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After playing the original masked avenger in the Cesar-winning, smash hit “The Count of Monte Cristo,” Pierre Niney is starring as a charismatic, yet toxic superstar coach in “Guru,” Yann Gozlan’s gripping psychological thriller which Studiocanal will introduce to buyers at the Cannes market this week.

Gozlan, who is presenting his latest film “Dalloway” at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, is reteaming with Niney for the third time, following “An Ideal Man” and “Black Box,” two of Gozlan’s most successful films.

Niney stars in “Guru” opposite Marion Barbeau, Anthony Bajon and Holt McCallany. Along with headlining “Guru,” Niney is also co-producing the movie with Marc-Henri De Busschere via his banner Ninety Films, with Wassim Beji at Wy Productions producing. Studiocanal will release the film in France on Jan. 28 on top of handling international sales on it.

Ahead of the Cannes Film Festival, Niney spoke to Variety about...

The French action thriller Ad Vitam has seen huge success on Netflix since being released earlier this month, but there’s another, hard-hitting action flick from France on the streaming platform that you should absolutely check out. Whether you enjoyed Ad Vitam or not. Released back in 2022, Athena drops audiences into the chaotic world of riots and violence following the tragic killing of a young boy. The boy’s three older brothers, one a soldier, the other a criminal, and the third out for revenge, find themselves at the center of the raging conflict.

Directed and co-written by Romain Gavras alongside Ladj Ly and Elias Belkeddar, Athena stars Dali Benssalah (No Time to Die), Sami Slimane (Beetlejuice Beetlejuice), Anthony Bajon (The Prayer), Ouassini Embarek (The Good Thief), Alexis Manenti. You can check out the official synopsis below.

“After the death of his youngest brother following an alleged police altercation, Abdel...

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

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

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

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

The thriller is inspired by the...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Teenage Wasteland: Boukherma Bros. Sprawl with Coming-of-Age Melodrama

French directing twins Ludovic & Zoran Boukherma swing hard with their fourth feature, And Their Children After Them, a coming-of-age saga taking place across eight years of the 1990s in the deindustrialized (fictional) town of Heillange in Eastern France. There’s a definite richness to the narrative, a change of pace for the directing duo, who, only in their mid 30s have explored several genres, most notably with their 2020 rural werewolf drama Teddy, starring Anthony Bajon. The dense storytelling this time around is no surprise, based on French crime writer Nicolas Mathieu’s celebrated 2018 novel.…...

French writer Nicolas Mathieu won the Prix Goncourt — France’s highest-profile literary award — for his 2018 novel “And Their Children After Them,” a working-class Bildungsroman set against a backdrop of severe deindustrialization, for which he stated his disparate influences to include John Steinbeck, Émile Zola, Bruce Springsteen and the 2012 Jeff Nichols film “Mud.” The Springsteen namecheck is easily taken care of in this brash big-screen adaptation, via a thuddingly obvious needle-drop as its bike-riding hero straps his hands across some engines and hits the open road. Mathieu’s more literary allusions, however, haven’t survived the journey to Ludovic and Zoran Boukherma’s overlong, outwardly emotive but strangely unmoving film, which resorts to soap-opera mechanics in its saga of three youths variously affected over a six-year period by one rash act of teen delinquency.

The Boukherma twins showed some inventive, genre-jumbling verve in their first three features — most prominently “Teddy,” a...

Conventional horror movies centered around werewolves often go heavy on special effects, showcasing the transformation from man to wolf and its subsequent uncontrollable slaughter. But the transformative aspect and dual nature of werewolves provide fertile ground for metaphor beyond their primal, animalistic urge to eviscerate everything in their path.

Out this week is The Beast Within, a werewolf movie with a fairy tale twist, framing its horror story from the perspective of a young girl discovering the truth about her afflicted father.

It’s the unconventional approach to werewolf lore that inspires this week’s streaming picks: five unconventional werewolf horror movies that defy easy categorization and use lycanthropy to explore historical horrors, the growing pains of youth, or simply loneliness.

Here’s where you can stream them this week.

For more Stay Home, Watch Horror picks, click here.

Brotherhood of the Wolf – AMC+, Kanopy, Pluto TV, the Roku Channel,...

The popular French actor working in just about every film genre has been on the Croisette on a couple of occasions but as a filmmaker got his first taste when Sink or Swim (also known as Le grand bain) — a 2018 selection slotted as an Out of Competition item. Six years later we have L’amour Ouf (Beating Hearts) which was was packaged and advertised at last year’s Cannes and moved into production with a huge ensemble of players in May. Gilles Lellouche directs François Civil, Adèle Exarchopoulos, Malik Frikah, Mallory Wanecque, Alain Chabat, Anthony Bajon, Jean-Pascal Zadi, Benoît Poelvoorde, Vincent Lacoste, Élodie Bouchez, Karim Leklou and Raphaël Quenard star.…...

