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Eye Haïdara (“C’est la vie!”) and Mélanie Laurent (“Inglorious Basterds”) are starring in “Mata,” a high voltage spy thriller directed by Rachel Lang, whose previous film “Our Men” played at Cannes’ Directors Fortnight.

“Mata” has been boarded by Paris-based Indie Sales which will introduce the project to buyers at the European Film Market in Berlin. Warner Bros. will distribute the movie in French theaters while Netflix has picked up local streaming rights.

Now filming, “Mata” also stars Joséphine Japy (“Tapie”) and Raphaël Personnaz (“Boléro”). The movie marks Lang’s third feature, following “Our Men” which was the closing film of Cannes Directors’ Fortnight in 2021, and “Baden Baden” which played at the Berlin Film Festival in 2016.

Haïdara stars as Mata, a French secret agent who gets wounded while on a clandestine operation in Niger and loses track of her colleague Antoine, captured on the spot. “Upon her return, she volunteers for...

Many a short film that is later expanded into a feature feels reverse-engineered for that specific purpose: an eye-catching taster of what is clearly intended as a larger work, though perhaps not wholly satisfying as a miniature. Bogdan Mureșanu’s much-lauded 2018 short “The Christmas Gift” — a European Film Award winner for best short film, among other accolades — didn’t seem such a case. Poignant and darkly funny as it evoked a child’s-eye view of political terror via an inadvertent act of protest, it was a perfectly self-contained detail of a wider historical canvas. In Mureșanu’s complex, involving debut feature “The New Year That Never Came,” however, “The Christmas Gift” is cleverly recontextualized as one of several intimate, integrated vignettes, composing a fraying tapestry of Romanian social and political turmoil in the country’s final days of communist rule.

Against a unifyingly momentous milieu — namely, the wintry week of...

Women directed or co-directed just 27.1% of French films in 2023, down from a historic high of 33.2% in 2022, according to the Cnc’s Gender Equality report published this month.

Women directors made 64 films in 2023, compared to 69 in 2022.This is triple the 33 films directed by women in 2003.

This compares to the 172 films directed by men in 2023, up 23.7% from 139 in 2022. Female directors accounted for just 26.7% of fiction features, down 7.3% from 2022, and 33.3% of documentaries, a slight rise from 2022’s 30.2%, but down from 2021 near-parity 47.7%.

There was a drop in the proportion of women directing or co-directing first films after a record 55% in 2021 with 34.2% of first films...

This post contains spoilers for "Agatha All Along" (as well as FX's "Legion").

In a series full of fun, intriguing, and camp-infused performances, Aubrey Plaza stands out as the most delightfully unpredictable member of the "Agatha All Along" ensemble. Her character is Rio Vidal, otherwise known as the black heart on Agatha's (Kathryn Hahn) list and the green witch in her coven. Her purpose so far seems to be to annoy and turn Agatha on in equal measure, all the while threatening to derail the entire expedition down the Witches' Road with her rather mercenary predisposition. Her strategy, thanks to Plaza's super-game performance, is to be equal parts weird, sexy, and borderline inhuman, and to revel in the discomfort her attractive monstrousness inspires in all the other witches.

Take, for example, the scene at the beginning of episode 4, when the coven summons Rio. While they're waiting in...

France’s Cnc has introduced a series of reforms to boost distribution of arthouse cinema in the country that will roll out over the next two years.

Scroll down for the top 10 arthouse releases in France in 2024

The annual budget for what is known in France as “le cinéma art et essai” has been set at €19m for 2024, up €1m from the previous year.

The increased funding is meant to better reward exhibitors who give what they call “fragile arthouse films a chance” and support the marketing of arthouse titles especially to the younger 15-25 age demographic.

The Cnc is...

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...

After a challenging start to the year, the French box office steadied in March with 15 million tickets sold, led by Warner Bros’ Dune: Part Two.

This was a dip of just 4.8% on March 2023. While not desirable, this is much less than the dip of 16.4% in February 2024 compared to the same month the year before which was buoyed by crowd-pleasing French titles Asterix & Obelix: The Middle Kingdom and Alibi.com 2 that dominated the box office in early 2023. Disney’s Avatar: The Way Of Water was also still in cinemas through February 2023.

Admissions for the first quarter of 2024 reached 43.7 million. 10% less...

“No soul, no history, no residents,” laments one Berliner of Potsdamer Platz, where the Berlinale has been based since 2000.

Speculation is rife about whether the festival will move when its contract with the Berlinale Palast expires in 2027. Screening space has declined since the CineStar closed its multiplex in the Sony Centre - previously one of the key venues for festival and European Film Market screenings. Last year the CinemaxX Berlin, based in Postdamer Platz, reduced its seating capacity.

