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The 2025 edition of the world’s biggest animation film festival, held in the serene French town of Annecy since it kicked off in 1960, turned out to be a pretty good year all round – and not just because of the glorious weather that welcomed thousands of visitors to the Alpine mountains and the stunning lake (you really wish you could hop on a boat and sail straight to nearby Lake Geneva). Most of this year’s films – whether in or out of competition – were strong, varied, and had something to offer. Only industry professionals gathered at the MIFA market managed to dismiss the fair weather and worry about the current state of the industry and the existential threat posed by artificial intelligence.

As always, the festival kept its famously relaxed vibe. The crowd was full of young people bringing their usual cheerful, enthusiastic energy to the screenings. From the paper aeroplanes...

Anouk Aimée in The Best Years Of A Life with Jean-Louis Trintignant, reprising their characters 53 years on from A Man And A Woman. Director Claude Lelouch said: 'It was wonderful for us all to get together again. It was as though something had been left unfinished, and none of us wanted it to end.' Photo: UniFrance Jean-Louis Trintignant as Jean-Louis and Anouk Aimée is Anne in A Man And A Woman One of the most revered icons of French cinema, Anouk Aimée who starred opposite Jean-Louis Trintignant in one of the most successful French films of all time, A Man And A Woman, by Claude Lelouch, has died today at the age of 92. The news was revealed by her daughter Manuella Papatakis.

The poet and screenwriter Jacques Prévert was so entranced with her that he gave her the name Anouk Aimée (she was born Françoise Sorya), and cast her...

"Now what?" "Would you like to go to the cinema?" Any fans of awkward romance must watch this. Mubi has unveiled their official trailer for Aki Kaurismäki's latest film Fallen Leaves, his light-hearted romantic tragicomedy that first premiered at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival. Two lonely people who meet each other by chance in the Helsinki night, until then can't find each other again. "With this film, Kaurismäki tips his hat to Bresson, Ozu and Chaplin, wanting to tell a story about the things that may lead humanity to a future: longing for love, solidarity, hope, and respect for another human being, nature and anything living or dead." Starring Alma Pöysti and Jussi Vatanen. The film was initially inspired by the song “Les feuilles mortes" (translates to "Dead Leaves”), composed by Joseph Kosma with lyrics by Jacques Prévert. And the fun song in the trailer is by the Finnish band Maustetytöt,...

"I don't even know your name." "I'll tell you next time." The Match Factory has revealed a trailer for Aki Kaurismäki's latest film Fallen Leaves, his light-hearted romantic "tragicomedy". This is premiering at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival later this month, playing in the Main Competition, not his first time either (he won the Grand Prix once before in Cannes for The Man Without a Past). Two lonely people who meet each other by chance in the Helsinki night and try to find the first love of their lives. "With this film, Kaurismäki tips his hat to Bresson, Ozu and Chaplin, wanting to tell a story about the things that may lead humanity to a future: longing for love, solidarity, hope, and respect for another human being, nature and anything living or dead." The movie is inspired by the song “Les feuilles mortes" (translates to "Dead Leaves”), composed by Joseph Kosma...

Eric Toledano and Olivier Nakache, the French filmmaking duo best known for their smash hit comedy “Intouchables,” are wrapping up their eighth feature, “A Difficult Year,” which Gaumont teased to buyers at the Unifrance Rendez-Vous last week. The topical comedy is bolstered by an ensemble cast including Jonathan Cohen, Pio Marmaï, Noémie Merlant and Mathieu Amalric. “A Difficult Year” reteams Toledano and Nakache with their longtime producers at Quad Films. The pair also co-produced through their banner Ten Cinema, alongside Gaumont.

Highlighting growing contradictions within our society, “A Difficult Year” follows two compulsive spenders, Albert and Bruno, who are in debt up to their necks. While seeking help from community workers to get their lives back on track, Albert and Bruno run into a group of young green activists. Lured by the free beer and snacks rather than by the ideals of these eco-activists, Albert and Bruno find themselves joining the movement without much conviction.

When the 2020 Oscar for original screenplay went to South Korea’s “Parasite” scribes, some were surprised, but they should not have been; the Academy has long been open to foreign-language contenders in all categories. As early as 1947, when the writing categories were a bit different, the Italian screenwriters Sergio Amidei and Federico Fellini nabbed a nomination for “Open City,” as did French scribe Jacques Prévert for “Children of Paradise.”

While during the 1940s and 1950s, barely a handful of foreign-language films reached the nomination stage for writing awards, by the 1960s, every year saw at least one non-English-speaking nominee, and some years, a whopping three. 1962 marked the first Oscar win for international scribes, with Ennio de Concini, Alfredo Gianetti and Pietro Germi claiming it for “Divorce Italian Style.” And in 1966, French screenwriters Claude Lelouch and Pierre Uytterhoeven nabbed a statuette for “A Man and a Woman.”

Although foreign-language writers continued...

“One Fine Morning” sounds an innocuous title for a grownup relationship drama — destined, perhaps, to be confused on streaming menus with the George Clooney-Michelle Pfeiffer romcom “One Fine Day” — and in a sense, the mellow, melancholic cinema of French writer-director Mia Hansen-Løve is its own kind of comfort viewing. But as with many facets of her filmmaking, there’s a smarter, sadder, more literary undertow to the title’s sunny simplicity. “Un beau matin” in French, it’s lifted from a haunting poem by poetic realist Jacques Prévert, which describes in plain imagery the conflict of facing absence in your life, all while pretending there’s literally nothing there.

Suffice it to say, then, that Hansen-Løve’s latest is not a romantic comedy, except in the interludes when it is. At no cost to its calm, loping pace, “One Fine Morning” is about many things at once, in the way...

British post-punk pioneers Bauhaus return with their first new song in over a decade, “Drink the New Wine.”