Love, as everyone has long agreed, makes you do crazy things. Silly things, too, and vastly indulgent things, and occasionally even beautiful ones. Gilles Lellouche does all of these, in significant quantities, in his supersized gangster melodrama “Beating Hearts,” which takes the slender plot of innumerable B-movies of the past — as time and crime collaborate to derail the pure-hearted romance between two pretty young things — and blows it up to a dizzily grand scale, complete with widescreen camera gymnastics, daydreamy reality breaks and sporadic swirls of Old Hollywood musical choreography. It’s a mad indulgence, but also one fully attuned to the mindset of its two besotted lead characters: When you fall completely in love for the first (and maybe last) time, doesn’t your life become its own Technicolor epic?

That air of big-swinging, love-drunk bravado will buy Lellouche’s film a lot of goodwill from audiences — particularly those at home in France,...

The César Awards are always the biggest night of the year for French cinema, but the massive award season impact of “Anatomy of a Fall” ensured that this year’s event took on additional importance for Oscar watchers around the globe. When the 49th César Awards took place in Paris on Friday night, all eyes were on Justine Triet and her Palme d’Or-winning film.

Predictably, “Anatomy of a Fall” swept many of the night’s biggest categories. In addition to winning the top prize of Best Film, Triet was honored with Best Director and shared Best Screenplay with her partner Arthur Harari. Stars Sandra Hüller and Swann Arlaud also won Best Actress and Best Supporting Actor, respectively.

The night’s other big winner was Thomas Cailley’s “The Animal Kingdom,” which won awards for Cinematography, Visual Effects, Costume Design, and Sound.

Keep reading for a complete list of winners from the 2024 César Awards.

Justine Triet’s Oscar-nominated Anatomy of a Fall and Thomas Cailley’s fantasy drama The Animal Kingdom are the front runners for this year’s Cesar Awards, France’s equivalent to the Academy Awards. In nominations announced Wednesday, Anatomy picked up 11 Cesar noms and The Animal Kingdom 12. Both were nominated in the best film and best director categories.

Also nominated for best film are Jean-Baptiste Durand’s Junkyard Dog, All Your Faces from director Jeanne Herry and Cédric Kahn’s The Goldman Case.

France’s official Academy Award contender, Anh Hung Tran’s foodie period drama The Taste of Things, which missed out on an Oscar nom on Tuesday, picked up three Ceasar nominations, but none in the main categories.

German actress Sandra Hüller, a best actress nominee at this year’s Oscars for her starring turn in Anatomy of a Fall, is also up for the Cesar for best actress,...

Thomas Cailley’s fantasy drama The Animal Kingdom topped the nominations for France’s César Awards, which were announced in Paris on Wednesday.

The drama picked up 12 nominations with Justine Triet’s Oscar hopeful Anatomy Of A Fall coming in second with 11 nominations, followed by Jeanne Herry’s All Your Faces, which nine, and The Goldman Case, with eight.

Set in a world where human beings start transmuting into animals, The Animal Kingdom world premiered as the opening film of Cannes Un Certain Regard in 2023 and went on to make $8.5M at the box office last fall.

The Animal Kingdom and Anatomy of a Fall are competing in eight categories spanning Best Film, Director, Original Screenplay, Male Revelation, Editing, Sound, Cinematography and Production Design.

The high nomination count for Herry’s ensemble drama All Your Faces was thanks to the fact it dominated the Supporting Actress category with separate nominations for cast members Leila Bekhti,...

Thomas Cailley’s supernatural drama “The Animal Kingdom” and Justine Triet’s Palme d’Or winner “Anatomy of a Fall” are leading the race at the 49th Cesar Awards with 12 and 11 nominations, respectively.

Triet’s movie, which just garnered an impressive five Oscar nominations, and “The Animal Kingdom,” which opened at Cannes’ Un Certain Regard and won a prize, will vie for top Cesar awards including best director and film.

“The Animal Kingdom” is an ambitious film that marks a departure from France’s cinema tradition of social realism. It’s both a creature-filled dystopia and a father-and-son drama, weaving some contemporary concerns over the future of mankind. It’s produced by Pierre Guyard at Nord Ouest Films and co-produced by Artemis.

“Anatomy of a Fall,” meanwhile stars Sandra Hüller — the German actor nominated for Cesar, Oscar and BAFTA awards — as a novelist who is put on trial following the...

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

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

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

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

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.

