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1792 was a turbulent time in Paris. As the French Revolution raged outside the dilapidated walls of the Tour du Temple, Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette faced an uncertain future behind those walls. Once the most powerful monarchs in Europe, ruling over the opulent court at Versailles, they had been deposed and cast into an isolated prison to await their fate.

Director Gianluca Jodice’s historical drama “The Flood” shines a light on this difficult period in the lives of the hapless royal couple. Focusing on their imprisonment in the dreary Tower ahead of their executions, the film is based on accounts from the journal of Louis’ valet, Jean-Baptiste Cléry, played in the film by Fabrizio Rongione.

Gone are the lavish parties and designer dresses of Versailles. In their dank cell in the Tower, Louis (Guillaume Canet) and Marie Antoinette (Mélanie Laurent) struggle to adjust to their new circumstances with dignity.

The court of Louis XVI is stripped to a faded, festering husk of itself in “The Flood,” a stark study of the king’s last days in which the luxurious trappings of French monarchy disappear before our eyes — until only its literal architecture remains. An impressively severe second feature by Italian director Gianluca Jodice, this is a brisk rejoinder to past cinematic portraits of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette that have rendered even their downfall in the most lavish way possible.

Such spectacle can have its own ironic purpose, as with the pointed whipped-cream excess of Sofia Coppola’s 2006 vision. But here, as played by Guillaume Canet and a blistering Mélanie Laurent, the deposed, imprisoned monarchs are mocked by whatever finery they’ve held onto: Looking shrunken and freeze-dried in their dirtied robes and increasingly unkempt wigs, they’re dead well ahead of their date with the guillotine. A rather...

The famous French saying, “Après moi, le déluge” (“After me, the flood”) has often been attributed to Louis Xv, who used it to express his total disinterest in what would happen to the world after his own demise. If things fell apart, well, too bad. And yet it’s the king’s own grandson, Louis XVI, who was ousted from power during the French Revolution and died on the guillotine, to whom the quote is most applicable. His death, as well as that of his wife, Marie-Antoinette, marked the end of the monarchy and the height of the Reign of Terror. It was also the start of one of the first modern democracies, with all its grandeurs and flaws.

The unpleasant final days of Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette are the subject of The Flood (Le Déluge), by Italian director Gianluca Jodice (The Bad Poet), who focuses solely on the period...

First we have Catherine Breillat getting back in the saddle, and now we have some great news coming out of Italy with Liliana Cavani working on her first feature film in more than two decades. Cineuropa reports that Alessandro Gassmann, Claudia Gerini and Angela Molina are toplining L’ordine del tempo – which is currently shooting in Rome until mid-October. The supporting cast includes Edoardo Leo, Ksenia Rappoport, Richard Sammel, Valentina Cervi, Francesca Inaudi, Angeliqa Devi, Mariana Tamayo and Fabrizio Rongione. We’re thinking the 92 year-old filmmaker will get an invite to the Venice Film Festival next year.…...

Elizabeth Banks Pic Sells For Protagonist

Protagonist Pictures has closed multiple deals on Phyllis Nagy’s Sundance and Berlin title Call Jane, starring Elizabeth Banks, Sigourney Weaver, Kate Mara and Chris Messina. Deals include Dcm for Germany, Austria and Switzerland, Umbrella Entertainment for Australia and New Zealand, Mis.label for Scandinavia, Eagle for Italy, Shaw for Singapore and Empire for South Africa. Roadside Attractions acquired U.S. distribution rights to Nagy’s directorial debut following its launch at Sundance. The film had already sold well internationally. In Call Jane, Joy (Banks), a traditional 1960s housewife, unexpectedly falls pregnant. She then finds the Janes, an underground abortion movement led by Virginia (Weaver). The group saves her life and gives her a sense of purpose: to help other women take control of their destinies.

The Pantani Affair Inks U.S. & France Deals

Exclusive: Iuvit Media Sales has closed deals for drama The...

Happening Review — Happening (2021) Film Review from the 44th Annual Sundance Film Festival, a movie directed by Audrey Diwan and starring Anamaria Vartolomei, Kacey Mottet Klein, Luana Bajrami, Louise Orry-Diquero, Louise Chevillotte, Pio Marmai, Sandrine Bonnaire, Leonor Oberson, Anna Mouglalis, Madeleine Baudot, Alice de Lencquesaing and Fabrizio Rongione. Set in the early 1960’s, the [...]

Continue reading: Film Review: Happening: An Unflinching, Well Acted Look at a Delicate Topic [Sundance 2022]...

Ivan de Wiel, private banker from Geneva, Switzerland, arrives in Buenos Aires with his wife Inès. A military coup has plunged the country into turmoil. De Wiel is in Argentina to take over the business left behind by his banking partner René Keys (Alain Gegenschatz), who had disappeared without a trace in Andreas Fontana’s haunting Azor, co-written with Mariano Llinas.

