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Barcelona-born, Beirut-based Irene Bartolomé’s experimental feature Dream Of Another Summer won the top prize in Locarno Pro’s First Look section which this year focused on works-in-progress from Spain.

Bartolomé, who has worked for the past 10 years as a film editor, received the Antaviana Films First Look Award, covering services towards the completion of films in post-production up to the value of €50,000.

The international First Look jury, comprising Istanbul Film Festival director Kerem Ayan, Venice Critics’ Week artistic director Beatrice Fiorentino and Rotterdam programmer Mercedes Martínez-Abarca, described the co-production between Colibrí Studio, I.B. Films and The Attic Productions as...

Austrian filmmaker Jessica Hausner will serve as jury president at the upcoming Locarno Film Festival, running August 7-17.

Hausner and her jury will hand out the festival’s top honor – the Golden Leopard.

Born in Vienna in 1972, Hausner has a history at the Swiss Festival. She picked up the main prize in Locarno’s Pardi di Domani section for the short Flora in 1997. Following Flora, she screened Inter-View, her 45-minute graduation film, at Cannes in 1999. She has gone on to screen several feature films in competition at Cannes, including Lovely Rita (2001) and Hotel (2004).

Hausner’s other credits include Lourdes (2009), Amour Fou (2014), her English-language debut Little Joe (2019), and last year’s Club Zero (2023).

“It is a great honor and also a great pleasure for me to preside over the main jury of this year’s Locarno Film Festival”, said Hausner.

“The responsibility I feel is to respectfully hear the various opinions of my fellow jury members,...

Austrian filmmaker Jessica Hausner is to serve as jury president for the international competition at this year’s Locarno Film Festival, which takes place August 7-17.

Locarno was the first international festival at which Hausner’s work made an impression, taking home the main prize in the Pardi di Domani section for her short Flora in 1997.

Hausner’s first feature films Lovely Rita (2001) and Hotel (2004) both premiered in Un Certain Regard at Cannes, while Lourdes (2009) debuted in competition at the Venice Film Festival and took home the Fipresci prize. Her subsequent films include Un Certain Regard premiere Amour Fou (2014), and...

Exclusive: Coming off his breakout role in Zone of Interest, Christian Friedel has signed with UTA for representation.

Friedel stars as the lead in Jonathan Glazer’s critically acclaimed feature The Zone of Interest, based on the book of the same name by Martin Amis. The film made its world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival in 2023 to remarkable reviews, where it was awarded the coveted Grand Prix and has since received a number of accolades including two Oscars for best sound and best international feature film.

Friedel was recently cast in a significant role in season 3 of the Emmy-winning global phenomenon anthology series The White Lotus. He is set to star alongside Michelle Monaghan, Carrie Coon, Aimee Lou Wood, Jason Isaacs, Parker Posey and Leslie Bibb, among others. Production is currently underway in Thailand.

Friedel’s first theater engagements took him to the Bayerisches Staatsschauspiel in Munich, the Munich Kammerspiele,...

German actor Christian Friedel melts into his roles, most recently as the commandant of Auschwitz in Jonathan Glazer’s “The Zone of Interest.”

The Dresden, Germany-based actor and musician fashioned Rudolf Höss as an executive on the rise: he’s a snappy dresser who’s efficient and knows how to get the most out of his employees and equipment —and how to suck up to his bosses. Except that he’s running a death camp and overseeing the murder of thousands of Jews and whoever else the Nazis didn’t like. He also oversees a large family run by his equally striving and efficient wife, Hedwig.

It’s a tough role, but on one Saturday at the London Hotel in West Hollywood, Friedel is dressed in casual chic clothes while his curly hair borders on rebellion, unlike the severe cut Höss sports.

“It’s really precise. It’s like a second skin in a way,...

How do you embody pure evil? While the discussion swirls regarding precisely how much Jonathan Glazer’s The Zone of Interest is meant to humanize the Nazis, by the film’s final moments, there’s no mistaking the director’s point in showing the physical distress on one’s body enacting daily atrocities. Christian Friedel, who plays commandant of the Auschwitz concentration camp Rudolph Höss, was up for the difficult task of portraying this seething wickedness while attempting to keep control of his relationship with his wife (Sandra Hüller) and family connection intact.

With the Cannes winner expanding in theaters, I spoke with Friedel about why Glazer didn’t want him to read the Martin Amis novel in preparation, looking to The Act of Killing as inspiration, the physicality of his performance, and what he’s gleaned from multiple viewings of the film.

The Film Stage: I know you worked...