“A Radiant Girl” is set in Paris in 1942, but you’d hardly know it from spending time with the film’s 19-year-old protagonist, Irene (Rebecca Marder) — at least not to begin with. Irene is, as the title suggests, a lovely young woman, practically vibrating with joie de vivre. An aspiring actor, she spends her days rehearsing for the entrance exam to the prestigious Paris Conservatory, which leaves her just about enough time to argue charmingly but lovingly with her tight-knit French-Jewish family, and tentatively pursue romance with a dishy young doctor. In a nutshell, Irene is somebody thoroughly determined to live every moment to its fullest.

These kinds of bright-eyed lead characters, whose defining trait is their insistent need to seize each and every single day in a keen and vice-like grip, are a long-standing staple of indie film. Where exactly they land on the spectrum from endearing to annoying,...

Irène, the vibrant center of Sandrine Kiberlain’s impressive debut feature, is indeed radiant. Beaming with youth, she’s an 18-year-old aspiring actor, awakened to first love and to the vision of who she wants to be. Irène is also Jewish, living with her family in occupied Paris, and the awful paradox of her blossoming during the summer of ’42 while a hateful and murderous world is closing in is suggested by the movie’s original title, Une Jeune Fille Qui Va Bien: She’s “a young girl who’s doing just fine.” Her zest for life sustains her, and it’s also a dangerous kind of tunnel vision.

Played to awkward/graceful perfection by Rebecca Marder, in her first lead film role, Irène is almost always in exuberant motion, well captured by Guillaume Schiffman’s nimble, unobtrusive cinematography. When the camera lingers for a moment on her anklets and oxfords,...

A Radiant Girl Trailer — Sandrine Kiberlain‘s A Radiant Girl / Une jeune fille qui va bien (2021) movie trailer has been released by Film Movement. The A Radiant Girl trailer stars Rebecca Marder, André Marcon, Anthony Bajon, and Françoise Widhoff. Crew Sandrine Kiberlain wrote the screenplay for A Radiant Girl. Plot Synopsis A Radiant Girl‘s plot synopsis: [...]

Continue reading: A Radiant Girl (2021) Movie Trailer: Aspiring Actress Rebecca Marder endures Nazi-occupied France...

"One must never fear." Film Movement has revealed an official US trailer for an indie drama from France titled A Radiant Girl, which is the US release title for the film originally known as Une jeune fille qui va bien. It's the feature directorial debut of a famous French actress / singer named Sandrine Kiberlain, and it first premiered at the 2021 Film Festival in the Directors' Fortnight section. The film is set in Paris, during the summer 1942. Irène is Jewish and French. She is 19 and living a life of passions – her friendships, her new love, her desire to be an actress – nothing suggests her time is running out. A Radiant Girl shows us both the dangers of complacency in the face of fascism, as well as the moments of beauty that are possible even under the hardest of circumstances. The film stars Rebecca Marder as Irène, along with André Marcon, Anthony Bajon,...

Netflix’s masterpiece, Athena, was shot mainly on the Arri Alexa 65 by cinematographer Matias Boucard AFC. Boucard utilized this extra-large sensor to enhance motion and storytelling in long takes, and within extreme environments.

Athena BTS. Picture: Netflix Athena: Children of Men

Athena is a 2022 French epic action tragedy film directed by Romain Gavras. Starring Dali Benssalah, Sami Slimane, Anthony Bajon, Ouassini Embarek, and Alexis Manenti, the film examines inequality and police violence in a French banlieue community. The film had its world premiere at the 79th Venice International Film Festival on September 2022, where it competed for the Golden Lion award, and was released on 23 September 2022 by Netflix.

Athena BTS. Picture: Netflix Athena BTS. Picture: Netflix

It was praised for its acting, score, direction, and technical aspects, especially regarding its cinematography. Athena’s Dp is Matias Boucard AFC, who used the extra-large sensor of the Arri Alexa 65 to enhance motion, and camera kinetics,...

The leaves are withering, the air is turning crisp, and film festival season is well underway — which means even more foreign-language movies to receive raves on the fall awards circuit before getting promptly buried on a streamer. But don't let that happen to "Athena," a staggering French drama that is in danger of falling into the Netflix abyss, crowded out by your "Gray Men" or "Kissing Booth's." Or check out one of last year's forgotten festival darlings in Céline Sciamma's "Petite Maman." And because spooky season is now here, we have a horror anime classic making their streaming debuts, alongside a cyberpunk anime classic. Plus, "Little Women," but make it crime?

Let's fire up those subtitles and get streaming.

Athena – Netflix

Country: France

Genre: Action drama

Director: Romain Gavras

Cast: Dali Benssalah, Sami Slimane, Anthony Bajon, Ouassini Embarek, Alexis Manenti.

"Athena" is a Molotov cocktail of a movie: incendiary,...

This review originally ran in conjunction with the film’s world premiere at the 2022 Venice Film Festival.

