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Back in 1977, Shelley Winters, Max von Sydow, Renato Pozzetto, and Alberto Lionello starred in a dark comedy called Black Journal (or Gran Bollito), which was directed by Mauro Bolognini and was loosely based on the true crime case of serial killer Leonarda Cianciulli. Now, Variety reports that Trouble Every Day director Claire Denis is in talks to direct a remake of that film, titled The Soap Maker.

The approach being taken this time around is to make this a cannibalistic elevated real crime drama in the vein of The Silence of the Lambs, Seven, and Get Out, “with a decidedly dark tone and a psychological thriller feel.” So we’re not getting a dark comedy from Denis. Variety notes that the producers hold the rights not only to the Black Journal screenplay but also to “a diary that Leonarda Cianciulli allegedly wrote in the psychiatric prison were she spent the...

Revered French auteur Claire Denis is in advanced talks to direct cannibalistic crime drama “The Soap Maker.”

The project, being shopped around at Berlin’s EFM, is an updated remake of Italian director Mauro Bolognini’s 1977 cult movie “Gran Bollito,” which starred Shelley Winters as a serial killer who cooked the bodies of her victims into soap, cake and cookies.

The English-language film is inspired by the true story of Italy’s Leonarda Cianciulli, who in the late 1930s and early ’40s murdered three local women in the central Italian town of Correggio and disposed of their bodies with chemicals — using what was left to make soaps, candles, cookies and cakes that she shared with people in her community.

“The Soap Maker,” which is lead-produced by the Los Angeles- and New York-based Gerry Pass via his Chrome Entertainment shingle, is being packaged by CAA and has been pitched to prospective buyers at the EFM.

Mia McKenna-Bruce, the breakout star of the 2023 hit ‘How to Have Sex’ and the winner of this year’s BAFTA Rising Star Award, has landed a leading role in her next major film project.

The British actress will star in ‘The Cry of the Guard’ (Le Cri Des Gardes), the upcoming feature film directed by renowned French filmmaker Claire Denis. McKenna-Bruce will take over from Riley Keough in the lead role and will act alongside Matt Dillon and Isaach de Bankolé.

The film is based on Bernard-Marie Koltes’ play ‘Black Battles With Dogs’ and is being produced by French production companies Curiosa Films and Vixens, along with Senegal’s Astou Production and support from Arte France Cinema.

Written by Claire Denis, Suzanne Lindon, and Andrew Litvack, the movie takes place over the course of one night near a large construction site in Senegal. The story revolves around a group of...

Mia McKenna-Bruce, the breakout star of 2023 hit “How to Have Sex” and 2024’s BAFTA Rising Star winner, has been cast in her next major project.

The Brit will star alongside Matt Dillon and Isaach de Bankolé in “The Cry of the Guard” (“Le Cri Des Gardes”), the next feature from French auteur director Claire Denis, taking over from Riley Keough in a lead role.

The film — being produced by French production outfits Curiosa Films and Vixens alongside Goodfellas and Saint Laurent Productions, with Senegal’s Astou Production and backing from Arte France Cinema — is adapted from Bernard-Marie Koltes’ play “Black Battles With Dogs,” and was written by Denis, Suzanne Lindon and Andrew Litvack.

The story spans one night near a vast construction site in Senegal, where a group of workers are confronted by a man whose brother was killed on the premises in a work-related incident. The film marks the...

Claire Denis is gearing up to shoot her next film The Fence [working title], an Africa-set feature that has a completed script.

Speaking to Screen at the Qumra event in Doha, Qatar, Denis said, “The script is finished; I have to do some corrections because I’m not sure about locations until today. One person is missing in the cast, so I might have to rewrite some parts.”

Denis sparsely described the project as “a film with four main characters, three men and a woman.” Three of the four cast members are attached, although Denis would not confirm names.

“It takes place in Africa,...

French writer Christine Angot has written many books, but Incest (1999) is arguably the one she is most famous for. Variously defined by Angot and others as a novel but also a work of autobiographical non-fiction (some call it “autofiction”), it features a protagonist also named Christine who, just like Angot, has a daughter named Leonore, an ex-husband named Claude, and a biological father who started raping Christine on weekends and holidays when she was 13 years old. The tome, quite experimental in places, triggered a contentious reception in the French literary world and was not translated into English until 2017, but it’s seen as a hugely influential contribution to the discourse all over the world about sexual trauma, especially in childhood, and especially where incest is involved.

Now in her 60s, Angot has directed her first documentary film, A Family (Une Famille), although this isn’t her first foray into cinema.

Qatar’s Doha Film Institute (Dfi) has announced that Leos Carax, Claire Denis, Atom Egoyan, Martín Hernández and Jim Sheridan will serve as Qumra Masters at the 10th edition of its respected talent incubator event, running from March 1 to 6.

They join a long list of top professionals to have participated in the Qumra meeting since its launch in 2014, which has included James Schamus, Naomi Kawase, Asghar Farhadi, Gael Garcia Bernal and Tilda Swinton.

