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Like its titular character, Emilia Pérezis many things. “You have an action movie that’s not an action movie, a drama that’s not a drama, a comedy that’s not a comedy,” star Karla Sofía Gascón told Netflix. “It is such a great gift, and I’m so proud to be part of it.”

The film is also, among the many other genres Gascón cites, an operatic musical. “During the first lockdown, I wrote a treatment quickly, and I realized along the way that it was closer to an opera libretto than to a film script — it was broken down into acts, there were few sets, the characters were archetypal,” writer and director Jacques Audiard told Netflix. “The idea of doing an opera had crossed my mind as I was working on [1996’s] A Self-Made Hero.”

So, to paraphrase Gascón, Emilia Pérez is an opera that’s not an opera.

The 40th Santa Barbara Film Festival held their International Directors Panel on Sunday, February 9. Directors Gints Zilbalodis (“Flow”), Walter Salles (“I’m Still Here”), Mohammad Rasoulof (“The Seed of the Sacred Fig”), and Jacques Audiard (“Emilia Pérez”) joined festival Director Roger Durling for a wide ranging Q&a at the Arlington Theater.

Coming off a contentious last couple weeks for his film’s awards campaign, Audiard had a more light-hearted opportunity to reflect on his Best Picture nominee. Durling highlighted the director’s history with portraying music onscreen throughout his career. Audiard responded by noting how his “natural masochism” influences him to make films in languages he doesn’t speak or understand.

“It’s incredible because the only memory I actually have of really articulating music and opera in my work was for my second feature, ‘A Self-Made Hero,'” Audiard said. “At that time, I had thought of making a...

There are many different ways to measure a terrific film awards season.

Last year, “Barbenheimer” put two billion-dollar blockbusters at the center of the awards chatter. “Barbie” settled for an Oscar and a “box office achievement” Golden Globe, while “Oppenheimer” fulfilled its promise as the first (much-needed) awards season megahit and awards juggernaut in many years. Besides sweeping up multiple Oscars, Christopher Nolan’s opus also garnered both Oscar and Golden Globe best picture wins.

Twenty-five years ago, the Oscar race was a Weinstein-era slugfest for best picture, with the Harvey-handled “Shakespeare in Love” keeping Steven Spielberg’s WWII epic “Saving Private Ryan” out of the top Oscar perch, while both films took home Golden Globe best picture trophies. This year has been knocked by some critics and some awards season pundits as perhaps not one for the history books, with a less than stellar lineup of key contenders.

The lineup for the 77th Cannes Film Festival has officially been unveiled. As of right now, 19 films will be competing for the prestigious top prize, the Palme d’Or. The festival will be running from May 14 through the closing ceremony on May 25 in the small town on the French Riviera. This year’s jury will be led by Greta Gerwig, fresh off of her success writing and directing “Barbie,” which earned her an Oscar nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay. The remaining members of the jury have yet to be announced.

Having an idea of a filmmaker’s history at the festival can sometimes help give us an insight as to who could be in the best position to take home the Palme. For example, two of this year’s entries come from filmmakers who have previously claimed the Palme. Another five are from directors who have won prizes in official...

French actress starred in Cannes titles A Self-made Hero and Polisse.

French actress Sandrine Kiberlain has been named president of the Caméra d’or at this year’s Cannes Film Festival (May 17-28).

Kiberlain and jury will award a prize to a director’s first work from the Official Selection, the Directors’ Fortnight or Critics’ Week .

Since 1978 the prize has gone to films including Stranger than Paradise by Jim Jarmusch (1984), Suzaku by Naomi Kawase (1997), The White Balloon by Jafar Panahi (1995), Hunger by Steve McQueen (2008) and Beasts of the Southern Wild by Benh Zeitlin (2012).

Last year, Houda Benyamina won the Caméra d’or for her film Divines screened in the Directors’ Fortnight.

In a career spanning 25 years and boasting around 40 films, actress Kiberlain first shot to prominence in The Patriots by Éric Rochant (winner of the Romy-Schneider Prize) and En Avoir (Ou Pas) by Laetitia Masson, for which she won the César for most promising actress.

Subsequent turns have...

