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Warning: The following contains spoilers for 1923 season 2, episode 4.1923 star Julia Schlaepfer, who plays Alexandra on the show, warns that the worst has yet to come for her character this season. After being separated from Spencer Dutton (Brandon Sklenar) in season 1, season 2 sees Alex embarking on a journey to America on her own. After enduring inhumane examinations at Ellis Island as an immigrant, she is robbed and attacked in 1923 season 2, episode 4.

In an interview with TVLine, Schlaepfer teases that something worse is on the horizon. The actor breaks down Alex's thought process in the season so far, having passed the border control by herself and received "bits of kindness" from strangers along the way. She explains that Alex enters season 2 witha sense of naivety and believes that "she is through the worst of it" after having lost nearly everything of monetary value. However, Alex may have gotten ahead of herself. Check...

If you thought Alex’s trials were over after her harsh experience at Ellis Island, Sunday’s 1923 quickly disabused you of that notion.

The shifty-looking man who followed Spencer’s wife into the ladies’ room at New York’s Grand Central Terminal beat and robbed her, taking her cash and everything of value — including the watch that Jennifer had given her to sell in case of emergency. She lost consciousness but came to just in time to run for her train to Montana, which she boarded with the realization that she had nothing to her name except her ticket. (Read...

Sony Pictures Classics has acquired North American and Latin American rights for Rebecca Zlotowski’s French-language murder mystery movie Vie Privée, starring Jodie Foster as a renowned psychiatrist who investigates the suspicious death of one of her patients.

Foster, who speaks fluent French, is joined in the cast by Auteuil and Efira (Other People’s Children), Mathieu Amalric (Serpent’s Path), Vincent Lacoste (Lost Illusions) and Luana Bajrami (Portrait of a Lady On Fire).

The acquisition follows a slew of deals on the film, which is being sold internationally by Goodfellas.

As announced by Deadline over the weekend, it has sold out in Europe with deals to UK (Altitude), Spain (Caramel Films), Germany (Plaion Pictures), Italy (Europictures), Benelux (September Film), Switzerland (Frenetic Films), Portugal (Pris Audiovisuais), Bulgaria (Cinelibri), ex-Yugoslavia (McF), Hungary (Cinetel Ltf), Romania (Independenta Film), Poland (Best Film), the Baltics and Cis (Pro:vzglyad).

Danish distributor Another World Entertainment has acquired Scandinavian rights,...

In one of the first major deals unveiled at the European Film Market, Sony Pictures Classics (“I’m Still Here”) has bought “Vie Privée,” a highly anticipated, humor-laced murder mystery movie starring Jodie Foster and directed by Rebecca Zlotowski (“Other People’s Children”), for North America and Latin America territories.

The Oscar winner stars in the film as renowned psychiatrist Lilian Steiner who mounts a private investigation into the death of one of her patients, whom she is convinced has been murdered. Foster last starred in a French-language film 20 years ago in Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s Oscar-nominated “A Very Long Engagement.”

Foster, who recently won an Emmy and a Golden Globe her turn in HBO’s “True Detective: Night Country,” stars in “Vie Privée” alongside a flurry of international stars, including Daniel Auteuil and Efira (“Other People’s Children”), Mathieu Almaric (“The Diving Bell and the Butterfly”), Vincent Lacoste (“Lost Illusions”) and Luana Bajrami...

Exclusive: Goodfellas has posted a slew of deals for Rebecca Zlotowski’s French-language murder mystery movie Vie Privée, starring Jodie Foster alongside a host of top French talent including Daniel Auteuil and Virginie Efira, and unveiled a first look.

The movie – which shot last fall between Paris and Normandy – is currently in post-production, with an expected festival push this year.

It has sold out in Europe, with deals to UK (Altitude), Spain (Caramel Films), Germany (Plaion Pictures), Italy (Europictures), Benelux (September Film), Switzerland (Frenetic Films), Portugal (Pris Audiovisuais), Bulgaria (Cinelibri), ex-Yugoslavia (McF), Hungary (Cinetel Ltf), Romania (Independenta Film), Poland (Best Film), the Baltics and Cis (Pro:vzglyad).

Danish distributor Another World Entertainment has struck a multi-territory deal for Scandinavia, covering Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden.

Outside of Europe, it has been acquired for Israel (Lev Cinemas) and Turkey (Yeni Bir Films) and Australia and New Zealand (Transmission)

North America, Latin...

International film biz pros may be gearing up for the Berlinale and its European Film Market in February, but most of Europe’s top buyers were already back on the circuit last week for the Unifrance Rendez-Vous in Paris showcasing French movies, series and talent.

The market component of the 27th edition, running January 14 to 17, swapped its recent location of the swanky Champs-Elysées Avenue eighth arrondissement for the grittier but storied Left Bank neighborhood of Montparnasse.

More than 80 French film and TV sales companies set up residence in the hangar-like Espace Pullman in the shadow of the Montparnasse Tower, to showcase their new French-language wares to 500 buyers from roughly 40 mainly European territories.

After years of being crammed into separate rooms, it was the first time France’s film and TV sales sectors were together in the same space and there was a different kind of energy.

