News

The Japan-inclined daughter of a Belgian diplomat, Amélie Nothomb has published several books about her upbringing in Asia, including one in which she boldly channels her inner toddler. In “Métaphysique des tubes” (or “The Character of Rain” in English), Nothomb spends a considerable amount of time thoroughly convinced that she is God. “In the beginning,” opens the memoir, clearly evoking the Good Book. It’s a touch that charmed many in print, but proves tricky to replicate in the otherwise enchanting animated adaptation which premiered at Cannes, delighted Annecy and now finds its way stateside courtesy of Gkids.

As Nothomb remembers it, in those early years, she assumed the universe revolved around her, which makes “Little Amélie” a poetic look at the process by which a self-centered European girl born in a foreign land came to understand her place in society. Some of young Amélie’s ideas are quite strange,...

With filming of “Emily in Paris” season 5 now underway in France, Netflix has added a couple of new names to the cast of its hit show.

Bryan Greenberg, best known for “How to Make it in LA” and “The Mindy Project” and most recently seen in “Suits LA,” has joined the ongoing Parisian party and will play Jake, an American living in the French capital. Meanwhile, Michèle Laroque, a well-known and Cesar-nominated French actress and comedian known for films such as “Ma vie en Rose,” “Brillantissime” and “The Closet” will play Yvette, an old friend of Sylvie Grateau.

Greenberg and Laroque join fellow “Emily in Paris” newcomer Minnie Driver, who Variety announced has been cast in May and is set to play the royal Princess Jane.

Additional returning cast include Paul Forman (playing Nico), Arnaud Binard (Laurent G), alongside the previously confirmed Lily Collins (Emily Cooper), Philippine Leroy-Beaulieu (Sylvie), Ashley Park...

A new documentary about Brigitte Bardot offers a rare look into the life of the famous French actress, singer, and animal rights advocate.

Directed by Alain Berliner, known for Ma Vie en Rose, the film premiered recently at the Cannes Film Festival and focuses on Bardot’s journey from global stardom to a quiet life devoted to animals.

At 90 years old, Bardot agreed to share parts of her story on camera, letting viewers into her home in Saint-Tropez where she lives surrounded by horses, dogs, and other animals. The director wanted Bardot herself to narrate the film. “Not having an outside narrator, but have Brigitte Bardot be the one who tells the story,” Berliner explained to Variety.

The documentary traces Bardot’s early life, her rise to fame in the 1950s and 60s, and her decision to retire in 1973. Born in 1934 to a wealthy but strict family in Paris, Bardot...

Brigitte Bardot may be speaking on camera in a new documentary about her life, but director Alain Berliner says she’s still as mysterious as ever.

The new doc, simply titled Bardot, was shown recently at the Cannes Film Festival. It looks at Bardot’s rise to worldwide fame, her sudden retirement in the early 1970s, and her passion for animal rights.

Alain Berliner, known for Ma Vie en Rose, directed the film and told Variety that he wanted Bardot to tell her own story. “Not having an outside narrator, but have Brigitte Bardot be the one who tells the story,” he said.

Now 90 years old, Bardot still lives in her quiet home by the sea in Saint-Tropez. She let the camera into her private world, opening the doors of her estate where she lives surrounded by animals, dogs, donkeys, geese, and horses.

While she speaks openly about her love for animals,...

Brigitte Bardot reflects on the stardom she escaped from more than 50 years ago in “Bardot” the doc about the iconic French actor, singer and animal rights activist directed by “Ma Vie en Rose” helmer Alain Berliner that recently launched from the Cannes Film Festival.

But Bardot, who in 1973 retired at the age of 39 having become the first French movie star to achieve worldwide fame, remains “a very mysterious person,” says Berliner. Still, she opened up enough in the doc for Berliner to feel that he managed to accomplish his vision of “not having an outside narrator, but have Brigitte Bardot be the one who tells the story,” he adds.

Now aged 90, Bardot opens up the gates of her La Madrague estate in Saint-Tropez, where she lives surrounded by horses, dogs, geese and donkeys and speaks candidly, especially when it comes to her love for animals. But she also speaks for...

Red Bull Studios and London-based Featuristic Films have partnered on “Art of the Jump,” a feature documentary about the life and career of Sébastien Foucan, a well-known French athlete.

Directed by James Kermack, the documentary follows Foucan’s humble upbringing in the French suburb of Lisses to sports stardom. Foucan is known for participating in extreme sports such as freerunning and parkour, where he crosses obstacles through the use of running, jumping, climbing and rolling.

The film is produced by Julien Loeffler and James Kermack for Featuristic Films and Philipp Manderla and Dominique Cutts for Red Bull Studios. Production on the film recently wrapped after shooting across the U.K. and France.

