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As though to provide a measure of solace in a year when the world news could hardly have been more depressing, 2024 has provided far more cinema of quality than has been seen for a very long time. I can come up with no less than twenty-five titles that count as exceptional works, at least half of which are close to perfection. Even so, that does not mean that 2024 has been a year without worries about where cinema is going. The great films are there but how readily can they be seen? This is a time when the range of what is on offer at mainstream cinemas fails to satisfy as many tastes as one would wish, when many films play mainly or exclusively on platforms too numerous for subscribers to embrace all of them and when the number of releases is so high that,...

Exclusive: Twelve new works including a feature-length pic from Palestinian filmmaker Laila Abbas will screen as part of the Meet The Neighbors+ competition sidebar at this year’s Thessaloniki Film Festival.

The jury for this year’s Meet The Neighbors+ comp will feature Ukrainian filmmaker Maryna Er Gorbach, actress Manal Awad, and distributor Vassilis Sourrapas.

The top prize in the Meet The Neighbors+ comp is the Golden Alexander “Michel Demopoulos” for Best Full-length Feature Film. The award comes with a 10,000-euro cash prize, which is shared equally between the producer and film director. The Silver Alexander – Best Director Award comes with a 5,000-euro cash prize.

Abbas’ Thank You for Banking With Us is a Palestine-Germany-Saudi Arabia-Qatar-Egypt co-production. The film will arrive in Greece after screening at the London Film Festival. Abbas, a filmmaker and academic, first gained international attention in 2013 with the doc feature Ice & Dust. The Thank You for...

RankFilm (distributor)Three-day gross (June 14-16)Total gross to dateWeek 1. Inside Out 2 (Disney) £11.3m £11.3m 1 2. Bad Boys: Ride Or Die (Sony) £1.9m £7.1m 2 3. If (Paramount) £414,673 £11.4m 5 4. Kingdom Of The Planet Of The Apes (Disney) £389,000 £15m 6 5. The Garfield Movie (Sony) £354,829 £7.9m 4

Gbp to Usd conversion rate: 1.27.

Disney’s Inside Out 2 stirred up plenty of emotions at the UK and Ireland box office this weekend after its £11.3m debut made it the biggest opening of the year so far and the third-highest of all time for an animated feature.

The Pixar sequel opened in 684 sites, for an impressive £16,520 location average.

This week's episode of the Empire Podcast invites you to settle into a pair of cracking interviews. First up, Ben Travis has a sit-down with Richard Linklater [22:48 - 42:49 approx], director of the excellent Hit Man, which is out now and available to stream over on Netflix. Then, Chris Hewitt has a bonny time with the wonderfully loquacious Stephen Fry [1:06:39 - 1:26:31 approx], whose father-daughter road-trip dramedy Treasure, based on Lily Brett's 1999 autofictive tome Too Many Men, arrives in cinemas this week.

Between the interviews then, you'll find Chris — now mercifully free of his gammy leg — back in the pod booth, running rings around Helen O'Hara and James Dyer as the team discuss the best sunglasses in the movies. There's also a tonne of movie news to digest, including the new Paddington In Peru trailer and the potentially perilous state of being for the McU's Blade after another director of the ill-fated project bit the dust this week.

Disney is hoping to perk up the summer box office with eagerly-anticipated Pixar sequel Inside Out 2 at 684 sites, making it this weekend’s widest new release.

Joy, Sadness, Anger, Fear and Disgust return for the follow-up, that once again dives into the emotional fabric of lead character Riley. This time, puberty has turned up, and it’s bringing with it Anxiety, voiced by Maya Hawke, and Ennui, portrayed by Adèle Exarchopoulos. Returning voice cast members include Amy Poehler and Kyle MacLachlan. Kelsey Mann directs.

The first film, back in 2015, opened to £7.4m from 608 sites.

Re-releases out this weekend include...

Ilça Moreno Zego and Louise Mauroy-Panzani in Àma Gloria. Marie Amachoukeli: 'The link between a nanny and her child is often stronger than the link between a mother and her child' Photo: UniFrance It took director Marie Amachoukeli quite a while to launch forth into her second feature Àma Gloria which explores the relationship between a nanny and her charge and all the taboos surrounding the subject.