With features such as The Beat That My Heart Skipped and Rust and Bone under his belt, filmmaker Jacques Audiard has garnered acclaim across various festivals over the course of his career. The Cannes Film Festival has been no different in this regard, as Audiard had been nominated three times for the Palme d’Or prior to the 2015 incarnation of the festival, for A Self-Made Hero, A Prophet, and Rust and Bone. The 2015 Festival, however, brought his first win, for Audiard’s newest feature Dheepan.

Audiard takes on both co-writing and directing duties for the film, with the three primary roles being notably played by relative newcomers. Jesuthasan Antonythasan, who plays the titular character, is appearing in only his second film, with co-stars Kalieaswari Srinivasan and Claudine Vinasithamby making their debuts in the feature. The synopsis is below.

Dheepan is a Sri Lankan Tamil warrior who flees to France and...

Winners were announced on Sunday for the 68th annual Cannes Film Festival, and the top prize, the coveted Palme d'Or, went to Jacques Audiard's French film "Dheepan." This is the first time Audiard has won the award following three unsuccessful attempts ("A Self-Made Hero" in 1996, "A Prophet" in 2009 and "Rust and Bone" in 2012), though he did previously win a screenwriting award for "Self-Made Hero" and the Grand Prix for "A Prophet." -Break- His last two entries lost to films by Michael Haneke – "The White Ribbon" in 2009 and "Amour" in 2012 – so in his speech, Audiard thanked Haneke "for not making a film this year." Oscars next for Cannes winners Rooney Mara, Emmanuelle Bercot and Vincent Lindon? This year, Oscar-winning directors Joel and Ethan Coen presided over the jury, which also included international actors Rossy de ...

Other winners include Son Of Saul, The Assassin, Chronic, The Lobster, The Measure Of A Man, Carol and Mon Roi.Scroll down for full list of winners

Jacques Audiard’s Dheepan has won the Palme d’Or at the 68th Cannes Film Festival (May 13-24).

Review: Dheepan

Critics had predicted that Todd Haynes’ Carol or Hou Hsiao-hsien’s The Assassin would take the top prize, while momentum appeared to shift to Laszlo Nemes’ Son Of Saul when it picked up the Fipresci prize. Even the bookies favoured a different title, pegging Yorgos Lanthimos’ The Lobster for the prestigious honour.

But while they each left the Lumiere Theatre with one prize apiece, it was Dheepan that claimed the top honour.

The drama centres on a Tamil freedom fighter (Antonythasan Jesuthasan, one of three non-professional Tamil leads) who, near the end of the Sri Lankan Civil War, flees to Europe with a makeshift family hoping to claim asylum...

We’ll be better able to assess whether this Jacques Audiard’s seventh feature film was triumphant, faltered or flatlined when more results trickle in, but for the time being this looks to situate itself quality-wise underneath 2009’s Grand Prix winning A Prophet. It got his Cannes debut back in 1994 with Regarde Les Hommes Tomber in the Critics’ Week, saw 1996’s Un héros très discret land him Best Screenplay, and his last showing was for Rust & Bone in 2012. Starring relative unknowns in Antonythasan Jesuthasan, Kalieaswari Srinivasan and Claudine Vinasithamby, (supporting players also include Vincent Rottiers and Marc Zinga), Dheepan has all the earmarks from his other films: the immigrant story, criminal underpinnings, protagonist with odds against them, Paris, a visceral photography and on the tech side: a continued partnership with co-writer Thomas Bidegain. Make sure to click on the chart below for a larger version.

Filmmaker Jacques Audiard first gained prominence in the international film community for his screenwriting capabilities, most notably winning the Best Screenplay award at the 1996 Cannes film festival for Un héros très discret, also known as A Self-Made Hero. Over the past decade, however, Audiard has also received acclaim for his directorial work, most notably for the 2009 feature Un prophète, also known as A Prophet, which went on to receive an Academy Award nomination for Best Foreign Film of the year. With his last feature coming in 2012, many were excited to learn that the filmmaker would be coming to the 2015 incarnation of the Cannes film festival once again with his latest feature.

Titled Dheepan, the film features newcomer Jesuthasan Antonythasan in the titular role, and the synopsis is as follows.