Under the Qumra format, a select group of Mena and international filmmakers and producers of projects supported by the Dfi’s grants program attend the six-day talent and project incubator meeting in Doha.

The Qumra Masters give a masterclass and then provide one-on-one mentorship to the partipants alongside a host of other industry professionals in attendance.

French director Carax is currently working on post-production for his personal work It’s Not Me, which follows his award-winning pop-rock melodrama Annette,...

The 74th Berlin International Film Festival unveiled its full lineup Monday at its official press conference in the House of World Cultures in Berlin. Berlinale managing director Mariëtte Rissenbeek and artistic director Carlo Chatrian presented the films that will compete for this year’s Golden and Silver Bears both in the competition and encounters sections.

Mexican director Alonso Ruizpalacios, a Berlinale regular and two-time Silver Bear winner — for A Cop Movie in 2022 and Museo in 2018 — returns to Berlin competition with his English-language feature debut La Cocina. Rooney Mara and The Cop Movie alum Raúl Briones star in the drama set over the course of a single day in a bustling New York City restaurant. Briones plays an undocumented cook in a relationship with Julia (Mara), an American waitress who cannot commit to their relationship. Fifth Season and WME are selling North American rights to La Cocina with HanWay handling international sales.

AMC Networks is bolstering the leadership team for its film group, which is comprised of IFC Films, Rlje Films, and Shudder. The company has added two new executives and promoted others, including one executive formerly with A24.

The hires come in the wake of an exodus of departures at IFC Films that began in March, including president Arianna Bocco after a 17-year run. The hires compose the team assembled under new film group head Scott Shooman, who took the job last month.

Nicole Weis, who previously worked at A24 as its VP of sales and distribution, is joining the team as VP of Distribution, managing the theatrical rollout of the film group’s output, and Judy Woloshen, who has been with AMC Networks, is moving over to the film group and is the VP of Public Relations. Weis will report to Scott Shooman, head of the film group, and Woloshen will promote to Olivia Dupuis,...

[Editor’s note: The following interview was conducted before the SAG-AFTRA strike began on July 14, 2023.]

The following interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Juliette Binoche has made her career out of playing characters who are independent, searching, unsatisfied, restless. From playing Czech protest photographer Tereza in her breakout movie, the Philip Kaufman erotic classic “The Unbearable Lightness of Being,” to playing a composer’s wife left grieving and with his baggage in Krzysztof Kieślowski’s “Three Colors: Blue,” the Academy Award-winning French actress plays women pulling themselves through confusing situations, political intrigue, and perverse romantic entanglements. Often at once.

Her body of work eschews a pat introduction, but the Quad Cinema in New York has put together a syllabus of sorts with “Beautiful Binoche,” a series of films running from August 4-10 in the lead-up to next week’s release of her new film “Between Two Worlds”, about a famous author who goes undercover as a cleaning lady to investigate the exploitation of...

An edgy new voice within the world of French genre, Adrien Beau worked as a designer and scenographer for the likes of Dior, John Galliano and Agnes B before making his feature debut with the offbeat vampire movie “Vourdalak.”

Produced by Judith-Lou Levy at Les Films du Bal, “Vourdalak” will world premiere at Venice Critics’ Week and will likely be one of its boldest entries. At a time when horror has become a mainstream genre overloaded with special effects, “Vourdalak” couldn’t be more radical. Lensed in Super 16, the film’s central character is a vampire patriarch named Gorcha, played by a marionette that Beau operates and lends his voice to.

In an interview with Variety ahead of the festival, Beau says he got the idea for the film after he and Levy came across “La Famille du Vourdalak,” a strange vampire novella penned by Alexeï Konstantinovitch Tolstoï, published in...

From the films of Krzysztof Kieślowski to Claire Denis, Oscar winner Juliette Binoche has starred in many of your favorite European arthouse classics, and she’s probably the reason we return to them again and again. This summer, New Yorkers — or any ambitious traveling cinephiles — will have the chance to see many of her all-time greatest performances on 35mm thanks to a new retrospective set for the Quad Cinema in Greenwich Village.

IndieWire exclusively announces “Beautiful Binoche,” which will take place August 4–10 at New York City’s longest-running, four-screen multiplex. In addition to some of the great Binoche titles from the ’80s, ’90s, and 2000s, the Quad Cinema will also present Binoche’s latest film, “Between Two Worlds,” opening from Cohen Media Group on August 11.

The French actress has long made a career playing determined women pulling themselves through confusing situations — from perverse erotic entanglements to political intrigue and isolating grief.

Exclusive: Longtime IFC Films and Cinetic Media PR colleagues Laura Sok and Kate McEdwards are launching new PR and strategy firm, Track Shot.

