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A film set is no place for little girls. In the fairy-tale-adjacent world of Lucile Hadžihalilović’s frigid dark fantasy “The Ice Tower,” an orphan runs away from her foster home and takes refuge in the basement of a movie studio, finding herself drawn to the production — and its star, played by Marion Cotillard — the way a child in a Hans Christian Andersen story might be lured into the clutches of a wicked enchantress. Aptly enough, the script they’re shooting is “The Snow Queen,” aspects of which echo through the ’70s-set movie’s many layers, all the way out to us, whom Hadžihalilović hopes to trap in her crystal prism.

Cotillard and Hadžihalilović collaborated once before, early in both their careers, on 2004’s “Innocence,” where the director first planted the unholy seeds she’s still harvesting all these years later: unsettling yet artful projects in which Hadžihalilović depicts the...

Since Tim Burton's "Batman" arrived in 1989, there's been no shortage of just plain silly moments throughout the franchise's run. The introduction of the bat-nipples in "Batman Forever," George Clooney's Dark Knight whipping out the Bat credit card, anything Arnold Schwarzenegger's Mr. Freeze did in "Batman & Robin." Following that 1997 blunder, however, Christopher Nolan took over the property, giving Batman a new origin story and single-handedly introducing the concept of the "gritty reboot" into the popular lexicon.

2005's "Batman Begins" was an impressively fresh take on a character that had already been reinterpreted multiple times, both on-screen and in the comics. It introduced us to what was dubbed a "grounded" Batman, situating the hero in a Gotham that felt much closer to our own world than any Bat-movie before it. It was a hero's origin tale that Nolan quickly followed up with the Bat-equivalent of "Heat," placing Christian Bale...

In the past 96 years of the Academy Awards, there have only been two years in which two Black women were nominated for Best Actress in the same year. That ignominious statistic could very well change for the better this year, as performers Cynthia Erivo (“Wicked”) and Marianne Jean-Baptiste (“Hard Truths”) are both closing in on nominations.

Erivo’s star turn as Elphaba, a role which won the Best Musical Actress trophy at the 2004 Tony Awards for Idina Menzel, currently ranks fifth in our combined Oscar odds. It would mark her second nomination in the category, following her breakout film role as Harriet Tubman in “Harriet” (2019). The actress earned two nominations that year, also receiving recognition for the song “Stand Up,” which she wrote with Joshuah Brian Campbell. The Tony winner for “The Color Purple” currently has 80% of experts and 40% of Gold Derby editors predicting her for the nom.

See Oscar...

Marion Cotillard joins star-studded cast of Apple TV+ hit series The Morning Show for highly anticipated fourth season. Cotillard brings acclaimed talent to role as 'Celine Dumont,' adding new depth to gripping workplace drama. The Morning Show continues to break records and gain acclaim, offering unapologetically candid look at power dynamics.

Apples award-winning, global hit series The Morning Show will expand its star-studded cast with Academy Award-winner Marion Cotillard for season 4. Apple TV+ has now revealed that Academy, BAFTA and Csar Award-winner Marion Cotillard is set to join the highly anticipated fourth season of The Morning Show, hailing from the studio Media Res and starring and executive produced by Reese Witherspoon and Jennifer Aniston.

Cotillard, who is best known for roles in the likes of Inception and La Vie En Rose, will star as Celine Dumont, a savvy operator from a storied European family. In 2015, Cotillard garnered an Academy...

Marion Cotillard has joined the cast of “The Morning Show” Season 4.

The Oscar-winning actress will star as Celine Dumont, a savvy operator from a storied European family, in the fourth installment of the Apple TV+ drama series. Cotillard joins returning cast members Reese Witherspoon, Jennifer Aniston, Billy Crudup, Mark Duplass, Nestor Carbonell, Karen Pittman, Greta Lee, Jon Hamm and Nicole Beharie.

Season 4 will pick up in the aftermath of the Season 3 finale, which saw Alex (Aniston) attempt to halt the acquisition — and impending dissolution — of Uba by suggesting a merger between Uba and Nbn.

Cotillard is best known for starring in “Allied,” “Inception,” “La Vie en Rose,” “Rust and Bone,” “Two Days, One Night,” “The Dark Knight Rises” and “Assassin’s Creed.” She also recently starred in an episode of the Apple TV+ series “Extrapolations” alongside Forest Whitaker.

Aniston and Witherspoon executive produce “The Morning Show,” with Aniston and Kristin Hahn EPing through Echo Films,...

Marion Cotillard has signed on for a role in “The Morning Show” Season 4, Variety has learned.

The Oscar winner will appear in the new season of the Apple TV+ series alongside stars Reese Witherspoon and Jennifer Aniston as well as cast members Billy Crudup, Mark Duplass, Nestor Carbonell, Karen Pittman, Greta Lee, Jon Hamm, and Nicole Beharie.

Cotillard will star as Celine Dumont, described as “a savvy operator from a storied European family.”