Amachoukeli, who is French of Georgian extraction, had just finished Party Girl in 2014 (co-directed and written with Claire Burger and Samuel Theis) which won the Camera d’Or prize for a first film at the Cannes Film Festival. It tells of a 60-year-old woman who provides company for men at nightclubs on the French-German border and who decides to leave the street life behind her by marrying a regular customer.

Rather than seize the moment she explained: “I wanted to wait a while,...

Sony’s “Bad Boys: Ride or Die” debuted atop the U.K. and Ireland box office with £3.8 million ($4.9 million), according to numbers from Comscore.

In second place, in its fourth weekend, Paramount’s “If” collected £866,474 for a running total of £10.8 million. In third position, in its third weekend, Sony’s “The Garfield Movie” earned £729,503 for a total of £7.3 million.

In fourth place, in its fifth weekend, Disney’s “Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes” added a further £620,911 for a total of £14.3 million. Rounding off the top five was Warner Bros.’ “Furiosa,” which collected £436,983 in its third weekend for a total of £5.5 million.

There were two more debuts in the Top 10. Warner Bros.’ “The Watched” bowed in sixth place with £387,339 and Signature Entertainment’s “The Dead Don’t Hurt” in eighth with £95,827.

There are a welter of releases the upcoming weekend, the widest of which is Disney’s animation sequel “Inside Out 2.

BFI Distribution has acquired Payal Kapadia’s acclaimed Cannes Competition title All We Imagine As Light for UK and Ireland theatrical release.

The first Indian film to be selected in Official Competition at Cannes in three decades, All We Imagine As Light was strongly received at its premiere last night and currently sits in joint first place on Screen’s closely-watched Cannes jury grid.

The film centres on two nurses with troubled relationships in Mumbai who go on a road trip to a beach town — a welcome refuge that gives them the space to grow. It stars Kani Kusruti, Divya Prabha,...

Rwandan actress Eliane Umuhire (“Augure by Baloji,” “My New Friends”), French producer Sylvie Pialat (“Timbuktu,” “Staying Vertical”), Belgian cinematographer Virginie Surdej and Canadian film critic, journalist and frequent Variety contributor Ben Croll have been named on the jury for the Critics’ Week section of the Cannes Film Festival.

The four will now join Spanish filmmaker Rodrigo Sorogoyen, who last week was named Critics’ Week jury president, with the group set to choose the sidebar competition’s award winners, including the Grand Prize for best feature film, the French Touch Prize of the Jury, the Louis Roederer Foundation Rising Star award for best actor or actress and the Leitz Ciné Discovery Prize for best short film.

The 2024 Critics Week lineup is set to be unveiled on April 15, four days after the Cannes official selection is announced on April 11.

Last year, Venice Golden Lion-winning “Happening” director Audrey Diwan presided over a Critics...

Dialling into a unique relationship dynamic that isn’t portrayed in cinema, Marie Amachoukeli, who won the Camera d’Or award at the 2014 edition of the Cannes Film Festival for Party Girl (co-directed and written with Claire Burger and Samuel Theis) moved into her solo directorial outing with a story that was always there… Titled Àma Gloria and receiving its world premiere in the Critics’ Week section in Cannes in 2023, it made its Sundance debut as one of four Spotlight section films this past January — and introduced audiences to the diminutive but towering performance from Cléo – a little six-year old child dealing with her own interpersonal issues and heartbreak.…...

M-Appeal has closed distribution deals in key territories for “Sex,” which had its world premiere in the Berlinale’s Panorama section.

The film, the first part of the “Sex Dreams Love” trilogy by Norway’s Dag Johan Haugerud, has garnered attention for its thought-provoking exploration of sexuality and gender roles.

All rights for the film have been sold to Pyramide Distribution for France, JinJin Pictures for South Korea and Cinobo for Greece.

“Sex” follows two men in heterosexual marriages, who have an unexpected experience that challenges them to reconsider their understanding of sexuality, gender and identity. One has a sexual encounter with another man, without considering it either as an expression of homosexuality or infidelity and discusses it with his wife afterwards. The other finds himself in nocturnal dreams where he is seen as a woman, stirring confusion and leading him to question how much his personality is shaped by the gaze of others.

The complex plights of migrant women who leave homes and children seeking means to provide for them have rarely been addressed with the sensitivity and delicateness of Àma Gloria, which looks at it through a new lens: a six-year-old French girl, Cléo (Louise Mauroy-Panzani), who has to come to terms with the abrupt departure of her beloved nanny Gloria (Ilça Moreno Zego).