1977 in A Book of Common Prayer Joan Didion writes: “The day Luis was shot Elena flew to exile in Geneva, a theatrical gesture but unnecessary, since even before her plane left the runway the coup was over and Little Victor had assumed temporary control of the government.” The characters inhabiting Didion’s invented Central American nation Boca Grande could...

Andreas Fontana’s haunting Azor, co-written with Mariano Llinas, stars Fabrizio Rongione and Stéphanie Cléau: “The cinematography was done by Gabriel Sandru and we were talking a lot about that.”

Andreas Fontana’s Azor, co-written with Mariano Llinas, shot by Gabriel Sandru with costumes by Simona Martínez, stars Fabrizio Rongione and Stéphanie Cléau.

Andreas Fontana with Anne-Katrin Titze on Jorge Luis Borges: “Borges of course in terms of literary inspiration is very important.”

In my discussion with the director we touch on the influence of Howard Hawks and Jorge Luis Borges, Joan Didion’s codes and games, casting director Alexandre Nazarian, the cinematography, costumes, and filming in Argentina with non-professional actors, “men who are very impressive”.

Boredom is seen as “divine punishment,” old money...

An eerie, unsettling conspiracy drama about the ultra-wealthy from director Andreas Fontana, in which a Swiss banker navigates Argentina’s dirty war

50 best films of 2021 in the UKMore on the best culture of 2021

Pure evil is all around in this unnervingly subtle, sophisticated movie; it is a conspiracy drama-thriller, shot with a kind of desiccated blankness, about the occult world of super-wealth and things not to be talked about. The title is a Swiss banker’s codeword in conversation for “be silent”. It is set in 1980 in Argentina, at the time of the junta’s dirty war against leftists and dissidents. Azor gives a queasy new perspective on the horror of those times, and there is even a nauseous echo of the Swiss banks’ attitude to their German neighbours in the second world war.

Yvan (Fabrizio Rongione) is a private banker from Geneva – elegant, discreet, an excellent speaker of Spanish,...

Close-Up is a feature that spotlights films now playing on Mubi. Andreas Fontana's Azor is exclusively showing on Mubi in many countries starting December 3, 2021 in the series Debuts.In Carol Reed's The Third Man, Harry Lime—for so much of the film a semi-mythic spectre—reaches about for a metaphor for worthy, peaceable dullness to contrast with the culturally fertile ferment of Renaissance-era Italy. He comes up with Switzerland. "In Switzerland," he drawls, in that infuriatingly amused, contemptuous baritone of his, "They had brotherly love, and they had 500 years of democracy and peace. And what did that produce? The cuckoo clock." Swiss director Andreas Fontana's Azor, an impossibly accomplished feature debut in which the character of René Keys becomes a structuring absence to rival Lime's, challenges that assertion. And not just because, as we've all been made aware by the tsk-ing of a thousand pedants since, the cuckoo clock actually originates in Bavaria.

Exclusive: Anonymous Content has signed Gotham Award-nominated filmmaker Andreas Fontana, whose feature debut Azor has played to acclaim at festivals including Berlin, San Sebastian and London.

The Swiss writer-director was recently nominated for a Gotham Award for Best International Feature for Azor, which played in the Berlinale’s Encounters section and was then picked up by arthouse distributor Mubi for a raft of territories.

The film uses French, Spanish and English dialogue to tell the trans-Atlantic story of Yvan De Wiel (Fabrizio Rongione), a private banker from Geneva. Yvan visits Argentina during the Junta dictatorship to replace his partner, who mysteriously disappeared one night leaving few clues behind. As he manoeuvres among Argentina’s elite, the banker plays a dangerous political game of modern capitalist colonization.

The movie recently won the Emerging Swiss Talent Award at the Zurich Film Festival and garnered ten nominations at the different festivals it played this year.

Audrey Diwan’s “Happening,” one of the three shortlisted films to represent France for the upcoming 94th Academy Awards, will make its North American premiere at the Chicago Film Festival as part of the Global Currants and Women in Cinema program on Saturday, Oct. 17.

“Happening” (L’événement) had its world premiere at the 78th Venice Film Festival, winning the Golden Lion, making Diwan one of only five women who have ever won since 1949.

Just acquired by IFC Films and Film Nation, the film is an adaptation of Annie Ernaux’s eponymous novel that looks back on her experience with abortion when it was still illegal in France in the 1960s. “Diwan’s ‘Happening’ is a timely exploration of the choices women have to make and is a powerful appeal for personal freedoms,” said Chicago International Film Festival Artistic Director Mimi Plauché.

“Audrey Diwan’s quietly devastating sophomore feature is the latest...