For those still under the erroneous impression that police brutality against Black people and other communities of color exists as an exclusively American form of racially motivated violence, “Athena,” an explosive drama (figuratively and literally) from French director Romain Gavras, son of legendary auteur Costa-Gavras, disproves it.

Over the course of one fateful day in the aftermath of the brutal killing of a boy of Middle Eastern descent at the hands of a group of white men — either comprised of cops, members of a far-right clan, or perhaps one and the same — chaos erupts in the disenfranchised Parisian neighborhood of Athena, as young people revolt in response to such injustice.

Almost immediately dropping us into the action, Gavras opens “Athena” with one of cinematographer Matias Boucard’s incredibly impressive one takes that carry...

The Film Circuit begins with Telluride, a small but perfect film festival in the mountains of Colorado as simultaneously Venice unfurls the films that will soon be released in the wonderful arthouse cinemas of Europe, followed closely by Toronto whose films foretell the coming year’s Oscars nominees. It is a very exciting time to be on the festival circuit.

And simultaneously with these great screenings are sidebars, panel discussions, workshops, master classes and all around great networking for filmmakers around the world.

Venezia 79 Competition

Il Signore Delle Formiche

Director Gianni Amelio

Main Cast Luigi Lo Cascio, Elio Germano, Leonardo Maltese, Sara Serraiocco / Italy / 134’

The Whale

Director Darren Aronofsky

Main Cast Brendan Fraser, Sadie Sink, Hong Chau, Samantha Morton, Ty Simpkins / USA / 117’

White Noise

Director Noah Baumbach

Main Cast Adam Driver, Greta Gerwig, Don Cheadle, Raffey Cassidy, Sam Nivola, May Nivola, Jodie Turner-Smith, André L. Benjamin and Lars Eidinger / USA / 136’

L’IMMENSITÀ

Director Emanuele Crialese

Main Cast Penélope Cruz, Luana Giuliani, Vincenzo Amato, Patrizio Francioni / Italy, France / 97’

Saint Omer

Director Alice Diop

Main Cast Kayije Kagame, Guslagie Malanda, Valérie Dréville, Aurélia Petit / France / 123’

Blonde

Director Andrew Dominik

Main Cast Ana de Armas, Adrien Brody, Bobby Cannavale, Xavier Samuel, Julianne Nicholson, Lily Fisher / USA / 166’

TÁR

Director Todd Field

Main Cast Cate Blanchett, Noémie Merlant, Nina Hoss, Sophie Kauer, Julian Glover, Allan Corduner, Mark Strong / USA / 158’

Love Life

Director Kôji Fukada

Main Cast Fumino Kimura, Kento Nagayama, Atom Sunada / Japan, France / 123’

Bardo, Falsa CRÓNICA De Unas Cuantas Verdades

Director Alejandro G. Iñárritu

Main Cast Daniel Giménez Cacho, Griselda Siciliani, Ximena Lamadrid, Iker Sanchez Solano, Andrés Almeida, Francisco Rubio / Mexico / 174’

Athena

Director Romain Gavras

Main Cast Dali Benssalah, Sami Slimane, Anthony Bajon, Ouassini Embarek, Alexis Manenti / France / 97’

Bones And All

Director Luca Guadagnino

Main Cast Taylor Russell, Timothée Chalamet, Mark Rylance, André Holland, Chloë Sevigny, Jessica Harper, David Gordon Green, Michael Stuhlbarg, Jake Horowitz / USA / 130’

The Eternal Daughter

Director Joanna Hogg

Main Cast Tilda Swinton, Joseph Mydell, Carly-Sophia Davies / UK, USA / 96’

Shab, Dakheli, Divar (Beyond The Wall)

Director Vahid Jalilvand

Main Cast Navid Mohammadzadeh, Diana Habibi, Amir Aghaee / Iran / 126’

The Banshees Of Inisherin

Director Martin McDonagh

Main Cast Colin Farrell, Brendan Gleeson, Kerry Condon, Barry Keoghan / Ireland, UK, USA / 109’

Argentina, 1985

Director Santiago Mitre

Main Cast Ricardo Darín, Peter Lanzani, Alejandra Flechner, Norman Briski / Argentina, USA / 140’

Chiara

Director Susanna Nicchiarelli

Main Cast Margherita Mazzucco, Andrea Carpenzano, Carlotta Natoli, Paola Tiziana Cruciani, Luigi Lo Cascio / Italy, Belgium / 106’

Monica

Director Andrea Pallaoro

Main Cast Trace Lysette, Patricia Clarkson, Adriana Barraza, Emily Browning, Joshua Close / USA, Italy / 113’

Khers Nist (No Bears)

Director Jafar Panahi

Main Cast Jafar Panahi, Naser Hashemi, Vahid Mobaseri, Bakhtiar Panjeei, Mina Kavani, Reza Heydari / Iran / 107’