Cléo has no recollection of the mother she lost to cancer years before. The only maternal figure she knows is Gloria, the Cape Verdean woman who looks after her while her father (Arnaud Rebotini) is at work. Cléo’s world revolves around Gloria, who feeds her, showers her with affection, and helps shape the way she looks at life. The love between them is undeniable, but Cléo has no idea Gloria had a life far away from her. How could she? Children don’t understand the dynamics of work or things like migration.

Unifrance and Film at Lincoln Center have unveiled the lineup for the 29th Rendez-Vous with French Cinema, a festival celebrating contemporary French film running from Feb. 29-March 10.

Thomas Cailley’s “The Animal Kingdom” will screen as the 2024 Opening Night Selection in its New York premiere. The film, which was nominated for 12 Cesar Awards, tells the story of an infection that mutates humans into animal hybrids.

“It is a great honor to open this year’s edition with the French critical and box-office hit ‘The Animal Kingdom’ with director Thomas Cailley in attendance,” said Daniela Elstner, executive director of Unifrance.

Elstner continued, “This remarkable film along with this year’s selection is a great example of the vitality and diversity of French cinema today. A mix of new and established filmmakers together with the stellar presence of actress Marion Cotillard indeed make for a rich 29th edition of this year’s Rendez-Vous With French Cinema.

Exclusive: New York-based cultural institution Villa Albertine and Unifrance have announced the selection of French features due to be showcased in the 10th edition of their joint Young French Cinema program.

The initiative aimed at promoting films in the U.S. by emerging French filmmakers without domestic distribution will showcase 11 titles this year.

They include Marie Amachoukeli’s Cannes Critics’ breakout Àma Gloria, Virginie Verrier’s female soccer pioneer bio-pic Marinette and Erwan Le Duc’s father and daughter tale No Love Lost.

Under the program, the titles are made available for booking by arthouse cinemas, film societies, the Alliance Française network and universities across the U.S.

“The program mainly focuses on rising talents, from high-profile independent works to impactful dramas and powerful documentaries about the world around us,” the partners said in a joint statement.

“The 2024 selection demonstrates that this young generation—more than ever—shares a global...

France’s awards season has officially kicked off with Justine Triet’s “Anatomy of a Fall” landing six nominations at the Lumières Awards, including best film and director.

The courtroom drama, which won the Palme d’Or at Cannes, is the season’s frontrunner. The Lumières are voted on by Paris-based correspondents working for foreign outlets across 36 countries.

Sandra Huller, who stars in the film as a German novelist put on trial after her French husband dies mysteriously, is nominated for best actress, while Milo Machado Graner, who plays her astute, low-vision son, is nominated for best male newcomer.

“Anatomy of Fall” has been on a roll, garnering a raft of international prizes at the European Film Awards, Gothams, as well as Los Angeles and the New York Film Critics Circle Awards, along with four Golden Globe nominations for best film, screenplay, actress and foreign film. The movie that was...

Anne-Cécile Rolland has been appointed to the role and start in February.

Anne-Cécile Rolland has been named head of acquisitions for France’s Pyramide Distribution and Pyramide International, taking over for Christine Ravet who will step down from her position at the end of the year.

Ravet is retiring after a more than 40-year career in auteur cinema. Before joining Pyramide, she was director of acquisitions at mk2 Films and a member of the selection committee for Cannes’ Directors’ Fortnight.

She was notably behind Pyramide’s acquisitions of Laura Poitras’ Venice-winning All The Beauty And The Bloodshed, Amjad Al Rasheed...

Festival ran November 2-12.

Sofia Exarchou’s Animal has won the €10,000 Golden Alexander-Theo Angelopoulos prize for best film at the 64th Thessaloniki International Film Festival, the first time in 30 years a Greek production has won the top prize.

The film’s lead actress Dimitra Vlagopoulou also won the best actress award ex aequo with Joanna Arnow for US production The Feeling That The Time For Doing Something Has Passed, which she also directed.

Vlagopoulou had previously won best actress at Locarno where the film had its world premiere.

The Greek, Austrian, Romanian, Cypriot, Bulgarian co-production follows a group of women...

In “Àma Gloria,” directed by Marie Amachoukeli, childhood is the domain of formative gains and losses. After opening this year’s Cannes Critics’ Week, the film screened as part of the Meet the Neighbors+ competition at the Thessaloniki Film Festival. Amachoukeli previously co-directed “Party Girl,” which won Cannes’ Camera d’Or in 2014.