Andreas Fontana’s exquisite, quietly dazzling feature Azor answers a question we didn’t know we had: how to make a mystery—a thriller, even—set in the world of private banking. Partly: it’s about the arrival of a Swiss banker, Yvan De Wiel (Fabrizio Rongione), in early 1980s Buenos Aires, when Argentina is still in the grip of dictatorship. De Wiel is there to take on the wealthy (and suspicious) clients of a colleague, Keys, who has disappeared, leaving a flamboyant reputation. Often accompanied by his wife, Inès (Stéphanie Cléau), he’s left to navigate the already murky areas of hush-hush finance under the […]

The post “In Switzerland, We All Benefit From the Bank”: Andreas Fontana on Azor first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

“Show, don’t tell,” says conventional wisdom. “Conceal, conceal, conceal” responds director Andreas Fontana, whose debut feature “Azor” paints a portrait of fear using palpable gaps in conversation. As a Swiss banker, Yvan (Fabrizio Rongione) follows in the footsteps of his missing colleague, and Fontana’s self-assured filmmaking captures a chilling atmosphere against the backdrop of Argentina’s Dirty War. The film seldom wavers from its singular idea and feeling; tonally, it’s a stroll across a plateau by design, but it teeters constantly over that plateau’s edge.

A false tropical backdrop and washed-out footage of a well-dressed man with a forced smile yank us into the story and its permeating sense of artifice. Perhaps this man is Yvan’s missing business partner, or perhaps he is the idea of an influential outsider under the thumb of vastly more influential local forces. This is the world Yvan enters with...

“Happening” does not extravagantly announce itself as a period piece, though gradually you figure it out. The young women on whom it’s focused speak in a way that sounds more or less contemporary, if you’re not thinking too hard about it. And if their outfits are a little dated, the film is shot in such tender, peering close-up on their smooth, hopeful faces that you scarcely notice. But then it clicks: The guys are wearing ties, phones are absent, the dancing in an early party scene is rather quaint. “Happening” is set, it turns out, in 1963, and you soon wish it felt altogether more distant from the present moment. For our protagonist, Anne, is 23 years old and unwillingly pregnant; determined to do something about it, she immediately finds every door in her world closed to her.

Audrey Diwan’s quietly devastating sophomore feature is the latest in an ongoing run of tough,...

"Act as simple as you can, my dear." Mubi has released an official trailer for an intriguing film titled Azor, which first premiered at the 2021 Berlin Film Festival earlier this year. It's described as a "political thriller" but it's unlike any other political thriller. Yvan De Wiel, a private banker from Geneva, goes to Argentina in the midst of a dictatorship to replace his partner, the object of the most worrying rumours, who disappeared overnight. It's set during a tumultuous time in Argentina in the 1970s, all about the power play of money. "In his remarkably assured debut, Swiss director Andreas Fontana invites us into this seductive, moneyed world where political violence simmers just under the surface." It's co-written by Argentinian filmmaker Mariano Llinás (La Flor), and is "a riveting look at international intrigue worthy of John le Carré or Graham Greene." Starring Fabrizio Rongione, Stéphanie Cléau, Elli Medeiros, and Alexandre Trocki.

The festival seasons have been so crowded—blame a world-ending pandemic that pushes premiere after premiere into the same ten-day spans—that something as uniformly admired as Azor needs a second to breathe. Andreas Fontana’s political thriller, co-written by the brilliant Mariano Llinás (La Flor), immerses us in ’70s Argentina and the backroom dealings of a banker replacing his mysteriously (murderously?) vanished predecessor. As Mark Asch said out of Nd/Nf, “a film of almost Le Carréan subtlety, of oblique plotting, crouching dialogue, and guarded performances masking sinister realpolitik.”

An excellent first trailer has arrived from Mubi, who will release Azor stateside on September 10. On full display is what Asch called its “handsome, in tasteful wood-varnish browns and billiards-felt greens” aesthetic, more than a few shots that merit a rewind and pause, and promise of—dare we say?—dealings deeper than meet the eye.

See our exclusive premiere of...

The story of a Swiss banker traveling Argentina during the junta, “Azor” takes place in the cloistered world of private banking. A world one is often born into, with special codes of conduct and dialect, private bankers prefer to operate out of public view – that’s why the banks endure and build fortunes over centuries while their criminal clients may rise and fall. Azor itself is a code word meaning “to not say too much” or “to keep one’s cards close,” a trait that the film and its protagonist so excel at, viewers will be kept guessing until the last moment.

Read More: ‘Liborio’: Nino Martínez Sosa’s Debut Is A Moving Drama About Belief [Nd/Nf Review]

Yvan de Wiel (Fabrizio Rongione) is a third-generation Swiss banker traveling to Argentina for the first time after the disappearance of his partner, Rene Keys.

Continue reading ‘Azor’: Andreas Fontana’s Debut...

An almost suffocating air of secrecy permeates Azor, a Swiss-Argentinean coproduction concerning the mutual suspicion and damnable complicity of patrician North Atlantic capitalism and repressive regimes in the postcolonial Global South. The year is 1980, and a private banker from Geneva circulates among the Buenos Aires elite. This is at the height of the Dirty War, though so absolute is the Swiss banker’s discretion—so clean his hands—that the military junta’s crimes against its people feel as suggestively peripheral to the film’s narrative as the word “disappeared” implies. Filmmaker Andreas Fontana’s debut feature is a film of almost Le Carréan subtlety, of oblique plotting, crouching dialogue, and guarded performances masking sinister realpolitik.