“There’s a real market feel this year,...

Spoiler Alert: This story contains spoilers for Season 2, Episode 1 of “Severance,” streaming now on Apple TV+.

The Season 1 finale of “Severance” left audiences with a cruel, spectacular cliffhanger.

The innies — that is, the versions of Mark (Adam Scott), Helly (Britt Lower), Dylan (Zach Cherry) and Irving (John Turturro) that exist only at work — found a way to break out of the confines of Lumon. Using the Overtime Contingency, they woke up in the outside world, in their outies’ bodies, and discovered shocking truths about who they are outside of work. Irving is investigating the shady company, Helly is the daughter of the CEO, and Mark has just found out his dead wife, Gemma (Dichen Lachman), might not be dead after all — she is his severed Lumon colleague, Ms. Casey. Just as he runs into the living room screaming “She’s alive!,” the Overtime Contingency ends, and the innies are zapped back into outies.

French filmmaker Rebecca Zlotowski, who’s just wrapped filming of “Vie Privée” starring Jodie Foster in Paris, received the French Cinema Award at a jam-packed ceremony held in an ornate room of the Ministry of Culture on Jan. 16.

The tribute, which is given by the film promotion body Unifrance, was introduced by Gaëtan Bruel, chief of staff of Rachida Dati, the minister of culture, as well as Unifrance president Gilles Pelisson and managing director Daniela Elstner.

Created in 2016, the French Cinema Award honors actors, filmmakers and producers who have contributed to making French cinema shine abroad. Past recipients include actors Juliette Binoche, Virginie Efira and Melvil Poupaud, director Olivier Assayas and producers Aton Soumache and Dimitri Rassam, among others.

Zlotowski, who is perfectly bilingual and has worked with a number of international talent, from Natalie Portman to Lily Rose-Depp and more recently Foster, has been actively promoting each movie she...

Apple has been pulling out all the stops to promote the long-awaited second season of Severance as of late, having recently made the show's first season available for free to Roku users. In the latest attempt to drum up interest, Apple staged a marketing pop-up at Grand Central Station in New York City in a stunt befitting of the show's quintessential oddness.

Via 9to5Mac, a TikTok user named @bigbrozelle uploaded a brief clip showing the brilliant Grand Central Station pop-up, which features Lumon employees working at their desks encased in a glass cube. The recreation of the Macrodata Refinement Department showcases the strange retro-looking computers seen on the show and even includes the green carpeting. Check out the brief clip of the Severance Season 2 marketing pop-up below.

@bigbrozelleSeverance Apple TV Grand Central Pop Up #apple #severance #grandcentral♬ Come Check This (Quickie Edit) - Fetish

There was more to come with the stunt,...

“Severance” fans commuting through Grand Central Station in New York City Tuesday were confronted by a special surprise ahead of Season 2’s Friday release.

A recreation of the office from the Apple TV+ series was placed inside a glass box in the center of the high-traffic train station, but the set piece pop-up was not the only surprise in store for fans. Several cast members, including producer and star Adam Scott, Britt Lower, Patricia Arquette, Trammell Tillman and Zach Cherry, among others, entered the office as their characters from the show.

Executive producer and director of the series Ben Stiller posted a video of the installation to his social accounts Tuesday, including one video of Scott mopping the office floor.

Grand Central right now. #Severance pic.twitter.com/VBcFzi4Bh3

— Ben Stiller (@BenStiller) January 14, 2025

Earlier in the day, social accounts said they spotted “Lumon employees” working in the cubicles inside the performance art piece.

Exclusive: Daniel Auteuil, Virginie Efira, Mathieu Amalric, Vincent Lacoste and Luana Bajrami have been unveiled as supporting cast members in Rebecca Zlotowski’s murder mystery movie Vie Privée starring Jodie Foster.

The production has also unveiled the plotline for the film which follows renowned psychiatrist Lilian Steiner, played by previously-announced Foster, who mounts her own private investigation into the death of one of her patients, whom she is convinced has been murdered.

The supporting cast news and plot reveal comes as filming – running from September 30 to November 22 between Paris and Normandy – enters its third week.

The feature is Zlotowski’s sixth film after 2023 Venice Golden Lion contender Other People’s Children, An Easy Girl, Planetarium, Grand Central and Dear Prudence.

Zlotowski co-wrote the screenplay with Anne Berest, whose credits include Audrey Diwan’s Venice Golden Lion winner Happening and Other People’s Children, as well as long-time collaborator Gaëlle Macé.

The film...

Oscar-winning actor and filmmaker Jodie Foster is set to star in a French movie, “Vie Privée,” the next directorial effort of Rebecca Zlotowski.

Currently filming in France, “Vie Privée” will mark Zlotowski’s follow up to “Other People’s Children,” which competed at the Venice Film Festival in 2022.

The movie is penned by Zlotowski, Anne Berest, a well-known French novelist (“The Postcard”) and screenwriter (“Happening”), alongside Gaëlle Macé. Zlotowski and Macé previously collaborated on the script of “Grand Central.” Zlotowski’s regular producer, Frederic Jouve at Paris-based Velvet Films is producing.