“Àma Gloria” introduces us to six-year-old Cléo (Louise Mauroy-Panzani), who lives in Paris with her widower dad Arnaud (Arnaud Rebotini) and her nanny Gloria (Ilça Moreno Zego). A blissfully constructed day-to-day routine keeps the world in order until one day Gloria has to return to her Cape Verdean family. In preparation to leave France for good, she invites Cléo to spend the summer with her in Cape Verde.

“Àma Gloria” unfolds as an exploration of childhood through the eyes of its young protagonist. Reviewing the film for Variety, critic Jessica Kiang called it “a debut made dazzling by...

Sofia Exarchou’s “Animal” won the Golden Alexander at the 64th Thessaloniki Film Festival on Sunday, marking the first time in 30 years that a Greek film took home the top honors at the country’s longest-running film event.

Exarchou’s sophomore feature, which premiered at the Locarno Film Festival, was praised by Variety’s Jessica Kiang as “a poignant portrait of life amid the sequins and the seediness of a Greek resort.” The film follows a group of entertainers at an all-inclusive island resort preparing for the busy tourist season who are forced to wrestle with the dark reality that the show must go on as the sultry Mediterranean nights turn violent.

Lead actor Dimitra Vlagopoulou, who won the acting award at the prestigious Swiss fest for what Kiang called a “riveting” performance, also shared the award for best actress in Thessaloniki. The awards were handed out by a jury comprised of producer Diana Elbaum,...

Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon East-West Award

Huang Jianxin

International Contribution to Chinese Cinema Award

Norman Wang

Fei Mu Awards

Fei Mu Awards: Best Film

“Only the River Flows” Dir. Wei Shujun.

Fei Mu Awards: Best Director

Geng Zihan for “A Song Sung Blue”

Film Review: A Song Sung Blue (2023) by Zihan Geng

Fei Mu Awards: Best Actress

Lyu Xingchen for “Carefree Days” (dir. Xu Lingling)

Fei Mu Awards: Best Actor

Zhang Yu for “Records Without Words” (dir. Li Lizhong)

Fei Mu Awards: Jury Award

“Dance Still” Dirs. Qin Muqiu, Zhan Hanqi

Fei Mu Awards: Special Mention (joint winners)

“The Night Rain South Township” Dir. Li Binbin.

“Undoing Time” Dir. Li Pu

Fei Mu Awards: Best Short Film

“Questions to Heaven” Dirs. Wenqi, Zheng Ziyi.

Roberto Rossellini Awards

Roberto Rossellini Awards: Best Film

“Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell” Dir. Pham Thien An

Roberto Rossellini Awards: Best Director

Lkhagvadulam Purev-Ochir for “City of Wind...

Two titles which debuted at Cannes this year were named as the major prize-winners at the seventh edition of the Pingyao International Film Festival in China.

Wei Shujun’s black comedy-thriller “Only the River Flows” won the festival’s Fei Mu prize for best Chinese film. “Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell,” by Vietnamese feature film debutant Pham Thien An, won the Roberto Rossellini prize for best international film. The picture is a Vietnam, Singapore, France, Spain co-production and won Cannes’ Camera d’Or for best first film.

Other prizes went to Hong Kong-based Norman Wang, a veteran consultant, marketeer and festival scout, and to Huang Jianxin, a leading mainland Chinese director-screenwriter and producer whose directing career has ranged from satire to propaganda. He also produced Sun Zhou’s Gong Li- and Tony Leung-starring “Zhou Yu’s Train.”

The festival, originally conceived by Jia Zhangke and Marco Mueller, is held in the Unesco-heritage,...

Wei Shujun’s Only The River Flows was presented with Best Film in the Fei Mu Awards at this year’s Pingyao International Film Festival (Pyiff), while Inside The Yellow Cocoon Shell, directed by Vietnam’s Pham Thien An, won Best Film in the festival’s Roberto Rossellini Awards.

The Fei Mu Awards recognise up-and-coming Chinese filmmakers selected in the festival’s Hidden Dragons section. The Roberto Rossellini Awards are presented to films in the Crouching Tigers section for emerging international filmmakers.

Both Only The River Flows and Inside The Yellow Cocoon Shell premiered at this year’s Cannes film festival, the former in Un Certain Regard and the latter in Directors Fortnight where it won the Camera d’Or.