Yvan De Wiel (Fabrizio Rongione), the third-generation scion of a Swiss private banking family—as Fontana himself is—arrives in Argentina with his wife Ines (Stéphanie Cléau), to meet with clients and colleagues: landowners,...

Based on his novel of the same name, the film will be shot mainly in Trentino with actors Lorenzo Richelmy, Fabrizio Ferracane and Fabrizio Rongione. Writer Massimo Donati makes his feature film directorial debut with Diario di Spezie, adapted from his own 2013 novel of the same name and which started filming a few days ago. Already behind the camera for Fuoriscena, a documentary about the Accademia Teatro alla Scala co-directed with Alessandro Leone, Donati is directing in this new film Lorenzo Richelmy, Fabrizio Ferracane and Fabrizio Rongione. The film is produced by Master Five Cinematografica with Rai Cinema and Rodeo Drive, with the support of the Trentino Film Commission. Written for the big screen by Donati himself, Diario di spezie is...

Following on an initial sale to Mubi for U.S., U.K, Italy, Turkey and India, Brussels-based sales agency Be For Films has clinched its first tranche of sales to international distributors on Berlinale Encounters title “Azor,” the first feature from Swiss talent to track Andreas Fontana.

In new sales, Pamela Leu at Be For Films, part of the pan-European Playtime Group, has closed Spain (Vitrine Filmes), Portugal (Legendmain Filmes), Greece (Cinobo), Cis (Capella Film), China (Huanxi Media Group), Brazil (Vitrine Filmes) and, just this week, Switzerland (Xenix Filmdistribution).

The news deals mean that “Azor” has sold more of less half of the 15 major territories in the world.

“Azor” is produced by Eugenia Mumenthaler and David Epiney from Alina Film and co-produced by France’s Local Films, Argentina’s Ruda Cine and Swiss public broadcaster Rts.

The deals also show “Azor” shaping up as one of the standout Swiss titles...

The first thing one notices about “Azor” is how real it feels: the entitlement, the encyclopedic knowledge of “good” families, the multilingual fluency, the bonhomie of power. The main characters are a Swiss private banker and his wife, and it comes as no surprise to learn that director Andreas Fontana is himself the grandson of a Swiss private banker – he knows this milieu very well, and how those inside look at the world. It’s because every line uttered, every glance and body gesture, is so right that Fontana can take such a hermetic bubble, connect it with Argentina in 1980 when the military junta was flexing its murderous muscle, and turn it into a supremely confident debut. Even if this environment will be foreign to most viewers, “Azor” builds the mystery with such engrossing cleverness that the film should easily attract art-house audiences.

Private banker Yvan De Wiel (Fabrizio Rongione...

In a festival where one typically expects a film debut to be youthfully unkempt and overeager, the Swiss director Andreas Fontana has premiered something most unusual with the sly and intriguing Azor: A debut that is well-composed, consummately controlled, and carefully discreet. But perhaps this approach is in order to so perfectly fit its subject matter, which is the glossy surface—all suits and business-speak—of private banking for deplorable people.Set in 1980, the film follows Swiss banker Yvan De Wiel (Fabrizio Rongione), who has been sent to Argentina to make the rounds with his firm’s private clientele, picking up the pieces left by his predecessor, currently missing. De Wiel is traveling with his elegant wife (Stéphanie Cléau) at his side, and together the pair are like finance’s Nick and Nora, securing accounts and inquiring after the bank’s missing partner with cocktails in hand. As she advises...

The Pantani Affair Gets International & U.S. Sales Deals

Exclusive: The Pantani Affair (Il Caso Pantani), about iconic Italian cyclist Marco Pantani, is launching for international sales at the virtual EFM via Italian firm Iuvit Media Sales. The biographical drama, written, directed and produced by filmmaker and Mr.Arkadin Film founder Domenico Ciolfi (Passaggio A Vuoto), explores the last five years of champion cyclist Marco Pantani’s life, including the events surrounding a doping scandal during the 1999 Giro d’Italia and the beloved sportsman’s tragic death in 2004, at the age of 34. The film is one of the many in consideration for this year’s David Di Donatello awards, which opened its nominations to all movies released via streaming due to the pandemic. Three different actors play Pantani: Marco Palvetti (Gomorrah), Brenno Placido (Romanzo Criminale) and Fabrizio Rongione (Two Days). The film also stars Libero De Rienzo (The Two Popes...

Andreas Fontana’s impressive debut feature takes us into the murky world of private banking and makes matters even murkier by portraying the financial wheeling and dealing of his protagonist with a host of dodgy characters in 1970s Argentina. The military dictatorship is taking people off the streets, people are disappearing, and the Argentine Catholic Church has priests who are ardent followers of the stock exchange and are willing to see any potential threat to their wealth eradicated.