Dheepan is a Sri Lankan Tamil warrior who flees to France and ends up working as a caretaker outside Paris.

Ahead...

French filmmaker Jacques Audiard was well on his way to international acclaim. He won best screenplay at Cannes for 1996’s “A Self-Made Hero,” while "Read My Lips" and "The Beat That My Heart Skipped," were two of the best French films of the early aughts. But it wasn’t until 2009 that he was back at Cannes and won the Grand Prix with his arresting crime film “A Prophet,” a stunning drama some might argue should have won the Palme d’Or. The picture was also nominated for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 82nd Academy Awards and thus thrust the director into a new stratosphere. Following “Rust And Bone” in 2012, Audiard is back in Palme d’Or contention with “Dheepan” a drama about a Tamil freedom fighter who flees to Europe near the end of the Sri Lankan Civil War. With a makeshift family hoping to claim asylum, they...

Violette , in French, subtitled in English, follows the strange and compelling story from the World War II years through the 1960s of trailblazing bisexual French feminist novelist Violette Leduc (Emmanuelle Devos, Kings and Queen) and her struggle to find her voice as a writer. Scarred by both a childhood trauma and a loveless marriage, as an adult, she became rather crazy.

Here Violette finds a complex and difficult mentor in her friend and benefactress, Simone de Beauvoir (Sandrine Kiberlain), and gains entry to a world of literary giants after a very difficult literary passage.

A parade of great French writers from Camus to Genet is brought to life by a magnificent ensemble cast.

Director Martin Provost (Séraphine, winner of 7 César Awards) vividly and unsentimentally recreates the heady intellectual atmosphere of Paris from the 1940s to the 1960s.

Devos gives one of the most impassioned, over the top crazy (i.e., good!!) performances of her lauded career in the title role, portraying an uncompromising, though totally confused, female artist’s journey from darkness, confusion, weirdness to light and finally literary success.

Devos won her first César Award for her performance as partially deaf Carla in Jacques Audiard's Read My Lips and her second César for Xavier Giannoli’s In the Beginning. She has been praised for many other performances including Arnaud Desplechins A Christmas Tale, Alain Resnais' Wild Grass and Audiard’s The Beat That My Heart Skipped. She will soon begin filming Neil Labute’s The Geography of Hope alongside Vera Farmiga, Ethan Hawke and Ed Harris.

Sandrine Kiberlain is perfect as the famously severe Simone de Beauvoir who is Violette's instructress and mentor.

Sandrine Kiberlain, fresh off her Best Actress win at the 2014 Cesar Awards for 9 Month Stretch, is one of France’s most respected actresses, and has appeared in over fifty films including Alain Resnais' final film Life of Riley, as well as with top French directors such as Jacques Audiard (A Self-Made Hero), Benoît Jacquot (Seventh Heaven, La Fausse Suivante de Marivaux) and Claude Miller (Betty Fisher and Other Stories).

With always interesting sets shot in French period grey tones, Violette is a stunning masterwork that casts an interesting, thought provoking spell.

This is an intimate and powerful true story of the relationship between two extraordinary women in an extraordinary time. If, like me, you thought you “knew” this period, this film will give you much food for thought. It is especially insightful as to the role of French intellectual women and their trials in this most interesting period of French history.

The film premiered at Toronto International Film Festival 2013 in Official Selection where it was acquired for U.S. by Adopt Films. Its U.S. premiere will be at the Los Angeles Film Festival, will open in New York June 13 and in L.A. June 27 followed by its national rollout.

Its international sales agent, Doc & Film has licensed the film to Adopt for U.S., Madman for Australia and New Zealand. Argentina has sold to Cdi Films, Brazil Imovision, Canada Métropole Films Distribution, Denmark Camera Film A/S, France Universcine and Diaphana, Germany Kool Filmdistribution, Iceland Heimili Kvikmyndanna - Bio Paradis, Italy Movies Inspired, Netherlands Contact Film, Norway As Fidalgo Film Distribution, Poland Aurora Films, Slovak Republic Film Europe Media Company, Sweden Folkets Bio, Switzerland Xenix Filmdistribution Gmbh, Taiwan Swallow Wings Films Co.,Ltd., U.K. Soda Pictures...