Recorded during lockdown, Bauhaus used the Surrealists’ “exquisite corpse” method to create the song, with each member coming up with a section without seeing what the other’s had done. The band set up some additional rules: Each member was given only one minute to fill, and only eight tracks to lay down whatever instrumentals and vocals they wanted; the band also allotted themselves a shared 60 seconds to create a composite at the end.

Lawrence Ferlinghetti, the poet whose San Francisco–based City Lights bookstore and publishing house served as a springboard for the Beat generation, has died. His daughter, Julie Sasser, reported his cause of death as interstitial lung disease, according to The New York Times. He was 101.

The poet was known for stacking small fractured lines on top of each other in unique geometric shapes like Jenga towers, with each thought supporting the ones above it. His best-known collection of poems, 1958’s A Coney Island of the Mind, presented vivid images in the language of his day,...

After the Mekons released their first album in eight years in 2019, the long-running cowpunk outfit make a quick return with their surprise new LP Exquisite, which the band wrote and recorded while in isolation during the Covid-19 pandemic.

The album — “recorded in splendid physical isolation on mobile phones, broken cassette recorders, clay tablets and other ancient technologies in Aptos, Chicago, London, Los Angeles, New York and Devon in April and May 2020,” the Mekons noted — will arrive exclusively on their Mekorpse Bandcamp on June 19th, or Juneteenth; on that day, Bandcamp...

Jean-Pierre Jeunet is going back to his roots. While visiting Los Angeles for a retrospective of several of his films at the American Cinematheque and the USC’s School of Cinematic Arts, the idiosyncratic French director shared details of his plans to make a mockumentary about the production of his beloved 2001 romantic comedy “Amelie” in anticipation of the movie’s 20th anniversary.

Jeunet, whose last completed feature was 2013’s “The Young and Prodigious T.S. Spivet,” also revealed that he was in the early stages of developing a sci-fi animated feature and a futuristic comedy.

“The Young and Prodigious T.S. Spivet” received a botched released in the U.S. in 2015 after distributor Harvey Weinstein decided to shelve it as retaliation for the director’s refusal to make cuts.

Since then, Jeunet has been trying to get a project off the ground with mostly discouraging results. “I’ve been fighting to make a...

To mark the release of Le Crime de Monsieur Lange on 27th August, we’ve been given 1 copy to give away on Blu-ray.

Monsieur Lange (René Lefèvre) is a publishing house clerk who writes cheap Western novels in his spare time. When his untrustworthy, salacious boss, Batala avoids his debt collectors by pretending to be dead, Lange and his co-workers take over the business themselves and thrive on the popularity of Lange’s pulp stories. That is until Batala returns to demand his share of the profits. Meanwhile Lange falls deeply in love with his neighbour Valentine, portrayed gloriously by the mesmerising Florelle.

Directed and co-written by Renoir, Le Crime De Monsieur Lange’s story is adapted by another great of French cinema, Jacques Prévert (Quai des Brumes, Le Jour se Léve), and boasts a nuanced leading performance by Lefèvre.

Please note: This competition is open to UK residents only...

It’s a given that their Main Slate — the fresh, the recently buzzed-about, the mysterious, the anticipated — will be the New York Film Festival’s primary point of attraction for both media coverage and ticket sales. But while a rather fine lineup is, to these eyes, deserving of such treatment, the festival’s latest Revivals section — i.e. “important works from renowned filmmakers that have been digitally remastered, restored, and preserved with the assistance of generous partners,” per their press release — is in a whole other class, one titanic name after another granted a representation that these particular works have so long lacked.

The list speaks for itself, even (or especially) if you’re more likely to recognize a director than title. Included therein are films by Andrei Tarkovsky (The Sacrifice), Hou Hsiao-hsien (Daughter of the Nile, a personal favorite), Pedro Costa (Casa de Lava; trailer here), Jean-Luc Godard (the rarely seen,...

Bertrand Tavernier on Jacques Prévert and Joseph Kosma's Les Feuilles Mortes with Yves Montand in Marcel Carné's Les Portes De La Nuit: "The birth of the song. I mean, that's a good scene." Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze

In the second installment of my conversation with Bertrand Tavernier on his Voyage À Travers Le Cinéma Français we go towards Ernst Lubitsch's Heaven Can Wait, Lino Ventura and Jean-Pierre Melville, Jean Gabin in Jean Delannoy's adaptation of Georges Simenon's Inspector Maigret, Bernard Blier in Henri Verneuil's Le Président, Nadja Tiller in Gilles Grangier's Le Désordre Et La Nuit, Eddie Constantine, and composers Jean-Jacques Grunenwald, George Van Parys, and Paul Misraki.

Martin Scorsese critiquing a Robert De Niro performance in a film by another director is unimaginable to Bertrand. "Distance is important to give you a wider vision of things."

Lino Ventura to Bertrand Tavernier on...

French actor best known for her role in the 1930s film Le Quai des Brumes

One of the quintessential images of pre-war French cinema was the almond-eyed Michèle Morgan, dressed in trench coat and beret, trying to grab some happiness together with the doomed army deserter, Jean Gabin, in a sombre fogbound port in Le Quai des Brumes (Port of Shadows, 1938). “You have beautiful eyes, you know,” Gabin tells her. “Kiss me,” she replies.

It was the first film in which the distinctive melancholic “poetic realism” of the director Marcel Carné and the screenwriter Jacques Prévert expressed itself. The then 18-year-old Morgan had already been in pictures for three years, yet never again in her long career would she appear in a role so perfectly suited to her, that of the beautiful, mysterious waif, old beyond her years.