This has all the makings of a racy political thriller, but Fontana prefers to play it cool. His focus is on Yvan De Wiel (Fabrizio Rongione), a Swiss banker from a long line of Swiss bankers. He is quietly and elegantly handsome and he has brought his wife Inés (Stéphanie Cléau) along for the trip, a journey intended to placate the bank’s clients and keep them on after his partner, the ‘dissolute’ and ‘depraved’ René Keys,...

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

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

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

The movie, an “emotional horror film” set in a version of Rome on the point of imploding, is produced by Propaganda Italia and Belgium’s GapBusters and stars Fabrizio Rongione and Cristiana Dell’Anna. Filming has begun in Rome on Piove, 28-year-old director Paolo Strippoli’s second work whose cast is led by the Dardenne brothers’ favourite actor Fabrizio Rongione, alongside Cristiana Dell’Anna (Gomorrah), whose performance we look forward to in Mario Martone’s upcoming movie. The pair are joined by the young Francesco Gheghi (recently seen in Padrenostro) and little Aurora Menenti. Produced by Marina Marzotto and Mattia Oddone on behalf of Propaganda Italia, and co-produced by Joseph Rouschop of Belgian group GapBusters, Piove applies the codes of the thriller/horror genre to a family drama, exploring an increasingly hateful modern-day society wrestling with ever greater pressures: “The Rome we see in Piove is continually on the point of imploding,...

This year’s Berlin International Film Festival will look a bit different this year, with a virtual edition taking place March 1-5 for industry and press, then a public, in-person edition kicking off in June.

The complete lineup has now been unveiled, including Céline Sciamma’s highly-anticipated Portrait of a Lady on Fire follow-up Petite Maman, a surprise new Hong Sang-soo feature, the latest work from Ryūsuke Hamaguchi, along with new projects by Radu Jude, Xavier Beauvois, Dominik Graf, Pietro Marcello, Ramon Zürcher & Silvan Zürcher, and more.

Check out each section below.

Competition Tiles

“Albatros” (Drift Away)

France

by Xavier Beauvois

with Jérémie Renier, Marie-Julie Maille, Victor Belmondo

“Babardeală cu buclucsau porno balamuc” (Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn)

Romania/Luxemburg/Croatia/Czech Republic

by Radu Jude

with Katia Pascariu, Claudia Ieremia, Olimpia Mălai

“Fabian oder Der Gang vor die Hunde” (Fabian – Going to the Dogs)

Germany

by Dominik Graf

with Tom Schilling,...

Day 3 of this year’s Berlinale announcements contain the line-ups for Encounters, Panorama and Perspektive Deutsches Kino. Check back in tomorrow for the Competition program.

Encounters was first introduced at last year’s festival to support new voices in cinema. A three-member jury will award Best Film, Best Director and a Special Jury Award during the industry event in March, with the prizes handed out physically at the summer event.

The selection consists of 12 titles from 16 countries, including seven debuts. Scroll down for the full list.

Over in Panorama, there are 19 titles including 14 world premieres. Several titles arrive from Sundance such as Prano Bailey-Bond’s UK feature Censor and Ronny Trocker’s Human Factors.

Perspektive Deutsches Kino will again present new views on German cinema, with six titles, all of which are world premieres. The full lists are below.

This week so far has seen the Generation, Retrospective, Forum, Forum Expanded and Shorts programs announced.

Marcello Sannino’s debut work wins the festival’s first edition, while its protagonist Ivana Lotito scoops the Best Actress accolade. Rose Stone Star, Marcello Sannino’s debut work starring Ivana Lotito, Ludovica Nasti and Fabrizio Rongione, has walked away with the award for Best Film at the first ever edition of the Matera Film Festival: “For the pertinence of its subject matter – the jury’s statement explains – addressed within a coherent structure which tells a wholly female story of survival in uncliched fashion. The film’s measured mise en scene, which is never intrusive, is complemented by a sincere and moving acting performance”. Indeed, protagonist Ivana Lotito was awarded the trophy for Best Actress. The film is produced by Antonella Di Nocera (Parallelo 41 Produzioni), Gaetano Di Vaio and Giovanna Crispino (Bronx Film) and Pier Francesco Aiello alongside Rai Cinema. Released in cinemas in late...

Andreas Fontana’s “Azor,” the latest production between Switzerland’s Alina Film and Argentina’s Ruda Cine, partners on Locarno Golden Leopard winner “Back to Stay,” has scored a world sales deal from Brussels-based Be For Films.

A scathing take on Swiss banks’ shady dealings during Argentina’s Junta dictatorship, “Azor” is one of the 10 Swiss titles featured in Locarno’s The Films After Tomorrow, a competition for movies whose preparation or production has been halted by the Covid-19 pandemic.

Written by Fontana, with the collaboration of Mariano Llinás, director of cult Argentine film “Extraordinary Stories,” “Azor” follows Yvan de Wiel, heir to his family bank, who flies to Argentina in late 1980, during its military dictatorship, to track down his banking partner Keys who’s gone missing overnight. He gradually discovers his own bank’s collusion with tax fraud and far more damning financial operations.

