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Interview by Bastian Meiresonne – Vesoul International Film Festival of Asian Cinemas, 25th edition, 2019

With a filmography spanning more than three decades, Korean director Bae Chang-ho remains one of the most influential voices of his generation. From “People in the Slum” to “The Dream“, his work has consistently examined human contradictions, aspirations, and vulnerabilities. At the 25th Vesoul International Film Festival of Asian Cinemas (Fica Vesoul), Bae took on the role of jury member—a first for him in France—and reflected on a life devoted to cinema.

A Juror and a Fan

“This is my first time serving on a jury in France,” Bae smiles, visibly excited by the opportunity. “I have two great passions in life: making films and watching good ones. Being on a jury lets me do the latter with a sense of purpose.”

Still, some might recall his earlier statements about disliking post-2000 cinema. He laughs...

The Criterion Collection‘s October line-up is stacked with genre heavy hitters: Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me, Eyes Without a Face, The Shrouds, A History of Violence, Altered States, Deep Crimson, and Nightmare Alley.

Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me will be released on 4K Ultra HD + Blu-ray on October 7.

Serving a prequel to “Twin Peaks,” the 1992 psychological horror film is directed by David Lynch from a script he co-wrote with Robert Engels.

Director-approved special features:

4K digital restoration, with 7.1 surround DTS-hd Master Audio soundtrack, both supervised by director David Lynch Alternate original 2.0 surround DTS-hd Master Audio soundtrack One 4K Uhd disc of the film and one Blu-ray with the film and special features The Missing Pieces, ninety minutes of deleted and alternate takes from the film, assembled by Lynch Interview by Lynch with actors Sheryl Lee, Ray Wise, and Grace Zabriskie Interviews with Lee and composer Angelo Badalamenti...

Lea Massari, the Italian actress and European cinema icon famous for her roles in Michelangelo Antonioni‘s L’Avventura (1960), Dino Risi’s A Difficult Life (1961) and Louis Malle’s Murmur of the Heart (1971), has died. She was 91.

Massari died at her home in Rome on Monday, Italian media reported.

In a decades-long career that spanned films, television and theater, Massari played alongside the likes of Alain Delon, Jean Paul Belmondo, Michel Piccoli and Omar Sharif. She was a critical and audience favorite but shunned the spotlight. After retiring from acting more than 30 years ago, she rarely appeared in public.

Born Anna Maria Massatani on June 30, 1933 — she took the stage name Lea in honor of her fiancé, Leo, who died in an accident shortly before they were to be married — her childhood was spent across Europe as her family followed her father, an engineer, to positions in Spain, France and Switzerland.

Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. To keep up with our latest features, sign up for the Weekly Edit newsletter and follow us @mubinotebook on Twitter and Instagram.Dear readers: We are pleased to share the first Rushes roundup of 2025, with big plans for how this feature will develop throughout the year. Among our ambitions is to better represent the film culture everywhere our readers live. Please help us do so by submitting screenings, series, talks, and other events for our listings consideration. Many thanks! –Ed.NEWSIt’s a Wonderful Life.This holiday season, fans of Frank Capra’s Christmas classic It’s a Wonderful Life (1946) were outraged to discover that Amazon Prime streams an abridged version of the film that cuts almost 25 minutes from the original, including the entire “Pottersville” sequence: what Bedford Falls would look like if George Bailey had never been born. Prime also...

La Piscine Photo: Criterion Collection The French Film Festival is returning to cinemas next month across the UK with a programme of French and Francophone films, mostly UK Premieres, spreading over 60 screenings.

Talents in attendance include actor and director Mathieu Amalric and filmmakers Jean-Marie Larrieu, Arnaud Larrieu, Claire Simon, Emmanuel Mouret, Payal Kapadia, Isabelle Prim and Yolande Zauberman.

Cinemas showing films include the French Institute in Edinburgh and the city's Dominion, Glasgow's Gft, Chichester Cinema and London's Ciné Lumière.

Holy Cow Photo: Laurent Le Crabe Among the current crop of Francophone films that will screen is Emmanuel Courcol's The Marching Band, which recently won the Audience Award at San Sebastian Film Festival, charming coming-of-age film Holy Cow and Belgian #MeToo drama Julie Keeps Quiet.