Mathieu Kassovitz was hailed as the heir to Truffaut after making La Haine in 1995. So why has he renounced French cinema after making his latest film, Rebellion?

Any doubts over Mathieu Kassovitz's feelings towards his national film industry were cleared up last year when he tweeted: "Bugger French cinema. Go fuck yourself with your shitty films." He's done with France. He's moved to Los Angeles. The tweet was in response to the César nominations, France's equivalent of the Oscars. In a field dominated by The Artist and Untouchable, Kassovitz's sober political thriller, Rebellion, received just one nomination, for best adapted screenplay.

"I wasn't hurt because they didn't want to give me a César, I was hurt because they didn't care about that kind of movie any more," says Kassovitz, who has previously won three Césars and never turned up to collect them. "It's a French story. It's craftsmanship. We...

A soundtrack that has Chinese overtones, interspersed with Satie, and A La Claire Fontaine. Is it a Chinese composer familiar with French culture? Turns out to be a French composer, capable of adapting his music to almost any setting in the world. Whether it be ethereal tunes for golden compasses, mysterious ones for wizards, or spectral ones for writers on the verge of giving up the ghost.

In a TV reality show about composers, Alexandre le Grand would be the winner of his era. Even if composers tend to be discreet, their work lives in a fish bowl. And M. Desplat’s bowl is filling up with scores of many scents and colours very rapidly.

Not just that, he does it consistently well, under lots of pressure, running against the clock on at least two continents, having composed the music for 115 feature films at the age of 51. Not counting the work done for TV,...

French director Jacques Audiard's bleak, brutal crime films have led to him being called the new Scorsese. His latest, Rust and Bone, is a love story – but as intense and inquisitive as ever

For a man who is a bundle of intense, nervous energy, Jacques Audiard is a surprisingly slow worker. Since he started directing, in 1994, he has completed just six features, with lengthy gaps between them. Indeed, the three-year run up to his new film, Rust and Bone, represents something of an acceleration. "I am free," Audiard shrugs, "because I work for a producer [Pascal Caucheteux] who says, 'We'll go when it's ready.' He doesn't give me a deadline. The films take a long time to write – too long, perhaps. That is where the time is spent."

But what films they are. His last, A Prophet, the coruscating study of a French-Arab convict who becomes a player in the Corsican mafia,...

It doesn’t take a prophet to predict that when Jacques Audiard makes a new movie, the film world is watching. The successful French director is known for his artsy yet accessible cinema that has won him top film prizes both at home and abroad. He explored revisionist history post World War II in A Self-Made Hero, brought an ex-convict and a nearly deaf woman together in Read My Lips, hit a high note with audiences everywhere with his musical drama The Beat That My Heart Skipped and then explored the inner workings of prison life in A Prophet,

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Variety has reported actress Marion Cotillard will star in “Rust and Bone,” a film based on a short story by Craig Davidson. The film is described as a mix of suspense and love by Variety. Jacques Audiard will be at the helm for the project. His last directed film project was with 2009’s “A Prophet.” His directorial film credits also included “The Beat That My Heart Skipped,” “Read My Lips” and “A Self-Made Hero.” “There are simply no words for me to express my joy at being on board Jacques’ next film as he is one of the most talented and inspiring directors today,” said Hengameh Panahi, a producer of the film. Cotillard will be seen in the upcoming Christopher Nolan-directed film “The Dark Knight Rises” next year. She won an Academy Award for Best Actress for “La Vie En Rose.” Her other film credits included “Inception,” “Big Fish” and “Nine.

Jacques Audiard's new prison thriller is the most stylish film to come out of Europe for years, following up on the promise of his previous movies Read My Lips and The Beat that My Heart Skipped and confirming his place among the greats of French cinema. Jason Solomons talks to a director who wants his audience to fly with him

Jacques Audiard wears a hat. It's a trilby that, the 57-year-old director says, keeps him warm in the winter and cool in the summer. He was wearing it in the heat of Cannes last May when I first met him, on a blazing roof terrace; and he's wearing it again today, in London, on an autumnal Monday when I catch him smoking his pipe outside the hotel where we're due to meet.

With horn-rimmed glasses, smart jacket and a cravat, he looks a bit like an English gentleman, a...