“Azor” was inspired by Fontana...

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

2017 may have just begun, but it already has its first superlative motion picture release. And no, sadly, it’s not the thirty-seventh (give or take) entry in the Underworld franchise. Instead, it comes from the art film world, and specifically one of world cinema’s most interesting directors working today.

After a little over a decade of finding niche pockets of support in niche pockets of film intellectual circles, 2014 gave director Eugene Green one of his most successful outings. The superlative La Sapienza in many ways introduced the auteur to a much broader selection of cineastes, and with actor Fabrizio Rongione once again by his side Green has made yet another skeletal, beautifully crafted drama.

Entitled The Son Of Joseph, Green’s film riffs on the nativity story, telling the story of a Parisian teen by the name of Vincent (Victor Ezenfis). Living with his single mother Marie, a nurse played by Natacha Regnier,...

We’re introduced to the protagonist of Son of Joseph as he silently observes the tortured of a trapped rat. Two of his schoolmates jab thin steel pins at the frightened rodent. “Try to poke one of its eyes out” one urges. “I can’t, he’s too clever,” the other replies. Our hero promptly leaves, finding himself to have more in common with the rat than his supposed friends.

If you’re unfamiliar with the work of Eugène Green you have a weird road ahead of you. He’s an American-born French filmmaker with a tendency towards brain numbingly glacial pacing, intentionally monotone performances, compositions static to the point of fossilization and characters who generally end scenes by gazing blankly into the lens. His style is definitely an acquired taste, catering for those with reservoirs of patience and the ability to tolerate some pretty artsy fartsy filmmaking.

Our lonely...

American-born French director Eugène Green is known as a practitioner of the Baroque theater technique, in particular his ability to translate that tradition into cinematic form. If that sounds like a hard sell, you’ve never seen a Eugene Green movie.

Despite their cerebral foundations (long pauses, stilted line reading), Green’s movies are characterized by dry humor and emotion that creeps into richly conceived stories. Using classic art as his backdrop, Green reshapes it into engaging new forms. “The Portuguese Nun” was a humorous look at an attempt to adapt a 17th century novel, and his marvelous “La Sapienza” followed the relatable plight of a modern architect against the backdrop of post-Renaissance architecture. Both movies manage to transform their topics into storytelling devices with unexpected twists.

With “Son of Joseph,” Green uses a 17th century biblical painting by Carvaggio to animate the contemporary tale of an angsty teen searching...

The story of a teenager’s quest to find his father is marred by laboured performances

An impossibly mannered performance style, which sees characters declaim their lines flatly, and frequently straight to camera, is a bold directorial decision in the story of Vincent (Victor Ezenfis), a teenager who longs to know his father. Although reminiscent of the line delivery favoured by Yorgos Lanthimos in Dogtooth or Lobster, without the disarming humour of those films the approach just seems arch and rather grating. Biblical symbolism is employed in the chapter headings that divide the story, and in the names – Victor’s saintly single mother is Marie (Natacha Régnier), his surrogate father figure is Joseph (Fabrizio Rongione).

Continue reading...

Eugène Green’s The Portuguese Nun was a gentle comic gem and his new film about a lonely boy is lovable in exactly the same way

Eugène Green is an international treasure: an American-born French film-maker who, like Manoel De Oliveira, absorbs the stylised, rarefied elegance of classical theatre and brings it to movies about the present day. The Portuguese Nun (2009) was a gem of gentle comedy, and his new drama, The Son of Joseph, has the same droll innocence and lovability. With its carefully controlled, decelerated dialogue, it is weirdly moving in just the same way. Again, it has something of Rivette or Rohmer, and like Ozu (or Wes Anderson), he uses that most eccentric technique – direct sightlines into camera.

Vincent (Victor Ezenfis) is a lonely teenage boy, alienated from his peers. We first see him walking away when a couple of charmless schoolfriends start tormenting a rat in a cage.

Following up his overlooked La Sapienza, director Eugène Green is back with The Son of Joseph, which after coming to Berlin, Nyff, and more, will arrive in U.S. theaters early next year. Led by Mathieu Amalric, Fabrizio Rongione (La Sapienza; Two Days, One Night), Natacha Régnier, Victor Ezenfis, and Maria de Medeiros, Kino Lorber has released the U.S. trailer for the Dardennes-produced film, which has a distinct sense of humor and energy — seemingly not to far off from Amalric’s recent film My Golden Days.

While at Berlin, Guy Lodge quite liked the film, writing for Variety, “No one behaves quite like a human being in Eugene Green’s “Le Fils de Joseph,” yet a soulful sense of humanity emerges from their heightened declamations anyway. Though it’s still steeped in its maker’s very particular formalities of language and performance, this honey-drizzled, farcically funny fable of an...