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The Lon Chaney silent The Hunchback of Notre Dame is an important document, and a pretty good movie, especially if you can see it projected. William Dieterle's 1939 film with Charles Laughton is an outright classic, with iconic casting in every role, but in a way it, like its predecessor, is as much a travesty of Victor Hugo's story as the Disney version. Tragedy is softened, hard edges blurred. (And actually there's a lot to admire in the cartoon: an epic cinematic scale and vision, use of humor that doesn't actually wreck the serious aspects. It's just that, starting with Quasimodo not being deaf—because he has to sing, you see—means you're not filming Notre-Dame de Paris by Victor Hugo at all.)So it was perhaps inevitable that the French would one day have to show us how it's done, and present a more faithful rendering of the book.

Danièle Delorme: 'Gigi' 1949 actress and pioneering female film producer. Danièle Delorme: 'Gigi' 1949 actress was pioneering woman producer, politically minded 'femme engagée' Danièle Delorme, who died on Oct. 17, '15, at the age of 89 in Paris, is best remembered as the first actress to incarnate Colette's teenage courtesan-to-be Gigi and for playing Jean Rochefort's about-to-be-cuckolded wife in the international box office hit Pardon Mon Affaire. Yet few are aware that Delorme was featured in nearly 60 films – three of which, including Gigi, directed by France's sole major woman filmmaker of the '40s and '50s – in addition to more than 20 stage plays and a dozen television productions in a show business career spanning seven decades. Even fewer realize that Delorme was also a pioneering woman film producer, working in that capacity for more than half a century. Or that she was what in French is called a femme engagée...

Potent creativity often comes in small concentrated doses and when you collect a couple dozen of these morsels, powerfully laced with astute ingenuity, you get an overwhelmingly delightful sample platter with some of the most diverse flavors out there unified by their topnotch quality. That’s the best way to describe what you get when watching the visual and tonal tapestry of the Animation Show of Shows. Now in its 17th edition, this program created originally to be screened at Hollywood studios with the purpose of highlighting the best artists working in the independent animation landscape and curated by Ron Diamond, Executive Producer of Acme Filmworks, Inc. and co-founder and President of Animation World Network, will come to theaters across the U.S. for the first time to allow audience to partake in the fun and discovery.

Constructed of 11 fantastic animated shorts showcasing a wide range of techniques within the medium’s spectrum, plus four documentary portraits on selected filmmakers, this feature-length festival of wonder overflows with sublime craftsmanship, but it’s also one of the most profound cinematic experiences of the year. The level of introspection and insight on the human condition contained in these colorful gems surpasses that of most films, animated or live-action, released in recent memory. What they might lack in running time individually, they make up in poignant observations and moments that will stir up a genuine smile.

The program kicks off with “The Story of Percival Pilts,” a stop-motion tale narrated in rhyme about a boy who became fascinated with stilts and declared his feet will never touch the ground ever again. Living his life on stilts, which get increasingly taller as he gets older, Percival cherishes the views and tranquility that such great heights offer. Marvelously achieved and organically suited for the physicality of the chosen technique, this film from Aussie John Lewis and Kiwi Janette Goodey, touches on familiar perils of those who live outside the norm with a classically inspired story told from the protagonist’s brother’s perspective. Tiny sheets of paper stand in as leaves on tress, detailed period costumes adorn the petite bodies of the numerous figures, and cheeky phrases move the plot along while a sky painted in pink and purple hues drench it all with a perpetual “magic hour” feel.

Percival” is followed by a tiny 3D animated work titled “Tant de Forets” (So Many Forests) from French/Turkish team Geoffrey Godet and Burcu Sankur, which uses basic shapes and aesthetics borrowed from the world of graphic design to bring to life a poem by Jacques Prévert on the horrific deforestation of the planet to satisfy our voracious needs for paper.

Evocative and delicately paced, Conor Whelan’s “Snowfall” is the first Lgbt animated short to be part of the Animation Show of Shows, and though it’s clear about its lead character’s sexual orientation, the film is much more focused on depicting how we experience anxiety and deal with rejection in a truly cinematic manner. On a snowy night in Amsterdam a young man arrives at a party where he casually meets a friendly guy. They seem to hit it off, but it soon becomes clear that their interest in one another comes from very different angles. Centered on this romantic misconnection, “Snowfall” is a tender and seemingly melancholic 2D animated meditation where emotions take on a beautiful ethereal form.

Claypainting takes center stage with Lynn Tomlinson’s exquisite “The Ballad of Holland Island House.” Driven by a folksy tune this house reflects on its lifespan from the time it was just wood without purpose, to becoming a family’s home, and eventually being abandoned and consumed by the rising Atlantic Ocean. Tomlinson’s mastery of the stunning technique that blends the tangible material to create rustic moving frames resembles the work of veteran artist Joan C. Gratz – the Academy Award-winning claypainting pioneer.

In Amanda Palmer and Avi Ofer’s “Behind the Trees” scratchy hand-drawn dream sequences turn a voice memo into a brief but deliciously cheeky trip into the subconscious of a man who mumbles abstract statements while asleep. Each incoherent, revealing, honest, or perhaps utterly irrelevant line is transformed into an unconventional artistic interpretation via the imperfectly sleek doodles.

Playfully realized with the charm of a Saturday morning cartoon, yet layered with bittersweet notions about friendship, grief, and solitude, Academy Award-nominated Russian animator Konstantin Bronzit’s latest film “We Can't Live Without Cosmos" is a bite-size animated masterpiece that is as profoundly moving as it’s enchantingly entertaining. On a mission to become the top cosmonauts in their class and earn the privilege to go into space as a team, two lifelong friends work tirelessly everyday using their common dream as fuel to endure the challenging tasks. Their bond, an idealized iteration of fraternal companionship that we could all aspire to, clearly emerges as a more significant and precious motivation than the outer space voyage itself. With clever visual gags, endearing character design reminiscent of bygone artistry, and inventive sharp editing, Bronzit’s virtuous storytelling abilities amuse and tug at our heartstrings till the very last shot. “We Can't Live Without Cosmos" is one of the best films of the year of any length and in any medium.