The Zone of Interest depicts the Holocaust without the horrifying and grotesque imagery of the 20th century's greatest crime. Director Jonathan Glazer of Under the Skin and Sexy Beast portrays the family life of Auschwitz's commandant Rudolf Höss (Christian Friedel) and his wife Hedwig (Sandra Hüller). They lived in an idyllic home with a beautiful garden directly adjacent to the concentration camp. You hear gunshots and terrifying screams as the fiendish couple enjoy a luxurious lifestyle. Their children collect gold teeth while Hedwig parades around in the fur coats of her husband's victims.

German actor Christian Friedel portrays Höss as supremely duplicitous. He was able to organize genocide and then read his children bedtime stories. Friedel needed to "connect his emotional archive" to "create a believable character." He hated "the whole family" but had to give Höss "a human face." Friedel had "no empathy" for a man capable of "incredible...

Film Movement has acquired U.S. rights to Jessica Hausner’s thought-provoking dark comedy “Club Zero,” which competed at the Cannes Film Festival.

Represented in international markets by Coproduction Office, “Club Zero” stars Mia Wasikowska as an eating instructor at an elite boarding school who exerts a dangerous influence over her students. When parents become concerned, calling for the firing of the teacher, it’s already too late as students are willing to go to a point of no return.

“Cults have been and still are a crucial issue in western societies,” Hausner said. “We believe in nutrition ideas like we used to believe in God, and I’m very happy that Film Movement will be bringing ‘Club Zero’ to U.S. audiences soon. Bon Appétit!”

The film previously won accolades at Munich and Sitges, and played at Karlovy Vary, Chicago, Busan, Sarajevo, Jerusalem, Sydney and Melbourne film festivals.

“Since...

Disney+ Asia Slate Takes Shape

Disney+ has set an Aug. 9 upload date for Korean series “Moving” from webtoon pioneer Kang Full.

The previously announced title forms part of a 20-component slate of films and series from East Asia that will release on the Disney-backed streaming platform in the second half of 2023 and through 2024.

Also from Korea is “The Worst of Evil,” a detective series in which a rural policemen is brought to the big city to bring down a DJ dealing in a potent new drug. It stars Ji Changwook, “Squid Game” actor Wi Hajun and Lim Semi.

Highlights from Japan include “Tokyo Revengers: Tenjiku Arc,” the latest instalments of a popular anime franchise, and the previously announced “Dragons of Wonderhatch,” a hybrid story set in both the “real world” and an anime land where dragons and humans coexist. The multi-dimensional story stars Nakajima Sena, Okudaira Daiken and Mackenyu.

The...

Forget about Robin Williams’ Mr. Keating and his iconoclastic sway over his pupils in Dead Poets Society, Mia Wasikowska’s nutrition teacher Miss Novak in the Cannes competition title Club Zero takes inspiring students to a darker level.

Miss Novak transforms her students at a British boarding school into an anorexic cult with her “conscious eating” philosophy. Her academic disciples have bouts of bulimia and even swear off vegan food. One female character even punishes her father in a power play by refusing to eat. Others starve themselves for political and environmental reasons.

Austrian filmmaker Jessica Hausner swears Club Zero isn’t about eating disorders. “It’s maybe even more about a strange sort of faith and nutrition religion.”

Related: Cannes Film Festival 2023 In Photos

“It was interesting in showing how an idea can influence the action of us humans,” said the director.

However, Club Zero‘s bigger jab is...

Bleak, clean spaces arranged in ominously geometrical order: Jessica Hausner’s eye for threatening design was destined to alight, sooner or later, on a boarding school. Our first glimpse of the expensive English boarding school for talented teenagers is from somewhere on the ceiling, from where we watch students in a sporty pan-gender uniform – long shorts and shirts in a sickly acid green, surely the color of nausea – moving stackable plastic chairs to form a circle.

Miss Novak (Mia Wasikowska) stands out in her warm rust trousers and orange polo. She is in the school at the instigation of the parents’ association to teach an elective on nutrition. Her focus is “conscious eating,” a focus the patrician headmistress Miss Dorset (Sidse Babett Knudsen) thinks could benefit everyone, including her. Yes, she will accept a packet of Miss Novak’s “fasting tea.” She will skip her customary cake. We could all do better,...

Jessica Hausner’s English-language film stars Mia Wasikowska, Sidse Babett Knudsen and Elsa Zylberstein.

Philippe Bober’s Coproduction Office has added new members to Club Zero, Jessica Hausner’s buzzy sixth feature in Competition here at Cannes.

The English-speaking drama set at an elite boarding school continues its global sales sweep, adding Neue Visionen in Germany, Sphere Films in Canada, Aerofilms in Czech Republic and Slovakia, Folkets Bio in Sweden, Another World in Norway, Obala in Bosnia, McF in Former Yugoslavia, A Plus in Bulgaria, Arthouse Traffic in Ukraine, Trt Sinema in Turkey, Shaw in Singapore, Sahamongkol in Thailand and Aardwolf for airline rights.