This will be one of the few TV roles Cotillard has held in her career. She won the Academy Award for best actress for “La Vie En Rose” in 2008. She was nominated in the same category in 2015 for “Two Days, One Night.” Her other notable film roles include “Brother and Sister,” “From the Land of the Moon,” “Macbeth,” “Midnight in Paris,” “The Dark Knight Rises,” and “Inception.”

Cotillard is repped by Agence Adequat in France and by...

It’s not only because of its similar time frame that Boris Lojkine’s hurtling, headlong social-issues drama “Souleymane’s Story” recalls “Two Days, One Night” by the Dardenne brothers. Lojkine’s film, which was awarded the jury prize and a well-deserved best actor award in the Un Certain Regard competition in Cannes, is similarly invested in its electrifying lead — non-professional Abou Sangare, making an unforgettably persuasive and poignant debut — and similarly effective in maintaining a level of urgency and high-stakes personal peril that few genre thrillers can muster. If the hero’s dire situation is a ticking clock, Lojkine’s intelligent and empathetic film places us right alongside him, with each cog of circumstance and each gear of good fortune grinding against him at every turn.

Souleymane (Sangare) is a recent arrival in Paris from Guinea, who sleeps in homeless shelters at night and works as a delivery biker by...

Azerbaijan's cinema history dates back to the late 19th century, but the national cinema has been dominated by male filmmakers ever since. Such lack of diversity tends to push the national cinema to the margins of the global festival circuit, making it obscure for the wider audiences. Maybe the young Los Angeles-based actress-turned-filmmaker Tahmina Rafaella could provide the solution to the problem with her directorial debut “Banu” which premiered at 2022 edition of Venice as a part of Biennale College Cinema programme.

Banu is streaming at Film Movement Plus

It would be the easiest to describe it as a riff on the Dardenne brothers' “Two Days, One Night” (2014), but on the topic of divorce and set against the backdrop of the Second Nagorno-Karabakh War which took place in the autumn of 2020. The titular protagonist, played by the filmmaker herself, is a school teacher with a problem. Her rich and influential husband...

Mubi’s May 2024 (streaming) lineup embraces their latest (theatrical) coup with a Radu Jude program. In addition to Do Not Expect Too Much From the End of the World arriving May 3, the Romanian director is highlighted with a six-film program launching on May 10. Lee Chang-dong and Bertrand Bonello are each given two-title highlights. While most of us can’t be at Cannes (I guess that’s a pun), the festival’s greatest tradition, booing, is celebrated with Jodie Foster’s The Beaver, Nicolas Winding Refn’s Only God Forgives, and Olivier Dahan’s Grace of Monaco. Among new releases, Al Warren’s Dogleg and the Ross brothers’ Gasoline Rainbow are notable selections.

As Lee Chang-dong recently told us in an extended interview, “Experiences in my life are what shaped me as a filmmaker, as obvious as that sounds. My artistic taste was shaped by the mountains and fields of my childhood village,...

Arthouse streamer Mubi has unveiled a deal to take a majority stake in Benelux indie distributor Cineart.

Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but the agreement will see the management team at Cineart remain intact, while co-CEOs and longtime execs Marc Smit and Stephan De Potter will retain “significant” stakes in the company.

“I’ve known and worked with Marc and Stephan for over 15 years, and admire what they’ve done with Cinéart. They are two of the most sophisticated and visionary operators in the business. We are delighted to be partnering with them and the whole team at Cineart, and can’t wait to bring more great films to audiences in Benelux together,” Efe Cakarel, founder and CEO of Mubi, said in a statement on Tuesday.

Cineart was part of a multi-territory deal for Sofia Coppola’s feature Priscilla ahead of a world premiere at the Venice Film Festival.

Arthouse streamer and distributor Mubi has acquired a majority stake in leading Benelux indie distributor Cinéart, further bolstering its global firepower as it continues to expand outside of its core streaming business.

Financial details of the deal were not revealed, but the acquisition will see Cinéart’s management team continue to lead the company as an independent European distributor, with no changes in operations. Cinéart will maintain its current team structure and slate of films, and will carry on working closely with its long time partners. Co-CEOs of Cinéart, Marc Smit and Stephan De Potter, will remain significant shareholders of the company.

Founded in 1975 by the late Eliane Dubois, Cinéart has offices in Amsterdam and Brussels and has released numerous prestige independent films, including “Slumdog Millionaire,” “The Artist,” “Amour,” “I Daniel Blake,” “Deux Jours Une Nuit,” “Son of Saul,” “The Worst Person in the World,” “The Whale” and current awards contender “The Zone of Interest.

Of the 272 films that have earned lone acting Oscar nominations – meaning they were each recognized in one performance category and nowhere else – a whopping 101 (or 37.1%) accomplished the feat thanks to lead actresses. Whereas just 60 examples have occurred in the Best Actor category, the corresponding female one reached that benchmark in 1991 and is on track to double it less than two decades from now. Its triple digit total has now been intact for one full year, having directly resulted from the simultaneous nominations of Ana de Armas (“Blonde”) and Andrea Riseborough (“To Leslie”).

Although an Oscar bid was generally expected to follow de Armas’s 2023 BAFTA, Golden Globe, and SAG Award nominations, Riseborough very memorably came out of nowhere, having defied precedent by benefiting from an enthusiastic grassroots campaign. While most of the earlier lone Best Actress contenders belong in de Armas’s camp, many align with Riseborough in having pulled off major surprises.

