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The French auteur behind 8 Women, In the House and most recently When Autumn Falls is joining us to answer your questions, from how does he coax such amazing performances from actors to his visual influences

Is François Ozon the most talented French film-maker currently working? That’s a big ask, in a very crowded field, but Ozon has got the back catalogue to back it up. From his 1998 feature debut Sitcom (notwithstanding 1997’s 52-minute See the Sea), early films such as Fassbinder adaptation Water Drops on Burning Rocks and star-stuffed crime musical 8 Women, on to more recent works including Frantz and Summer of 85, Ozon has ranged widely across styles and genres, offering something new and original wherever he’s gone. He’s even done an English-language period drama, Angel, starring Romola Garai.

A distinctive feature of Ozon’s career is his ability to command great performances from top-notch female stars,...

European Film Promotion, which gives a boost to films and talent from Europe, has revealed the jury for the 28th edition of European Shooting Stars, which showcases actors from the continent.

The jury is comprised of five film professionals who will select 10 actors. They will then take part in a program at the Berlin Film Festival, which runs Feb. 13 – 23. The jury will select the actors from candidates who have been nominated by their national film promotion institutes and film centers.

The jury includes former European Shooting Star Ludivine Sagnier, an actor best known for her roles in films by François Ozon. She starred in, among others, “Water Drops on Burning Rocks” (2000), “8 Women” (2002) and “Swimming Pool” (2003), and she will also appear in Ozon’s latest film, “Quand vient l’automne” (2024). Sagnier has also worked with directors such as P.J. Hogan, Lee Tamahori, Paolo Sorrentino, Hirokazu Koreeda and Ridley Scott.

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Rainer Werner Fassbinder died as he lived: at many frames per second. The cinephile’s errand of trying to watch everything the German filmmaker made in his lifetime, from all 10 hours of “Berlin Alexanderplatz” to more modestly scaled melodramas like “The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant,” often feels like an act of running in place. Reports of his “contradictory” and “complex” nature reveal what we already know: He was a self-medicating, workaholic perfectionist who drove himself into the ground, completing more than 40 films in his short life, and died because of it. He also did not believe in love, or so say his latest collaborators in absentia, director François Ozon and Fassbinder’s longtime muse Hanna Schygulla.

Ozon has made his best film in years with “Peter von Kant,” one that will be seen by few but relished by all who do. The movie is both a response to...

More than 20 years after adapting a Rainer Werner Fassbinder play called “Waters Drops on Burning Rocks” into a movie, François Ozon has made this gender-flipped adaptation of one of Fassbinder’s greatest films, “The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant,” in an attempt to understand Fassbinder’s real-life struggle with the power plays of love.

Fassbinder’s “Petra von Kant” was shot very quickly on a very low budget, and he used a lot of long takes; every camera movement in Fassbinder’s version of this material feels so ultra-controlled that watching it is like getting tied up in an S & M dungeon or getting slowly strangled by a python. Ozon shoots his own “Peter von Kant” with a casualness that can feel frivolous, and he uses very conventional short takes for shot/reverse shot conversations.

Fassbinder’s “Petra von Kant” revolves around a lesbian love triangle that consists of...

Save Your Tears for Another Day: Ozon Revels in the Camp Mystique of R.W. Fassbinder

It’s clear François Ozon has long been obsessed with the cinema of New German Wave provocateur Rainer Werner Fassbinder, seeing as one of his first successes was 2000’s Water Drops on Burning Rocks, adapted from an unproduced screenplay of his idol’s. Over two decades later, and working at a similar breakneck pace, Ozon attempts something nearing sacrilege in Peter von Kant, a liberal reimagining of Fassbinder’s most hysterically excessive camp masterpiece, 1972’s The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant (read review). Whereas the original was a femme-centric snake pit featuring three of Fassbinder’s usual muses, Ozon switches the queered perspective to male and transposes bits and pieces of Fassbinder’s own life into the von Kant prism about a monstrous artist who devours all those around him in the quest to quell his desires.