Foster, who was last seen in “True Detective: Night Country,” picks her roles very selectively. Her pairing with Zlotowski seems like an ideal match as they share a similar sensibility and are both interested in dramas portraying multi-faceted characters, many of which are female protagonists.

Besides “Other People’s Children,” Zlotowski is best known for directing “Une fille facile,” “Grand Central” with Lea Seydoux,...

Audrey Diwan’s erotic quest movie “Emmanuelle” has dropped a first trailer and poster ahead of its world premiere screening in September at the San Sebastian Film Festival.

Shot in Hong Kong, the film is freely adapted from Emmanuelle Arsan’s novel of the same name. It casts a female gaze on the intimate quest of the woman whose name still evokes one cinema’s most provocative characters.

With “Portrait of a Lady on Fire” star Noémie Merlant in the title role, Emmanuelle goes in search of a lost pleasure. She flies alone to Hong Kong on a business trip. In this sensual global city, she initiates numerous encounters and meets Kei (Will Sharpe), a man who constantly eludes her.

Alongside Merlant, the film also stars Naomi Watts, Jamie Campbell Bower, Chacha Huang and Anthony Wong.

Diwan, a Venice Golden Lion winner for her 2021 film “Happening,” co-wrote “Emmanuelle” with fellow filmmaker Rebecca Zlotowski,...

“Emmanuelle,” a new feature from French writer-director Audrey Diwan, will world premiere in competition as the opening film for the 72nd San Sebastian Film Festival, which kicks off on September 20.

Inspired by the eponymous erotic novel by Emmanuelle Arsan, the film tells the story of a woman looking for a lost pleasure. During a business trip to Hong Kong, she meets several new people, including a man named Kei, who constantly eludes her. According to the director, the story was conceived as an exploration of pleasure in the post #MeToo era.

Diwan, a Venice Golden Lion winner for her 2021 film “Happening,” co-wrote “Emmanuelle” with fellow filmmaker Rebecca Zlotowski, whose 2013 feature “Grand Central” screened in competition at Cannes and won the François Chalais Award.

Chantelouve, Rectangle Productions and Goodfellas (formerly Wild Bunch) produce. “Emmanuelle” will be distributed by Pathé in France, where it will debut on September 25, and Beta Fiction in Spain.

Exclusive: Universal Television, a division of Universal Studio Group, has landed rights to The Ascent, the debut novel of police officer and sergeant turned author Adam Plantinga, in a highly competitive situation.

Sources tell Deadline that a pair of prominent directors were taking meetings to set the book up at various studios before Universal stepped in with a preemptive bid and enlisted Davis Entertainment, its collaborator on shows like The Blacklist and The Equalizer, to executive produce the series adaptation. Usg’s Creative Acquisitions and IP Management team, led by Jordan Moblo, was instrumental in securing rights to the novel.

Garnering critical acclaim in its publication last month through Grand Central, The Ascent centers on Kurt Argento, an ex-Detroit street cop who can’t let injustice go — and has the fighting skills to back up his idealism. If he sees a young girl being dragged into an alley, he’s...

Paul Dano, Maryam Touzani, Denis Menochet, Rungano Nyoni, Atiq Rahimi round out jurors.

Cannes Film Festival has unveiled the eight global talents set for jury duty alongside president Ruben Östlund at the 76th annual event running May 16-27.

Joining the two-time Palme d’Or-winning Swedish filmmaker will be 2021’s Palme d’Or-winning French director-screenwriter Julia Ducournau, Moroccan director-screenwriter Maryam Touzani, French actor Denis Menochet, Zambian-uk writer-director Rungano Nyoni, American actress, director and producer Brie Larson, US actor-writer-director Paul Dano, Afghani writer-filmmaker Atiq Rahimi, and Argentinian writer-director Damian Szifron.

The jury is packed with familiar festival faces. Touzani’s first feature...

The Cannes Film Festival has unveiled the eight members of the main Competition jury, who will join its previously announced president Ruben Östlund at the 76th edition, running May 16 to 27

They comprise Moroccan director Maryam Touzani, French actor Denis Ménochet, British-Zambian screenwriter and director Rungano Nyoni, American actress, director and producer Brie Larson, American Actor and director Paul Dano, Afghan writer and filmmaker Atiq Rahimi, Argentinian director and screenwriter Damián Szifrón and French director Julia Ducournau.

Like two-time Palme d’Or winner Östlund, most of the jury members have strong Cannes pedigrees.

Having long collaborated on her husband Nabil Ayouch’s films such as Much Loved, Touzani made her feature directorial debut in Cannes Un Certain Regard with Adam in 2019 and returned to the section in 2022 with The Blue Caftan, which made it onto the Oscars long-list in the Best International Film category.

Ménochet’s Cannes credits include Quentin Tarantino...

The Batman and The Fabelmans star Paul Dano, Titane-directing Palme d’Or winner Julia Ducournau, I Am Not a Witch breakout filmmaker Rungano Nyoni, and Captain Marvel herself, Brie Larson will help make up the superstar competition jury for this year’s Cannes Film Festival.