“We cannot use it for our audience screenings any more but we are very settled showing press and industry screenings there,” says Mariëtte Rissenbeek,...

Anne Fontaine’s Maurice Ravel biopic Boléro has sold to key territories for Snd following the film’s world premiere at International Film Festival Rotterdam. Snd is now screening the film to buyers at the EFM.

Boléro has been snapped up by X-Verleih for Germany, Movies Inspired in Italy, O’Brother for Benelux, Gaga in Japan, Sphere in Canada, Cinemundo in Portugal, Njuta for Scandinavia, Agora for Switzerland, Beta in Bulgaria, Discovery in the Balkans, Cirko in Hungary, Aj Jet in Taiwan, Arna Media for Cis and Skeye for Airlines.

Raphael Personnaz stars as the famed composer as he prepares...

Every 15 minutes, according to a title at the end of director Anne Fontaine’s latest film, someone on earth plays Maurice Ravel’s “Boléro.” It’s a largely unprovable statement that is nonetheless borne out anecdotally by the familiarity of the tune, which crops up so frequently in concerts, movies, TV shows, commercials, dance recitals and at least one iconic 1980s ice skating routine, that it’s close to becoming sonic wallpaper. It’s a pleasant surprise then, that “Boléro,” Fontaine’s gently deconstructed Ravel biopic, while running long and never wholly airing out the stuffiness of “tortured genius” genre, does at minimum make us appreciate the music anew — its rustling snare drums, its snake-charmer woodwinds, its revving, roundabout rhythms.

Indeed Fontaine’s screenplay, co-written with Claire Barré, persuasively suggests that whatever ambivalence a modern viewer may feel toward the composition, Ravel, whose quiet peculiarities are sensitively underplayed by Raphaël Personnaz,...

Please don’t stop the music: Anne Fontaine isn’t done with it just yet.

Following “Boléro” — world premiering at International Film Festival Rotterdam — the noted director is developing another melodic project.

“It’s about a character who was a star at 10 years old. He had a ‘magic’ voice, but then he suddenly lost it. Years later, he is ready to come back. It’s a comedy, based on something real,” she says. Admitting that this time, she will swap classical compositions for popular tunes.

“I like songs: they are in our blood. We hear them and remember we lost a lover when they were playing. They mark our lives. There will be so much music [in this film]. And all these amazing voices, including a real-life singer making her film debut.”

New project will combine “cruelty and humor.”

“Our destiny might be cruel, but we are still able to laugh about it.

Following a fully online 2021 event, a hybrid 2022 and last year’s 2023 comeback edition that saw most European distributors still struggling to stay afloat in a barely post-pandemic world, this year’s Rendez-Vous with French Cinema in Paris was a “typical” market. And in 2024, typical is great.

“We haven’t had a typical market in four years. Everyone was back,” enthused Gilles Renouard, head of cinema for Rendez-Vous organiser Unifrance.

“Buyers are definitely more future-oriented,” he continued. “Last year, they were scared to buy films for theatrical release, but now they are confident in films that can work in their territories...

Debbie Harry, lead singer of Blondie, will be among those taking part in on-stage talks at the International Film Festival Rotterdam, which runs Jan. 25 to Feb. 4.

Harry narrates the latest film by Amanda Kramer, “So Unreal,” an essay-documentary about the relationships between cinema, humanity and technology. On Jan. 27, the two will give an IFFR Talk discussing their work as artists with distinctive esthetics whose careers have developed across film and music.

As previously announced, other speakers in the IFFR Talk program include actor Sandra Hüller, and directors Anne Fontaine, Marco Bellocchio, Bill Plympton and Billy Woodberry.

Directors attending with their titles in the Limelight section, which is for films from established filmmakers, include Mexican filmmaker Amat Escalante with “Lost in the Night,” Polish filmmaker Agnieszka Holland with “Green Border” and Tunisian filmmaker Kaouther Ben Hania with “Four Daughters,” which is shortlisted for an Oscar.

Fontaine will attend the world premiere of her 19th feature film,...

Film stars Raphael Personnaz and Jeanne Balibar.

Paris-based Snd has boarded Anne Fontaine’s Boléro about the birth of the renowned orchestral work from Maurice Ravel, now shooting in France.

Set in the Roaring 1920s, the film stars Raphael Personnaz, known for Our Brothers, Julia(s) and The French Minister, as the composer. Jeanne Balibar, who has appeared in Lost Illusions, Cold War and Grace Of Monaco, plays the Russian dancer-choreographer Ida Rubinstein who commissioned the now legendary music.

Snd, the film arm of France’s M6 group, is on board as co-producer and French distributor and is launching international sales at Cannes.