Eugène Green with Kleber Mendonça Filho's Aquarius star Sônia Braga Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze

Jean-Pierre Dardenne and Luc Dardenne, who have their film The Unknown Girl (La Fille Inconnue) screening in this year's New York Film Festival and are the co-producers for Cristian Mungiu's Graduation (Bacalaureat), also co-produced Eugène Green's Son Of Joseph (Le Fils De Joseph) starring Victor Ezenfis, Natacha Régnier, Fabrizio Rongione, Maria de Medeiros and Mathieu Amalric.

Vincent (Victor Ezenfis) Marie (Natacha Regnier) Joseph (Fabrizio Rongione): "I like Balthazar very much, but since my childhood I've always liked donkeys."

Following my conversation with Sônia Braga on her Oscar worthy performance in Kleber Mendonça Filho's Aquarius, we ran into Eugène Green whom I was meeting to discuss his film up at the Film Society of Lincoln Center. He spoke with me about Michelangelo Antonioni's Red Desert with Monica Vitti, Robert Bresson's Au Hasard Balthazar,...

Keep up with the wild and wooly world of indie film acquisitions with our weekly Rundown of everything that’s been picked up around the globe. Check out last week’s Rundown here.

– Exclusive: Samuel Goldwyn Films has picked up the North American rights to the drama “Green Is Gold,” written and directed by Ryon Baxter and starring Jimmy Baxter, Ryon Baxter and David Fine. The film recently had its world premiere at the Los Angeles Film Festival over the summer, where it won the Audience Award for Best Fiction Feature.

The film follows “a thirteen-year-old boy [who] is forced to live with his estranged brother after their father is sent to prison. Their relationship is soon tested when the older brother’s occupation as a marijuana dealer infringes on his ability not only to raise his brother, but to even take care of himself. However, through constant tribulation, they discover...

Menemsha Films has acquired North American rights to Israeli film The Women’s Balcony, while Kino Lorber has picked up North American rights to Son Of Joseph.

The Women’s Balcony recently received its world premiere in Toronto and stars Evelyn Hagoel, Igal Naor, Orna Banai, Einat Saruf, Itzik Cohen and Aviv Alush.

Pie Films and United King produced the story about female members of an Orthodox community who rally together after the collapse of the women’s balcony in a Jerusalem synagogue.

Emil Ben Shimon directed from a screenplay by Shlomit Nehama in their feature debut.

Menemsha Films brokered the deal with Pie Films and plans a theatrical release in the first quarter of 2017.

The film will open in Israel next week as the centrepiece film release for the Jewish holidays

“We just fell in love with this film from its first screening in Toronto,” said Menemsha’s Neil Friedman. “We are confident...

The 2016 New York Film Festival line-up has arrived, and as usual for the festival, it’s an amazing slate of films. Along with the previously announced The 13th, 20th Century Women, and The Lost City of Z, there’s two of our Sundance favorites, Manchester By the Sea and Certain Women, as well as the top films of Cannes: Elle, Paterson, Personal Shopper, Graduation, Julieta, I, Daniel Blake, Aquarius, Neruda, Sieranevada, Toni Erdmann, and Staying Vertical. As for other highlights, the latest films from Hong Sang-soo, Barry Jenkins, and Matías Piñeiro will also screen.

Check it out below, including our reviews where available.

The 13th (Opening Night, previously announced)

Directed by Ava DuVernay

USA, 2016

World Premiere

The title of Ava DuVernay’s extraordinary and galvanizing documentary refers to the 13th Amendment to the Constitution, which reads “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted,...

The distributor has picked up Us rights to newly announced Cannes selections Graduation and The Unknown Girl.

Cristian Mungiu’s Graduation (aka Bacalaureat) is a family drama that takes place in small Romanian town where everybody knows everybody.

Adrian Titieni, Maria Dragus and Lia Bugnar star. Mungiu’s Mobra Films produced with Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne of Films du Fleuve; Pascal Caucheteux and Grégoire Sorlat of Why Not Productions; Vincent Maraval of Wild Bunch; and Jean Labadie of Le Pacte. Tudor Reu is executive producer.

Sundance Selects negotiated with Wild Bunch for The Unknown Girl – also known as The Son Of Joseph (La Fille Unconnue) – from Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne.

Adele Haenel, Jeremie Renier, Olivier Gourmet, Fabrizio Rongione and Thomas Doret star in the story about a young doctor who investigates the identity of a mysterious dead body. Denis Freyd and the Dardennes produced.

The buys bring to four the number of Cannes competition selections in the...

It was only a few days ago when we shared the first images from Le Fils de Joseph, the latest drama Eugène Green, his follow-up to La Sapienza, which was sadly overlooked last year — at least in the United States. Led by Mathieu Amalric, Fabrizio Rongione (La Sapienza; Two Days, One Night), Natacha Régnier, Victor Ezenfis, and Maria de Medeiros, we now have the first trailer for the drama. While it is without any subtitles yet, that isn’t a problem when it comes to witnessing more vibrant cinematography from the director.