A hungry cat and a helpless goldfish set an unlikely love story in motion in Isabel Favez curious short “Messages Dans L’Air.” Uniquely designed with an elegantly simple style, Favez world is entirely made out of paper and she uses this particular trait as a perfect narrative device for the film’s scope. Written on a folded paper bird, a lovely message makes its way to a young woman while her mischievous feline constantly attempts to devour a tiny fish that belongs to a bulky boxer who lives near by. Such problematic relationship between their pets will be the catalyst for the mismatch lovebirds to connect.

Passionate admirers of Walt Disney’s classic films, Iranian brothers Babak & Behnoud Nekooei crafted a remarkable 2D animated piece in which their influences are unmistakable but not without reinvention. “Stripy” centers on an enthusiastic factory worker in a city where homogeneity is paramount. His job is simply to paint dark stripes on every box that comes through the assembly line; however, the spirited young man decides that a more vibrant pattern would make the repetitive labor more interesting. Individuality and the power that comes from refusing to conform are crucial themes weaved into the Nekooei brothers’ melodically structured short. Without explicitly touching on their country’s politics, the filmmakers created a subtly rebellious work of art that transcends divisive discourses and ideologies.

Landscapes so realistically rendered that could nearly fool you into thinking they were indeed extracted from our world are one of the extraordinary elements in 3D animated adventure “Ascension,” by a French team of artist form by Colin Laubry, Thomas Bourdis, Martin de Coutenhove, Caroline Domergue, and Florian Vecchione. Two bold mountain climbers are on their way to the top carrying a statue of the Virgin Mary when one of them suffers an accident that leaves her without functional limbs. Devotion and their relentless desire to succeed a will keep them focused on their almost impossible mission. The astonishing backgrounds alone are spectacular enough to merit significant recognition.

Darkly comedic and brutally honest, “Love in Times of March Madness” is a black-and-white animated personal essay by Melissa Johnson and Robertino Zambrano, which dissects Johnson’s mishaps and realizations as she navigates life as a 6’4” tall woman. Among the many quotidian complications she must face, dating is by far one of the thorniest facets of Johnson’s above average existence. Insecure shorter men and the judging stares from a world that equates physical differences with unforgivable inadequacies are part of the tricky deck she’s been given. By sharing hilarious anecdotes and analyzing why other people reflect their fears on her appearance, Johnson gives us a lesson in acceptance with the help of vividly surreal vignettes that illustrate her unique perspective.

Capping off this outstanding selection of small-scale treasures is Don Hertzfeldt's thought-provoking and visionary Sundance-winning short "World of Tomorrow." Easily the best animated film of the year, this 17-minute science fiction journey is a mind-bending study on the essence of humanity and how technology’s ferocious advances to know and control it all endanger our ability to notice what’s truly meaningful. Employing his signature stick figures, the filmmaker introduces us to Emily Prime (Winona Mae), a young girl who has just met an older, cloned version of herself living far into the future. Emily (Julia Pott), as the film simply refers to the adult replica, has come from her time to meet Emily Prime and inform her about the terrifying dangers of what lies ahead. Loneliness reigns and falling in love is a futile enterprise in a future where wealthy individuals get to live forever by virtually saving their consciousness into data cubes. Life as we know it is no more and people, always longing for fulfillment, have adapted to the hopelessness of their condition. Miraculously, Hertzfeldt packs all of these components within his intricate and engrossing vision into a plot that includes lighter moments of intelligent comedy. Besides the thematic brilliance of the concepts and ideas discussed in “World of Tomorrow,” the film is also testament to Hertzfeld’s admiration and loyalty to the film medium in its most authentic state, while at the same time being unafraid to experiment. Handcrafted on one of the last remaining functioning 35mm rostrum animation stands, the film exists as a bridge between what some consider to be obsolete and the boundless freedom of independent animation in the 21st century. Furthermore, all the amazing special effects were created directly on film, using traditional double exposures, in-camera mattes, and new experimental techniques to transport the avid viewer into a land of intoxicating color, frightening warnings, and inconspicuous wisdom.

In every fragment used to the build “The 17th Annual Animation Show of Shows” audiences will find a heartfelt antidote to formulaic tent poles and will most likely see some of the films that will make headlines as Oscar contenders and nominees in the upcoming months. Undoubtedly, the individual quality of each work is stellar, but the emotional gravitas of the program as a whole is absolutely disarming.

“The 17th Annual Animation Show of Shows” is now playing in Los Angeles at the ArcLight Hollywood and will travel to 20 more cities across the U.S. in the following weeks.

Each week, the fine folks at Fandor add a number of films to their Criterion Picks area, which will then be available to subscribers for the following twelve days. This week, the Criterion Picks focus on eight delightful French films.

Three decades of exceptional French cinema in the service of that most intoxicating, unpredictable and stubborn of muscles, to which laws of convention and commitment prove no barrier: the heart.

Don’t have a Fandor subscription? They offer a free trial membership.

Children of Paradise by Marcel Carne

Poetic realism reached sublime heights with Children Of Paradise, widely considered one of the greatest French films of all time. This nimble depiction of nineteenth-century Paris’s theatrical demimonde, filmed during World War II, follows a mysterious woman loved by four different men (all based on historical figures): an actor, a criminal, a count, and, most poignantly, a mime (Jean-Louis Barrault,...