All The Beauty And The Bloodshed

Director Laura Poitras

USA / 117’

Un Couple

Director Frederick Wiseman

Main Cast Nathalie Boutefeu / France, USA / 64’

The Son

Director Florian Zeller

Main Cast Hugh Jackman, Laura Dern, Vanessa Kirby, Zen McGrath, Anthony Hopkins, Hugh Quarshie / UK / 124’

Les Miens

Director Roschdy Zem

Main Cast Sami Bouajila, Roschdy Zem, Meriem Serbah, Maïwenn, Rachid Bouchareb, Abel Jafrei, Nina Zem / France / 85’

Les Enfants Des Autres

Director Rebecca Zlotowski

Main Cast Virginie Efira, Roschdy Zem, Chiara Mastroianni, Callie Ferreira / France / 104’

Toronto is in spite of itself in a civilized sort of way in competition for the premieres with Venice, though the sequential festivals are serving different constituencies. Still, The Whale, for example is premiering in Venice and then traveling to TIFF.

TIFF Gala Presentations:

The Whale directed by Darren Aronofsky, produced and to be distributed in U.S. and actng as international sales agent A24.

TIFF says: “Brendan Fraser gives a career-defining performance in Darren Aronofsky’s arrestingly intimate drama about a reclusive English professor struggling with personal relationships and self-acceptance, adapted from the stage play by Samuel D. Hunter.”

Alice, Darling by Mary Nighy

Also playing are Alice, Darling (Mary Nighy) in which Anna Kendrick captures the anxious psychology of a woman in an abusive relationship as her friends try to reconnect with her while on a cottage getaway.

Black Ice(Hubert Davis) about Black hockey players facing systemic racism in the sport.

The Greatest Beer Run Ever (Peter Farrelly) about man’s story of leaving New York in 1967 to bring beer to his childhood buddies in the Army while they are fighting in Vietnam. An Apple TV+ production.

Butcher’s Crossing (Gabe Polsky) is a frontier epic about an Ivy League drop-out as he travels to the Colorado wilderness, where he joins a team of buffalo hunters on a journey that puts his life and sanity at risk. Based on the highly acclaimed novel by John Williams. Isa Altitude

The Hummingbird (Francesca Archibugi)Hunt (Jung-jae Lee)A Jazzman’s Blues (Tyler Perry)Kacchey Limbu (Shubham Yogi)Moving On (Paul Weitz)Paris Memories (Alice Winocour)Prisoner’s Daughter (Catherine Hardwicke)Raymond & Ray (Rodrigo García)Roost (Amy Redford)Sidney (Reginald Hudlin)The Son (Florian Zeller)The Swimmers (Sally El Hosaini)What’s Love Got to Do With It? (Shekhar Kapur)The Woman King(Gina Prince-Bythewood)

Special PRESENTATIONSAllelujah (Sir Richard Eyre)All Quiet on the Western Front (Edward Berger)The Banshees Of Inisherin (Martin McDonagh)Blueback (Robert Connolly)The Blue Caftan (Maryam Touzani)Broker (Hirokazu Kore-eda)Brother (Clement Virgo)Bros (Nicholas Stoller)Catherine Called Birdy (Lena Dunham)Causeway (Lila Neugebauer)Chevalier (Stephen Williams)Corsage (Marie Kreutzer)Decision to Leave (Park Chan-wook)Devotion (Jd Dillard)Driving (Madeleine Christian Carion)El Suplente (Diego Lerman)Empire of Light...

It’s always tempting to fetishize single-shot sequences — to look for visible seams in their making, to wonder how many times it took to nail the final take, to get caught up in the meticulous, Milton Bradley’s Mouse Trap choreography of it all. Some are great, some are merely show-offy, and others go from bravura to self-indulgent simply by outstaying their welcome by 30 seconds. It’s usually just look-ma-no-cuts razzle dazzle, a bit of filmmaking virtuosity designed to have viewers wondering, “How did they do that?” The more pertinent question,...

There is no Athena housing project in Paris. That’s a name invented by “Athena” director Romain Gavras and partner in crime Ladj Ly for the banlieu apartment block that becomes a kind of makeshift fortress in an epic standoff between residents — first- and second-generation Black and Arab immigrants tired of being mistreated — and the French national police. Naming it thus lends what unfolds there a classical resonance, one that ties Gavras’ astonishing third feature to the tradition of Greek tragedy, though the situation could hardly be more timely.

“Athena” tells the story of four brothers, one murdered on camera by a group of unidentified men in police uniforms, the three others torn about what to do next. Who were these assailants, shown stomping an innocent 13-year-old to death? Why does the French police seem to be protecting the culprits? And what will it take to obtain justice?

These questions...