Classic movies in the line-up include Claude Sautet's César And Rosalie and Jacques Deray's sultry La Piscine.

Read more about the festival and...

The American French Film Festival has long been considered the premiere U.S. event for launching French film and television content to American audiences and while last year’s edition was forced to cancel due to Hollywood’s dual strikes, this year the L.A.-based event is back and gearing up for what it expects to be one of its best editions yet.

The six-day festival, which kicks off its 28th edition on October 29 at the DGA Theater Complex, is bookended by two of the year’s buzziest French titles with Jacques Audiard’s Spanish-language musical-crime film Emilia Pérez set for opening night while Pathé’s French box office hit The Count of Monte Cristo set to close the event on November 3.

Both films, say festival organizers, are reflective of the kinds of projects that Tafff wants to unveil to Hollywood audiences: Audiard’s Cannes-winning title Emilia Pérez is...

New York-based Rialto Pictures is gearing up for the release of Studiocanal’s 4K restoration of Jean-Luc Godard’s 1961 musical comedy “A Woman Is a Woman.”

The film, Rialto’s first release of 2025, stars Anna Karina, Jean-Claude Brialy and Jean-Paul Belmondo. The film will hit selected U.S. theaters on Feb. 7.

The new restoration, which premiered this year in Locarno, was made from the negative 35mm original copy, digitized by Paris-based post production company Hiventy and realized by Studiocanal with the collaboration of France’s National Center of Cinema (Cnc).

Rialto’s biggest success this year was the 75th anniversary of “The Third Man,” Rialto Co-President Adrienne Halpern told Variety at the Lumière Film Festival’s International Classic Film Market (Mifc) in Lyon, France.

‘The Third Man’

The 4K restoration of Carol Reed’s 1949 classic, starring Joseph Cotten and Orson Welles, was carried out by Deluxe Restoration on behalf of Studiocanal.

Sharon Stone defined the '90s with her bold, captivating performances, cementing herself as a queen of the screen and one of the most iconic film actresses of the 90s. She hit her stride with an impressive versatility that few in her generation could match, taking on roles that showcased her ability to transition seamlessly between genresfrom gritty thrillers to heartfelt dramas. Stone embodied the spirit of the '90s with her fearless choices, bringing a combination of charisma, complexity, and undeniable presence to every project she touched. Her roles in this decade made her a household name and left her mark on pop culture.

More than just a star, Sharon Stone became a symbol of on-screen empowerment, particularly in roles that challenged traditional portrayals of women and their stereotypical gender roles. Whether portraying femme fatales or vulnerable characters, Stone's undeniable acting ability helped define a generation of cinema that...

The American French Film Festival returns for its 28th annual event at the DGA Theater Complex from Oct. 29 to Nov. 3. The festival will showcase 60 films and series, including 14 shorts and 14 series or TV movies. It will open with France’s official selection for Oscar consideration, “Emilia Pérez,” and close with the new rendition of the classic Alexandre Dumas novel “The Count of Monte Cristo” by Matthieu Delaporte and Alexandre de La Petelliére.

This marks the first time 16 of these features will be presented to an audience in Hollywood after premiering at the latest editions of the Berlin, Cannes, and Venice International Film Festivals. Additionally, 59 of the selected works will be up for the Tafff Awards.

The selection of films includes the comedy “A Nice Jewish Boy” by director Noé Debré, written by Michael Zindel, Agnès Jaoui, and Solar Bouloudnine; the political thriller “Death of a Corrupt Man,” directed by Georges Lautner and written by Lautner,...

Cannes Film Festival president Iris Knobloch said she learned about the “power of cinema to carry messages, liberate speech and accomplish a duty of remembrance” from her parents, who are Holocaust survivors.

Speaking at the Kering Women in Motion Talks at the Cannes Film Festival on Tuesday, the Munich-born Knobloch said her parents took her to the movie theater several times a week. “For them, going to the cinemas was about reclaiming the youth they had lost.”