Jazz music has long expressed its capacity to borrow from various, sometimes contradictory sources in order to create something which in every sense transcends the original elements. Since the earliest days of jazz as a musical form, it has been inspired by military and funeral marches; has stylishly interpreted popular songs; and even brought the classical intricacies of Wagner into the domain of swinging brasses and reeds. This multiculturalism and eclecticism of jazz likens it to cinema which, in turn, has transformed pop culture motifs into something close to the sublime and mixed ‘high’ and ‘low’ artistic gestures to remarkable effect.In the history of jazz, the evolution from ragtime or traditional tunes, to discovering the treasure trove of Broadway songs was fast and smooth. The latter influence was shared by cinema, as the history of film production quickly marched on. The emergence of ‘talkies’ in the United States meant rediscovering Broadway,...

Publicity still of Remorques. Courtesy of Janus Films.

"Melodrama – 2. now, a drama with sensational, romantic, often violent action, extravagant emotions, and, generally, a happy ending" —1959 Webster's New World Dictionary

The “melo” of melodrama, a word from the French, takes its root from the Greek melos, meaning “song.” Originally, the two-pronged word was said to be a sensational or romantic stage play with songs or orchestral accompaniment. The recently departed Alain Resnais took the prefix for the title of his superb 1986 film Melo, about a love triangle involving a violinist and a pianist. Only one of the three Jean Grémillon’s films (Remorques, Lumière d'été, and Le Ciel est à vous) in the Museum of the Museum Image's major and rare retrospective, made during WWII and the French Occupation, carries the music or the happy ending, which Webster’s affixed to melodrama’s meaning in the year of the filmmaker’s death,...

In 1946, the French animator Paul Grimault and poet/screenwriter Jacques Prévert set out to make what they hoped would be the first French animated feature film, based on Hans Christian Andersen’s tale “The Shepherdess and the Chimneysweep.” Prévert was already a legend, having written Le jour se lève and Children of Paradise for director Marcel Carné. Meanwhile, Grimault’s wonderfully iconoclastic fables had won favor both during and after the war. You wouldn’t think two such heavy-duty names would meet much resistance, but within a couple of years, Grimault and Prévert had lost control of the project, and an incomplete, 63-minute version was released without their approval in 1953. That also made its way to U.S. shores in a dubbed version as The Curious Case of Mr. Wonderbird.A couple of decades later, the duo set out to complete the film. Prévert worked on the new script until...

A long time in the making, Reach Me, from filmmaker/actor John Herzfeld brings ‘positive thinking’ and ‘self-help’ to the big screen. It stars a bevy of Herzfeld’s actor friends and friends of friends, including Sylvester Stallone, Kyra Sedgwick and Kevin Connolly.

The title is one of a dozen or so newcomers opening in limited release this weekend. Music Box’s Happy Valley and Kino Lorber’s Monk With A Camera are among Friday’s debuting documentaries.

Happy Valley, named after the area where Pennsylvania State University is located, dives into the child sexual-abuse scandal that rocked Penn State, while Monk looks at an unlikely ascetic who gave up life in the fast lane.

Kino Lorber also is launching Iranian Western Vampire pic A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night, which it is releasing with Vice Films. The title, which was born out of a previous short film, debuted at Sundance in January.

Marcel Carné and screenwriter Jacques Prévert's Le jour se lève (1939) "tracks the inevitable unraveling of factory worker François (Jean Gabin) after he kills the absurd vaudeville entertainer Valentin (Jules Berry), his romantic rival for the affections of Françoise (Jacqueline Laurent) and Clara (Arletty)," writes Anna King for Time Out. The Guardian's Peter Bradshaw finds it "bristling with energy and shaped with incomparable artistry and flair." We're collecting reviews and the trailer for the new restoration opening at New York's Film Forum. » - David Hudson...

Marcel Carné and screenwriter Jacques Prévert's Le jour se lève (1939) "tracks the inevitable unraveling of factory worker François (Jean Gabin) after he kills the absurd vaudeville entertainer Valentin (Jules Berry), his romantic rival for the affections of Françoise (Jacqueline Laurent) and Clara (Arletty)," writes Anna King for Time Out. The Guardian's Peter Bradshaw finds it "bristling with energy and shaped with incomparable artistry and flair." We're collecting reviews and the trailer for the new restoration opening at New York's Film Forum. » - David Hudson...

The King and the Mockingbird is one of those legendary animated features with a tortured production history, along the lines of Richard Williams’s The Thief and the Cobbler and Yuri Norshtein’s still-unfinished The Overcoat. French artist Paul Grimault began the project in the late 1940s under the title The Shepherdess and the Chimneysweep, taken from a Hans Christian Andersen story. The script was by Jacques Prévert, by that point one of the most important poets and screenwriters working in France. In spite of all these talents, however, production stalled and a great deal of money was lost. Grimault’s studio, Les Gemeaux, was forced to close and his former partner released an unfinished version without his permission in 1952. Eventually Grimault regained the rights to the project, secured funding and was able to finally complete his own version of the project in the late 1970s. It was renamed Le Roi et l’oiseau, literally...

★★★★★There's bleak and then there's Le Jour Se Lève (1939). To celebrate the film's 75th anniversary, this week sees the release of an immaculate 4K restoration along with what the Independent Cinema Office are calling "new previously censored scenes that will be seen by audiences for the very first time." Easily director Marcel Carné and screenwriter Jacques Prévert's most accomplished film together, Le Jour Se Lève is packed to the gills with actors who embodied both cinema and Frenchness that would hold until the iconography changed when the Nouvelle Vague stormed the barricades in the late fifties. This bastion of poetic realism stands as an entry point for French cinema that spread across to Britain and beyond.

A Brazilian feature wins at the animation festival for the second consecutive year; market reports record high.Scroll down for full list of winners

Brazilian director Ale Abreu’s The Boy and the World, about a child who heads to the city in search of his father, has won both the Crystal Award and Audience Award for the best feature-length film at the 38th edition of the Annecy International Animation Festival.