Geng Zihan won Best Director in the Fei Mu Awards for A Song Sung Blue, which also premiered in Cannes Directors Fortnight. Luc Besson, who was in Pingyao with Dogman,...

China’s Pingyao International Film Festival has announced the line-up for its seventh edition (October 11-18), which will open with Wei Shujun’s Only The River Flows and close with the world premiere of Fei Yu’s Football On The Roof.

Wei’s 1990s-set noir thriller, which premiered in Un Certain Regard at this year’s Cannes film festival, is also one of 11 titles competing in Pingyao’s Hidden Dragons competition for emerging Chinese filmmakers. Football On The Roof tells the story of a female soccer team fighting against the odds in the remote mountains of Yunnan province.

The Hidden Dragons line-up also includes Geng Zihan’s A Song Sung Blue, which premiered in Cannes Directors Fortnight, along with world premieres including Hao Feihuan’s Records Without Words, Li Binbin’s The Night Rain South Township and Yang Pingdao’s A Romantic Fragment (see full line-up below).

Pingyao has also...

The 19th Zurich Film Festival promises to be a star-studded affair with plenty of Hollywood A-list talent attending.

Todd Haynes will be honored with the festival’s A Tribute to… Award and will present his film “May December.” Previous recipients include Paolo Sorrentino, Wim Wenders, Olivier Assayas, Claire Denis, Michael Haneke, Oliver Stone, Maïwenn and Luca Guadagnino.

“It’s a real honor to celebrate this master of American cinema. Todd Haynes is renowned for his elegant mise-en-scène and his ability to get the best from his actors and actresses,” said festival director Christian Jungen.

Ethan Hawke will be present with his film “Wildcat.” As previously announced, Jessica Chastain will receive the festival’s Golden Icon Award. Diane Kruger will receive the Golden Eye prize.

The festival’s feature film competition for first, second and third works will see “Ama Gloria,” “Enea,” “Fair Play,” “Femme,” “Hesitation Wound,” “How To Have Sex,...

Todd Haynes will be honored with the Zurich Film Festival’s A Tribute To… Award at its upcoming 19th edition.

The Swiss festival announced the honor as it unveiled its full line-up on Thursday.

The U.S. director will be presented with the honorary prize ahead of a screening of new film May December on October 3.

“It’s a real honour to celebrate this master of American cinema. Todd Haynes is renowned for his elegant mise-en-scène and his ability to get the best from his actors and actresses,” said Zff Artistic Director Christian Jungen.

“We also have a long-standing working relationship with Todd. The outstanding drama May December featuring Julianne Moore and Natalie Portman is the third film he has presented with us in the last ten years.”

Previous recipients of the award include Paolo Sorrentino, Wim Wenders, Olivier Assayas, Claire Denis, Michael Haneke, Oliver Stone, Maïwenn and Luca Guadagnino.

The Melbourne International Film Festival has confirmed that it will provide $202,000 will go to the winner of its Bright Horizons competition for features by first- and second-time directors. Bragging rights to being the richest film competition in the country previously belonged to the smaller CinefestOZ festival in West Australia, which follows later in August.

The Melbourne festival (in cinemas Aug. 3-20) has this year added two significant prizes: the inaugural First Nations Film Creative Award in collaboration with Kearney Group, and the return of the Blackmagic Design Australian Innovation Award, worth $47,500 recognizing an outstanding Australian creative within a film playing in the Melbourne 2023 program.

Winners across long-form awards categories will be announced at Melbourne’s closing night gala on Aug. 19, These will include the juried prizes and the Miff Audience Award.

The First Nations Film Creative Award supports First Nations talent and storytelling with the recipient awarded a $13,500 cash prize and $16,900 worth of financial services.

Major indie presence is assured – but will talent promote their films?

Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) head Cameron Bailey has been talking to counterparts on the fall festival circuit about Hollywood’s double strike as his team tries to fathom who will be able to promote features at what he is confident will be a robust edition in September.

“None of us wants to get in the way of labour action but we also want to understand what can be done,” Bailey told Screen on Thursday, a day after he sent out a letter saying his team was continuing to...

Distributor plans 2024 release.

Magnet Releasing, Magnolia Pictures’ genre arm, has acquired US rights from Studiocanal to Cannes Un Certain Regard selection The Animal Kingdom.