She cited Volker Schlöndorff’s “The Tin Drum” as the one movie that marked her the most, alongside French movies by Claude Sautet, Claude Lelouch. “I would see the Cannes Film Festival from afar, and it seems a bit like a fairy tale to be here today,” said Knobloch, a trained lawyer who became Cannes’ first female president in 2023 after spending 25 years at Warner Bros. where she led the studio in France and Germany.

Nine women have accused prolific French producer Alain Sarde of rape and sexual assault in a detailed expose in the French edition of Elle magazine.

Sarde has denied the accusations. The 72-year-old producer has not been officially charged with any crimes for the incidents in question, according to the magazine.

The testimonies were published on May 14, on the eve of the Cannes Film Festival where Sarde has premiered 50 films over the years including Roman Polanski’s Palme d’Or-winning The Pianist and David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive.

The accusations date from between 1985 and 2003 and are all from actresses who mostly...

Indies in moderate-wide release claimed the nos. 6, 8 and 9 spots at the domestic box office led by Love Lies Bleeding. Kristin Steward toplines the Berlin-premiering film by Rose Glass that expanded nationwide, grossing $2.5 million for the weekend on 1,362 screens (up from five theaters opening week). The steamy crime thriller from A24 also stars Katy O’Brian with an ensemble featuring Ed Harris, Anna Baryshnikov Dave Franco and Jenna Malone. It’s 88% Certified Fresh with audiences on Rotten Tomatoes (92% critics score).

Stewart plays a reclusive gym manager who falls hard for an ambitious bodybuilder headed through town to Vegas in pursuit of her dream as the pair is pulled into the web of Lou’s criminal family. Weekend breakdown: Friday, $1.1 million; Saturday, $790k; Sunday; $592k.

One Life by James Hawes pulled in a $1.7+ million debut 983 screens. The Bleecker Street film, starring Anthony Hopkins as a British stockbroker who helped rescued hundreds of Jewish children from Czechoslovakia,...

“Kung Fu Panda 4” (Universal) and “Dune: Part Two” (Warner Bros.) came in a close #1-#2 this weekend, with the DreamWorks Animation title edging out Denis Villeneuve’s sci-fi adaptation by just under $1 million ($30 million to $29.1 million). The two films, in their second and third weekends respectively, are positioned to exceed their most optimistic pre-release projections.

Going against last year’s trend of disappointing franchise results, the two sequels made up about two thirds of the weekend’s $90 million total. With little help from other new releases, this fell just short of last year’s $92 million. It reduced the year’s deficit to nine percent.

“Dune” joined WB’s “Wonka” as the second film to pass the domestic $200 million total since last July. By next weekend, it will surpass that film’s $218 million gross.

How high could it go? Pre-release, the most optimistic hopes were perhaps $250 million — $150 million more than the first “Dune,...

Italian actress Sandra Milo, who was best known for her supporting roles in Federico Fellini’s Oscar winner 8 ½ and Golden Globe winner Juliet of the Spirits, has died at the age of 90.

Born in Tunisia to Italian parents in 1933, Milo grew up in Tuscany.

She got her first big screen break in 1955 opposite Alberto Sordi in Antonio Pietrangeli’s comedy The Bachelor.

Milo’s career quickly took off with roles in Roberto Rossellini’s General Della Rovere, Pietrangeli’s Hungry for Love, Edouard Molinaro’s Witness in the City and Claude Sautet’s The Big Risk over the course of the late 1950s.

It briefly hit the buffers in 1961 when her performance in Rosselini’s Stendhal adaptation Vanina Vanni was brutally panned by critics at the Venice Film Festival, but Milo returned to the set and went on to rack up more than 80 credits across her 70-year career.

Internationally, Milo...

In keeping with tradition, the 2023 edition of Cannes Classics promises to be a feast for cineastes with tributes to global masters and restored versions of all-time classics.

Cannes Classics’ Memories of Jean-Luc Godard strand pays homage to the master who died in 2022 by screening a restored version of “Contempt” (1963); “Godard by Godard,” a self-portrait of the auteur; and the world premiere of “Phony Wars,” a trailer for a film that will never get made, described by the festival as a venture where the filmmaker “transformed his synopses into aesthetic programs.”

Liv Ullman will be present at the strand with “Liv Ullmann – A Road Less Travelled,” a documentary directed by Dheeraj Akolkar.