The lineup for the 76th installment of the Cannes Film Festival has finally been announced. Nineteen films will be competing to take home the prestigious Palme d’Or, including a record six films helmed by women. The festival will be taking place in the French Riviera from May 16 to May 27. This year’s jury will be headed by Ruben Östlund, who won his second Palme d’Or last year for “Triangle of Sadness.”

Knowing a filmmaker’s previous track record at Cannes can sometimes help give an idea as to who might be in the best position to claim the Palme. For instance, five of this year’s entries come from directors who have previously won the Palme. Another five are from auteurs who have had previous films win a prize in the main competition other than the Palme. Another five are from directors having their first film screen in the main competition.

New films from Wes Anderson, Jessica Hausner, Nanni Moretti, Catherine Breillat, Todd Haynes, Ken Loach and Wim Wenders have all been selected for the 2023 Cannes competition.

The Cannes Film Festival (May 16-27) has unveiled its 2023 official selection already buzzing with the return of veteran auteurs In Competition including Todd Haynes, Jessica Hausner, Wim Wenders, Ken Loach, Nanni Moretti, Catherine Breillat, Wes Anderson, Nuri Bilge Ceylan and Hirokazu Kore-eda.

They join the previously announced Martin Scorsese, whose Killers Of The Flower Moon was announced for Out of Competition but who still could end up in Competition, it was suggested at today’s press conference.

Film also stars Mathieu Demy, Elsa Zylberstein and Sidse Babett Knudsen.

Coproduction Office has added members to Club Zero with multiple buyers snapping up Jessica Hausner’s psychological drama at the EFM.

The ensemble film set at an elite boarding school sold to Bac Films in France, Klockworx in Japan, Academy Two in Italy, Karma in Spain, September Films in Benelux, Camera in Denmark, Praesens Film in Switzerland, Bio Paradis in Iceland, Alambique in Portugal, Ama Films in Greece, New Horizons in Poland, Vertigo in Hungary, Independenta in Romania, Filmstop Inspiration in the Baltic countries and Front Row in the Middle East.

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,...

"You're all gone. You just don't know it." In her Indie Memphis Film Festival review of Little Joe, Emily von Seele wrote that Jessica Hausner's new film "brings up feelings of paranoia in the parent-child bond," and those potentially paranoid feelings are on display in a new clip from the film.

Below, you can watch an unsettling cafeteria speech in the new clip from Little Joe, which is coming to theaters on December 6th from Magnolia Pictures.

"Little Joe follows Alice (Emily Beecham), a single mother and dedicated senior plant breeder at a corporation engaged in developing new species. She has engineered a special crimson flower, remarkable not only for its beauty but also for its therapeutic value: if kept at the ideal temperature, fed properly and spoken to regularly, this plant makes its owner happy. Against company policy, Alice takes one home as a gift for her teenage son,...

Above: Little JoeJessica Hausner is one of the great observers in modern cinema. The human body and its roots and tendrils are examined as if in a nature documentary while circumstances become outrageous: The faces of her heroines, the slow body language meant to mask an internal longing and anxiousness, the minute changes in expressions, the cracking of a voice. The world suddenly becomes too small for her characters and we watch as they try to breathe. Hausner began by observing young Germans and their first brushes with the thorniness of adult life and its inherent violence. In her shorts Flora (1995), Inter-View (1999), and her first feature Lovely Rita (2001), she shows people who seem like they want to claw their way out of their cramped surroundings or even out of their own skin. In 2004’s Hotel, her aesthetic playbook was completely rewritten. Suddenly a clinical stillness and a nagging, asymmetrical design...

Austrian filmmaker Jessica Hausner made her English language debut with the UK-set project, Little Joe, taking up science fiction for the first time in her career after previously exploring horror and the period drama in Hotel (2004) and Amour fou (2014), respectively. In the film, Alice (Emily Beecham) works at a corporate biotechnology lab with a team of scientists who aim to develop new breeds of flowers that can, with their oxytocin-rich pollen, elevate people’s happiness, friendliness, and sex life—an evocative and typically rich concept for Hausner that still manages to be supplemental to her exquisitely detailed and precise mise […]...