‘The Animal Kingdom’: Cannes Review

Thomas Cailley, who was last in Cannes in 2014 with Directors’ Fortnight entry Love At First Fight, directed the story of genetic mutations that are causing humans to become hybrid creatures.

It stars Roman Duris, Adèle Exarchopoulos, and Paul Kircher. Cailley co-wrote the screenplay with Pauline Munier, and Pierre Guyard produced the Nord-Ouest Films production. Magnet plans a 2024 release.

“The Animal Kingdom is a wild ride of a film,” said Magnolia Pictures...

Lila Aviles received best director in the international competition.

Marie Amachoukeli’s Ama Gloria and Juraj Lerotic’s Safe Place lead the winners of the 40th Jerusalem Film Festival, which handed out 1m Ils in prizes this evening (July 20).

Ama Gloria, which premiered in Critics’ Week at Cannes this year, won the best international film award. The film depicts the last summer between a six-year-old girl and her nanny Gloria, before the latter returns to Cape Verde to care for her own children.

Scroll down for the full list of feature winners

A jury led by Claire Denis and consisting of Whit Stillman,...

Marie Amachoukeli’s Ama Gloria has won the Best International Film Prize at the 40th edition of the Jerusalem Film Festival, running from July 13 to July 26.

The feature, which world premiered as the opening film of Cannes Critics’ Week in May, revolves around a motherless six-year-old girl who travels to Cape Verde to reunite with her longtime nanny.

The jury presided over by Claire Denis, and also figuring Whit Stillman, Florian Zeller, Joana Vicente, and Maria Schrader praised the film’s “extraordinary poignancy, beauty and insight”.

Ama Gloria is produced by Bénédicte Couvreur, the long-time producer of Céline Sciamma and her films Petite Maman and Portrait Of A Lady On Fire.

Other winners in the International Competition include Best Director for Mexico’s Lila Avilés for Berlinale-selected family drama Totem and a Special Mention for the ensemble cast of Argentinian director Rodrigo Moreno’s The Delinquents, which debuted in Un Certain Regard this year.

Cannes titles and debut features make strong appearances throughout the programme.

Melbourne International Film Festival (Miff) has revealed the 11 titles in the running for its $93,400 competition prize, and will open with Shayda by Australian-Iranian director Noora Niasari.

The festival, which runs August 3-20, unveiled the titles at a programme launch this evening (July 11). Debut and second features are eligible for the Bright Horizons competition, which was introduced last year for the 70th edition, but debuts undoubtedly dominate this year.

Scroll down for full list of competition titles

In fact, the only undeniably second film is Mexican director Lila Avilés’ Tótem.

Cannes titles and debut features make strong appearances throughout the programme.

Melbourne International Film Festival (Miff) has revealed the 11 titles in the running for its $93,400 competition prize, and will open with Shayda by Australian-Iranian director Noora Niasari.

The festival, which runs August 3-20, unveiled the titles at a programme launch this evening (July 11). Debut and second features are eligible for the Bright Horizons competition, which was introduced last year for the 70th edition, but debuts undoubtedly dominate this year.

Scroll down for full list of competition titles

In fact, the only undeniably second film is Mexican director Lila Avilés’ Tótem.

The Melbourne International Film Festival has unveiled the full lineup for its 2023 edition, with “Shayda,” by Iranian-Australian director Noora Niasari, set as the opening title.

The festival will run as a live event August 3-20, at venues around the city and its suburbs, and online Aug 18 – 27. The hybrid format was developed during the Covid pandemic and Miff found it useful as a tool to reach further away audiences and wider demographics than a strictly in-theater edition.

The ‘Bright Horizons’ competition section open to films by first- or second-time feature directors contains an 11-title mix of new and recently-debuted works.

As well as opening the festival, “Shayda” will play in competition. The competition’s other Australian-made title was announced as “The Rooster,” from actor turned writer-director Mark Leonard Winter.

International titles in competition include “Banel & Adama,” by Franco-Senegalese director Ramata-Toulaye Sy, which played in competition in Cannes; “How to Have Sex,...

The director gave an interview to French newspaper Le Journal du Dimanche.

In an article in French newspaper Le Journal du Dimanche released today (June 11), Maiwenn belatedly detailed the reasons behind her reported attack on a French journalist earlier this year ahead of the world premiere of her film Jeanne Du Barry in Cannes.