Together with French actor Denis Ménochet, of Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds and Ari Aster’s Beau is Afraid; Argentinian director Damián Szifron (Wild Tales, To Catch a Killer); Afghani-born, French-based filmmaker Atig Ranimi (Earth and Ashes, The Patience Stone); and Moroccan director Maryam Touzani (The Blue Caftan, Adam), they will join jury president Ruben Östlund, director of last year’s Cannes winner The Triangle of Sadness, in judging the Palme d’Or winners at the 76th Cannes International Film Festival.

Together, the jury will screen the 21 films picked for Cannes competition this year —among them Todd Haynes’ May December, Wes Anderson’s Asteroid City,...

Phenomenal Media, the media and merchandising company founded by Meena Harris, announced Tuesday a publishing partnership with Hachette Book Group divisions, launching Phenomenal Media Books.

Phenomenal Media Books will develop and acquire works from underrepresented voices across multiple genres and for audiences of all ages. Books will be published in collaboration with imprints Grand Central Publishing and Little, Brown Books for Young Readers.

Founder and CEO Meena Harris, who is the niece of Vice President Kamala Harris, said in a statement, “We are excited to be able to expand on our mission to support underrepresented voices and singular storytelling through this unprecedented publishing partnership with Hachette. We were thrilled to see the positive reaction to our launch of Phenomenal Book Club — clearly, people are looking for more stories from authors who, too often, do not receive the spotlight from the publishing industry. Phenomenal Media Books will provide new avenues for...

Click here to read the full article.

Released on Netflix in 2020 after premiering at Cannes the year before, An Easy Girl was an under-the-radar treat — a South-of-France-set coming-of-age film so lusciously tactile and perceptive it felt like a classic as soon as the closing credits began to roll. The writer-director, Rebecca Zlotowski, is back with a more conventional but equally winning work in Venice competition entry Other People’s Children (Les enfants des autres), confirming her gift for investing familiar formulas with freshness and charm, smarts and sexiness.

Anchored by a superb Virginie Efira (Benedetta) as a 40ish high-school teacher whose bond with her boyfriend’s daughter awakens a complicated mix of maternal yearning and midlife frustration, the movie has the typical contours of contemporary Parisian romantic dramedy: Good-looking people embrace, talk, smoke, sip wine, attend casually chic soirees, and embrace some more against the backdrop of a glittering Eiffel Tower...

French director Rebecca Zlotowski makes her Venice Film Festival competition debut on Sunday with drama Other People’s Children, casting the often neglected, sometimes maligned figure of the stepmother in a fresh light.

Virginie Efira stars as an attractive teacher in her 40s with a full and happy life. In the backdrop, however, her biological clock is ticking. When she gets involved with a divorced father, she becomes attached to his young daughter.

Efira is joined in the cast by Roschdy Zem as the father; Chiara Mastroianni, in a small role as his ex-wife and the girl’s mother, and documentarian Frederic Wiseman, who makes a guest appearance as a gynaecologist.

Other People’s Children is Zlotowski’s fifth film after Dear Prudence, Grand Central, Planetarium and An Easy Girl. The filmmaker was last in Venice with Planetarium which played Out of Competition in 2016.

Deadline talked to Zlotowski ahead of the premiere in Venice.

Some films spring from abundance, while others are born of a need. Premiering in competition in Venice, Rebecca Zlotowski’s “Other People’s Children” clearly falls into the latter camp. “I’ve often used cinema as a guide for living, only aspects of my own life hadn’t been told,” Zlotowski tells Variety. “I imagined a 40-year-old woman, nearing the end of her fertility, who is a stepmother to others, and thought, why hadn’t we seen that character before?”

Filling in the missing pieces, Zlotowski’s romantic drama follows Rachel (Virginie Efira), a Parisian high school teacher who feels a sudden and unrealized desire for maternity when she falls in love with a recent divorcé – and with him, his four-year-old daughter. Tinged in bittersweet tones, the film tracks the ecstasies of a new and all-enveloping love affair and the tradeoffs that arrive with mid-life relationships. Because in this particular love-triangle...

Click here to read the full article.

In what has to be a film festival first, two of the actors in Rebecca Zlotowski’s new drama Other People’s Children, Roschdy Zem and Frederick Wiseman, have their own movies — Zem-directed Our Time and Wiseman’s Un couple — in competition at the Venice Film Festival this year.

It’s Zlotowski’s second trip to the Lido after Planetarium starring Natalie Portman, Emmanuel Salinger and Lily-Rose Depp premiered in Venice in 2016. That opulent period drama, featuring Portman and Depp as a pair of sisters and spiritual mediums touring 1930s France, was a departure for Zlotowski, who won critical praise in France and on the international circuit with her first two features: Belle Epine (2010) and Grand Central (2013), both starring Lea Seydoux.

Other People’s Children features Benedetta star Virginie Efira as Rachel, a 40-something childless school teacher (her gynecologist, played by Wiseman, keeps reminding...

In part deux today of the Cannes Film Festival symposium on cinema, three female filmmakers were represented in You Were Never Really Here‘s Lynne Ramsay and Grand Central‘s Rebecca Zlotowski and French actress/director/scribe Agnes Jaoui, unlike yesterday when it was all men. The festival on social media took a licking for being tone deaf in the wake of yesterday’s panel.