Following its world premiere as the Berlin Film Festival opener, Francois Ozon’s “Peter von Kant” has been acquired by Strand Releasing for U.S. distribution.

Represented in international markets by Playtime, the critically acclaimed movie is inspired by Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s cult film “The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant,” with Denis Menochet playing the tormented filmmaker, opposite Isabelle Adjani, who stars as his muse.

Ozon previously told Variety that the movie was a “universal tale of passion, timely as ever” and “explores the relationships of domination, control and submission in the creative world.”

“Peter von Kant” marks Ozon’s sixth movie that played in competition at the Berlin Film Festival. He won the Silver Bear for his 2018 film, “By the Grace of God,” and “8 Women” 20 years ago. He also debuted “Water Drops on Burning Rocks,” another adaptation of a Fassbinder work, at the festival in 2000.

Playtime...

François Ozon gives Fassbinder’s all-female 1972 drama The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant a makeover, making it lighter and more camp

François Ozon made a breakthrough in his film-making career in 2000 with an adaptation of an unproduced stage play by Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Water Drops on Burning Rocks. Now, to open this year’s Berlin film festival, he has returned to the dark master of New German Cinema with a gender-switched version of Fassbinder’s 1972 movie The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant, that strange, angular, claustrophobic drama in which only women appear on screen.

Fassbinder’s film is set entirely in the apartment of a fashion designer who has an emotionally abusive relationship with her live-in assistant, and then conceives a mad and despairing love for a beautiful young woman who openly cheats on her. Ozon makes some of these characters men, but only some of them. We...

It’s a neat conceit, making the directing colossus of 1970s German cinema into the star of his own show. Peter Von Kant, the opening film of the Berlin Film Festival, is “freely adapted” by French director François Ozon from The Bitter Tears Of Petra Von Kant, Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s highly stylized 1972 story of three women locked in a toxic triangle of love, jealousy, domination and submission. The storyline and much of the dialogue, is the same; where Ozon shakes it up is by making the trio all men.

Ozon has tangled with Fassbinder before. His 2000 film, Water Drops On Burning Rocks, which also dealt with power struggles within sexual relationships, was adapted from a Fassbinder play. Taking on The Bitter Tears Of Petra Von Kant, a recognized landmark of European cinema, is a bolder move, made at a different moment in Ozon’s career. This is maestro on...

François Ozon, the prolific and provocative French director who won the Berlinale’s 2018 Golden Bear Award with “By the Grace of God,” is returning to the festival with “Peter von Kant” which will world premiere on opening night. A twist on Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s cult film “The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant,” Ozon’s movie has Denis Menochet playing the tormented filmmaker, opposite Isabelle Adjani, who stars as his muse. Like the original film, “Peter von Kant” is about a film about love, jealousy and domination. It’s Ozon’s sixth movie in competition at the Berlin Film Festival. Ozon’s Berlin films include 2000’s “Water Drops on Burning Rocks,” another adaptation of a Fassbinder work, and “8 Women,” which won the Silver Bear 20 years ago. The director discussed his artistic ambition for the “Peter von Kant” with Variety.

This is your second Fassbinder-based project. Why is Fassbinder...

The 72nd edition of the Berlin International Film Festival will open with François Ozon drama Peter Von Kant, starring Denis Menochet, Isabelle Adjani and Hanna Schygulla.

The French-language film will play as part of the international Competition and get its world premiere on February 10, 2022, at the Berlinale Palast.

The feature is an adaptation of Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s heralded film Die bitteren Tränen der Petra von Kant (The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant, 1972). The French filmmaker turns the character of Petra von Kant into a man and a filmmaker in a nod to Fassbinder.

Berlin organizers this morning announced protocols and restrictions for the in-person event, which will be shortened by three days and run with 50% capacity in cinemas.

The event remains one of the few festivals still on course to go ahead in-person at the start of 2022 after Sundance and Palm Springs were forced to cancel their physical...

The Berlin Film Festival has its opening film in François Ozon’s “Peter von Kant.”