“Sébastien Foucan’s story is a testament to the power of determination, innovation and the relentless pursuit of one’s dreams, dreams that ultimately come at a cost,” said Kermack, who described Foucan as “a man who refuses...

While Covid has never quite been eradicated, it has certainly been contained, allowing society to look to the future with a degree of positivity. This has been reflected in so many ways, not least the rise in movie attendance. The road to recovery has been long and painstaking, but moviegoing is back in vogue, with viewings increasing by over 60% last year, a trend likely to continue. Another reason for this growing popularity is the way movies are reflecting trends such as inclusivity. More and more LGBT-oriented films are being released, especially titles focusing on trans characters. Let’s take a closer look at these societal shifts, with the bonus of six movie suggestions where trans storylines are captivating audiences.

Why Inclusivity is Important

Minority groups have always had good reason to feel excluded from mainstream society, with fewer social opportunities, and sometimes facing outright prejudice and discrimination. The equality of...

UK production company is looking to make as many as 10 films this year.

Bardot and Cold Meat producer Featuristic Films has appointed former Motion Picture Capital production executive Laura Brook as head of film.

The appointment was confirmed this week by Julien Loeffler, managing director at the London-based company which is now looking to expand.

Brook’s appointment follows on from that of former UKTV and Wag Entertainment exec Meredith Coral as Featuristic Films’ head of TV last year.

At Motion Picture Capital Brook worked on projects such as Netflix’s The Titan and Kodachrome with Ed Harris, Elizabeth Olsen and Jason Sudeikis.

Exclusive: Fremantle has acquired global distribution rights to the upcoming Brigitte Bardot documentary.

TF1’s Bardot from Alain Berliner (Ma Vie en Rose), which will air later this year on the French network, is a 90-minute feature from Featuristic Films and Timpelpictures that aims to unearth the true life story of a “muse to the greatest artists who was often misunderstood.”

Fremantle will sell around the world and Deadline can reveal that the likes of Paul Watson, Claude Lelouch, Allain Bougrain-Dubourg and Jean-Max Rivière are taking part in the doc.

Bardot was one of the first French movie stars to attain worldwide fame. The And God Created Woman star lived a life under the spotlight, thrown from success to scandal until she almost completely disappeared. Seen in the present day as an enigma, Bardot, who will shortly turn 90, shares her current outlook on life, being ahead of her time on women’s rights,...

Alain Berliner, who directed the BAFTA-nominated and Golden Globe-winning “Ma vie en rose,” is in pre-production on feature documentary “Bardot,” about French actor, singer and animal rights activist Brigitte Bardot. Bardot is giving the project her full support, and will narrate the film herself.

“Bardot” is produced by Julien Loeffler, James Kermack and James Barton-Steel at Featuristic Films, teaming with Nicolas Bary at TimpelPictures. They have released an exclusive first look image from the film.

The film will offer Bardot an opportunity “to speak openly about her life and revisit some of the issues she feels passionately about,” such as women’s place in society, animal welfare, deforestation and global warming, according to a statement from the producers. It will contain never seen before archive film and photos, as well as music from the 1950s and 1960s.

Berliner said: “The icon that is Brigitte Bardot remains a mystery. Today, she should be considered a feminist,...

Unlike most of the kids in his class, 16-year-old Jamie New knows what he wants to be when he grows up: a drag queen. And unlike most of the fabulous aspiring female impersonators who’ve strutted on-screen before him, he has surprisingly few obstacles in his way. Jamie has an understanding mom, a supportive best friend and a school full of closed-minded students who don’t take much to come around, which makes this glittery big-screen adaptation of 2017’s well-liked West End tuner an unusually festive affair. “Everybody’s Talking About Jamie” is to queer teens what “High School Musical” was to, well, their more closeted peers: an upbeat, be-yourself pep rally for self-questioning young adult audiences.

Pre-pandemic, the feel-good musical was snapped up by Fox for big-screen release, where it would have followed in the footsteps of the studio’s “Love, Simon” — a second unapologetically gay, refreshingly nonjudgmental coming-out and...

After last year’s scandal over Roman Polanski’s director win, the 46th Cesar Awards, France’s highest film honors, which took place on Friday in the presence of nominees, has been the subject of vitriolic criticism from industry figures.

Some have claimed that the spectacle was so vulgar that it has tarnished the image of French cinema and will discourage audiences from returning to theaters when they finally reopen. But, in fact, the awards were a fitting encapsulation of an industry that’s increasingly at odds with itself.

The 2021 edition marked a new era for the Cesar Awards, which is now headed by Veronique Cayla, former president of Arte, and vice chaired by Eric Toledano, co-director of “The Intouchables,” who took over from Alain Terzian following an industry revolt over the lack of transparency and democracy within the institution. With the last six months, the operating model and corporate...