Track Shot will be based in New York City and work across independent, foreign and genre films as well as distribution strategy. The duo brings more than two decades in the publicity and communications field as well as a deep knowledge of the distribution landscape. Sok and McEdwards have built and led hundreds of film campaigns during their careers working in-house and alongside major distributors on the agency side. Previously, they led PR efforts for IFC Films, IFC Midnight, Sundance Selects, IFC Films Unlimited (streaming service) and most recently Shudder and Rlje.

Their final campaign for IFC Films was Matt Johnson’s chart-topping BlackBerry. This year they also launched Kyle Edward Ball’s breakthrough feature Skinamarink for Shudder/IFC Films.

Among their many successful campaigns at IFC...

Claire Denis does not define herself as anyone’s protégé.

The “Both Sides of the Blade” director shut down a question posed by The Guardian asking what it was like to be a “protégé” of Jim Jarmusch, Wim Wenders, and Jacques Rivette, among Denis’ previous collaborators.

“Protégé! It’s insulting,” Denis replied. “What a vision of women you have. It’s so disgusting to say things like that. Would you use that word for a man?”

She continued, “I was working as an assistant director. I made my own way and was paying my own rent. They chose me because I was good at my job.”

Denis made her feature directorial debut with 1988’s “Chocolat.” Despite her decades in the film industry, the French auteur admitted she is still fearful of filmmaking “all the time.”

“Everything about filmmaking is frightening,” Denis said. “I’m scared before about making a bad movie,...

The start of any month brings with it batches of movies added to streaming services’ libraries. As of this week, Netflix has “Girl, Interrupted,” “Steel Magnolias” and “Traffic,” HBO Max has “Blue Valentine,” “Hustle & Flow” and “Parasite,” and Hulu has “Atonement” and “Boogie Nights.” A handful of newer titles are also premiering digitally. First up is a spellbinding thriller featuring some of Hollywood’s hottest young actors.

The contender to watch this week: “How to Blow Up a Pipeline”

Neon picked up this eco-thriller out of last year’s Toronto International Film Festival, after which it won raves for its gripping portrait of young DIY environmental activists who band together to destroy oil pipes in West Texas. Based on Andreas Malm‘s nonfiction book of the same name, “How to Blow Up a Pipeline” stars Ariela Barer (“Runaways”), Sasha Lane (“American Honey”), Lukas Gage (“The White Lotus”), Marcus Scribner...

Each week we highlight the noteworthy titles that have recently hit streaming platforms in the United States. Check out this week’s selections below and past round-ups here.

Both Sides of the Blade (Claire Denis)

In Both Sides of the Blade a romance breaks down and threatens to break up in a stylish apartment overlooking the sweet Parisian skyline. The director is of course Claire Denis, a filmmaker whose last work began in a place that looked like Eden and ended in a spaceship plummeting toward no less than a black hole. A baroque melodrama that might just maybe be a trolling farce, Both Sides of the Blade‘s concerns are of a more earthbound variety–though if the insistent strings of Tindersticks’ score are something to go by, they are of no less importance. – Rory O. (full review)

Where to Stream: Hulu

Demonlover (Olivier Assayas)

Like so many Olivier Assayas films,...

With its list of new releases for May 2023, Hulu is relying on an acclaimed original and a whole lotta FX.

The acclaimed original in question in The Great season 3. Premiering on May 12, this historical black comedy with continue the story of Catherine the Great (Elle Fanning) and her pal Peter III (Nicholas Hoult). The other Hulu original series of note this month is The Clearing on May 24. Based on the best-selling crime novel In the Clearing this story will follow a story inspired by the real life events behind Australian cult “The Family.”

For its other TV options in May, Hulu is turning to its cable partner FX. Class of ’09, an FBI thriller starring Kate Mara and Brian Tyree Henry, premieres on May 10. That will be followed by The Secrets of Hillsong, a docuseries investigating the controversial church on May 20.

Hulu’s list of original movies this month is...

“The Great” returns to Hulu for Season 3 on May 12. Elle Fanning portrays Catherine the Great, desperate to turn Russia into an enlightened nation, while Nicholas Hoult plays Peter III, her libertine husband. Despite marital problems, including Catherine’s attempt to murder him, Peter now claims to be in love with his wife. The show, loosely based on history, takes a snarky, sexy, and irreverent ride through 18th-century Russia. Catherine was the longest-running female ruler in the nation’s history.

Check out “The Great” Season 3 trailer:

FX’s suspense thriller “Class of ’09” streams May 10 on Hulu. A class of FBI agents at three points in time face changes in the U.S. criminal justice system, which has been altered by AI. The series takes a deep dive into the nature of justice and the choices we make.

Watch the trailer for “Class of ‘09”:

Also returning to the Disney-owned...

Music Box is unveiling the trailer for “Revoir Paris,” a French drama boasting a Cesar-winning performance by Virginie Efira. The movie, which bowed at Cannes’ Directors Fortnight and played at Toronto, will have its New York premiere on June 23 at Film at Lincoln Center and IFC Film Center.