Austrian filmmaker Jessica Hausner made her English language debut with the UK-set project, Little Joe, taking up science fiction for the first time in her career after previously exploring horror and the period drama in Hotel (2004) and Amour fou (2014), respectively. In the film, Alice (Emily Beecham) works at a corporate biotechnology lab with a team of scientists who aim to develop new breeds of flowers that can, with their oxytocin-rich pollen, elevate people’s happiness, friendliness, and sex life—an evocative and typically rich concept for Hausner that still manages to be supplemental to her exquisitely detailed and precise mise […]...

After presenting three celebrated films in Cannes’ Un Certain Regard section — her 2001 debut, Lovely Rita, its follow-up Hotel in 2004 and, her last feature, Amour Fou in 2014 — Austrian filmmaker Jessica Hausner finally graduated to festival competition with her English-language debut, Little Joe.

The science fiction-esque drama, which will be screened at the 21st Mumbai Film Festival, stars Emily Beecham as a scientist who genetically engineers a plant — nicknamed Little Joe after her teenage son — that can alter emotions to make its owner happy. But as the flower grows and Alice and the people around her ...

After presenting three celebrated films in Cannes’ Un Certain Regard section — her 2001 debut, Lovely Rita, its follow-up Hotel in 2004 and, her last feature, Amour Fou in 2014 — Austrian filmmaker Jessica Hausner finally graduated to festival competition with her English-language debut, Little Joe.

The science fiction-esque drama, which will be screened at the 21st Mumbai Film Festival, stars Emily Beecham as a scientist who genetically engineers a plant — nicknamed Little Joe after her teenage son — that can alter emotions to make its owner happy. But as the flower grows and Alice and the people around her ...

A staple figure of the Un Certain Regard section with three trips dating back to 2001’s Lovely Rita and 2004’s Hotel with her last feature Amour Fou (2014) being profiled there, the only non-Cannes anomaly in her output so far has been 2009’s Lourdes which premiered at the Venice Film Festival. Jessica Hausner makes her first trip to the competition with what appeared to be a Little Shop of Horrors-esque / Invasion of the Body Snatcher stale about breeding. Starring Emily Beecham, Ben Whishaw, Kerry Fox, some cool lab plants and lab coats, this genre item is production design bliss, meticulous in design and feels like a cross between Akerman and Kubrick.…...

In lesser hands, “Little Joe” would be a very dangerous film. As it stands, the latest masterful psychodrama from Austrian powerhouse Jessica Hausner still has plenty of potential to offend. A horticultural riff on “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” that broadly likens the spread of antidepressants to a dehumanizing alien force, “Little Joe” can be seen as a direct attack on anyone who’s ever appreciated the benefits of a mood-enhancing pharmaceutical, either firsthand or otherwise; the movie isn’t the least bit subtle in its suggestion that people on Prozac are addicted to their own well-being, and that their dependency siphons away at the full spectrum of who they are.

At the same time, Hausner — whatever her personal feelings on the matter — is too cunning an artist to launch such an uncomplicated broadside against millions of human beings who are just trying their best to put one foot in front of the other.

It’s fifth time lucky for Austria’s Jessica Hausner, who has had a strong Cannes presence since her unsettling debut Lovely Rita premiered there in 2001. After returning with the Lynchian 2004 thriller Hotel, Hausner took 2009’s provocative French religious drama Lourdes to compete in Venice before coming back to the Croisette in 2014 with the literary romance Amour Fou. Now she follows Austrian stalwarts Michael Haneke and Ulrich Seidl into the major league with a cautionary British-set sci-fi called Little Joe, in which Emily Beecham stars as Alice, a single mother and plant breeder who has created a flower remarkable for both its beauty and its therapeutic properties.

What’s Little Joe about?

I would say that, at the center of the film, is the idea of Frankenstein. Frankenstein invented a monster and lost control over it. And, in my film, Alice is a scientist who invents a monster and she also loses control over it.

One year after 82 of the film industry’s biggest names stood in protest on the red carpet, and the Cannes Film Festival signed a pledge designed to increase gender equality, its programmers made a small step forward: Four female filmmakers have been programmed in an Official Competition so far comprised of 19 titles. It’s a new high for a festival that has hosted 1,645 competition titles from men over its storied history and just 82 from women. The festival plans to add more films in the days ahead, but for now, the change remains incremental.

With today’s announcement of the Competition lineup, this year’s slate boasts the highest percentage of female filmmakers (21 percent) over the last 19 years, besting the former frontrunner of 2011, when four out of 20 competing films were made by women (20 percent). That year came only after a series of notable inequities: In 2010 and 2005, there were no women in the competition lineup.

Little Joe and Sorry We Missed You both selected for Cannes Competition.

Following last year’s disappointing Cannes showing for UK movies, with only one Polish-language UK co-production in Competition (Cold War), this year’s presence looks to be an improvement.