Japanese master Ozu Yasujiro will be paid tribute to with screenings of “Record of a Tenement Gentleman” (1947) and “The Munekata Sisters” (1950) off restored prints. “Return to Reason” – where four films of painter, photographer and director Man Ray have been...

Rebecca Zlowtowski’s longtime cinematographer discusses shooting Other People’s Children, the writer-director’s latest film that stars Virginie Efira and Roschdy Zem and grapples with themes of motherhood and the concept of being child-free. See all responses to our annual Sundance cinematographer interviews here. Filmmaker: How and why did you wind up being the cinematographer of your film? What were the factors and attributes that led to your being hired for this job? Lechaptois: I met [director] Rebecca [Zlowtowski] in 2009 when shooting her first feature Belle Epine. I have since shot all her films. Filmmaker: What were your artistic goals on this […]

The post “In Preparation We Talked About Claude Sautet’s Films”: Dp George Lechaptois on Other People’s Children first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

Rebecca Zlowtowski’s longtime cinematographer discusses shooting Other People’s Children, the writer-director’s latest film that stars Virginie Efira and Roschdy Zem and grapples with themes of motherhood and the concept of being child-free. See all responses to our annual Sundance cinematographer interviews here. Filmmaker: How and why did you wind up being the cinematographer of your film? What were the factors and attributes that led to your being hired for this job? Lechaptois: I met [director] Rebecca [Zlowtowski] in 2009 when shooting her first feature Belle Epine. I have since shot all her films. Filmmaker: What were your artistic goals on this […]

The post “In Preparation We Talked About Claude Sautet’s Films”: Dp George Lechaptois on Other People’s Children first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

Studio executives, renowned directors, and a crop of rising young talent huddled below crystal chandeliers in Paris’ Palais Royal on Thursday, turning out to fête “Benedetta” star Virginie Efira as she received the Unifrance French Cinema Award – a prize honoring those who carry the banner for Gallic cinema across the globe – in the presence of Unifrance president Serge Toubiana and the country’s Minister of Culture, Rima Abdul Malak.

Organized as part of the Unifrance Rendez-Vous in Paris, the ceremony drew a fittingly international crowd, with filmmakers Emily Atef, Juho Kuosmanen, Sergei Loznitsa and Albert Serra joining “Athena” star Dali Benssalah, “Forever Young” lead Nadia Tereszkiewicz, “Mother and Son” breakout Annabelle Lengronne and “Everybody Loves Jeanne” director Céline Devaux for an intimate reception held in opulent surroundings.

Abdul Malak kicked off the Efira tribute with a victory lap of sorts, boasting about local theatrical attendance rates – which, with only 29 lost...

Hungry for those wet Parisian streets, the city lights, and cadavres en lambeaux in the pale moonlight? Enter three highly atmospheric, star-studded Crime Noirs, one of which is a stealth classic of Gallic Pulp. Stars Jean Gabin, Jeanne Moreau, Lino Ventura, Marcel Bozzuffi, Gérard Oury, Sandra Milo, and Annie Girardot bring the tales of à sang froid malice and mayhem to life. The films featured are Gilles Grangier’s Speaking of Murder (Le rouge est mis) and Édouard Molinaro’s Back to the Wall (Le dos au mur) and Witness in the City (Un Témoin dans la ville). Beware of French husbands when cucklolded — they show no pity. Bonne chance, victimes!

French Noir Collection

Blu-ray

Kl Studio Classics

1957-59 / B&w / 1:66 widescreen, 1:37 Academy / 265 minutes / Street Date November 29, 2022 / available through Kino Lorber / 49.95

Starring: Jean Gabin, Jeanne Moreau, Lino Ventura, Marcel Bozzuffi, Gérard Oury, Sandra Milo, Annie Girardot, Paul Frankeur,...

With such massive sociopolitical shifts taking place in recent years, including Roe v Wade recently being overturned in the United States, one area where these changes are often reflected the most is the cinema screen.

Audrey Diwan's new film Happening (L'événement) chronicles how a woman named Anne navigated her pregnancy in 1960s France when abortion was illegal. Fans of the film looking for similar international material are in the right place. The following movies are some of the best that feature similar themes as those found in Happening, including unplanned pregnancies and abortion, and reflect the changing political climates in the countries in which they are set.