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With his incendiary 2019 debut feature, Les Misérables, director Ladj Ly brought the urban unrest, the police brutality and the festering social and racial inequality of the Paris banlieue drama La Haine hurtling into the 21st century, its belly aflame with righteous anger and indignation. Ly serves as a writer and producer on Romain Gavras’ Athena, which is both a companion piece to those films and a thundering amplification of their themes. Where the earlier works built to stunning crescendos of violence, Athena is a live grenade, beginning in full ignition mode and dialing up its intensity throughout with virtuoso technique.

That latter factor will surprise no one familiar with the output of Gavras, son of renowned Greek director Costa-Gavras, who made a mark with his dynamic music videos for artists including Kanye West, Jay-Z and M.I.A. His third feature is a...

After the edgy crime comedy “The World Is Yours,” Romain Gavras is back with thriller “Athena.” Produced by Paris-based Iconoclast for Netflix, the ambitious, €15 million film (15 million) unfolds in the aftermath of the tragic killing of a young boy in what appears to be an act of police brutality. An all-out war sparks in an imaginary community called Athena. It’s the first French movie that Netflix is presenting in competition at the Venice Film Festival.

“Athena” tells the story of the boy’s three siblings, who are responding to the tragedy in different ways and clashing with one another. French star Dali Benssalah plays the older brother, Abdel, a devoted French soldier. Faced with an impossible moral dilemma, Abdel is called back from the frontline to help diffuse the all-out war that has been sparked by his younger brother Karim (Sami Slimane), who wants revenge. Athena becomes the backdrop...

Athena Trailer 2 — Netflix has released the second movie trailer for Athena (2022). Crew Romain Gavras‘ Athena stars Dali Benssalah, Alexis Manenti, Anthony Bajon, Sami Slimane, and Ouassini Embarek. Romain Gavras, Ladj Ly, and Elias Belkeddar wrote the screenplay for Athena. Plot Synopsis Athena‘s plot synopsis: “It is difficult to fight anger; for a man will [...]

Continue reading: Athena (2022) Movie Trailer 2: Romain Gavras’ Community Under Siege & Siblings at War Film...

"When they strike, we strike back. When they kill, we kill." Holy! Sh*t! Strap in – this looks Awesome! Netflix has debuted the full official trailer for Athena, the latest from French filmmaker Romain Gavras (The World Is Yours). He teams up with the talented filmmaker Ladj Ly, who co-wrote the script and co-produces this, to make a film about youth clashing with police in France. Hours after the tragic death of their youngest brother in unexplained circumstances, three siblings have their lives thrown into chaos. This is premiering at the 2022 Venice Film Festival which kicks off next week and it looks like it's going to knock us out. It looks like Ladj Ly's Les Miserable meets La Haine meets Snyder's 300, with a "war" kicking off in the streets of Paris. Athena stars Dali Benssalah, Alexis Manenti, Anthony Bajon, Sami Slimane, and Ouassini Embarek. I really love these kind...

While making his name with his striking music videos for the likes of M.I.A., Jay-Z & Kanye West, Jamie xx, and more, French director Romain Gavras has also proven prowess in the feature-length department with Our Day Will Come and The World Is Yours. He’s now back with Athena, which will premiere at the Venice Film Festival before coming to Netflix on September 23, and now the first trailer has landed.

Co-written by Ladj Ly (Les Misérables) and Elias Belkeddar alongside Gavras, the film follows three siblings thrown into chaos after the death of their young brothers following an alleged police altercation. Starring Dali Benssalah, Sami Slimane, Anthony Bajon, Ouassini Embarek, and Alexis Manenti, Gavras’ third feature looking to be a stylish, gripping tragedy.

See the trailer below.

Athena premieres at Venice and arrives on Netflix on September 23.

The post Athena Trailer: Romain Gavras' Venice-Bound Drama Finds Siblings at...

Whoa!! Netflix has revealed the first look teaser trailer for a new film titled Athena, the latest from French filmmaker Romain Gavras. He teams up with the talented filmmaker Ladj Ly, who co-wrote the script and co-produces this, to make a film about youth clashing with police in France. Hours after the tragic death of their youngest brother in unexplained circumstances, three siblings have their lives thrown into chaos. That's the only very brief synopsis available so far, and it sounds very similar to La Haine or Ly's last film Les Miserables (which rules) - from this footage, it looks like a combination of both. Athena stars Dali Benssalah, Alexis Manenti, Anthony Bajon, Sami Slimane, and Ouassini Embarek. It might premiere at a few festivals in the fall, but nothing has been announced yet. For now get a first look at some footage below - which reveals a quote to...

French hub confirms €200m investment in French series and features this year.

Netflix France has given a taster of the 25 original French series and films due to be launched on the platform this year at a press event in Paris on Thursday (March 10) and revealed a further 20 titles are in production.