Cannes Film Festival Boss Thierry Frémaux returned with Guillermo del Toro to lead what was, again, another three hour discussion about the potential death of cinema and its future.

“There will always be obstacles,” said Ramsay, “Necessity is the mother of invention. You shouldn’t feel depressed because of difficulties, even if my 7-year-old daughter says to me, ‘Mom, don’t make movies anymore, you have the look so sad!”

Jaoui, who won Best Screenplay for Look at Me at Cannes in 2004, spoke about how in regards to job offers,...

Léa Seydoux, who is in two films at this year's Cannes is to reprise the role first played by Sylvia Kristel, right Photo: UniFrance One of the cult erotic film hits of the Seventies Emmanuelle is to be remade by Happening director Audrey Diwan - who received the Golden Lion in Venice last year -with Léa Seydoux in the title role originally taken by Sylvia Kristel.

The new adaptation from the 1959 novel by Emmanuelle Arsan has just been announced at the Cannes Film Festival. It will be made in English with a script developed by Diwan and Rebecca Zlotowski, who directed 2013 film Grand Central, which played at Cannes in Un Certain Regard. She is currently preparing her third feature, co-authored with Robin Campillo, while continuing to co-write with other directors.

Léa Seydoux will be the new Emmanuelle, pictured here in last year’s Cannes hit Deception by Arnaud Desplechin Photo:...

Palme d’Or winning actress Léa Seydoux will star in Happening filmmaker Audrey Diwan’s English-language directorial debut, Emmanuelle, inspired by Emmanuelle Arsan’s novel and based on a script co-developed by Diwan and Rebecca Zlotowski.

The Arsan book follows a young woman’s sexual journey from the arms of her husband to intimate encounters with the wives of his business associates, to further explorations wherein the philosophical and aesthetic facets of eroticism are expounded—and enacted—to the fullest degree.

Diwan’s second feature, Happening, adapted from Annie Ernaux’s book recounting her illegal abortion in the 1960s, received the Golden Lion at the 2021 Venice Film Festival; four César Award nominations, including a win for Most Promising Newcomer for Anamaria Vartolomei; and a BAFTA Award nomination; among other honors. The pic features a cast of stellar emerging French acting talent including Anamaria Vartolomei, Kacey Mottet-Klein and Luana Bajrami.

Diwan’s feature directorial debut,...

Les enfants des autres (Other People’s Children)

Directly after premiering her fourth feature film Une fille facile (An Easy Girl) in the Directors’ Fortnight section, Rebecca Zlotowski moved into the directors’ chair for a six-parter politico-series she co-created called “Savages” and we imagine it is here she nabbed actor Roschdy Zem for what might be a more two-hander drama. After her huge entrance into the film world with 2010’s Belle Epine (Critics’ Week), 2013’s Grand Central (Un Certain Regard), 2016’s Planetarium (Out of Comp in Venice), this more intimate fifth feature (in just over a decade) began lensing in March of 2021 with Virginie Efira (who will have an eventful 2022 with Alice Winocour’s Revoir Paris and Serge Bozon’s Don Juan).…...

In 1990, Prince, who was as competitive as he was virtuosic, made a rare admission of vulnerability: “To this day, [the Time] are the only band I’ve ever been afraid of.”

Prince had initially helped nurture the Time, a group of crack musicians from his hometown of Minneapolis that he formed into a band and wrote songs for. When they emerged in 1981 with an eponymous album full of knee-buckling funk and an impeccably choreographed live show, they immediately scored a pair of Top Ten R&b hits: “Get It Up,...

The 74th Cannes Film Festival has unveiled its jury which includes five women; a majority in the nine-person group including President Spike Lee.

The jury includes French-Senegalese actor-director Mati Diop whose 2019 movie Atlantics took home the Grand Prix from the festival; Crazy Heart Oscar nominated actress Maggie Gyllenhaal, French Inglorious Basterds actress Mélanie Laurent, Austrian filmmaker Jessica Hausner and French singer Mylène Farmer.

Rounding out the jury are French actor and recent Golden Globe and BAFTA nominated The Mauritanian actor Tahar Rahim, Brazilian director Kleber Mendonça Filho and South Korean actor Song Kang-Ho who starred in the 2019 Cannes Palme d’Or winner and ultimate Oscar Best Picture winner, Parasite. Song has been a frequent star in Bong Joon Ho’s canon including The Host and Memories of Murder.

Diop’s Atlantics was shortlisted as one of the ten best international films at the Oscars. She has also directed several short-films...

Led by Spike Lee, the jury contains five women and four men.

The Cannes Film Festival has unveiled the main Competition jury for its 74th edition which runs July 6-17.

For the second time in the festival’s history, female jury members will be in the majority with five women and three men due to join previously announced jury president Spike Lee. In 2018, when Cate Blanchett was jury president, the split was also five women and four men.

This year’s female jury members comprise French-Senegalese filmmaker Mati Diop, Canadian-French singer/songwriter Mylène Farmer, US actress, producer and director Maggie Gyllenhaal,...