Persona (1966) Available On HBO Max

Audrey Diwan has been praised for ratcheting the tension felt by Anne in Happening to create a searing psychological thriller. For a similar affair, the legendary Swedish auteur Ingmar Bergman's Persona follows Alma, a young nurse...

Cinematography retrospectives are the way to go—more than a thorough display of talent, it exposes the vast expanse a Dp will travel, like an education in form and business all the same. Accordingly I’m happy to see the Criterion Channel give a 25-film tribute to James Wong Howe, whose career spanned silent cinema to the ’70s, populated with work by Howard Hawks, Michael Curtz, Samuel Fuller, Alexander Mackendrick, Sydney Pollack, John Frankenheimer, and Raoul Walsh.

Further retrospectives are granted to Romy Schneider (recent repertory sensation La piscine among them), Carlos Saura (finally a chance to see Peppermint frappe!), the British New Wave, and groundbreaking distributor Cinema 5, who brought to U.S. shores everything from The Man Who Fell to Earth and Putney Swope to Pumping Iron and Scenes from a Marriage.

September also yields streaming premieres for the recently restored Bronco Bullfrog, Ang Lee’s Pushing Hands,...

Lilo Ventura and Jean-Paul Belmondo in Classe Tous Risques San Sebastian Festival has announced it will dedicate a retrospective at its 70th edition to the French director and screenwriter Claude Sautet (1924-2000), shose films include The Big Risk (Classe Tous Risques) and The Things Of Life.

Sautet, who was known for his collaborations with artists such as Romy Schneider, Michel Piccoli and Emmanuelle Béart, is described by the festival as being at "a comparative crossroads in the history of French cinema: he belonged to neither the post-war generation of moviemakers nor the Nouvelle Vague".

The director , who was born in Montrouge in 1924 and died in Paris in 2000, took his first steps in the film industry of the 1950s as an assistant director, working on around a dozen films including comedies and crime stories produced by André Cerf, Edouard Molinaro and Richard Pottier. His most important film as an assistant was his last in the.

Eric Zemmour, the French far-right pundit and TV journalist who has been called “France’s Trump,” sparked a scandal in French media earlier this week when he announced his presidential bid with a video that incited nationalist fervor and included unauthorized footage from classic movies, TV shows, newscasts and soccer games.

The controversy echoes musicians such as Neil Young and the Rolling Stones threatening lawsuits over Donald Trump’s campaign using their songs..

French production powerhouse Gaumont and the producers of the popular primetime show “Quotidien” are among those who have threatened to sue Zemmour over the use of their materials in the video.

The 10-minute clip — the first of its kind posted by a French presidential candidate to social media — is set to Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7 and shows Zemmour sitting at a desk with imagery reminiscent of French General Charles de Gaulle’s 1940 filmed appeal to resist the Nazi occupation.

Populist candidate Eric Zemmour’s campaign is under fire over the use of extracts from French film classics.

French film and TV company Gaumont is threatening legal action after extracts of films in its library were used in a video launching far-right politician Eric Zemmour as a candidate in France’s 2022 presidential elections without authorisation.

The 10-minute video, posted on YouTube on Tuesday (November 30), intercuts Zemmour’s candidacy speech with a montage of news footage and extracts from French film and TV shows. These included Gaumont titles Luc Besson’s Joan Of Arc and Henri Verneuil’s A Monkey In Winter...

After beating the odds last year by hosting a physical edition in the midst of the pandemic, Cannes chief Thierry Fremaux’s Lumière Festival kicked off in Lyon with great fanfare and prestigious guests including Paolo Sorrentino, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Netflix’s co-ceo Ted Sarandos, Valeria Golino, Joachim Trier, Rossy de Palma, Melanie Laurent and Edouard Baer.

The festival, which unfolds in the birthplace of the Cinematograph and its creators, the Lumière brothers, is dedicating its 13th edition to its long-time president Bertrand Tavernier, the beloved filmmaker who recently died.