“May December,” the newest acclaimed drama film from Todd Haynes, is now available to stream on Netflix, and one of the film’s stars, Julianne Moore, is already an early favorite to receive a Best Supporting Actress Oscar nomination for her spellbinding performance. Let’s look back at her five Academy Award races and talk about why Moore finally won her first gold trophy in 2015 for “Still Alice” (2014).

Her first Oscar nomination came in 1998 in the Best Supporting Actress category for “Boogie Nights” (1997). Moore’s only Academy Award nom of the 1990s put her up against Joan Cusack for “In & Out,” Minnie Driver for “Good Will Hunting,” Gloria Stuart for “Titanic” and Kim Basinger for “L.A. Confidential.” Moore didn’t have a chance that first time around because Basinger dominated the category all season, her beloved film often showing up in the Best Picture and Best Director categories,...

Annette Bening is one of our finest actresses who has never won an Oscar. That could change with her new Netflix sports drama “Nyad,” which is due out on Oct. 20. The film stars Bening as Diana Nyad and charts her attempts to swim from Cuba to Florida while in her sixties. Jodie Foster co-stars as Nyad’s best friend and coach, Bonnie Stoll, and the rapport between Bening and Foster is the movie’s highlight.

Bening’s Nyad is a flawed character but one full of tenacity, commitment, drive, and belief. It makes for an easy character to root for, despite her flaws. The actress is earning some of the best reviews of her career.

Richard Lawson (Vanity Fair) opined: “Nyad is played by Annette Bening, who trained for a year to ready herself for the physical demands of the role. It’s quite a testament to actorly commitment: This...

Arianna Bocco, IFC Films President, is out at the distributor, Deadline has confirmed.

The shocking news to the NYC indie world comes within days after the 17-year IFC vet was feted at the New York Women in Film & Television (Nywift)’s flagship fundraising event, the annual Muse Awards gala.

Bocco will be replaced in the interim by IFC Head of Acquisitions Scott Shooman. The Sony Pictures Worldwide Acquisitions Group and CBS Films vet joined last year. The search for a new long-term replacement is underway. Talk about a revolving door at IFC.

We’re still sorting through what went down here. In the meantime, Bocco posted the following statement on social media, “I have big news to share! After much thought, I have stepped down from my post as President of IFC Films to pursue other opportunities. I’m so proud of the IFC Films team I’ve worked...

A veteran producer and sales agent once told me that, for a billion dollars, anyone could buy their way into the Oscar race for Best Picture. In recent months, that prediction proved altogether generous.

While not a Best Picture contender, Andrea Riseborough’s performance in “To Leslie” demonstrated the potential of DIY campaigning to chart a surprising path into a major Oscar category. Controversial or not, and despite all the potential campaign violations it raised, Riseborough’s Best Actress nomination got the attention of other established actors who work on low-budget movies with limited resources. As one veteran awards consultant told me this week, “People are now going to say, ‘Where’s my Andrea Riseborough campaign?’”

The answer to that question requires some meticulous number-crunching as well as ample chutzpah. The Oscar race is often a Trojan horse for cinema that would go otherwise unrecognized by the U.S. industry,...

Actress Marion Cotillard ("Asterix and Obelix: the Middle Empire") wearing Chanel, poses for the January 2023 issue of "Madame Figaro" magazine, photographed by Matthew Brookes:

"...Cottilard had her first English-language role in the TV series 'Highlander' (1993), and made her film debut in 'The Story of a Boy Who Wanted to Be Kissed' (1994). Her breakthrough came in the successful French film 'Taxi' (1998). She appeared in Tim Burton's Big Fish (2003), and won her first 'César Award' for 'Best Supporting Actress' for her performance in 'A Very Long Engagement' (2004). 

"Her first major English-language role was "A Good Year" (2006). For her portrayal of French singer 'Édith Piaf' in 'La Vie en Rose' (2007), Cotillard won her second 'César Award', a 'BAFTA Award', a 'Golden Globe Award', a 'Lumières Award' and the 'Academy Award for Best Actress'. Her performances in 'Nine' (2009), 'Rust and Bone...

For their ninth feature film in competition, Jean-Pierre & Luc Dardenne once again turn to non-actors to give their text fresh new faces for a drama of dire consequences. Tori et Lokita comes three years since their last trip to the Croisette with Best Director winning Young Ahmed, the Dardennes will likely leave the Croisette with some awards recognition – from Critics’ groups to a possible third Palme. Winners for Rosetta (1999) and L’Enfant (2005), they came close to winning for 2011’s Kid With A Bike. They won Best Screenplay in 2008 for Lorna’s Silence. Let us not forget that they also premiered 2011’s Two Days, One Night and 2016’s The Unknown Girl.…...

A version of this preview of this year’s Cannes Film Festival lineup appeared in the Cannes edition of TheWrap magazine.