A meditation on healing, the film tells the story of Mia (Efira), a married translator who survived a mass shooting in a Paris restaurant, and feels haunted by the trauma, yet unable to recollect memories of the tragic attack. Determined to reconstruct the sequence of events and reestablish a sense of normalcy, Mia finds herself repeatedly returning to the bistro where the shooting happened. In the process she forms bonds with fellow survivors, including banker Thomas (Benoît Magimel) and teenager Félicia (Nastya Golubeva). Efira, who just won a Cesar Award for her role in the film, stars opposite Magimel, the Cesar-winning actor of “Pacifiction,...

After nabbing Palme d’Ors for his last two films, Ruben Östlund is selecting this year’s winner of Cannes’ top prize. The Swedish director of “Triangle of Sadness” and “The Square” has been appointed jury president for the 76th Cannes Film Festival, it was announced Tuesday.

“I am happy, proud, and humbled to be trusted with the honor of Jury President for this year’s Competition at the Festival de Cannes,” Östlund said in a statement announcing his appointment. “Nowhere in the film world is the anticipation as strong as when the curtain rises on the films in Competition at the festival. It is a privilege to be part of it, together with the Cannes audience of connoisseurs. I am sincere when I say that cinema culture is in its most important period ever. The cinema has a unique aspect. There, we watch together, and it demands more on...

As the 2023 Berlin International Film Festival drew to a close, the first of the three major international film festivals began giving out its awards. This year’s Berlin jury was headed by Kristen Stewart, and the selections promised to reflect the actress’ famously good taste in movies. But a strong lineup featuring a variety of innovative films from the world’s top directors ensured that their job was never going to be easy. From a timely documentary about the war in Ukraine to a variety of dramas about men trapped in small spaces (see: “Inside” and “Manhole”), the eclectic collection of films had something for everyone.

At last year’s festival, Carla Simon’s Spanish Drama “Alcarras” won the coveted Golden Bear. Several of the biggest names in global cinema also walked away with big prizes, as Claire Denis won the Silver Bear for Best Director for “Both Sides of the Blade...

Louis Garrel’s “The Innocent” and Dominik Moll’s thriller “The Night of the 12th” are leading the race at the 48th Cesar Awards, France’s equivalent to the Oscars.

Nominated for 11 Cesar nominations, “The Innocent” is a heist romantic comedy starring Garrel, Roschdy Zem and Noemie Merlant, who previously starred in “Portrait of a Lady on Fire” and most recently in “Tár.” Produced by Anne-Dominique Toussaint at Les Films des Tournelles, the crowdpleaser world premiered out of competition at Cannes for the 75th anniversary of the festival.

“The Night of the 12th,” meanwhile, is in the running for 10 Cesar awards. The brooding topical procedural, which also opened as part of Cannes’ Premiere section, stars Bastien Bouillon and Bouli Lanners as two cops trying to solve a gruesome murder. The movie, produced by Haut et Court (“The Class”), delves into issues of gender and violence.

Other top Cesar contenders include Cedric Klapisch’s dance-filled “Rise,...

Following The Film Stage’s collective top 50 films of 2022, as part of our year-end coverage, our contributors are sharing their personal top 10 lists.

Just hours prior a friend asked what’s on my best-of-2022 list. (This sounds made-up; I promise it actually happened.) I could run it down with exacting detail, each entry signaling a postmark—personal, temporal, geographic, formal—in the year before one escaped me. Absolutely, entirely, gone as if never seen. Consulting my Notes app let all attendant thoughts and feelings rush back—where and when seen, fulfilled or complicated desires, fruitful conversations (including with its director) and strong recommendations all the time since.

It is a great film. Have I thought about it more than Tár (stylized as TÁR), which but minutes prior I’d asked if my companion saw? Clearly not. Tár (stylized as TÁR) also doesn’t appear here. Much as I liked Todd Field...

Comedies such as “Serial (Bad) Weddings 3” and family fare, including “Pil’s Adventures” and “The Wolf and the Lion,” helped the overseas box office for French movies climb back in 2022.

While international ticket sales for French movies were still 32.5 down compared with pre-pandemic times, admissions grossed €167.4 million (180 million) from 27 million admissions in 2022 – a 51.8 year-on increase.

Figures highlighting the performance of French movies in theaters at festivals and on streaming services were unveiled by Unifrance, the French film and TV promotion org, during the Export Day, which took place on Tuesday in Paris.

“Youth and family audiences were the first to return to theaters (when they reopened), and so films targeted at these demographics performed best,” said Unifrance in its study. Theaters in most countries around the world were indeed shut down for several months in 2021.

The org’s co-managing director Gilles Renouard also noted that there was a “concentration of...

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The Los Angeles Film Critics Association has named both Everything Everywhere All at Once and Tár as its best picture for 2022.

On Sunday, the critics association announced its winners for the best films of 2022. Living actor Bill Nighly and Tár star Cate Blanchett were both named best lead performance. This was the first year that Lafca introduced gender-neutral acting categories, including two awards for best lead performance and two for best supporting performance.