“The rising strength of Brazilian animation is confirmed. The Boy and The World’s double honours signal yet again the vitality of this cinematography,” said the festival’s artistic director, Marcel Jean.

It is the second year in a row that a Brazilian film has won the top prize. Last year, Luiz Bolognesi’s Rio 2096, capturing key periods in Brazil’s history though a man who lives for 600 years, clinched the Crystal for best feature.

In other awards, the [link=tt...

For the second year running a Brazilian feature wins the festival.

Brazilian director Ale Abreu’s The Boy and the World, about a child who heads to the city in search of his father, has won both the Crystal Award and Audience Award for the best feature-length film at the 38th edition of Annecy International Animation Festival. “The rising strength of Brazilian animation is confirmed. TheBoyand The World’s double honours signals yet again the vitality of this cinematography,” said the festival’s artistic director Marcel Jean. It is the second year in a row that a Brazilian film has won the top prize. Last year, Luiz Bolognesi’s Rio 2096 clinched the Crystal for best feature. The Jury Prize for best feature was awarded to Bill Plympton’s Cheatin’. The jury also gave a special mention to Mizuho Nishikub’s Giovanni’s Island. In other awards, the Crystal for the best short film went to French-Korean...

My dear President, dear festival director and dear colleagues,

Once again, I thank you for inviting me to the festival, but you know I haven't taken part in film distribution for a long time, and I'm not where you think I am. Actually, I'm following another path. I've been inhabiting other worlds, sometimes for years, or for a few seconds, under the protection of film enthusiasts; I've gone and stayed.

[Cut to a scene of Eddie Constantine as Lemmy Caution in "Alphaville"]

Eddie Constantine/Lemmy Caution: "I don't feel comfortable in this environment anymore. It's not longer 1923, and I'm not longer the man who fought through the police barricades, the man who fought behind the scenes with a gun in my hand. Feeling alive was more important than Stalin and the Revolution."

The risk of solitude is the risk of losing oneself, assumes the philosopher because he assumes the truth is to wonder about metaphysical questions, which are actually the only ones the everyone's asking.

Rather than writing a simple letter to explain his absence from the press conference for his latest Cannes entry, "Goodbye to Language," at the Cannes Film Festival today, instead, legendary filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard created a video "Letter in motion to (Cannes president) Gilles Jacob and (artistic director) Thierry Fremaux." The video intercuts from Godard speaking cryptically about his "path" to key scenes from Godard classics such as "Alphaville" and "King Lear" with Burgess Meredith and Molly Ringwald, and quotes poet Jacques Prevert and philosopher Hannah Arendt. You can see the video in motion below, but we've translated the key bits for you as well: My dear President, dear festival director and dear colleagues, Once again, I thank you for inviting me to the festival, but you know I haven't taken part in film distribution for a long time, and I'm not where you think I am.  Actually, I'm following another path.

This beautiful reissued French animation draws on Fritz Lang and seems to prefigure the style of Japanese anime

Here is an animated gem from 1980, which draws on classic modes that came before it and anticipates the Japanese animation that followed. Jacques Prévert was working on its screenplay until virtually his dying day. The animator Paul Grimault was refining and wrangling over the movie, Le Roi et L'Oiseau, with producing partners for decades, following an argument over a early rough-cut showing in the early 50s. It is loosely based on Hans Christian Andersen's The Shepherdess and the Chimney Sweep. A pompous King, puffed up with pure Bourbon vanity, rules over the fantasy kingdom of Takicardia, whose surreal vastness is enough to give anyone a heart disorder. He falls in love with the portrait of a shepherdess. However, this imaginary woman runs off with the equally imaginary chimney sweep in the neighbouring canvas,...

An exclusive clip from the classic 1980 French animation, made in collaboration with screenwriter and poet, Jacques Prévert. The King and the Mockingbird, which has been cited as an inspiration by animators including Hayao Miyazaki and Isao Takahata, sees an evil king pursue a young sherpherdess and her boyfriend - a chimney sweep - through a magical world. The King and The Mockingbird is in UK cinemas tomorrow and on DVD 28 April

Read Peter Bradshaw's review Continue reading...

★★★★☆Marking the 30th anniversary of its UK debut, StudioCanal rereleases the highly influential The King and the Mockingbird (1980) in a fully restored version after a popular reissue in France last year, offering audiences both old and new the chance to experience a landmark work of sublime hand-drawn animation 28 years in the making. Long considered a masterpiece of the genre, the film is the product of a collaboration between filmmaker Paul Grimault and screenwriter Jacques Prévert who, together in 1947, began loosely adapting Hans Christian Andersen fairytale The Shepherdess and the Chimney Sweep, though complications arose and an unfinished version was released without their approval.

As we continue to move forward through the list, let us consider: how do you define an original screenplay? In theory, everything is based on something. Woody Allen’s Blue Jasmine is basically a modern A Streetcar Named Desire. But, somehow, Jasmine is classified as an original screenplay. When a film is wholly original, nothing like it had been done before, and others have tried to copy it since. Plenty of original screenplays (some in this list) take on tired genres, but flip the script. But the ones that really catch the audience by surprise are the ones that feel imaginative, creative, and different.

40. Spirited Away (2001)

Written by Hayao Miyazaki

That’s a good start! Once you’ve met someone, you never really forget them. It just takes a while for your memories to return.

No writer/director on this list may be more fantastical than the great Hayao Miyazaki,...

Every time I see a Jean Grémillon film, I write about it for The Forgotten. I'm now going to break with tradition slightly, because thanks to the Edinburgh Film Festival's Grémillon retrospective, subtitled Symphonies of Life, I've now seen too many films to catch up on except through a kind of overview, which I will now attempt. I should stress that the retrospective isn't over yet, I haven't been able to see all of it, and anyway there are some films not showing. So this should be considered a work in progress.

Between La petite Lise (1930), which deserves to be considered alongside Lang's M when early sound cinema is discussed, and Gueule d'amour (1937), a magnificent melodrama that works along far more stylistically conventional lines, it's been hard to see exactly what kind of filmmaker Grémillon is. A great one, certainly, but what qualities unite his work?

This is now a bit clearer to me.

Last night I finally finished watching Marcel Carne's 1945 film Children of Paradise. At just over three hours long it took me a couple sittings, though last night I watched the bulk of it (a little over two hours) and it's one hell of a piece of cinema. Roger Ebert describes the production saying it "was shot in Paris and Nice during the Nazi occupation and released in 1945. Its sets sometimes had to be moved between the two cities. Its designer and composer, Jews sought by the Nazis, worked from hiding. Carne was forced to hire pro-Nazi collaborators as extras; they did not suspect they were working next to resistance fighters. The Nazis banned all films over about 90 minutes in length, so Carne simply made two films, confident he could show them together after the war was over." The film largely focuses on an actor -- Frederick Lema?tre played by...

By Allen Gardner

Prometheus (20th Century Fox) Ridley Scott’s quasi-prequel to his 1979 classic “Alien” has an intergalactic exploratory team (Noomi Rapace, Michael Fassbender, Guy Pearce, Charlize Theron, Idris Elba) arriving on a uncharted planet, where they discover what appears to be a dormant alien spacecraft and what might be the first discovery of intelligent life outside of Earth. Of course, everything goes straight to hell before you can scream “Don’t touch that egg!” Sumptuous visuals and strong performances from the cast (not to mention a nearly-perfect first half) can’t compensate for gaping plot and logic holes that nearly sink the proceedings in the film’s protracted second half. It feels as though some very crucial footage wound up on the cutting room floor. Perhaps, as with “Alien” and “Aliens” we’ll see a “Director’s Cut” of “Prometheus” arriving on DVD within the next year. In the meantime,...

Chicago – Marcel Carne is one of the most important filmmakers in European history and two of his most timeless efforts, “Children of Paradise” and “Les Visiteurs du Soir,” are two of the most recent films inducted into the most important collection of Blu-rays in the history of the form — The Criterion Collection. “Children” had been a Criterion release before (it’s spine #141) but “Visiteurs” (#626) is new to the collection. Both are gloriously restored version of French classics.

“Children” is the superior of the two, a film that has often been voted the best French film of the last century. It’s often compared to “Gone with the Wind” in its epic scope (it’s 190 minutes long) or at least that’s how it was sold in some markets — “The French Gone with the Wind!” The film is actually much more ambitious thematically than the American epic as wonderfully detailed in...

By Raymond Benson

Children of Paradise has been called the greatest movie ever made in France, their equivalent to Gone With the Wind. Originally released in 1945 and directed by Marcel Carné, the three-hour historical epic is big in scope and ideas, and yet it is simplistic in its story about four men in love with the same woman. The excellent Criterion Collection label released the picture on DVD several years ago, but now they have given it the deluxe treatment with Pathé’s 2011 restoration and uncompressed monaural soundtrack in new Blu-ray and DVD editions. It looks and sounds amazing.

The story of the film’s production is just as fascinating as the picture itself. Made in Vichy France during the Nazi Occupation, Carné and his collaborator/writer Jacques Prévert had to work in secrecy, for the Nazis acted as “studio executives” and approved everything being made. The production designer and music composer were Jews,...

A father, worried sick that his wife may be dead, walks his son and daughter across a rain-slicked square, while a long line of black-clad children from an orphanage snakes past them in the other direction. The bars of a castle-shaped birdcage, which has been the backdrop for a bitter quarrel between an aristocrat and his middle-aged mistress, gives way to a shot of a mountaintop hotel crisscrossed by countless panes of glass. A man and woman on the verge of an affair walk through an empty seaside house that evokes both their waning marriages and the life they will never have together.

Those are three moments from the three movies in Eclipse's set, Jean Grémillon During the Occupation: Le ciel est à vous, Lumière d'été and Remorques. This DVD release marks an extraordinary stroke of luck for those who, like me, had barely heard of this director. How often does anyone encounter,...

Port of Shadows

Directed by Marcel Carné

Written by Jacques Prévert

France, 1938

There’s a reason why it’s called ‘film noir’. Stylish, haunting, and lyrically cynical, the genre, however, has always been regarded as a staple in the American cinematic tradition. So why the French name?

Because before the likes of Hitchcock, Huston or Hawks popularized the movement in the 40’s and 50’s, there was a Frenchman named Marcel Carné, whom, along with writer by Jacques Prévert, adapted a novel by Pierre Dumarchais to create Port of Shadows (French: Le Quai des brumes).

Bursting with a style, atmosphere, thematic discontent, and a ‘poetic realism’ that were hitherto unknown, Port of Shadows was an undeniable game changer that revolutionized French filmmaking.

Dark, bleak, and more sinister than anything they’ve ever seen before, the French had, in Port of Shadows, a new genre on their hands. And they called it...

Blu-ray & DVD Release Date: Sept. 18, 2012

Price: DVD $29.95, Blu-ray $39.95

Studio: Criterion

Jean-Louis Barrault stars in Marcel Carne's Children of Paradise.

Poetic realism reached sublime heights with Marcel Carné’s 1945 romantic drama Children of Paradise, which is widely considered one of the greatest French films of all time.

A classic depiction of 19th century Paris’s theatrical demimonde, Les enfants du paradis follows a mysterious woman (Arletty, The Pearls of the Crown’s) loved by four different men (all based on historical figures): an actor, a criminal, a count, and, most poignantly, a street mime (Jean-Louis Barrault, La ronde).