As the film industry — from the mightiest moguls to the scrappiest indie-theater owners — struggles to bring movies and moviegoing back to pre-covid standards, look to this year’s Cannes Film Festival to trumpet the cause, starting with a splashy premiere of “Top Gun: Maverick” that’s clearly meant to send out an international message: “Remember summer movies? You love those. And they’re back!”

Beyond that Paramount blockbuster, Cannes 2022 seems to be delivering more of what the annual event is known for, in the best ways (providing an international platform for some of the world’s greatest films and filmmakers) and in the worst.

Even with its recurring shortcomings, the Cannes lineup provides an impressive menu of titles that cineastes everywhere have been eagerly awaiting, from David Cronenberg’s...

After being cancelled in 2020 and then delayed in 2021, the Cannes Film Festival is finally back on track for May 2022 on the French Riviera. The 75th installment of the international cinema showcase will take place from May 17 to May 28, and there will be 18 films competing for the coveted Palme d’Or, the festival’s top prize. Last year that honor went to the French thriller “Titane,” directed by Julia Ducournau. As of this writing several details are still to be announced including who will be on this year’s jury and who will be serving as jury president after Spike Lee presided over last year’s program.

A filmmaker’s previous track record at Cannes can sometimes give us an idea of who’s in a good position to claim the Palme. For instance, seven of this year’s entries in the official competition come from directors who have previously won...

The 2022 Oscar nominees for Best Actress are Jessica Chastain (“The Eyes of Tammy Faye”), Olivia Colman (“The Lost Daughter”), Penélope Cruz (“Parallel Mothers”), Nicole Kidman (“Being the Ricardos”), and Kristen Stewart (“Spencer”). Our current odds indicate that Chastain (17/5) will take the prize, followed in order of probability by Colman (39/10), Kidman (4/1), Stewart (9/2), and Cruz (9/2).

Stewart is the only first-time nominee among the five, as each of her competitors has been involved in at least two past acting contests. Kidman’s resume is the longest, consisting of three previous lead bids for “Moulin Rouge!” (2002), “The Hours” (2003), and “Rabbit Hole” (2011) and a supporting one for “Lion” (2017). She triumphed on her second outing and is now looking to become the 15th woman to win a bookend Best Actress trophy.

Colman also has a shot at achieving a second lead victory, having prevailed here three years ago for “The Favourite.” Her second career nomination came...

Fifteen years have passed since Penélope Cruz broke new ground as the first Spanish woman to receive an Oscar nomination for Best Actress. Although her performance in Pedro Almodóvar’s Spanish-language film “Volver” was passed over in favor of Helen Mirren’s in “The Queen,” she bounced back two years later by triumphing in the supporting category for “Vicky Cristina Barcelona.” Now, based on her work in Almodóvar’s “Parallel Mothers” (their seventh collaboration), she may have another shot at lead glory. If she does land in the lineup, she will join an exclusive club as the fifth leading lady to be recognized for two non-English language performances.

The first woman to accomplish this feat was Sophia Loren, who was nominated for “Marriage Italian Style” (1965) after winning for “Two Women” (1962). Both are Italian-language films directed by Vittorio De Sica. After losing on her second outing to Julie Andrews (“Mary Poppins...

The year is 1963. The location is Angoulême, France. The woman is Anne (Anamaria Vartolomei), a bright student faced with the weight of the world when she discovers she has an unwanted pregnancy. Facing the country’s strict anti-abortion laws, Anne’s predicament puts not only herself in danger, but also any doctor who’d be willing to help her achieve the procedure for which she’s desperate. So begins Happening, Audrey Diwan’s Golden Lion-winning adaptation of Annie Ernaux’s semi-autobiographical 2000 novel of the same name (L’événement).

While comparing Happening to Eliza Hittman’s masterful 2020 abortion drama Never Rarely Sometimes Always skirts reductive, there’s something to be said for the similar way in which Diwan observes her main character. While her aesthetic may boast some grander flourishes than Hittman’s neorealism, there is nevertheless a vérité style to Diwan’s approach that places us right up against Anne for...

On Friday, December 3, Lady Gaga was announced as the New York Film Critics Circle Awards winner for Best Actress for her performance in “House of Gucci.” She plays Patrizia Reggiani, the real-life woman who was convicted of murdering her ex-husband Maurizio Gucci. NYFCC is one of the most prominent critics groups in the country, so does this boost Gaga’s chances for an Oscar nomination?

The Gotham critics’ choice winner hasn’t been nominated at the Oscars for the last three years in a row. NYFCC picks Regina Hall, Lupita Nyong’o, and Sidney Flanigan were snubbed by the actors branch of the academy.

Prior to this losing streak, eight of the nine NYFCC Best Actress winners went on to receive Oscar nominations: Meryl Streep, Annette Bening, Streep again, Cate Blanchett, Marion Cotillard, Saoirse Ronan, Isabelle Huppert, and Ronan again. Of those, Streep (for “Iron Lady”) and Blanchett ended up winning the Oscar.