Following today’s announcement, which saw 90% of the Official Selection titles unveiled, two films with significant UK involvement have been selected for Competition.

Ken Loach’s Sorry We Missed You sees the director once again break his own record with his 14th selection – his latest film focuses on the UK’s gig economy. Loach’s last film I, Daniel Blake...

The 72nd Cannes Film Festival will get underway next month and today Thierry Frémaux has unveiled the lineup. Some festival alums will return, including Terrence Malick, who last came to Cannes with his Palme d’Or winner The Tree of Life and will now debut his three-hour-long A Hidden Life (formerly known as Radegund). Also returning is Jim Jarmusch, Dardennes, Bong Joon-ho, Arnaud Desplechin, Pedro Almodóvar, Corneliu Porumboiu, Ken Loach, Marco Bellocchio, Kleber Mendonça Filho, and Xavier Dolan.

In competition this year are a number of highly-anticipated from up-and-coming directors as well, including Jessica Hausner’s Amour Fou follow-up Little Joe and Mati Diop’s directorial debut Atlantics. Diao Yinan will also bring his new drama The Wild Goose Lake to competition, along with Ira Sachs’ Isabelle Huppert-led Frankie and Céline Sciamma’s Portrait of a Lady on Fire.

In other sections, Bruno Dumont’s sequel Jeanne, Olivier Laxe...

Little Joe

Austrian director Jessica Hausner returns to the essence of genre with her fifth feature Little Joe, which deals with issues of reality vs. identity complicated by a genetically engineered plant and how its scattered seeds begin to have notable effects on the living creatures it comes into contact with. Hausner built an impressive resume through the 2000s, beginning with her 2001 debut Lovely Rita, which premiered in Un Certain Regard at Cannes, a sidebar she would return to again with 2004’s Hotel and with her last feature, 2014’s Amour Fou (read review). Hausner’s most successful international success to date was 2009’s Lourdes, which starred Lea Seydoux and Sylvie Testud and competed for the Golden Lion.…...

We are a little over a month away from the 20th anniversary of one of the greatest TV shows ever made: The Sopranos, which may be the most-copied series since I Love Lucy. Peak TV would not exist without Tony, Carmela, Paulie Walnuts and friends.

In the course of writing The Sopranos Sessions, an upcoming book about the series (with essays on every episode and a new series of interviews with creator David Chase), my co-author Matt Zoller Seitz and I had an excuse to rewatch the entire series, and...

Through the 10 years of the Emmys from 2000 to 2009, the Television Academy only chose five men to win the award for Best Drama Actor. The decade included not one, not two, but three actors who won the Drama Actor trophy multiple times. So which Emmy-winning performance is your favorite all these years later? Take a look back on each Drama Actor Emmy winner of the 2000s and vote in our poll below.

James Gandolfini, “The Sopranos” — The new decade also served as a sign that the Emmys were looking to embrace the antihero as cable came to the forefront. Gandolfini’s performance as New Jersey mobster Tony Soprano was the true godfather of this new wave, winning Emmys for the second, third and fourth seasons of “The Sopranos.” His Emmy-winning episode submissions included “The Happy Wanderer,” in which Tony starts to reject therapy, “Amour Fou,” where he grapples with his erratic mistress,...

“The Sopranos” is back. David Chase and Lawrence Konner’s script for a prequel film titled “The Many Saints of Newark” has been picked up by New Line, and now everyone wants to know who will be the director tasked with bringing one of America’s favorite crime families back to life.

The film is set during the 1960s riots in Newark, New Jersey and deals with the war between the African-American and Italian mafias. While story details are not confirmed, characters such as Tony’s father and mother are reportedly involved. Chase himself could very well end up in the director’s chair, although he’s only listed as a co-writer and producer and is said to be closely involved with the hiring process.

Considering “The Sopranos” prequel film will be a period gangaster drama, Martin Scorsese is the no-brainer option every fan of the series would go crazy about,...

Style can be the star in Classic Noir, making a less prestigious film more entertaining than one with bigger names. Dennis O’Keefe, Claire Trevor and Marsha Hunt spin an excellent crime-love-murder triangle, for a road picture that’s one of the best Noirs not made by a big studio. Director Anthony Mann and cinematographer John Alton dial up the intensity for an experience as rich as the best pulp crime fiction.

Raw Deal

Blu-ray

ClassicFlix

1948 / B&W / 1:37 Academy / 79 min. / Special Edition / Street Date January 16, 2018 / 39.99

Starring: Dennis O’Keefe, Claire Trevor, Marsha Hunt, John Ireland, Raymond Burr, Curt Conway, Chili Williams, Regis Toomey, Whit Bissell, Cliff Clark, Greg Barton, Tom Fadden, Ilka Grüning, Ray Teal.