Filming got underway this week in Paris on Alors, On Danse, the French remake of 2017 UK feature Finding Your Feet.

The French update is being directed by veteran French actress, director and comedian Michèle Laroque (Ma Vie En Rose) who will also star alongside well-known French faces Thierry Lhermitte (La Dîner De Cons), Isabelle Nanty (Amelie) and Jean-Hugues Anglade (Betty Blue) as well as Jeanne Balibar (Les Misérables) and Patrick Timsit (Le Cousin).

The film is being produced by Maxime Delauney and Romain Rousseau of Nolita Cinema and is among the first films to start shooting in the capital since the country came out of lockdown. The film’s original producers Meg Leonard, Nick Moorcroft, James Spring, Andrew Berg, John Sachs and Charlotte Walls all serve as executive producers on the film.

The French remake deal was brokered by Fred Films’ James Spring who told us that there are additional...

“Psycho.” “The Silence of the Lambs.” “Dressed to Kill.” What do all of these classic films have in common? They feature a transgender or gender variant person as a psychotic, deranged, murderous villain. The pesky trope began with “Psycho,” in what would become a favorite theme of Alfred Hitchcock’s, and proliferated throughout some of the most iconic thrillers of the last fifty years. Then there’s the “trans deception” narrative, which originated with dramas like “The Crying Game” and “M. Butterfly” but soon became a mainstay in comedies like “Tootsie,” “Bosom Buddies,” and “Ace Ventura: Pet Detective.”

There are countless troubling examples of trans characters being portrayed as evil and duplicitous or sad and pathetic, far more than the average cinephile realizes. Most of the time, trans characters die before the end of a movie or TV episode. They’re all discussed in “Disclosure: Trans Lives Onscreen,” a new...

Adolescence is inevitably turbulent, and one of its cruelest paradoxes is the way society pushes us to be exceptional (who doesn’t want to feel special?) at the same time that insecure/jealous peers reinforce the idea that it will all pass easier if we just keep our heads down. Add to that the complication of feeling as though you were born with the wrong gender, and those years are sure to be confusing: How to stand out and blend in at the same time? Few films convey that tension better than “Girl,” a deeply humane first feature from Belgian director Lukas Dhont about a boy who wants to be a ballerina.

Arriving 21 years after Belgian classic “Ma Vie en Rose,” but rejecting that film’s hyper-stylized, high-kitsch aesthetic in favor of fellow countrymen the Dardenne brothers’ more down-to-earth sense of observational naturalism, “Girl” focuses on how the greatest conflict...

Mariana Rondón’s tale of the tense relationship between a mother and her curly-haired son has dark but insightful undertones

This breakthrough drama from Venezuelan writer-director Mariana Rondón starts small – sketching a somewhat tetchy, resentful relationship between a single mother and her nine-year-old son in latter-day Caracas – and gradually builds an idea of a society constructed along restrictively gendered lines. Both main characters are brushing against the grain: mama Marta (the excellent Samantha Castillo) quitting menial cleaning work to try out as a security guard, Junior (Samuel Lange Zambrano) struggling to straighten the unruly moptop he inherited from his macho deceased dad and become a singer. (He’s a little like the crossdressing hero of 1997’s French crowd-pleaser Ma Vie en Rose.) Rondón charts their progress in unemphatic slices of life, just playful enough for the whole not to feel like a tract; a pre-teen female neighbour’s gabby obsession with rape – funny,...

French-Algerian director Rachid Bouchareb has lately alternated between sweeping historical dramas (the WWII drama "Days of Glory," the Algerian War portrait "Outside the Law") and sentimental two-handers with quieter approaches ("London River," "Just Like a Woman"). In all cases, however, Bouchareb tends to deal in similar themes of contrasting political and personal relationships. "Two Men In Town," a loose remake of José Giovanni's 1973 tale of a paroled murderer trying to get his life back together, applies this tendency to the least-ideological of Bouchareb's movies, resulting in a thinly executed tale littered with uneven performances. Nevertheless, a committed turn by Forest Whitaker in the lead role, paired with "Holy Motors" and "My Life in Pink" cinematographer Yves Cape's evocative images of the spare western landscape, lead to an intriguing contrast between the half-baked material and a handful of stronger ingredients. It's a movie at war with its deficiencies. "Two Men.