On March 7, Edwy Plenel, editor-in-chief of French publication Mediapart, accused the actress/filmmaker of physically attacking him in a Paris restaurant in February without provocation, pulling his hair and spitting in his face before storming out of the restaurant. The incident attracted broad media interest in...

The French drama explores the close relationship between a six-year-old girl and her nanny

BFI Distribution has picked up Marie Amachoukeli’s Cannes Critics’ Week opener Ama Gloria for the UK and Ireland. The French drama was acquired from Pyramide International.

The film, which is set to be released in 2024, explores the close relationship between a six-year-old girl and her nanny as they spend their last summer together in Cape Verde.

Pyramide has also sold the film to Transformer in Japan, Hugoeast in China, Cinéart in Benelux, Alambique in Portugal, Ama Films in Greece, Surtsey in Spain, and I Wonder in Italy.

Eva Vik’s ‘Serpentine’ Starring Barbara Palvin To Make European Premiere at Taormina

Eva Vik’s short film Serpentine, starring supermodel Barbara Palvin, will make its European premiere at the 69th edition of Italy’s Taormina Film Festival, running from June 23 to July 1. Czech writer and director Eva Vik explores the possibilities of interspecies development in the film, which was previously nominated for the X Award at the Tribeca Film Festival. Set within a mysterious snake cult, the stylistic body-horror follows attempts to initiate a snake-human hybrid through genetic engineering – creating an extraterrestrial higher power intelligence as a new influential force. Palvin is joined in the cast by Soo Joo Park, and Luke Brandon Field. The film’s official partner is Bulgari brand, and it was produced by Evasion Pictures. The film will play in Taormina’s Influential Shorts program, a special gala event curated by Bella Thorne. “I look...

The French outfit has had a productive Cannes.

Pyramide International has signed a number of key sales for mathematics world-set Marguerite’s Theorem and Critics’ Week opener Marie Amachoukeli’s Ama Gloria and kept up the momentum on Catherine Breillat’s Competition title Last Summer.

Anna Novion’s Special Screening title Marguerite’s Theorem has sold to Adso in Spain, Red Cape in Israel, Angel Films for Scandinavia, Jinjin in Korea, Wanted in Italy, Weltkino Filmverleih in Germany, Teleview in the Middle East and Discovery in the former Yugoslavia, with discussions ongoing for Australia, Latin America and Taiwan.

Ella Rumpf stars a...

It is unlikely that this Cannes will yield many characters as strikingly well-drawn as Cléo (Louise Mauroy-Panzani), the star of Marie Amachoukeli’s small but acutely affecting Critics’ Week opener “Ama Gloria.” Over the course of an efficient 84 minutes, Cléo changes and resists change, she learns and rejects life lessons, she befriends and betrays. She is funny, somber, silly, conniving, shockingly selfish and shiningly pure, sometimes all in the space of an afternoon. She is six years old.

Cléo, a bundle of personality under a tangle of hair and pair of thick glasses, lives in Paris with her affable widower Dad, Arnaud (Arnaud Rebotini), but is raised mostly by her beloved Cape Verdean nanny Gloria (Ilça Moreno Zego). Their relationship is close as a goodnight kiss, and obviously mutually adoring — witness the exchange of incandescent smiles when Cléo sees Gloria waiting at the school gates. So it’s a heavy...

All the films opening the sections at this year’s political event are French for the first time in many years.

Glamour and gripes are poised to collide this year as Cannes kicks off in the most French way imaginable with French films opening every section for the first time in many years – from Maiwenn’s Jeanne Du Barry to The Animal Kingdom in Un Certain Regard, The Goldman Case in Directors’ Fortnight and Ama Gloria at Critics’ Week – and protests from labour unions threatening to spill over onto the Croisette.

Despite a ban on protests during the festival by the city of Cannes,...

’Jim’s Story’ is an adaptation of the novel of the same name by Pierric Bailly.

French filmmaking duo the Larrieu brothers, known for their eccentric comedies are turning to melodrama with Jim’s Story for which Pyramide International has rights and is kicking off sales at the Cannes Market.

Jim’s Story is an adaptation of the novel of the same name by Pierric Bailly and stars Sara Forestier, Sara Giraudeau, Karim Leklou, and Valérie Donzelli, director of Cannes Premiere title Just The Two of Us, alongside Noé Abita.

The film is about a family living in the Jura...