It looks like Penelope Cruz could get her fourth Oscar nomination with the help of the filmmaker who got her her very first. As of this writing the Expert journalists we’ve surveyed from major media outlets rank her third in the race for Best Actress for “Parallel Mothers,” the latest film from Pedro Almodovar, who directed her to a Best Actress bid for “Volver” 15 years ago. That now puts her ahead of Lady Gaga (“House of Gucci”) and Jennifer Hudson (“Respect”) and right behind front-runner Kristen Stewart (“Spencer”) and strong challenger Jessica Chastain (“The Eyes of Tammy Faye”).

In “Volver” (2006), Cruz played Raimunda, whose late mother returns from the dead with unfinished business. After that awards breakthrough she won Best Supporting Actress for “Vicky Cristina Barcelona” (2008) and was nominated again for Best Supporting Actress for the movie musical “Nine” (2009), so she racked up all three of her nominations in...

Since the first Oscar for Best Actress was presented to Janet Gaynor at the 1929 ceremony, 77 different women have heard their names called on the big night, 14 of whom have won more than once. In 1982, Katharine Hepburn became the first, and to date only, individual to win four acting Oscars, all in the leading category. She held the record for most competitive acting nominations (12) from 1982 until Meryl Streep tied her in 2000, and then surpassed her in 2003. Streep currently holds the record for acting nominations with 21, 17 as a lead and four in supporting. However, it’s one of her contemporaries who is right behind Hepburn for most wins for Best Actress.

SEEOscar Best Actress Gallery: Every Winner in Academy Award History

At the 2021 ceremony, Frances McDormand won her third Best Actress trophy, having won every time she has been up in this category (she lost all three bids in supporting). A total...

International sales agent Be For Films has given Variety exclusive access to the international trailer for Andreas Fontana’s first feature “Azor,” selected for this year’s Encounters section at the Berlin International Film Festival. Set among the world of international banking in the 1980’s, Fontana describes his debut as being “like a film about conquistadors.”

The film uses French, Spanish and English dialogue to tell the trans-Atlantic story of Yvan De Wiel, a private banker from Geneva. Yvan visits Argentina during the Junta dictatorship to replace his partner, who mysteriously disappeared one night leaving few clues behind. As he maneuvers among Argentina’s elite, offering rich shots of ballrooms, posh hotels, massive gardens and swanky lounges, the banker plays a dangerous political game of modern capitalist colonization.

In the trailer, we get a taste of the conquistador attitude Fontana refers to as Yvan uses the arrival of Hernan Cortes...

This year 14 performers reaped bids at all three key precursor prizes — the SAG, Golden Globes and Critics’ Choice awards. Such recognition certainly warrants getting up early on Oscar nominations mornings. But as Jennifer Lopez learned in 2020 reaping nominations for that awards triple crown for her featured role in “Hustlers” didn’t make her a sure thing in the Academy Awards derby.

She became the most recent of the 24 performers to stumble at the last hurdle and suffer Oscars snubs since the Critics’ Choice Awards introduced nominations in 2001. In 2019 Emily Blunt (“Mary Poppins Returns”) and Timothee Chalamet (“Beautiful Boy”) got added to the roster of those saddled with this dubious achievement.

Chalamet should take comfort from the case of Leonardo DiCaprio, who finally won an Oscar in 2016 for “The Revenant” after four losses. There were two instances when he didn’t even reap an Oscar nomination despite having done well in the run-up awards.

Over the decades, filmmakers Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, aka The Dardenne Brothers, have produced some of the most interesting films to come out of Europe. They’ve collected trophies from all over the world at various festivals, including two Palme d’Or awards from Cannes, and are always surprising film fans with each and every project. And it appears that the Dardennes are back at it, with a new film, titled “Tori et Lokita.”

Read More: ‘Two Days, One Night’ Beautifully Captures The Plight Of The Underpaid “Essential” Worker

According to Cineuropa, Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne have received financing for their forthcoming feature, “Tori et Lokita,” with a summer production start time on the schedule.

Continue reading ‘Tori et Lokita’: The Dardenne Brothers’ New Film Is Expected To Begin Production This Summer at The Playlist.

AMC Networks on Wednesday said that longtime film executive Arianna Bocco has been named president of its IFC Films division. Bocco was previously EVP of Acquisitions and Production. She replaces departing IFC Films Co-President Lisa Schwartz. Schwartz had served as Co-President with Jonathan Sehring who retired at the end of 2018.

Bocco has spent more than a decade overseeing acquisitions and productions for IFC Films as well as genre label IFC Midnight.

In her new role, Bocco will continue to oversee acquisitions, production, marketing and publicity, while adding oversight of theatrical film distribution and the fast-growing IFC Films Unlimited subscription streaming service. Bocco will report to Miguel Penella, AMC Networks’ president of SVOD, who oversees the company’s new premium subscription bundled offering AMC+, which includes IFC Films Unlimited; its portfolio of subscription video on demand services Acorn TV, Shudder, Sundance Now, and Umc; as well as Rlje Films. Penella reports to Ed Carroll,...

When Jean-Luc and Pierre Dardenne won the Palme d’Or for “Rosetta” in 1999 — upending such hotly fancied contenders as Pedro Almodovar’s “All About My Mother” — it wasn’t exactly an out-of-nowhere arrival. The Belgian brothers were already in their mid-forties, having begun their career in documentary filmmaking 20 years before, and had already enjoyed a fiction breakthrough with 1996’s award-winning “La Promesse.”