The Karlovy Vary International Film Festival has set the program for its 47th edition, including an official competition featuring eight world premieres and four international premieres. Those films will compete for the festival's Crystal Globe, which has previously gone to Frédéric Dumont's "Angel at Sea," Henrik Ruben Genz's "Terribly Happy,"  Laurie Collyer's "Sherrybaby" and Alain Berliner's "Ma Vie En Rose," among others. The film festival runs June 29-July 7, 2012. A complete rundown of the program -- including descriptions and commentary care of the festival -- is below. Official Selection - Competition Eight world premieres and four international premieres will be competing in the main competition of the 47th Kviff, which will also be profiling four talented debut directors One of the films competing for the Crystal Globe for Best Film will be Piazza Fontana: The Italian...

Jean Dujardin Jean Dujardin made film-award history after he won the 2012 Best Actor Academy Award for his performance as a fading silent-film matinee idol in Michel Hazanavicius' The Artist. But before I proceed, I must say that those who compare Dujardin with former Best Actor Oscar winner Roberto Benigni (Life Is Beautiful, 1998) should watch more French and Italian films. The comparison is ludicrous. What Dujardin and Benigni have in common is that they've both made comedies and neither one of them speaks very good English. That's it. (Photo: Todd Wawrychuk / © A.M.P.A.S.) Anyhow, Jean Dujardin was a first-time Academy Award nominee. His Best Actor competition consisted of Demián Bichir for Chris Weitz's A Better Life, Gary Oldman for Tomas Alfredson's Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, George Clooney for Alexander Payne's The Descendants, and Brad Pitt for Moneyball. As a result of his victory, Dujardin...

Christopher Plummer, Octavia Spencer, Meryl Streep, Jean Dujardin Christopher Plummer, Octavia Spencer, Meryl Streep, and Jean Dujardin pose backstage at the 2012 Academy Awards held at Hollywood and Highland Center on February 26. Plummer was the Best Supporting Actor winner for Mike Mills' Beginners. Spencer was Best Supporting Actress for Tate Taylor's The Help. Streep won Best Actress for Phyllida Lloyd's The Iron Lady. And Dujardin was the year's Best Actor for Michel Hazanavicius' The Artist. (Photo: Todd Wawrychuk / © A.M.P.A.S.) This was Christopher Plummer's second Oscar nomination. His fellow Oscar nominees this year were first-timer Jonah Hill for Bennett Miller's Moneyball, two-time nominee Max von Sydow for Stephen Daldry's Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, two-time nominee (in the acting categories) Kenneth Branagh (as Laurence Olivier) for Simon Curtis' My Week with Marilyn, and three-time nominee Nick Nolte for Gavin O'Connor's Warrior.

Céline Sciamma’s Tomboy screened at the 2011 Los Angeles Film Festival. While she was not able to attend the festival, our occasional blogger, Pamela Ezell conducted an interveiw with her via email below. The synopsis for Celine Sciamma’s Tomboy begins, ‘Laure is a tomboy. On her arrival in a new neighborhood, she lets Lisa and her crowd believe that she is a boy” but Tomboy is about so much more than that. In her moving at times funny and bittersweet coming of age film about a young woman experimenting with gender, Sciamma takes us on a journey while her young protagonist explores familial relationships, sibling love, the victory of acceptance and the pain of being an outsider .

What inspired this idea? Gender identity is such a relevant topic – do you know a “tomboy”?

I had the storyline in mind for a while, as a pitch: “a little girl pretending...

——————–

Inception

Directed by Christopher Nolan

Written by Christopher Nolan

2010, USA

For a filmmaker often accused of possessing a cold, clinical, fussy approach, Christopher Nolan seems to produce an awful lot of movies propelled by obsession. His 2000 breakthrough, Memento, used its backwards structure to underline the jumbled frustration of its protagonist – in the same way, Nolan has consistently employed unorthodox delivery methods for his particular brand of pathos. For all of the critical hemming and hawing over whether or not Nolan is a genius or a fraud, there rests one simple fact: his movies either work on an emotional level for the viewer, or they don’t. If they fail to connect, Nolan’s ever-more elaborate schemes feel cheap and even exploitative. If he succeeds, however, the combined effect of viewer involvement and Nolan’s narrative and visual trickery can be an incredibly potent experience. Inception ranks as Nolan’s greatest gambit yet,...

This is the best of times and the worst of times for the kinds of films we here in this blog find ourselves seeking. I'm talking about good independent films--which usually means films financed, released and marketed outside the big distribution channels. That's a vague category which might also include foreign films, documentaries and classic revivals. These are the films where the future of film as an art form resides.

I have nothing to say against mainstream movies, the kinds that open on thousands of screens and are the only movies most people ever hear about. I like a lot of them--too many some of my readers say. They fend nicely for themselves. Sometimes they can be genuine art. Good for them.

I speak instead of films that make their own way in the world, inhabiting those few theaters that are booked with taste and independence. Or films available only on DVD.