Cinematography: John Alton

Film Editor: Alfred DeGaetano

Original Music: Paul Sawtell

Written by Leopold Atlas, John C. Higgens, from a story by Arnold B. Armstrong & Audrey Ashley

Produced by Edward Small

Directed by Anthony Mann...

Career development initiative selects 2017 group.Scroll down for list of participants

The participants for the 2017 edition of Screen Leaders, the Creative Europe and Irish Film Board (Ifb) backed career development programme, have been revealed.

Participants this year are companies in Austria, Belgium, Germany, Hungry, Ireland, Luxembourg, Norway, Portugal and Spain. They will converge in Ireland for the first module of the programme in June.

Of the companies selected, four are from Ireland: Speers Film, Giant Animation, Calico Pictures and El Zorrero Films (the company behind 2016 comedy doc Mattress Men, pictured).

The initiative assists attendees with operating in the international marketplace.

Andy Mason, co-ceo of Altitude Films, who tutors on the programme, said: “Screen Leaders is a really well thought-out program and even though the level of experience and competence of the chosen participants is extremely high, the main benefits to them are gaining access to additional tools and insight to help them navigate their companies through the ever...

There’s plenty of Sin in Walerian Boroczyk’s searing movie, but little of it can be laid at the feet of its heroine, no matter what terrible crimes she commits. In pre-WW1 Poland, the innocent Ewa’s tragedy is to fall hopelessly in love, without restraint; Boroczyk’s camera doesn’t flinch as the hapless Ewa falls from grace. Amour fou has been crazier than this, but rarely as destructive. Artistically this show is flawless, and in terms of sex politics it’s a scream of protest.

Story of Sin

Blu-ray + DVD

Arrow Academy USA

1975 / Color / 1:66 widescreen / 130 min. / Dzieje grzechu / Street Date March 28, 2017 / Available from Arrow Video / 39.95

Starring: Grazyna Dlugolecka, Jerzy Zelnik, Olgierd Lukaszewicz, Roman Wilhelmi, Marek Walczewski, Karolina Lubienska, Zdzislaw Mrozewski, Mieczyslaw Voit, Marek Bargielowski.

Cinematography: Zygmunt Samosiuk

Film Editor: Lidia Pacewicz

Written by Walerian Borowczyk from the novel by Stefan Zeromski

Directed by Walerian Borowczyk

Walerian Borowczyk...

With Maren Ade’s Toni Erdmann dominating this week’s European Film Awards, panelists at the Les Arcs European Film Festival focus on women filmmakers expressed lingering disbelief that the film was shunned in Cannes.

While Anna Serner, director of the Swedish Film Institute, Elle producer Diana Elbaum and Amour Fou director Jessica Hausner addressed the challenges facing women filmmakers, they couldn’t avoid the Cannes controversy, calling the snub "inconceivable" but acknowledging it was a symptom of the continued focus on established, older and male directors.

“It’s unbelievable with the number of submissions that the Cannes film festival gets every...

With a seemingly endless amount of streaming options — not only the titles at our disposal, but services themselves — we’ve taken it upon ourselves to highlight the titles that have recently hit platforms. Every week, one will be able to see the cream of the crop (or perhaps some simply interesting picks) of streaming titles (new and old) across platforms such as Netflix, iTunes, Amazon, and more (note: U.S. only). Check out our rundown for this week’s selections below.

Amour Fou (Jessica Hausner)

An ecstatically original work of film-history-philosophy with a digital-cinema palette of acutely crafted compositions. Amour Fou seamlessly blends together the paintings of Vermeer, the acting of Bresson, and the psychological undercurrents of a Dostoevsky novel. It is an intensely thrilling and often slyly comic work that manages to combine a passionately dispassionate love story of the highest order with a larger socio-historical examination of a new era of freedom,...

★★☆☆☆ Amour fou in a French penitentiary has Blue is the Warmest Colour star Adele Exarchopoulos falling in love with the prison warden in Pierre Godeau's slickly-produced true-story tale of forbidden passion, Down By Love. We first meet Anna (Exarchopoulos) as she arrives at a prison to await her trial. Focusing on her familiar features while we hear the shouting and threats of male prisoners, there is an echo of Jacques Audiard's A Prophet, but don't get your hopes up. There is a naturalism to the first minutes with fellow inmates played by real prisoners and the prison itself portrayed as relatively relaxed, despite the odd punch up in the exercise yard.