While at Berlin, Guy Lodge quite liked the film, writing for Variety, “No one behaves quite like a human being in Eugene Green’s “Le Fils de Joseph,” yet a soulful sense of humanity emerges from their heightened declamations anyway. Though it’s still steeped in its maker’s very particular formalities of language and performance, this honey-drizzled,...

There are few better ways to predict the Cannes lineup than looking up whatever Wild Bunch are soon putting out. The French production outfit earns as much attention as anyone around mid-May, and there are at least two in-development titles that have caught our attention — though you wouldn’t necessarily expect that they have the same people working behind the scenes.

They are The Red Turtle, a co-production with Studio Ghibli directed by Michaël Dudok de Wit, and Blood Father, a thriller directed by Jean-François Richet that stars Mel Gibson, William H. Macy, Diego Luna, Michael Parks, and Erin Moriarty (The Kings of Summer, Jessica Jones), among others. Then there’s Le Fils de Joseph, from Eugène Green — whose La Sapienza was one of my ten favorite movies from last year — and starring Mathieu Amalric, Fabrizio Rongione (La Sapienza; Two Days, One Night), Natacha Régnier, Victor Ezenfis, and Maria de Medeiros...

In today's Berlinale Diary entry, I offer first impressions of Eugène Green's Le Fils de Joseph with Victor Ezenfis, Natacha Régnier, Fabrizio Rongione, Mathieu Amalric and Maria de Medeiros; Wang Bing's Ta'ang, a documentary on refugees crossing the border from Myanmar into China; Yang Chao's years-in-the-making Crosscurrent with Qin Hao, Xin Zhi Lei, Wu Lipeng, Wang Hongwei and Jiang Hualin; and Rafi Pitts's Soy Nero with Johnny Ortiz, Rory Cochrane, Aml Ameen, Darrell Britt-Gibson and Michael Harney. » - David Hudson...

In today's Berlinale Diary entry, I offer first impressions of Eugène Green's Le Fils de Joseph with Victor Ezenfis, Natacha Régnier, Fabrizio Rongione, Mathieu Amalric and Maria de Medeiros; Wang Bing's Ta'ang, a documentary on refugees crossing the border from Myanmar into China; Yang Chao's years-in-the-making Crosscurrent with Qin Hao, Xin Zhi Lei, Wu Lipeng, Wang Hongwei and Jiang Hualin; and Rafi Pitts's Soy Nero with Johnny Ortiz, Rory Cochrane, Aml Ameen, Darrell Britt-Gibson and Michael Harney. » - David Hudson...

La Fille inconnue

Directors: Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne

Writers: Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne

The two-time Palme d’Or winning Belgian duo Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne (Rosetta; L’Enfant) take our top spot for most anticipated foreign film of 2016. Like their last two features, the directors have cast a well-known actress, Adèle Haenel (recently winning her second Cesar for Love at First Fight) for their latest feature, La Fille inconnue (The Unknown Girl) (Cecile de France centered 2011’s Kid with a Bike while Marion Cotillard mastered 2014’s Two Days, One Night). Haenel stars as a young general practitioner who feels severe guilt about not providing surgery for a young woman who is found dead a short while after. Confirming the girl’s identity is a mystery, the Gp is determined to find out what happened and who she is.

Cast: Adèle Haenel, Jeremie Renier, Thomas Doret, Olivier Gourmet, Fabrizio Rongione, Christelle Cornil

Production Co.

Director: Eugène Green

Writer: Eugène Green

American born French director Eugène Green usually premieres his films at Locarno, though despite critical acclaim many fail to get considerable attention in the Us (of note, his last film 2014’s La Sapienza, also starring Belgian Fabrizio Rongione, was distributed by Kino Lorber). His latest film, Le fils de Joseph (Joseph’s Son), is described by the director as having allusions to the Bible whilst meanwhile being a topical narrative wrapped up in elements of film noir. And it boasts an incredibly prolific cast. The story revolves around a young man (Ezenfis) who lives with his mother (Régnier). Having never known his father, he heads off to look for him. He finds a cynical and Machiavellian man (Amalric) who works as a publisher in Paris. After he attempts to kill him, he will then find filial love thanks to his uncle (Rongione).

Cast: Mathieu Amalric,...

Two Days, One Night

Written and directed by Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne

Belgium/France/Italy, 2014

Are there any filmmakers working today with a better recent track record than Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne? From their 1996 feature La Promesse, to Two Days, One Night (2014), available now on a new Criterion Collection Blu-ray, the writing/directing duo have made seven classics of contemporary world cinema in a row, all of which were also among the best of their respective year of release. There have been six films up for the Palme d’Or, resulting in two wins (as well as five other Cannes awards), five César nominations, a host of critical accolades, and dozens of other honors spanning the globe (though curiously, no Oscar love for the brothers). Two Days, One Night, itself the winner of 40 international awards, is just the latest to follow this exceptional trend. It’s a film utterly unique in so many ways,...