But it felt like an invigorating new wave all the same. Toward the end of a decade marked by auteurist flash and swagger, the empathetic, unvarnished realism of their working-class survival tale gave world cinema a clean-scrubbed human face: intent on making audiences concentrate more on the lives being presented than the directors’ style of presentation.

In a career-making performance, the 18-year-old Emelie Dequenne played a teen struggling to support herself and her alcoholic mother with fleeting, fragile jobs: Though incidentally a damning study of Belgian labour law and social welfare,...

Brotherly Belgian filmmaking duo Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne will receive this year’s Lumière Award at the upcoming Lumière Festival, which celebrates classic films and cinematic masters each autumn in Lyon, France.

Last year’s award went to Francis Ford Coppola, who joined previous recipients including Jane Fonda, Wong Kar-Wai, Martin Scorsese, Pedro Almodóvar, Clint Eastwood and Quentin Tarantino.

This year’s award will be presented during the Lumière Festival, launched by filmmaker Bertrand Tavernier and Cannes Festival chief Thierry Fremaux, heads of Lyon’s Institut Lumière.

One of the biggest classic film celebrations in the world, with an audience of 250,000 last year, the Lumière Festival will run Oct. 10-18.

“For us, two directing brothers, this award embodies a special emotion,” the brothers said in a statement released by the festival. “It connects us to the original brotherhood of cinema, with the two brothers who filmed for the first time...

by Cláudio Alves

It's become somewhat uncommon for Oscar champions in the acting categories to be a "one and done" type of deal. A good amount of the winners from the past 25 years have either received nominations after their victory or already had them before their golden coronation. All this to say that, after Marion Cotillard won the Best Actress Academy Award for her work in La Vie en Rose, it felt like it was just a matter of time before she'd be in another Oscar lineup. That follow-up nod would come until 2014 for Two Days, One Night but, before that, there were a couple of failed Oscar bids to account for.

Previously in this series, we talked about her 2012 Best Actress snub for Rust & Bone. Now, let's look further back, to the Best Supporting Actress race of 2009...

Over the past month, we’ve watched the world slowly come to realize what the word “essential” truly means for the global economy. In many instances, our essential employees are also the ones that are paid the least, often with minimal job security. And as frontline employees around the country fight for better working conditions and increased safety precautions, these employees become causalities of the corporate policies that are meant to protect companies from those same voices.

Continue reading ‘Two Days, One Night’ Beautifully Captures The Plight Of The Underpaid “Essential” Worker at The Playlist.

For all the ways Belgium’s Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne are rightly hailed as masterful contemporary realists with an abiding compassion for society’s fringe strugglers — the poor, the undocumented, the criminal, the victimized — they’ve just as easily earned their place as some of the greatest suspense directors of all time.

Their street-level stories, frequent Cannes winners since 1999’s “Rosetta,” typically hinge on a central desperation tied to simple survival, but when played out with their trademark visual restlessness and character-driven purposefulness, they’re often as nail-biting as any genre exercise or melodrama.

Which makes “Young Ahmed,” the pair’s latest dispatch from the viewpoint of a troubled soul — in this case, a 13-year-old Belgian boy in the dangerous throes of religious fanaticism — both a typically unnerving entry in their canon, and a strangely distancing one, given the impenetrability of its lead’s self-destructiveness.

Also Read: In 'Young Ahmed,...

Jean-Pierre Dardenne on Young Ahmed (Le Jeune Ahmed): “We're always very concerned with avoiding imagery …” Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze

With Young Ahmed (Le Jeune Ahmed), starring Idir Ben Addi as Ahmed, featuring Myriem Akheddiou, Victoria Bluck, Claire Bodson, Othmane Moumen, Olivier Bonnaud, and Cyra Lassman, Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne enter a new realm of their oeuvre.

And yet their latest film, for which they won the top director prize at Cannes, is very much in line with what they do best. They illuminate seemingly impossible situations that are deeply grounded in social realities. Body language, quotidian objects, and a hesitant glance speak volumes.

Luc Dardenne on Idir Ben Addi as Ahmed: “We define the character not by his psychology, but by his accessories.” Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze

In the second half of my conversation at Ian Schrager's Hudson Hotel with the master filmmakers, I started out...

In a 90-minute onstage interview at the Marrakech Film Festival, Marion Cotillard – a best actress Oscar winner with “La Vie en Rose” – spoke about how she chooses her roles, suggesting that it is the characters who actually pick her.

“I believe that the characters choose us, when they need us to tell their story. I then try to understand why,” she said.

Cotillard has recently finished filming Leos Carax’s musical comedy “Annette,” which is produced by Charles Gillibert’s CG Cinema, (“Personal Shopper”) and released by Amazon Studios in the U.S.

The project brings together rock band Sparks, which is composing original songs, with music producer Marius de Vries (“La La Land”).

It is Cotillard’s most directly singer-orientated role since her performance as Edith Piaf in “La Vie en Rose.”