The more “international” body of tastemaker critics have anointed Todd Haynes’ Carol, Hou Hsaio-Hsien’s The Assassin, George Miller’s Mad Max, Sean Baker’s Tangerine and Bruno Dumont’s Li’l Quinquin as the better film items for 2015 and top vote getters with the most noms for 2016 Ics Awards. Winners of the 13th Ics Awards will be announced on February 21, 2016. Here are the noms and all the categories.

Picture

• 45 Years

• Arabian Nights

• The Assassin

• Carol

• Clouds of Sils Maria

• The Duke of Burgundy

• Inside Out

• Li’l Quinquin

• Mad Max: Fury Road

• A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence

• Tangerine

Director

• Sean Baker – Tangerine

• Bruno Dumont – Li’l Quinquin

• Todd Haynes – Carol

• Hou Hsaio-Hsien – The Assassin

• George Miller – Mad Max: Fury Road

Film Not In The English Language

• Amour Fou

• Arabian Nights

• The Assassin

• Hard to Be a God

• Jauja

• La Sapienza

• Li’l Quinquin

• Phoenix

• A...

Update with Martin Scorsese statement: Veteran French filmmaker Jacques Rivette has died at the age of 87. The French New Wave director has an illustrious list of credits including La Belle Noiseuse, Celine and Julie Go Boating and L’Amour Fou. The news was confirmed today by French culture minister Fleur Pellerin, who tweeted Rivette was "one of the greatest filmmakers of intimacy and impatient love." Rivette started his career alongside New Wave luminareis Jean Luc…...

The Beautiful Woman Sleeping

Director: Ulrike Ottinger

Writers: Ulrike Ottinger, Elfriede Jelinek

It is with great pleasure we feature the announced plans for a new film from German auteur Ulrike Ottinger, a provocative artist perhaps best remembered for 1981’s Freak Orlando, starring Magdalena Montezuma and Delphine Seyrig, an exemplification of her own surrealist style. Ottinger is also an applauded documentarian, her last project being 2011’s Under Snow. But it’s been well over a decade since we’ve seen Ottinger tackle a fictional narrative, the last being 2004’s Twelve Chairs. Around 2007/2008, an announcement was made for Ottinger to make a feminist vampire film about the infamous historical figure Countess Bathory, set to star Tilda Swinton and Isabelle Huppert. The project never got off the ground (and Julie Delpy went ahead with her own recuperation, The Countess). However, in early 2015, Amour Fou Films announced two projects with writer Elfriede Jelinek (author...

With a seemingly endless amount of streaming options — not only the titles at our disposal, but services themselves — we’ve taken it upon ourselves to highlight the titles that have recently hit the interwebs. Every week, one will be able to see the cream of the crop (or perhaps some simply interesting picks) of streaming titles (new and old) across platforms such as Netflix, iTunes, Amazon Instant Video, and more (note: U.S. only). Check out our rundown for this week’s selections below.

Amour Fou (Jessica Hausner)

An ecstatically original work of film-history-philosophy with a digital-cinema palette of acutely crafted compositions. Amour Fou seamlessly blends together the paintings of Vermeer, the acting of Bresson, and the psychological undercurrents of a Dostoevsky novel. It is an intensely thrilling and often slyly comic work that manages to combine a passionately dispassionate love story of the highest order with a larger socio-historical...

“A cinematographer is a visual psychiatrist — moving an audience through a movie […] making them think the way you want them to think, painting pictures in the dark,” said the late, great Gordon Willis. As we continue our year-end coverage, one aspect we must highlight is indeed cinematography, among the most vital to the medium. From talented newcomers to seasoned professionals, we’ve rounded up the 22 examples that have most impressed us this year. Check out our rundown below and, in the comments, let us know your favorite work.

Amour Fou (Martin Gschlacht)

As if Dreyer had been sprung into the 21st century, Amour Fou stands with feet in formally classical and aesthetically modern doors — as rigid in composition as it is lucid in palette. Writer-director Jessica Hausner and cinematographer Martin Gschlacht have created a world in which it seems nothing will escape, making those moments of visual discord — an object...

There are a multitude of reasons why any film may get unfairly overlooked. It could be a lack of marketing resources to give it a substantial push, or, due to a minuscule roll-out, not enough critics and audiences to be the champions it might require. It could simply be the timing of the picture itself; even in the world of studio filmmaking, some features take time to get their due. With an increasingly crowded marketplace, there are more reasons than ever that something might not find an audience and, as with last year, we’ve rounded up the releases that deserved more attention.

Note that all the below films made less than $1 million at the domestic box office at the time of posting (VOD figures are not accounted for, as they normally aren’t made public) and are, for the most part, left out of most year-end conversations. Sadly, most...