Tár took home several awards, including Todd Field being named best director and best screenplay.

The best supporting performance went to Dolly De Leon in Triangle of Sadness and Ke Huy Quan in Everything Everywhere All at Once.

Jerzy Skolimowski’s Eo won the best film not in the English language, and Laura Poitras’ All The Beauty And The Bloodshed won the best documentary/nonfiction film.

The best animated movie...

IFFKThe festival will honour Iranian filmmaker and women’s rights activist Mahnaz Mohammadi with the Spirit of Cinema award.Tnm StaffMahnaz Mohammadi / IFFKOf the 185 films that will be screened at the International Film Festival of Kerala (Iffk), 32 are directed by women from 17 countries. The 27th edition of the festival which will be held between December 9 and 16 in Thiruvananthapuram will honour a woman filmmaker with the Spirit of Cinema award. The felicitation was introduced in the last edition of the festival held in March this year, and the award was presented to Kurdish filmmaker Lisa Calan. In this edition, Iranian filmmaker and women’s rights activist Mahnaz Mohammadi will receive the award on the inaugural day of the Iffk. Mahnaz's first documentary, Women without Shadows, told the story of homeless and abandoned women in a shelter home. She has directed several other documentaries including Travelogue, in which she interviews on a train,...

Claire Denis’s Both Sides of the Blade, starring Juliette Binoche, joins other classics where three’s a crowd, from The Piano to The Favourite

Call it the original triangle of sadness. As much as the mores and taboos of screen romance have shifted over the decades, the love triangle has remained a constant: a problem that screenwriters rarely manage to solve without someone being hurt or worse. Ménage à trois solutions are rare; heteronormative coupledom must usually prevail. And yet our fascination endures with the simultaneously simple and wildly complicated crisis of loving two people at once – rarely depicted with more adult candour than in Claire Denis’s new drama Both Sides of the Blade, now streaming on Mubi.

The story is slender but urgent: radio presenter Sara (Juliette Binoche) is happy in her 10-year marriage to former rugby player Jean (Vincent Lindon) until a chance sighting of her...

A retrospective on the late great French-Swiss director and New Wave pioneer Jean-Luc Godard as well as special screenings of three award-winning films are among the many elements of France’s participation at the 53rd International Film Festival of India (Iffi) in Goa, beginning on November 20.

France is the festival’s Country of Focus, in reciprocity of India being named the Country of Honour at the Marche du Cinema of the Cannes Film Festival earlier this year on the occasion of the 75th anniversary of the country’s Independence.

There will be special screenings of Iffi favourite Claire Denis’s ‘Both Sides of the Blade’, starring Juliette Binoche and Vincent Lindon; Albert Serra’s ‘Pacifiction’ with Benoit Magimel; and Mia Hansen Love’s ‘One Fine Morning’, which features former Bond girl Lea Seydoux in a lead role.

France will also be represented by a heavyweight delegation, which will include producer Olivier Delbosc,...

Vincent Lindon and Juliette Binoche under Claire Denis’s direction in Both Sides of the Blade (aka Fire) Photo: Courtesy of Curiosa Films. An IFC Films release. The French Film Festival is celebrating three decades of bringing Francophile cinema to UK audiences this year, with venues stretching from Shetland to Poole. Running through November and into December, there's an eclectic mix of films, from classics to recent hits. To celebrate, we've picked six of the best and a shorts programme suggestion - for you to catch. For a full list of screenings visit the official site.

Both Sides Of The Blade, streaming on Curzon@Home

If you can't make it to a cinema then this is just one of several films you can catch at home courtesy of Curzon in a selection that also includes Casablanca Beats and Paris, 13th District. By using the code FFF30 at Curzon from now...

It’s not so much the question of whether or not Claire Denis and Tindersticks are modern cinema’s most fruitful director-musician collaboration; it’s more a matter of how far above the competition they stand. By my count their soundtrack for her new feature, Stars at Noon, adds an additional bound or two to that distance—it’s frankly amazing a group in its 30th year would deliver something playing to their milieu and strengths while adding new textures to the fold.

As a major fan of the group—the studio albums, the Denis soundtracks, frontman Stuart A. Staples’ solo work and experimental doc Minute Bodies—I couldn’t have been happier to talk with Staples, who Zoomed from a rather homely recording studio. Our 40-minute conversation is as follows.

The Film Stage: Where are you right now?

Stuart Staples: I’m in my studio.

This is separate from your living space?...

Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.NEWSUncut Gems.According to Adam Sandler in a new Vanity Fair profile, he will be shooting a new film with the Safdie brothers this winter. Not much is known about the project, but Sandler had previously mentioned that the film would take place in “the world of sports.” Artist-filmmaker Sky Hopinka has been named as one of 25 recipients of the MacArthur Fellowship’s prestigious “genius grant.” (Michael Sicinski interviewed Hopinka for Notebook in 2020.)A new TV series based on Herbert Asbury’s 1927 nonfiction book The Gangs of New York has been announced. Martin Scorsese, who directed the book’s 2002 feature film adaptation, is attached as executive producer of the series and director of the first two episodes.Recommended Viewinga trailer has arrived for Laura Poitras’s latest feature All the Beauty and the Bloodshed...

(From left) Joe Alwyn and Margaret Qualley in Claire Denis’ Stars At Noon Photo: A24 Claire Denis arrives at her Upper East Side hotel’s sparsely populated restaurant one afternoon during the 60th edition of the New York Film Festival, clutching a drugstore item she had just purchased after searching...

Claire Denis has had a busy year. Her two films, Both Sides of the Blade and Stars at Noon, premiered at Berlinale and Cannes, respectively. Blade earned the Silver Bear for Best Direction out of Berlin, Stars the Grand Prix out of Cannes. The two differ in tenor, but in each she pulls out fantastic lead performances, from one actor she’s worked with in spades, and one that’s new to her troupe: Juliette Binoche and Margarett Qualley.

Her more recent film, starring Qualley and Joe Alwyn, centers on a flailing journalist and mysterious businessman starting a relationship in Panama. Seemingly on the run at all times, the couple evade capture and cultivate a physical, financial, and—finally—emotional bond in the midst of a political thriller. Stars at Noon features a sizzling, sweaty narrative, muddled in its second act by a connection that doesn’t always stick between...

Awards Voting Set for Sunday, December 11

Los Angeles Film Critics Association (Lafca) is to bestow this season’s career achievement award upon Claire Denis and has said it will introduce gender-neutral acting categories in its awards.

Denis won the Berlinale’s directing prize for Both Sides Of The Blade and the Cannes grand prix for Stars At Noon. She began her career working with directors like Jacques Rivette, Costa-Gavras and Wim Wenders and made her 1988 debut on Chocolat, continuing with films like Beau Travail, White Material, 35 Shots Of Rum, Let The Sunshine In, and High Life.

Gender-neutral acting categories will...

The Los Angeles Film Critics Association has chosen French writer-director Claire Denis as the recipient of this year’s Career Achievement Award, the organization announced Wednesday. Lafca’s first in-person awards ceremony in three years will be held on Saturday, Jan. 14, 2023.

“We are thrilled to be honoring Claire Denis, one of the best living film auteurs and a master at depicting the identity crises faced by both the colonizer and the colonized,” said Lafca president Claudia Puig in a statement. “A distinctive sociopolitical point of view and anti-patriarchal sensibility infuse her work, which is deeply evocative — often tender and intimate but never sentimental — and always uncompromising.”

Also Read:

Oscars International Race 2022: Full List of Entries (So Far)

Denis’ film “Stars at Noon” – starring Margaret Qualley, Joe Alwyn and Robert Pattinson – won the second-place Grand Prix award at this year’s Cannes Film Festival. In February, Denis was awarded Venice...

A true Tindersticks fan will only welcome whatever’s next, but even by such open-armed standards was I dazzled by their soundtrack for Stars at Noon, the (give or take) 96th collaboration with Claire Denis. Like a bouncier, bongo-laden spin on their soul-shaking Intruder score, it induces the trance state we expect from this director while (frankly) sometimes superseding her film itself.

I’m accordingly delighted the soundtrack will release on October 14. Today it’s preceded by a title song—this and “Both Sides of the Blade” constitute a kind of Bond theme era, I suppose—that I’d count among their best in years: a perfect arrangement of Stuart Staples’ falsetto, horn accompaniment, and percussion, with each recurrence of the main lyrics a direct hit. The video is taken directly from Stars at Noon and, from its opening image of Margaret Qualley swaying solo to a tightly held dance...

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The 27th Busan International Film Festival opened Wednesday night on a long overdue note of optimism with the premiere of Scent of Wind by Iranian director Hadi Mohaghegh. Festival organizers have indicated that they view the 2022 festival as a full-scale comeback edition, following two hard years of pandemic restrictions and a sequence of prior political challenges.

“We believe that the seat occupancy rates have recovered to about 80 to 90 percent compared to 2019,” said Huh Moon-young, the festival’s director, on opening night.

The opening ceremony, which took place at the festival’s main venue, the Busan Cinema Center, was attended by Asian cinema luminaries and celebrities, including Hong Kong screen icon Tony Leung, Korean star Song Kang-ho, Korean-American actor Daniel Dae Kim, Thai actor-model Mario Maurer and Japanese director Hirokazu Kore-eda.

Leung, who starred last year in Marvel’s Shang-Chi and the Legend of...

Update: French actors Juliette Binoche, Marion Cotillard, Melanie Laurent, Isabelle Huppert and Charlotte Gainsbourg are among those who have cut off locks of their hair in support of the Iranian protests against the death of Mahsa Amini.