She first met Carax to talk about the project three years ago, but was unavailable for the...

Luc Dardenne and Jean-Pierre Dardenne, Cannes Film Festival Best Director winners for Young Ahmed (Le Jeune Ahmed) Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze

Jean-Pierre Dardenne and Luc Dardenne joined me for a conversation at Ian Schrager's Hudson Hotel the day after the North American Premiere of Young Ahmed (Le Jeune Ahmed) at the New York Film Festival. The film stars Idir Ben Addi as Ahmed with Myriem Akheddiou, Victoria Bluck, Claire Bodson, Othmane Moumen, Olivier Bonnaud, and Cyra Lassman.

Marion Cotillard's walk turned her into a reluctant Western hero in Two Days, One Night. Here, Young Ahmed (Idir Ben Addi), an adolescent boy, living in a small Belgian town, suddenly grows distant from his surroundings. His body is changing and out of control and so are his thoughts. The words of the local Imam (Othmane Moumen) and the video of a cousin who died a martyr's death inspire his radical thoughts.

Fabrizio Rongione and Stéphanie Cleau will head up the film’s cast; the Cnc will also support the feature debuts by Philippe Petit and Camille Ponsin. Three projects have been accepted during the third 2019 session of the Cnc’s first advance on receipts committee. Standing out among them is Andreas Fontana’s Azor, a predominantly Swiss production handled by Alina film with French partners Local Films (Nicolas Brevière) contributing up to 30%. Shooting will begin on 11 November in Argentina. The cast includes Belgian actor of Italian origins Fabrizio Rongione and Stéphanie Cleau (The Blue Room). Worth noting as well is the presence, in...

Palme d’Or winners for 1999’s Rosetta (review) and L’Enfant (2005), Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne have attempted to three-peat this past decade with 2011’s The Kid with a Bike (winner of the Grand Prix prize), 2014’s Two Days, One Night and 2016’s The Unknown Girl (review). Their eleventh feature film and eighth consecutive competition film, Le Jeune Ahmed adheres to their beginnings in cinema mixing non professional actors with socially conscious template and bleak realism. Set in Belgium, this is about a young fanatic barely out of childhood who plans to kill his teacher in the name of his religion.…...

Belgian directors Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne excel at showing how the struggles of the underprivileged can lead them down morally questionable paths, but when “Young Ahmed” begins, that journey has started long ago. As 13-year-old Ahmed (Idir Ben Addi in a breakout turn) spends his days studying radical Islam with Imam Youssouf (Othmane Moumen), much to the consternation of his frantic mother Louise (Claire Bodson), the child has already committed himself to jihad. Within the first act of the movie, he has sworn himself to murdering his secular teacher Ines (Miriam Akheddiou), and the reckless act lands him in juvenile detention. The rest of the movie finds the kid struggling with his confused ideology, as various characters attempt to sway his beliefs.

In the pantheon of Dardenne brothers movies from the past three decades, “Young Ahmed” lies somewhere on the spectrum ahead of mediocre works like “The Unknown Girl” but...

IFC Films will launch a new subscription video on demand channel, Variety has learned. Dubbed IFC Films Unlimited, it will comprise theatrically released and award-winning titles such as “Y Tu Mama Tambien,” “The Trip,” “Two Days, One Night,” “45 Years” and “The Babadook.” The movies will be furnished from the company’s distribution labels IFC Films, Sundance Selects and genre label IFC Midnight.

IFC Films Unlimited will initially launch on Amazon Prime Video Channels, with a monthly price of $5.99, and its launch will coincide with the Cannes Film Festival, which is fitting given that the company has distributed five Palme d’Or winners. At launch, IFC Films Unlimited will include three of those victors: “4 Months, 3 Weeks 2 Days,” “Dheepan” and “The Wind That Shakes the Barley.”

The company will initially offer several hundred titles. The selection will be routinely updated. In an interview, IFC Films co-president Lisa Schwartz said that the...

Nineteen films are in contention for the Palme d’Or at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, which runs from May 14 to May 25. The history of a filmmaker at this festival can offer wisdom as to who could be out front to win the coveted Palme d’Or. Seven of the entries are by filmmakers that have been honored during past closing ceremonies. Newcomers to Cannes could end up being big winners with three filmmakers making their first appearance on the Croisette and another four having their films shown for the first time in competition. The jury will be headed by four-time Oscar winner Alejandro González Iñárritu, who claimed the Best Director prize at Cannes in 2006 for “Babel.”

Below is a breakdown of the 19 films competing this year and the history of their helmers at the festival.

Pedro Almodóvar (“Pain and Glory”)

The acclaimed Spanish director is back at Cannes...

One of the few surprises at the 91st Academy Awards came in one of the categories we least expected. While we all thought this would finally be the Oscar coronation for Glenn Close (“The Wife”) on her seventh nomination, Olivia Colman (“The Favourite”) swiped that Best Actress crown to everyone’s shock (even Lady Gaga mouthed “Oh my god.”) So how did Colman pull off this upset when it certainly felt like it was Close’s time after wins at the Golden Globes (and that speech!), the Critics’ Choice and Screen Actors Guild Awards? Here are seven explanations.