Etienne Comar, a well-established French producer and screenwriter who made his directorial debut with the Berlinale opener “Django” in 2017, is stepping back behind the camera for the prison drama “A L’ombre des filles.”

The movie, which will soon begin shooting, is headlined by a top-notch European cast including Alex Lutz (“Guy”), Agnès Jaoui (“The Taste of Others”), Veerle Baetens (“The Broken Circle Breakdown”), Hafsia Herzi (“Mektoub My Love”) and Marie Berto (“Grand Central”).

Set over a summer, the film follows Luc, a renowned singer who agrees to give singing lessons in a women’s prison. Quickly, Luc will have to deal with their unpredictable temperaments and keep them in harmony throughout the various prison dramas.

“A l’ombre des filles” is being produced by Didar Domehri at Maneki Films and Comar at Arches Films, and is co-produced by Jacques-Henri Bronckart and Gwenaëlle Libert at Versus Production in Belgium. Playtime...

An intellectually stimulating art-house treasure all too easily overlooked amid the near-constant flood of Netflix content, “An Easy Girl” depicts a transformative summer in the life of a 16-year-old girl, but not the one described in the film’s title. That label — which writer-director Rebecca Zlotowski employs ironically, calling into question the patriarchal idea that a woman’s worth is tied up in how “hard to get” she plays it — refers to the protagonist’s 22-year-old cousin, no girl at all, but a comely temptress who breezes into the coastal French city of Cannes like a seductive tropical storm, turning heads and jostling perceptions wherever she goes.

Shifting gears from her widely panned “Planetarium”, Zlotowski delivers a relatively modest but far more thought-provoking project — a Rohmerian moral tale, à “La Collectionneuse,” with a shrewd feminist twist. It’s at once a striking auteur statement (launched during Director’s Fortnight at...

Rosanne Tan edited some of the most significant episodes of the final season of “Mr. Robot,” including the premiere, the dialogue-free fifth episode and Episode 8, where Elliot (Rami Malek) finds his father’s key. Tan joined for Season 3 of the series, having previously been a major fan and she knew it was going to be a major season going into the fourth. “I was excited, nervous, I think all the feelings,” Tan says in an exclusive video interview with Gold Derby. “Even before reading the script I just knew Sam [Esmail] and the writers would be creating something amazing for all of us to come back to.” Watch the exclusive interview with Tan above.

SEERami Malek flashback: He thanks ‘Mr. Robot’ fans for their ‘undying love and support’

Tan was able to show off her editing skills in the first few moments of Season 4, where the “Previously on” segment blended seamlessly...

Before everything went to hell with the Covid-19, I was prepping for attending Film at Lincoln Center's annual Rendezvous with French Cinema Festival, as I've been covering it for Screen Anarchy for the last several years. I was even lucky enough to have a chat with lovely director Rebecca Zlotowski about her seductive new film An Easy Girl, starring a French tabloid sensation, Zahia Dehar. Dehar made headlines in 2009 in a sex scandal involving players in French National Footbal team. She was a minor at the time. She later used her notoriety to be an internet celebrity and entrepreneur. A few days after our conversation, the citywide quarantine hit. With the movie slated to come out this summer, tentatively, here...

[Read the whole post on screenanarchy.com...]...

Rebecca Zlotowski on intertextuality in An Easy Girl (Une Fille Facile): “It’s a reproduction of the prologue of the summer tale by Éric Rohmer, the beginning of La Collectionneuse is Haydée Politoff, the main actress on the beach, shot exactly the same.” Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze

There is nothing easy about being an easy girl in Rebecca Zlotowski’s An Easy Girl (Une Fille Facile), co-written with Teddy Lussi-Modeste, shot by Georges Lechaptois, which is a highlight of Rendez-Vous with French Cinema.

Naïma (Mina Farid), Sofia (Zahia Dehar), Philippe (Benoît Magimel), and Andres (Nuno Lopes) in An Easy Girl (Une Fille Facile)

Naïma (Mina Farid) has just turned 16. She lives in Cannes with her mother who works as a maid in one of the fancy hotels. When her older bombshell cousin Sofia (Zahia Dehar) visits for the summer, a new chapter begins in her life. Naima is in awe...

Hachette division to release film-maker’s memoir Apropos of Nothing, once thought unpublishable in the #MeToo era

A memoir by Woody Allen, rumoured for years and once thought unpublishable in the #MeToo era, is coming out next month. Grand Central Publishing, a division of Hachette Book Group, announced on Monday that the book is called Apropos of Nothing and will be released on 7 April.

“The book is a comprehensive account of his life, both personal and professional, and describes his work in films, theatre, television, nightclubs and print,” according to Grand Central. “Allen also writes of his relationships with family, friends and the loves of his life.”...

Grand Central Publishing announced on Monday that Apropos of Nothing, the long-rumored Woody Allen memoir considered unpublishable in the wake of #MeToo, will be out next month on April 7th.

“The book is a comprehensive account of his life, both personal and professional, and describes his work in films, theater, television, nightclubs, and print,” Grand Central wrote in its press announcement. “Allen also writes of his relationships with family, friends, and the loves of his life.”