During his opening speech, the usually voluble Frémaux had to take a moment to regain his composure as he paid an emotional tribute to Tavernier, his friend and close collaborator, with whom he worked side by side for nearly four decades at the Lumière Institute.

“Bertrand has left us with a heritage that is so major and so immense, and your...

Jean-Paul Belmondo and Jean Seberg in Breathless Photo: Studiocanal One of the “monstres sacrées” of French cinema Jean-Paul Belmondo has just died at the age of 88. His lawyer made the announcement in Paris today. His family revealed that he had passed away peacefully after complaining of being tired these last few days.

Jean-Paul Belmondo Photo: UniFrance Belmondo, who was born on 9 April, 1933, in the Paris suburb of Neuilly sur Seine initially was associated with the New Wave of French cinema in the 1960s with his role in Jean-Luc Godard’s Breathless at the start of the decade, starring in Claude Sautet's Classe Tous Risques in the same year. He progressed to become one of the country’s biggest stars often alongside Alain Delon in such box office hits as Borsalino.

Known affectionately by his compatriots as Bébel, testimony to his status as a national treasure came with hours of...

Robert Altman's Images (1972) is showing on Mubi starting November 15, 2020 in the United Kingdom, Ireland, United States, and Canada.Robert Altman’s dizzying psychological horror film Images (1972) is one of those slippery films that has inspired a wide variety of poster art ranging from the sublime to the ridiculous. I only recently came upon the stunning British double crown poster above, thanks to New York poster house Posteritati (more on that in a minute), but I’d long been aware of a number of very different pieces for the film. Seemingly tossed off in between Altman’s two indisputable masterpieces McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971) and The Long Goodbye (1973), Images is unusual in the Altman canon for being a horror film of sorts (though it has been said to form a loose trilogy of female psychosis with That Cold Day in the Park [1969] and Three Women [1977]), and also for its non-American...

Paris-born actor was best-known internationally for Moonraker and Of Gods And Men.

French-British actor Michael Lonsdale, who is best known internationally for his role as the James Bond villain Hugo Drax in Moonraker, has died at his home in Paris at the age of 89.

Lonsdale was born in Paris to an English army officer and French-Irish mother and spent his childhood in Guernsey and then Morocco, where his father was interned during World War Two.

Upon returning to Paris after the war, Lonsdale took acting classes and broke into theatre and then cinema and TV, working prodigiously in all three arenas thoughout his career.

Above: 1976 Hungarian poster for The Wizard of Oz. Art by Olga Tövisváry.In the world of East European poster design, Hungary has always been somewhat of a poor relation to Poland and Czechoslovakia, whose artists have been justly celebrated for years. In that indispensable bible of international postwar movie poster design, Art of the Modern Movie Poster, 66 pages are devoted to Polish posters and 40 to the Czechs, but not only is Hungary lumped into a section with Russia, Romania, and Yugoslavia but there are only two Hungarian posters featured. But that dearth of attention is all due to access rather than to the quality of Hungarian design. I recently came across a treasure-trove of Hungarian movie posters on a number of websites that could go a long way to redressing the balance. The posters that I am featuring here were all found on the auction site Bedo and they come...

European major Studiocanal has signed an enhanced distribution agreement with Under The Milky Way, the global VOD aggregator.

Since 2011, Under The Milky Way has been iTunes’ preferred aggregator and now works in more than 100 territories, handling international rights aggregation on behalf of producers, sales agents and distributors.

The company will begin repping more than 450 Studiocanal library titles for transactional digital distribution in Europe, plus Latin America, Asia and Canada. The previous deal only covered Latin America.

Movies on offer include latest 4K restored version of Apocalypse Now, which will be released digitally this summer, as well as Elephant Man, the Rambo trilogy, Basic Instinct and Bridget Jones. There are also more than 300 French titles that will now be available for digital distribution in Canada, including films by François Ozon, Claude Sautet, and Jacques Tati.

Juliette Hochart, Studiocanal’s EVP Library,...

Michel Piccoli in one of his most memorable roles in Nanni Moretti’s We Have A Pope which he made at the age of 85 Photo: Unifrance One of French cinema’s monumental acting talents Michel Piccoli, famed for his roles in Jean-Luc Godard's Contempt (Le Mépris), The Things Of Life (Les Choses De La Vie), by Claude Sautet, and more recently Nanni Moretti’s We Have a Pope (Hamemus papam), has died at the age of 94.