1. Colman was in a bigger and widely seen film

“The Favourite” and “Roma” topped the field with 10 nominations. Close’s bid was the only nomination for “The Wife.” The math is not hard. “The Wife” probably wasn’t on top of most voters’ screener piles, while “The Favourite” was going to be...

This year 16 performers reaped bids at all three key precursor prizes — the SAG, Golden Globes and Critics’ Choice awards. Such recognition certainly warrants getting up early on Oscar nominations mornings. But as Emily Blunt (“Mary Poppins Returns”) and Timothee Chalamet (”Beautiful Boy”) found out reaping bids for that triple crown still didn’t make them sure things in the Academy Awards derby.

They became the most recent of the 23 performers to stumble at the last hurdle and suffer an Oscar snub since the Critics’ Choice Awards introduced nominations in 2001. Last year, James Franco (“The Disaster Artist”) and Hong Chau (“Downsizing”) got added to the roster of those saddled with this dubious achievement.

See 2019 Oscar nominations: Full list of Academy Awards nominees in all 24 categories

Chalamet should take comfort from the case of Leonardo DiCaprio, who finally won an Oscar three years ago for “The Revenant” after four losses. There were...

Ahmed

The Dardenne Bros. turn their socially minded lens to religious extremism with their eleventh narrative feature, Ahmed. As usual, the Dardennes are collaborating with production company Les Films du Fleuve, returning to a template which saw them find early success by using a cast of unknowns. Having twice won the Palme d’Or, the duo are the most celebrated directors to have come from Belgium, making any of their projects of instant note. Besides their Palme wins, their offerings almost always leave Cannes with a major prize, including the Ecumenical Jury Prize for 2002’s Le fils, Best Screenplay for Lorna’s Silence in 2008, the Grand Jury Prize for 2011’s The Kid with a Bike, and again the Ecumenical Jury Prize for 2014’s Two Days, One Night (which also resulted in an Oscar nod for Marion Cotillard).…...

A collective sigh by critics greeted Monday’s announcement of the nine films shortlisted for this year’s foreign-language film Oscar. For once, though, it was a sigh of relief rather than exasperation, with few complaints arising over the chosen titles, which were broadly acclaimed.

Controversy over prominent omissions is practically an annual tradition. Last year, critics castigated the Academy for leaving out France’s celebrated AIDS drama “120 Beats Per Minute,” while the year before that, they lambasted the snubbing of Pedro Almodovar’s “Julieta” and Paul Verhoeven’s “Elle” (which went on to nab a nomination for Isabelle Huppert). From “Gomorrah” to “Once Upon a Time in Anatolia” to “Two Days, One Night,” the roll call of recent critics’ darlings to fall at this first hurdle is a distinguished one.

The Academy addressed the outcry that followed the sidelining of 2007 Palme d’Or winner “4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days...

Most of the winners at the 2018 New York Film Critics Circle Awards were already in the conversation for Oscars, but my favorite part of the critics awards roll-out at this time of year is when they wander off the beaten path to champion a movie or performance that has flown under the radar. That’s what they did in Best Actress, where they sidestepped more familiar choices like Glenn Close (“The Wife”) and Olivia Colman (“The Favourite”). Instead, they picked Regina Hall (“Support the Girls”), who may seem like an unlikely Oscar contender, but history is on her side.

Is she really that unlikely, though? She’s a veteran of film and television with credits including “Ally McBeal,” “Girls Trip” and another acclaimed film this year, “The Hate U Give.” And while it’s early yet, she hasn’t missed a beat on the awards circuit. She earned Best Actress...

The New York Film Critics’ Circle is so determined to be one of the first groups to weigh in with its picks for the best of the year that the date of its decision-making keeps getting advanced; it was on Nov. 29 this year. But how much influence does it have on the last group to be heard from — the motion picture academy which will reveal the Oscar winners 88 days from now on Feb. 24, 2019? Let’s take a look back at the last seven years of the Gotham critics picks and see how well (or not), these early kudos previewed the Academy Awards.

See New York Film Critics’ Circle Awards 2019: Full list of winners [Updating Live]

Last year, Greta Gerwig‘s solo directorial debut “Lady Bird” was named Best Picture by the Nyfcc while its star, Saoirse Ronan, took home the Best Actress award. The film fell short at the Oscars, losing...

After months of searching for a white knight, Paris-based film group Wild Bunch is looking to be rescued by its biggest German shareholder, Lars Windhorst, who owns a controlling stake in the company via his investment fund Sapinda, Variety has learned.

Windhorst is in advanced negotiations to inject capital and to restructure Wild Bunch’s debt – which stood at €74.7 million ($86.5 million) as of mid-2017 – in a deal potentially worth €40 million to €50 million, according to several sources. The deal has yet to be approved by a Paris business court as part of Wild Bunch’s ongoing mediation procedure, which began last December and received an extension of deadline before the Cannes Film Festival.

Wild Bunch and Sapinda declined requests for comment Thursday.

Windhorst will have to prove that he has the financial resources to make the transaction in order for the deal to be sealed in mid-July, sources say. A colorful financier,...