Grand Central, a division of Hachette Book Group, acquired the rights to the book...

Exclusive: Assemble Media’s footprint in the literary and IP-generation space has expanded with Vigilantes Anonymous, an in-house original concept that just earned a two-book deal at at Grand Central Publishing after a competitive auction for the world publishing rights.

New York Times bestselling author Nancy Allen, who wrote The Ozark Mystery Series and co-authored Juror No. 3 with James Patterson, will write the criminal justice thriller about a hard-charging prosecutor who is pulled into a covert circle of vigilantes.

“Kate Stone is a badass prosecutor who’s always itching for a fight,” Allen said of the property’s rule-bending protagonist. “She’s the character I was born to write and I’m thrilled to be doing so with Assemble and Grand Central.”

The concept for Vigilantes Anonymous was first sparked by Assemble founder and principal Jack Heller and then developed internally alongside Brendan Deneen, Assemble’s President of Literary and IP Development.

Toronto-bowed “Savages,” the kinetic, taut political thriller from Vivendi’s Canal Plus, imagines a French Obama – Idder Chaouch, of Algerian descent, played by a stately Roschdy Zem – poised in Paris to rule France as its first Maghrebi president.

If he survives an assassination attempt.

Yet, created and co-written by novelist Sabri Louatah and cineast Rebecca Zlotowski, who also directs, the six-part limited series kicks off, in a total declaration of intentions, 250 miles south in the dowdy city of Saint-Étienne.

From a slow sweep establishing shot, it’s a motley, downbeat mix of high-rise council apartment blocks and hills. Cut to two sisters, Dounia and Rabia Nerrouche, in a car, running through the guest list for the wedding of Slim, Dounia’s youngest.

“Arab, Arab, Arab! Mekloufi, Arab. Sahraoui, Arab. Benboudaud, big fat Arab! All Arabs: Are you serious?” asks Rabia in semi-mock disgust, using a more derogatory word in French for “Arab.

With less than a month until the Toronto International Film Festival, the annual gathering has unveiled some intriguing TV entries in its 2019 schedule.

As part of the fifth incarnation of Tiff’s Primetime section, the festival announced a half-dozen series that will join this year’s lineup. The headliner for 2019 is HBO’s “Mrs. Fletcher,” the latest TV effort from Tom Perrotta based on one of novels. Featuring a pilot directed by Nicole Holofcener, the series stars Kathryn Hahn as Eve Fletcher, in search of fulfillment while her son looks for the same during his first year at college.

After making a Tiff splash at last year’s fest with “Sorry for Your Loss,” Facebook Watch is returning with another high-profile title. “Limetown,” starring Jessica Biel and Stanley Tucci, is adapted from the scripted podcast of the same name, a fictional spin on a mysterious true-crime investigation. Rounding out the U.

Tahar Rahim will play French serial killer Charles Sobhraj in the BBC drama “The Serpent,” which Netflix is boarding as a co-producer. The streaming giant will play it in the U.S. and around the world.

Rahim (“The Looming Tower”) will star as conman and mass murderer Sobhraj, who was discovered and trailed by a young diplomat in mid-1970s Southeast Asia and who escaped prison more than once.

The eight-part series is written by Richard Warlow (“Ripper Street”) and based on the true story of how the elusive Sobhraj was caught and brought to trial. The drama follows a junior diplomat from the Dutch Embassy in Bangkok as he unwittingly walks into the web of crime that leads him to chase down the murderer in the twilight years of the Asian Hippie Trail.

The series will be directed by Tom Shankland (“The Missing”) and produced by ITV-owned Mammoth Screen...

Available for the first time on vinyl, the score for Brian De Palma's film Carlito's Way by composer Patrick Doyle is being released on July 12th exclusively through Barnes and Noble. This package has artwork created by Gary Pullin along with LP labels and a back-cover reference to the famous pool hall scene.

"I am extremely fortunate and proud to have composed the score for Carlito's Way for the extraordinary auteur, Brian de Palma. I recognized the moment I first saw the film that it was a masterpiece and time has indeed confirmed this. Every new generation discovers Carlito's Way and the enthusiasm and appreciation over the years for the film, for the score and for the work of all the other departments has been extremely flattering. This film has become a classic and to have my score be part of it is a tremendous honor. Thank you, Brian,...

Exclusive: French filmmaker Rebecca Zlotowski has signed with CAA following her most recent Cannes showing with An Easy Girl, which won the Sacd Prize in last month’s Directors’ Fortnight. Zlotowski is a Cannes regular whose feature debut, Belle Epine, screened in Critics’ Week in 2010 winning the Grand Prize for best first film. It also took the prestigious Louis Delluc award that year.

Zlotowski’s follow-up, Grand Central, ran in Un Certain Regard in 2013 while her third feature, The Summoning, was in the 2016 Venice Film Festival and also screened at Toronto.

The writer/director is currently in post-production on her first miniseries, Les Sauvages, for Canal Plus. A family saga set against a backdrop of politics and social tensions in contemporary France, it’s based on the novel by Sabri Louatah who co-adapted with Zlotowski. Roschdy Zem, Marina Foïs and Amira Casar star.