This article accompanies the Film Society of Lincoln Center’s dual retrospective of the films of Jacques Rivette and David Lynch and is part of an ongoing review of Rivette’s films for the Notebook, in light of several major re-releases of his work.Amour fou, in Lynch’s Wild at Heart, Rivette’s L’amour fou, is a pretext for the theatrical. Only in Lynch’s very romantic Palme d’Or winner do the shifts between and coalesces of plastic (the stage) and interior life (the love affair) lead to a union of any kind; when Sailor (Nicolas Cage) mounts the hood of his sweetheart’s Cadillac and serenades her with “Love Me Tender,” the superficiality of the reference to badboy Elvis Presley movies achieves a sort of extradimensional poignancy: the characters live in a plastic world, of Wizard of Oz witches, barroom brawls, lipstick-smeared killer moms, Texas hitmen,...

Film Movement brings Eric Rohmer’s classic period film The Marquise of O… to Blu-ray, the first time the title is made available in the Us (previously, it was sandwiched into a Region 2 Rohmer collection, the same set which features another rare title, 1982’s A Good Marriage). Awarded the Grand Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival (it tied with Carlos Saura’s Cria Cuervos), it would be the only accolade the famed filmmaker would collect from the event and it was his last time in competition.

It’s one of Rohmer’s earliest historical dramas (he would continue in this vein intermittently, with titles like Perceval and The Lady and the Duke), and initially seems like a black comedy on social mores before it seeps into a . A German co-production, the film is based on a short story by Heinrich von Kleist (Jessica Hausner’s 2014 film Amour Fou documents the writer’s curious denouement,...

With a seemingly endless amount of streaming options — not only the titles at our disposal, but services themselves — we’ve taken it upon ourselves to highlight the titles that have recently hit the interwebs. Every week, one will be able to see the cream of the crop (or perhaps some simply interesting picks) of streaming titles (new and old) across platforms such as Netflix, iTunes, Amazon Instant Video, and more (note: U.S. only). Check out our rundown for this week’s selections below.

Amour Fou (Jessica Hausner)

An ecstatically original work of film-history-philosophy with a digital-cinema palette of acutely crafted compositions. Amour Fou seamlessly blends together the paintings of Vermeer, the acting of Bresson, and the psychological undercurrents of a Dostoevsky novel. It is an intensely thrilling and often slyly comic work that manages to combine a passionately dispassionate love story of the highest order with a larger socio-historical...

It’s with great pleasure to see Austrian director Jessica Hausner’s fourth feature Amour Fou available on Blu-ray in the Us, considering several of her previous exemplary titles have failed to secure distribution altogether. Winner of Best Screenplay and Best Film Editing at Austrian Oscars, premiering her latest at the 2014 Cannes Film Festival in the Un Certain Regard sidebar, it’s an innovative exploration of the strange thing called love. Film Movement released the title in three theaters in early summer of 2015, and only managed to rake in around thirteen thousand in a three month run. Although it ultimately didn’t manage to heighten Hausner’s international profile as much as one would’ve hoped, with a little luck this should end up on some year-end best lists and continue to grasp a wider, more deserving audience.

Hausner reveals her strongest work yet, a droll, romantic exploration of sorts...

As 2015 winds down, like most cinephiles, we’re looking to get our hands on the titles that may have slipped under the radar or simply gone unseen. With the proliferation of streaming options, it’s thankfully easier than ever to play catch-up, and to assist with the process, we’re bringing you a rundown of the best titles of the year available to watch.

Curated from the Best Films of 2015 So Far list we published for the first half of the year, it also includes films we’ve enjoyed the past few months and some we’ve recently caught up on. This is far from a be-all, end-all year-end feature (that will come at the end of the year), but rather something that will hopefully be a helpful tool for readers to have a chance to seek out notable, perhaps underseen, titles from the year.

Note that we’re going by U.

It’s almost the start of a new month and that means Netflix is about to refresh their content by adding a lot of new titles and removing some as well. Some of the titles we’re losing include Fargo, Stand By Me, and Batman & Robin, oh no! But some of the highlights for November include the first season of Bob Odenkirk and David Cross’s new Netflix show With Bob and David; Marvel’s Jessica Jones, and The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie. Check out the full listings below:

All Title Dates are Subject to Change

Netflix U.S. Release Dates Only

Available 11/1

Beethoven’s Christmas Adventure (2011)

Girlfriends’ Guide to Divorce: Season 1

Idris Elba: Mandela, My Dad and Me (2015)

Last Days in Vietnam (2014)

Pasion de Gavilanes (2003)

Robot Overlords (2015)

Seven Deadly Sins: Season 1 — Netflix Original

Smithsonian Channel: The Day Kennedy Died (2013)

The Last Time You Had Fun (2014)

The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie...