Bas Devos, Belgium/Netherlands)Jessica Forever (Caroline Poggi, Jonathan Vinel, France)AcidMid90s (Jonah Hill, USA) Family MembersMonos (Alejandro Landes, Columbia/Argentina/Netherlands/Germany/Denmark/Sweden/Uruguay) O Beautiful Night (Xaver Böhm,...

In 2018 we've published 70 interviews whose subjects have ranged from old masters to emerging new voices, and including some unexpected conversations, including those with curators (Dave Kehr of the Museum of Modern Art), as well as archival finds (a 1971 talk with Jerry Lewis).Below you will find an index of our conversations throughout the year, listed in order of publication date.Blake Williams (Prototype)Samira Elagoz (Craigslist Allstars)F.J. Ossang (9 Fingers)Jerry LewisAndré Gil Mata (The Tree)Christian Petzold (Transit)Raoul Peck (Young Karl Marx)Ashley McKenzie (Werewolf)Penelope SpheerisTed Fendt (Classical Period)Dominik Graf (The Red Shadow)Blake Williams ("Stereo Visions")Arnaud Desplechin (Ismael's Ghosts)Ruth Beckermann (The Waldheim Waltz)Nelson Carlos de los Santos Arias (Cocote)Esther GarrelPhilippe Garrel (Lover for a Day)Jonas MekasJohann Lurf (★)Karim Aïnouz (Central Airport Thf)Juliana Antunes (Baronesa)Cristina Gallego and Ciro Guerra (Birds of Passage)Wang Bing (Dead Souls)Donal Foreman...

22 films in the Panorama programme so far, with nine directorial debuts.

The first 22 titles from the 2019 Berlin Film Festival (Feb 7-17) Panorama programme have been revealed.

Scroll down for the full line-up

The European premiere of UK director Joanna Hogg’s The Souvenir, starring Tilda Swinton, her daughter Honor Swinton-Byrne and Tom Burke, and the world premiere of Seamus Murphy’s Pj Harvey documentary A Dog Called Money are among the titles confirmed today.

The line-up also includes the directing debuts of actors Jonah Hill (Mid90s) and Alexander Gorchilin (Acid), and Rob Garver’s documentary What She Said: The Art of Pauline Kael,...

The Berlin Film Festival has revealed a large selection of movies for its Panorama strand. Section head Paz Lázaro and co-curator and programme manager Michael Stütz have revealed 22 titles, 14 of which will be world premieres.

Among highlights are Jonah Hill’s directorial debut Mid90s; Jamie Bell starrer Skin, about the USA’s neo-Nazi scene; Tilda Swinton drama The Souvenir; and What She Said: The Art Of Pauline Kael, about the legendary film critic.

Panorama Films:

37 Seconds – Japan

by Hikari (Mitsuyo Miyazaki)

with Mei Kayama, Misuzu Kanno, Makiko Watanabe, Shunsuke Daitō, Yuka Itaya

World premiere – Debut film

Director Hikari, aka Mitsuyo Miyazaki, tells the story of Yuma, a young Japanese woman who suffers from cerebral palsy. Torn between her obligations towards her family and her dream to become a manga artist, Yuma struggles to lead a self-determined life.

Dafne – Italy

by Federico Bondi

with Carolina Raspanti, Antonio Piovanelli,...

Jonah Hill’s directorial debut, “mid90s,” about a 13-year-old skateboarder’s coming of age, and a documentary on influential film critic Pauline Kael are among the works that will screen in the Panorama section of the upcoming Berlin Film Festival.

Films starring Tilda Swinton and Jamie Bell and titles from countries including Israel, Brazil and Japan were also announced in the first batch of 22 Panorama selections unveiled by the Berlinale on Tuesday. Nine of the films are debut works, and 14 will have their world premiere in the German capital. The section is curated by Paz Lázaro and co-curator and program manager Michael Stütz.

“mid90s” follows teenage Stevie as he joins up with four skateboarding punks who take him under their wing. Variety described Hill’s debut film as “a slice of street life made up of skittery moments that achieve a bone-deep reality. And because you believe what you’re seeing,...

“Every poem against the police is also and always a guardian of love for the world.”—Anne BoyerIn the first images of Jessica Forever we find the titular eternal hero on a rooftop under a tender pink sunrise, briefly followed by a startling shot of a young man jumping through a glass door. This swing in tonalities offers a most apt distillation to this special movie's many moods, textures, and the pulse of its constructed world. Yet this world may prove not be a construct in the least—Jessica, realized with calming warmth and secrecy by Aomi Muyock (Love), has taken it upon herself to rescue and rehabilitate "Orphans"—young men who have done horrible things, in many cases beyond their control. Jessica's methods? She showers them with measured yet rapturous platonic love. The Orphans are in turn hunted by the government ("Special Forces"), whom appear solely in a mass...

From small to big screens, everybody loves a story about a redeemed criminal. Shows like “The Wire” and films like “The Departed” ask viewers to root for misanthropic men whose criminal careers are either on the downswing or in the not-too-distant past. In “Jessica Forever,” a French Tiff premiere from directors Caroline Poggi and Jonathan Vinel, a band of lost boys vie for audience sympathy.

Continue reading ‘Jessica Forever’: Sci-Fi Drama Drones On With No Plot In Sight [Tiff Review] at The Playlist.

Redemption is a tricky concept. Can you be redeemed without forgiveness from those you wronged? Are our actions in the aftermath enough to achieve some semblance of peace if they show we’ve learned through remorse? Everyone has a different opinion on the matter whether victim, loved one, stranger, or corporation. Rehabilitation only goes so far when you find yourself free without any opportunities to prove to yourself that change was worth the trouble. There’s a reason so many criminals find themselves right back in jail and it’s not simply due to them being inherently evil because few people are. They’re marked, reduced to their worst day, treated like a second-class citizen, and worst of all haunted by the memories of what they did. Good intentions are never enough.

Now if things are that bad today, how much worse can they get in the future? Caroline Poggi...

’Jessica Forever’, ’Mademoiselle De Joncquières’ also take spots.

Three new titles have scored mid-range on Screen’s Toronto Platform jury grid, leaving Emir Baigazin’s The River as the early leader.

Caroline Poggi and Jonathan Vinel’s debut Jessica Forever scored exactly 2, although split opinion among critics.

Radheyan Simonpillai of Now/CTV, Boston Globe’s Loren King and Time Out New York’s Joshua Rothkopf all gave it one star for ‘poor’, while Vincent Le Leurch of Le Film Français and Screen’s own critic both awarded a top score 4 for ‘excellent’.

The film presents a dystopian world where violent misfits reign supreme.

Imagine an installment of Divergent or The Maze Runner directed by two budding French auteurs with a penchant for hyper-stylized violence and minimalist plotting, and you'll get an idea of what's in store with the dystopian whatchamacallit Jessica Forever.

Marking the feature debut of Caroline Poggi and Jonathan Vinel, whose shorts (As Long as Shotguns Remain, After School Knife Fight) have scooped up much renown — and a Golden Bear — on the fest circuit, this weird and sometimes wild genre-bender tends to overstay its welcome while delivering a few impressively low-key thrills. Beautifully shot and also too self-serious for its own ...

Imagine an installment of Divergent or The Maze Runner directed by two budding French auteurs with a penchant for hyper-stylized violence and minimalist plotting, and you'll get an idea of what's in store with the dystopian whatchamacallit Jessica Forever.

Marking the feature debut of Caroline Poggi and Jonathan Vinel, whose shorts (As Long as Shotguns Remain, After School Knife Fight) have scooped up much renown — and a Golden Bear — on the fest circuit, this weird and sometimes wild genre-bender tends to overstay its welcome while delivering a few impressively low-key thrills. Beautifully shot and also too self-serious for its own ...