The French hub, which officially opened on the eve of the Covid-19 pandemic in January 2020, also confirmed it would be investing €200m in French content this year.

The Paris team announced two new French feature projects, the presidential election comedy En Place and Le Roi Des Ombres, a family...

Netflix today provided a taste of its slate of original French productions coming up in 2022, which includes 25 new titles for launch this year and 20 projects currently in production. The slate, selected and developed by the Netflix France creative team, reps a total investment of more than 200M euros ($221M) across 2022. The streamer recently signed a deal with the French industry in which it committed to producing at least 10 local films per year, investing about 40M euros ($45M).

Among the projects highlighted during a presentation in Paris today was Romain Gavras’ formerly untitled feature, which is now called Athena. An immersive and modern tragedy, it stars Dali Benssalah, Sami Slimane, Anthony Bajon and is co-written with Oscar nominee Ladj Ly (Les Misérables) and Elias Belkeddar. The logline reads: In the space of a few hours following the tragic death of their younger brother in troubling circumstances, the men’s lives will tip over into chaos.

Netflix unveiled its 2022 slate of 25 French Originals, as well as projects including the second and third opus of its action movie “Lost Bullet,” and “En Place,” a comedy series created by Jean-Pascal Zadi (“Tout simplement Noir”) and Francois Uzan.

The company said it will invest more than €200 million ($220 million) in 2022 in France. Out of these 25 titles, there are about 10 series, and approximately eight films.

The streamers’ French presentation was hosted at the Comedy Club in Paris to tease “Standing-Up,” a series following aspiring stand-up comedians directed by Fanny Herrero, the creator of “Call My Agent.” Herrero attended the press conference along with key Netflix executives in Europe, including Damien Couvreur, Sara May and Gaelle Mareschi.

Besides “Standing Up,” Netflix’s anticipated highlights for 2022 including Romain Gavras’s “Athena,” an immersive and modern tragedy played by Dali Benssalah, Sami Slimane, Anthony Bajon and co-written by Ladj Ly (“Les Miserables”); as well as “Rhythm + Flow France,...

In “The Measure of a Man” (2015) and “At War” (2018), director Stéphane Brizé and actor Vincent Lindon dramatized the working-class struggle with a calm reserve that didn’t cool or dilute the films’ rage. In both films, blue-collar workers find their livelihood, their ethics or both compromised by the hard, inhuman priorities of their capitalist overlords, to incrementally soul-scraping effect.

In “Another World,” Brizé and Lindon reunite to complete a trilogy of sorts on the theme, though the perspective in this characteristically measured, intelligent, unexcitable film is reversed: Here, Lindon plays a white-collar manager caught between duty to his corporate superiors and obligations to his employees, rendered increasingly powerless in the impasse. Lest you think “Another World” is a work of bourgeois both-sides-ism, however, rest assured that it reaches the same furious conclusion as it predecessors, albeit via another route: Brizé’s reputation as France’s own answer to Ken Loach remains intact.

Work eats our lives. For nine, 10 hours a day — often more — we are either at work, traveling to work or catching up on work at home. Yet, for whatever reason, the process and patina of working life is rarely the subject of cinema. Except in the films of Stéphane Brizé, the French director who has made the workplace his stomping ground.

In The Measure Of A Man (2015) Brizé focused on a middle-aged white-collar worker who loses his job and, just as he reaches the end of his tether, gets a job as a security guard where he is expected to spy on his fellow workers. In At War (2018) he told the story of a factory strike. In his latest, Venice Film Festival competition title Another World, he moves upstairs as the film embeds us with middle management. Things are no better up there, of course, there is just the chance...

2018’s “At War” burned hot with righteous fury as it followed a labor organizer protesting layoffs at his local plant. Fighting a campaign always doomed to fail and falling well short of his opponents’ financial munitions, Vincent Lindon’s working-class tribune found strength in his rage, kindling an inner flame that eventually consumed him whole. With “Another World,” director Stéphane Brizé has devised a companion piece of sorts, once again surrounding Lindon with a cast of (mostly) non-professionals and tracking a similar story from management’s perspective while raising its ire ever so high that the flames burn blue.

Chilly in all the ways that “At War” singed, staid in every way its predecessor frenzied, “Another World” takes another bleak snapshot of a globalized and financialized workforce, offering a character study so fatalistic (and no doubt entirely apt) in its appraisal of the larger system that its narrative plays out...

Ludovic and Zoran Boukherma show promisingly grim tendencies in a supremely confident horror that lacks a bit of thematic bite

Teddy. The name is all wrong for the teenager at the centre of this French arthouse horror: a shaven-headed heavy metaller. Teddy is not cuddly nor particularly lovable, but he does turn furry by the light of the full moon. He’s a werewolf, though young film-making brothers Ludovic and Zoran Boukherma are too classy – and sensible – to reveal much more than a flash of bony wolf-foot when Teddy transforms.