Directed with sensitivity and dramatic élan (during World War II, no less!) director Carné (Port of Shadows) and screenwriter Jacques Prévert (Le jour se lève) bring to life a world teeming with hucksters and aristocrats, thieves and courtesans, pimps and seers, and, of course, love and sorrow.

Released previously by Criterion in...

They outraged the authorities on release. But the two films, made before and during the second world war, are now considered classics – and will be re-released this month. Our critics consider their impact

Ryan Gilbey on Le Quai des Brumes

It's easy now to call Marcel Carné's Le Quai des Brumes a masterpiece. When the film was released in 1938, such a view was more contentious. In the wake of the collapse of France's Popular Front government, the film was seen as exacerbating the mood of despair creeping into the left. Jean Renoir labelled it "counter-revolutionary". The Motion Picture Herald concluded: "One will be sorry that such art and talents have been used for such a trite and sordid story, which includes not a decent or healthy character." The Vichy government denounced it as "immoral, depressing and detrimental to young people", and declared that if the war was lost, Le Quai des Brumes...

Jean Gabin stars in this French classic about an army deserter who falls for a gangster's moll

This classic rerelease by Marcel Carné is part of a season dedicated to the French acting legend Jean Gabin (1904-1976); it is dark, mysterious and shrouded in sensuous fog that Gabin's character says is part of the emotional weather he carries around with him. He is an army deserter who fetches up in the port town of Le Havre; escaping abroad is vital, but in a grim bar (with a picture of Dickens on the wall) he finds himself falling in love with the 17-year-old Nelly, played by the gasp-inducingly sexy Michèle Morgan, a gangster's moll in the malign grip of snivelling bad-guy Lucien (Pierre Brasseur) and her sinister, libidinous guardian, played by Michel Simon. The dialogue by Jacques Prévert boasts glorious lines comparable to those in Les Enfants Du Paradis. Nelly says:...

DVD Release Date: July 24, 2012

Price: DVD $44.95

Studio: Criterion

Jean Gabin gets involved with Michèle Morgan in Jean Grémillon's 1941 film Remorques.

The Criterion Collection continued its love affair with the great filmmakers of France with Eclipse Series 34: Jean Grémillon During the Occupation, a selection of three film dramas and romances.

Though little known outside of France, Jean Grémillon was a consummate filmmaker from his country’s golden age. A classically trained violinist who discovered cinema as a young man when his orchestra was hired to accompany silent movies, he went on to make almost fifty films—which ranged from documentaries to avant-garde works to melodramas with major stars—in a career that started in the mid-1920s and didn’t end until the late 1950s. Three of his richest films came during a dire period in French history: Remorques was begun in 1939 but finished and released after Germany invaded France,...

Concluding our short series celebrating the films of the Pathé-Natan company, 1926-1934.

Above: Maurice Tourneur invents the film noir style while nobody's looking in Justin de Marseille. 

Bernard Natan, CEO of Pathé, was as conservative in his tastes as any studio boss, but he can be considered a brilliant talent scout on the basis of a few risks he took: casting Jean Gabin in his first feature (Chacun sa chance, 1931, an operetta-film), giving Jacques Tourneur his first directing job (Tout ça ne vaut pas l'amour, 1932, a comedy), and allowing Pierre and Jacques Prevert to make their first film (L'affaire est dans le Sac, 1932) on leftover sets, although admittedly he was so baffled by the resulting film he refused to release it.

But Natan often preferred to work with tried and true filmmakers with the added insurance of long track records. Leonce Perret, who made his directing debut in 1909, was...

Les enfants du paradis (Marcel Carné, 1945)

When I was about 11 years old my father stood me in front of the television at home and said: "This is a film you have to see." It was Les enfants du paradis, directed by Marcel Carné. Shot in Paris during the Nazi occupation, it's about a troupe of mime artists and performers in the 1880s.

It's a very beautiful, epic story, but what moved me the most was the scene where Jean-Louis Barrault, who plays the mime artist Jean-Baptiste Debureau, is performing a pantomime on stage, his face painted white. He looks into the wings and sees the woman he loves with another man. You see his face crack behind the mask. For me, that moment captured what acting is all about – what is happening behind the mask.

The French actor Arletty, who played the love interest Garance, aroused me as an 11-year-old boy.

Les Enfants du Paradis is back, now at the Ciné Lumière and BFI Southbank. David Jenkins in Time Out London: "In this crisp restoration of Marcel Carné's rich, literary romance from 1945 ('France's answer to Gone with the Wind!"), four men tussle for the affections of one woman, the conflicted, sphinx-like Garence (Carné regular Arletty), an ice maiden in the league of Marlene Dietrich who, in nearly every shot, has her eyes masked by a beam of light. Such ethereal, delicately cinematic touches are in otherwise short supply in a film which is content to let a dazzling, witty script (by Jacques Prévert), sumptuous set design and exceptional performers lend the fiction its lifeblood."

"Like all true love stories, it ends badly," writes Agnès Poirier in Guardian. "Equally important to the legend of Les Enfants du Paradis is the making of the film itself. It started shooting in Nazi-occupied France...

As a new generation can now find, the heroine of Les Enfants du Paradis isn't one you easily forget

Is Les Enfants du Paradis the greatest film ever? A survey of film critics said so in 1996, and the British public will soon be able to decide for themselves. A digitally restored version of the film, whose prints had for two decades been too damaged to be screened, is to be released this week.

I was 12 when I first saw Les Enfants du Paradis, at the Ranelagh theatre in Paris, a stone's throw from Balzac's house. The neo-Renaissance theatre screened this story of mimes, actors, impresarios and swindlers every week-end for more than 20 years until the 35mm print became too fragile. Two generations of cinephiles did as we did, going up the little street like pilgrims on a quest. If God was a film director, he would have made this film,...