In a video posted to Instagram, the actors are among a number of French industry members who are seen trimming locks of their hair. In Binoche’s case, the “Both Sides of the Blade” actor defiantly lobs off entire inches of her dark hair, while declaring “For freedom!”

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Soutien Femmes Iran (@soutienfemmesiran)

The video campaign, which uses the hashtag #HairForFreedom, was organized by Richard Sedillot, with Julie Couturier and Christiane Feral Schuhl.

“It is impossible not to denounce again and again this terrible repression,” reads a statement posted with the video. “There are already dozens of dead men and women, including children. The arrests only swell,...

Margaret Qualley and Joe Alwyn find love in the time of political corruption and international unrest.

The duo star in Claire Denis’ latest romance-thriller “Stars at Noon,” distributed by A24. Qualley plays a young American journalist who is stranded in present-day Nicaragua and falls in love with an enigmatic Englishman (Alwyn) who seems like her best chance of escape. However, she soon realizes that he may be in even greater danger than she is. Danny Ramirez and Benny Safdie also star in the film, premiering in theaters October 14 and debuting on Hulu October 28.

“Stars at Noon” won the Grand Prix at 2022 Cannes and screened at the New York Film Festival. Writer/director Denis adapted the screenplay from Denis Johnson’s novel “The Stars at Noon,” which is part love story, part political thriller.

Denis originally was set to collaborate again with “High Life” star Robert Pattison before he had to...

What a year 2022 has been for French director Claire Denis. Back in February, her film “Both Sides of the Blade” (formerly known as “Fire”) premiered at the Berlin Film Festival. Then in May, her romantic thriller “Stars At Noon” premiered in competition for the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival, winning the Grand Prix award—her first entry in 34 years.

Continue reading ‘Stars At Noon’ Trailer: Margaret Qualley & Joe Alwyn Star In Claire Denis’ Erotic Political Thriller On October 14 at The Playlist.

It’s now evident that smaller-scale projects from Claire Denis that she completes while waiting for the larger-scale ones to get off the ground are more artistically satisfying (see: Let the Sunshine In and this year’s Both Sides of the Blade). However, a new work from the French auteur is still one to seek out. Her Cannes winner Stars at Noon, starring Margaret Qualley and Joe Alwyn, adapts Denis Johnson in a sweaty, captivating, and, yes, occasionally aimless tale of strangers in a strange land. A24 will now release the film in theaters and VOD on October 14 followed by a Hulu debut two weeks later and the first trailer has landed.

David Katz said in his review, “It’s intriguing for a long-term fan of a director, perhaps even one whose films you’ve grown up alongside the last decade or two, to watch them stumble slightly. But for Claire Denis,...

This article contains IndieWire’s preliminary Best International Feature predictions for the 2023 Oscars. We regularly update our predictions throughout awards season, and republish previous versions (like this one) for readers to track changes in how the Oscar race has changed. For the latest update on the frontrunners for the 95th Academy Awards, see our 2023 Oscars predictions hub.

Nominations voting is from January 12-17, 2023, with official Oscar nominations announced January 24, 2023. Final voting is March 2-7, 2023. And finally, the 95th Oscars telecast will be broadcast on Sunday, March 12 and air live on ABC at 8:00 p.m. Et/ 5:00 p.m. Pt. We update predictions through awards season, so keep checking IndieWire for all our 2023 Oscar picks.

The Oscar submission deadline (October 3) has returned to its pre-pandemic place on the awards calendar, with the Best International Feature Film shortlist announced on December 21.

As always, film festivals are the gatekeepers for the Best International Feature Oscar race,...

This article contains IndieWire’s preliminary Best Adapted Screenplay predictions for the 2023 Oscars. We regularly update our predictions throughout awards season, and republish previous versions (like this one) for readers to track changes in how the Oscar race has changed. For the latest update on the frontrunners for the 95th Academy Awards, see our 2023 Oscars predictions hub.

Nominations voting is from January 12-17, 2023, with official Oscar nominations announced January 24, 2023. Final voting is March 2-7, 2023. And finally, the 95th Oscars telecast will be broadcast on Sunday, March 12 and air live on ABC at 8:00 p.m. Et/ 5:00 p.m. Pt. We update predictions through awards season, so keep checking IndieWire for all our 2023 Oscar picks.

The State of the Race

While the greatest Best Adapted Screenplay contenders are ahead of us, there have been films of all kinds of scale that have kicked off the conversation about what film will win.

“You have to know how to reject roles so as not to enter into a system in which women are only seen in a certain way,” French actress Juliette Binoche said here on Sunday, according to ‘Variety’.

Binoche spoke up for women while answering questions from the media at the San Sebastian Film Festival, where she is a recipient this year of the festival’s Donostia Award as a tribute to her career.

‘The English Patient’ star is a go-to actress for a slew of auteur directors, including Krzysztof Kieslowski and Claire Denis, who joined her on stage to discuss ‘Both Sides of the Blade’, this year’s Silver Bear winner for Best Director at the Berlinale.

A love triangle film co-starring Binoche, the film will be screened at the festival before the award’s presentation. ‘Both Sides of the Blade’ also stars Vincent Lindon and Gregoire Colin.

“You have...

“You have to know how to reject roles so as not to enter into a system in which women are only seen in a certain way,” said French actor Juliette Binoche on Sunday.

Binoche spoke up for women whilst answering questions from the press at the San Sebastián Film Festival where she is a recipient this year of the festival’s Donostia Award, as a tribute to her career.

“The English Patient” star is a go-to actress for a slew of auteur directors, including Krzysztof Kieślowski and Claire Denis.

Denis joined her on stage to discuss “Both Sides of the Blade,” a love triangle film co-starring Binoche, which will screen at the festival before the award’s presentation.

“Both Sides of the Blade” also stars Vincent Lindon and Grégoire Colin.

“You have to go instead to the new. And you have to jump into the unknown and work outside of macho codes,...

Juliette Binoche spoke about what she described as the challenging process of working with Jean-Luc Godard during a press conference at the San Sebastian film festival.

Binoche — who is at the festival to receive a Donostia award, the festival’s prestigious lifetime achievement gong — was asked to talk about Godard following news of his death earlier this week. In response, she began to discuss the process of auditioning for their sole collaboration, the 1985 film Haily Mary.

“There was a series of casting I did with him that lasted a long time. And then in the last rehearsal, I had to be naked, combing my hair, and saying a poem I learned by heart,” she said. “He didn’t choose me for the role but he created a new role for me.”

Binoche continued to say that Godard was unlike any other directors she had previously encountered while working on the...

Packing its first full-on onsite edition since the pandemic, Spain’s San Sebastian Festival has never been busier or bigger. 10 Takes on what is shaping up as a vibrant edition:

Playing Off Powerful Market Forces

Nine of Netflix’s 20 Top 10 non-English-language films and TV series are sourced from Spain or Latin America. Platforms are battling to tie down talent.

This year, eight movies from Spain and Latin America play in competition alone at San Sebastian, the most important film event in the Spanish-speaking world. The fest’s main sidebar is its New Directors strand. San Sebastian’s focus on the Spanish-speaking world and new talent now aligns with powerful market forces. That fact plays out over the 2022 edition.

San Sebastian’s New Creative Investors’ Conference

CAA Media Finance is teaming with San Sebastian to organize the festival’s first Creative Investors’ Conference, running Sept. 19-20. Attendees take in international film...

When France announced its shortlist of five films it will consider for its international Oscar submission this week, it was the start of a new chapter in the country’s efforts to win the prize. With the backlash still simmering from last year, when the subversive Palme d’Or winner “Titane” got the slot over emotional crowdpleaser “Happening,” the country has revised its approach in an attempt to support films more likely to secure the nomination.

This year’s selection has no obligatory entry from the official Cannes competition, which reflects the decision to remove festival head Thierry Fremaux from his influential spot on the committee after more than a decade of wielding influence there. Additionally, the one possible entry from a veteran French auteur was snubbed as Claire Denis’ romantic drama “Both Sides of the Blade,” which won Best Director at the Berlinale, did not make the cut.

Instead,...

With the Berlin Film Festival’s Golden Bear awarded to Spanish director Carla Simón and four of the country’s titles featuring in competition at Cannes, there’s a quiet air of confidence among Spanish industry professionals, including José Luis Rebordinos, director of the San Sebastian Film Festival.

“This has been the best year for Spanish cinema,” Rebordinos tells Deadline shortly after revealing the line-up for San Sebastian’s latest edition, running from September 16-24.

This year the prominent Spanish festival, celebrating its 70th edition, kicks into gear with some 200 films across its six competitive and seven non-competitive sections. The selection will be bookended by Friday night’s opening film Prison 77 (Modelo 77), from Spanish filmmaker Alberto Rodríguez, and Neil Jordan’s latest film Marlowe, starring Diane Kruger and Liam Neeson, which will close the festival. The full lineup includes the European Premiere of Chilean filmmaker Sebastián Lelio’s The Wonder,...

The French director on being mesmerised by the film Memoria, and her love of Tindersticks, Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker and the Mediterranean

Born in Paris in 1946 but raised in west Africa, the film director Claire Denis worked as an assistant to film-makers such as Jacques Rivette and Wim Wenders before making her unforgettable debut with Chocolat (1988), a semi-autobiographical film set in Cameroon. Her work is broad-ranging, including fiction and documentary. Highlights include Beau Travail (1999), loosely based on Herman Melville’s Billy Budd, and more recently High Life (2018), her first film in English, which starred Robert Pattinson. She has two new films: Both Sides of the Blade, which won the best director prize at the Berlin film festival and is in cinemas and on Curzon Home Cinema now, and Stars at Noon, joint winner of the Grand Prix at this year’s Cannes.