The film is in fact a supremely confident genre dice and splice from the Boukhermas: a social realist body-horror black comedy with elements of coming-of-age drama. It reminded me a bit of Julia Ducournau’s cannibal movie Raw, but I’m not sure it’s got quite as much to say. Anthony Bajon is electrifying as Teddy, a high school dropout from a poor family.

Netflix is teaming with Romain Gavras, the French filmmaker of “The World is Yours” and “Our Day Will Come,” for his next film which will start production this week in France.

The untitled film will mark Gavras’s follow up to his 2018 film “The World is Yours,” a crime comedy with Isabelle Adjani and Vincent Cassel, which world premiered at Cannes Directors’ Fortnight. His 2010 feature debut, “Our Day Will Come,” played at Toronto and SXSW. Aside from his filmmaking career, Garvas is also a renown director of music videos for Jay Z, Kanye West, Jamie Xx, M.I.A and Justice, among others, and has directed short films for luxury brands, including Louis Vuitton, Yves Saint Laurent and Dior.

The film, the plot of which is under wraps, is co-written by Gavras and Ladj Ly, the director of the Oscar-nominated “Les Misérables” and Elias Belkeddar (“My days of glory”). Gavras...

French-Greek filmmaker Romain Gavras, whose credits include the 2018 Cannes Directors’ Fortnight selection The World Is Yours and 2020 Toronto premiere Our Day Will Come, is underway on his new film, this time with Netflix.

The streamer is keeping title, plot and genre under wraps on the mysterious movie, which is now in production in France.

The script comes from Gavras and Ladj Ly, who directed the 2019 Cannes hit Les Miserables, which was Oscar nominated. Elias Belkeddar (My Days Of Glory) is also a writer on the project.

Starring are Dali Benssalah (No Time To Die), Anthony Bajon (Teddy), Cesar Winner Alexis Manenti (Les Misérables), Ouassini Embarek (The Eddy), and newcomer Sami Slimane. Iconoclast is producing. Netflix is aiming to release in 2022.

We’ve got a fresh look at a new French horror film that’s howling for sales through WTFilms at the forthcoming EFM. Ludovic and Zoran Boukherma write and direct Teddy, which stars Anthony Bajon (The Prayer) and Noémie Lvovsky (Invisibles). In the film, which is heading to the EFM in Berlin, “Twentysomething Teddy lives in a foster home and works as a temp in […]...

Pour le meilleur et pour le pire

Produced by Christophe Rossignon, Philip Boëffard

Directed by Stéphane Brizé

Written by Stéphane Brizé, Olivier Gorce

Starring: Vincent Lindon, Sandrine Kiberlain, Anthony Bajon

Cinematographer: To be announced.

Release Date/Prediction: Insert shooting date and location and prediction. If you used specific links copy and paste and I’ll copy and paste them.

…...

The 9th International Independent Film Festival has crowned as joint champions Ludovic and Zoran Boukherma’s werewolf film and the documentary by Diane Sara Bouzgarrou and Thomas Jenkoe. The International Competition might have been dominated by the Iranian film by Saeed Roustaee Just 6.5, but the French competition jury of the 9th International Independent Film Festival (which unspooled 14 – 19 October), composed of Maïmouna Doucouré, Delphine Gleize and Lio, awarded their Grand Prize 2020 to two feature films decorated with Cannes 2020 labels: Teddy by brothers Ludovic and Zoran Boukherma and The Last Hillbilly by Diane Sara Bouzgarrou and Thomas Jenkoe. Honoured with Cannes’ Official Selection label, Teddy (Ludovic and Zoran Boukherma’s second feature film after Willy 1er) stars Anthony Bajon, Christine Gautier and Noémie Lvovsky in its cast. Written by the two filmmakers, the story begins one evening, during a full moon, when 19-year-old Teddy who works in a...

With the state of things these days, Fantastic Fest has gone virtual for 2020, and here are my thoughts on two of the films that helped kick off the festivities this week: Teddy, from the directing duo of Ludovic and Zoran Boukherma, and Girl, which features both Bella Thorne and Mickey Rourke.

Teddy: As someone who has a deep love for anything lycanthrope-related, I really enjoyed what Ludovic and Zoran Boukherma were able to do with Teddy. The film hits all the beats you’d expect from a coming-of-age werewolf story, but the directors come at these tropes in a very unique way, making Teddy a thoughtful and heartfelt examination of a young man who has lost his place in this world that also delivers up some gnarly body horror moments and a sizeable body count to boot.

The film follows the titular character (played by Anthony Bajon) who lives in a remote village in France.