An Easy Girl, which took the French...

Rebecca Zlotowski, director of the fascinating, disturbing romance Grand Central with Léa Seydoux and Tahar Rahim, and the rather less successful Natalie Portman-starrer Planetarium, has come up with a summer popsicle of a movie set in Cannes, with the flair of Luca Guadagnino and Éric Rohmer.

The director herself calls An Easy Girl a “simple film on a complex subject,” which is as fine a one-liner as I’ll ever come up with. This is a straightforward coming-of-age story from France, a country for whom this is almost a national cliché, but elevated by a key eye for gender roles of its protagonists and an up-to-date message for a teenage generation growing up in a #MeToo world.

School’s out for the summer and 16-year-old Naïma (enchanting first-timer Mina Farid) is enjoying her freedom in the Riviera sun, before she has to make big decisions about the rest of her life.

New films by Robert Eggers, Takashi Miike, Luca Guadagnino and Rebecca Zlotowski to premiere.

Cannes Directors’ Fortnight has unveiled the line-up for its 51st edition, running May 15-25, overseen for the first time by artistic director Paolo Moretti.

Scroll down for full line-up

For his debut edition, Moretti and his programming team have pulled together an auteur-driven selection, mixing established and emerging filmmakers, genre fare and a dash of star power.

“Directors’ Fortnight was born out of a collective and this collective spirit is still alive. The support of the team that I found in place has really touched me,...

Tahar Rahim, the French actor currently appearing in the Berlinale opening film “The Kindness of Strangers,” is in negotiations to star in Damien Chazelle’s highly anticipated Netflix series “The Eddy,” Variety has learned.

A Paris-set musical series written by Jack Thorne (“National Treasure”), “The Eddy” will revolve around a club, its owner, the house band, and the chaotic city that surrounds them. The series is expected to start shooting on location in Paris later this year.

Chazelle, the Oscar-winning director of “La La Land” and “First Man,” will direct several episodes of the series, on top of exec-producing. Glen Ballard, the composer and producer of Alanis Morissette’s “Jagged Little Pill” and Michael Jackson’s “Bad,” is composing the original score for the series and will also exec-produce it, along with Alan Poul.

Some episodes will be directed Houda Benyamina, several sources say. Benyamina helmed “Divines,” which world premiered...

An Easy Girl (Une fille facile)

French director Rebecca Zlotowski attempts something new with her fourth film, Une fille facile (An Easy Girl), which is described as a romantic comedy. Zlotowski has thus far focused on complex portraits of women in extraordinary situations or emotional circumstances, working with Lea Seydoux on her 2010 debut Belle Epine (aka Dear Prudence) and reuniting with the actress for 2013’s Grand Central, featuring a troubled love triangle (including Denis Menochet and Tahar Rahim) amidst the backdrop of potential radioactive poisoning. Zlotowski’s underrated English debut Planetarium (read review) co-written by Robin Campillo, which featured Natalie Portman and Lily-Rose Depp as a pair of 1930s psychic sisters is the stuff of esoteric arthouse eloquence once prized at the cinema.…...

Company to unveil new films by Rebecca Zlotowski, Guillaume Nicloux and Roschdy Zem during Paris Rendez-vous in January.

Wild Bunch will kick-off sales on a quartet of new French films during the Rendez-vous with French Cinema in Paris in January including a coming-of-age tale by Rebecca Zlotowski, starring glamour girl and lingerie designer Zahia Dehar, and Guillaume Nicloux’s new collaboration with cult writer Michel Houellebecq and Gérard Depardieu.

Zlotowski’s An Easy Girl co-stars debutant actress Mina Farid as the naïve 16-year-old Naïma, whose eyes are opened to the world of love, sex and human relationships over a summer...

Abbi Jacobson may best be known as a comedian, but the “Broad City” star isn’t shying away from tackling some tough topics in her new book, “I Might Regret This: Essays, Drawings, Vulnerabilities, and Other Stuff.”

Released this week from Grand Central Publishing, the book was inspired by a solo road trip the actress took across the country last summer, and details her search for a sense of stability, from dealing with the repercussions of a bad breakup, to sorting through personal anxieties about status and success.

The stories — and lessons learned — are told through essays, anecdotes, and casual observations in the 320-page book, which is peppered with illustrations drawn by Jacobson herself. The actress wrote the book in between writing for Season 5 of “Broad City.” Grand Central calls it a “collection about love, loss, work, comedy, and figuring out who you really are when you thought you already knew.

Further jury members are Chang Chen, Robert Guédiguian, Khadja Nin, Léa Seydoux and Andrei Zvyagintsev.

The 2018 Cannes Film Festival (May 8-19) has unveiled the jury for its main competition.

Comprising five women and four men, the Jury features:

Chinese actor Chang Chen, who starred in Hou Hsiao-hsien’s Three Times and The Assassin, and Kim Ki-duk’s Breath, which all screened in Competition at Cannes. His other films include John Woo’s Red Cliff and Ang Lee’s Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.

Writer, director, producer Ava DuVernay, whose features include Disney sci-fi A Wrinkle In Time, Selma, for which she...