The film, which stars Denis Menochet, Isabelle Adjani and Hanna Schygulla, is part of the fest’s International Competition and will have its world premiere on Feb. 10 at the Berlinale Palast. Variety revealed on Tuesday that the festival is planning to go ahead as an in-person event, and organizers provided further details of the plan on Wednesday.

“We are beyond thrilled to welcome back François Ozon to the festival and are happy to launch our next edition with his new film,” said Berlin artistic director Carlo Chatrian. “For this year’s opening, we were looking for a film that could bring lightness and verve into our somber daily lives. ‘Peter von Kant’ is a theatrical tour de force around the concept of lockdown. In the hands of Ozon, the kammerspiel becomes the perfect container for love and jealousy,...

Francois Ozon, one of France’s most prestigious and prolific filmmakers, will next direct Isabelle Adjani and Denis Menochet (“Custody”) in “Petra Von Kant,” a film adaptation of Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s cult play “The Bitter Tears.”

“Petra Von Kant” will star Menochet as Fassbinder, while Adjani will play the German director’s muse, according to Satellifax, which was first to report the news.

“The Bitter Tears” was previously adapted into a film by Fassbinder himself in 1972. Titled “The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant,” the film boasted an all-female cast with Margit Carstensen playing Petra von Kant, a prominent fashion designer with narcissistic tendencies.

Ozon previously adapted Fassbinder’s play “Water Drops on Burning Rocks” into a 2000 film with Ludivine Sagnier, which competed at the Berlinale.

“Petra Von Kant” will be produced by Ozon’s own production company, Foz Productions. The shoot is expected to kick off this week.

The French film centre will also lend its support to films by Rebecca Zlotowski, Gaspar Noé and Hugo P Thomas, as well as animated films by Michel Hazanavicus and Fernando Trueba and Javier Mariscal. Eight projects were singled out during the first 2021 session of the Cnc’s second advance on receipts committee. Standing tall among these works is Peter von Kant, the 21st feature film by prolific director François Ozon. For the second time, after Gouttes d’eau sur pierres brûlantes (in competition in Berlin in 2000), the filmmaker has adapted the play The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant by Germany’s Rainer Werner Fassbinder (who brought the production to the big screen himself in 1972). For the record, the original version of the work revolves around a famous fashion designer, widowed by her first husband, divorced from the second...

We have a brand new teaser trailer for Oxygen. This one comes from Netflix, serving as just one of the many original movies the streaming service has coming our way this year. The company is putting out at least one new movie a week, which is a lot more than any other major service on the market. In this case, we have a French-language thriller from director Alexandre Aja, serving as his follow-up to the 2019 alligator creature feature Crawl. It stars Melanie Laurent in what looks to be a tense and highly-contained ride.

The trailer opens with a close-up of someone waking up, rather surprised, and confused as to where they are. We then find Mélanie Laurent inside of a tube of some kind, surrounded by screens, not unlike the cryotubes seen in the Alien franchise. She is quick to find that the oxygen in this tank is running out and,...

New films by Francois Ozon, Fatih Akin and Denis Cote are among the titles that will compete for the Golden Bear at the upcoming Berlin Film Festival.

German director Akin’s “Der Goldene Handschuh” (“The Golden Glove”) and French helmer Ozon’s “Grâce à dieu” (“By the Grace of God”) were announced by the Berlinale in its first batch of competition films Thursday. Akin won the Golden Bear in 2004 with “Head-On.”

The lineup also includes “Der Boden unter den Fuessen” (“The Ground Beneath My Feet”) by Austrian director Marie Kreutzer; “Répertoire des villes disparues” (“Ghost Town Anthology”) by Canadian director Cote; “Ich war zuhause, aber” by German director Angela Schanelec; and “Kız Kardeşler” (“A Tale of Three Sisters”) by Turkish helmer Emin Alper.

All six competition films unveiled Thursday will have their world premieres in Berlin with the exception of “By the Grace of God,” which gets its international premiere at the festival.