Piccoli had acted in movies by practically every major French filmmaker, starting with Jean Renoir, Jean-Pierre Melville, Jacques Demy, Costa-Gavras, Jacques Rivette and of course Godard, who cast him in Le Mépris (1963), adapted from Alberto Moravia's melancholy novel, opposite Brigitte Bardot.

He played in more than 60 theatre productions and 100 movies, yet Piccoli's beginnings were not auspicious. He started out in movies as an extra, to make money, and by the time he was discovered,...

Piccoli worked with Jean-Luc Godard, Luis Buñuel, Jean Renoir and Alfred Hitchcock.

French actor Michel Piccoli, star of Jean-Luc Godard’s 1963 classic Contempt, has died aged 94.

His family confirmed the news to French media on Monday (May 18).

In a career spanning more than 70 years and 200 films, some of Piccoli’s other memorable roles included six films with Luis Buñuel including The Discreet Charm Of The Bourgeoisie and Belle de Jour, Jean Renoir’s French Cancan, Jean-Pierre Melville’s Le Doulos, Alfred Hitchcock’s Topaz and five features with Claude Sautet.

Piccoli won the best actor prize at the 1980 Cannes Film...

Belmondo and Melville is showing April and May, 2020 on Mubi in the United States.In 1961 Jean-Pierre Melville released Léon Morin, Priest—a deeply French film set during the Second World War—and in 1963 came his follow-up, Le doulos, a modern-day crime movie with American influences. In the year between those two films, Serge Gainsbourg released an album called Serge Gainsbourg N° 4. The record is notable for shifting the singer a little further away from his French troubadour roots and towards more contemporary, rock’n’roll sounds. The album features a song with a title in English, “Intoxicated Man”—a jazzy, Hammond organ-backed number in which Gainsbourg uses the English words “smoking” and “living room.” These little touches show the creep of American influences on French culture: Gainsbourg is affecting the cool nonchalance of a modern man, with the help of these particular lifestyle signifiers. A year later, Jean-Paul Belmondo also...

An unsung genre masterpiece from Claude Sautet, 1971’s Max and the Junkmen comes to Blu-ray for the first time courtesy of Kino Lorber. Featuring Sautet’s frequent muse Romy Schneider and Michel Piccoli, the latter stars as a detective playing both sides against the middle when he poses as a wealthy banker tempting a group of petty thieves to rob a bank. The only trouble is the gang leader’s prostitute girlfriend, with whom he falls in love. Based on a novel by Claude Neron, the title is eclipsed by Sautet’s own filmography of lauded dramatic pieces, particularly those he was best remembered for at the tail end of his career.…...

The first international festival to have signed the pledge for gender equality in 2018, the Cannes Film Festival now boasts a new selection committee including five women and five men.

The names of the committee members were unveiled by Thierry Fremaux, the director of Cannes Film Festival, and Christian Jeune, the head of the department and deputy director, as well as Stephanie Lanome, the artistic advisor of the film department who has also been a member of the selection committee for a decade.

The committee of the 2020 edition includes Virginie Apiou, a journalist who has directed TV documentaries about film, notably for Canal Plus and Arte; Johanna Nahon, a young script doctor and producer who previously worked with French producer Charles Gillibert, and industry veteran Hengameh Panahi at Celluloid Dreams, where Nahon headed up the acquisition department from 2016 to 2018; Guillemette Odicino, a journalist, critic and head of the film department at Télérama,...

Cannes Film Festival 2020 leaders have unveiled the selection committee for this year’s edition, running May 12 through May 23. Last year, the festival revealed its committee for the first time, and it included four women, three of whom return this year. The committee now includes five women, dominating the list of participants. The announcement was made by Thierry Frémaux (the festival’s General Delegate), Christian Jeune (Director of the Film Department and Deputy General Delegate), and Stéphanie Lamome See the selection committee members below. Bios come courtesy of the Cannes Film Festival.

Last year’s Cannes made strides in the representation of films by female directors throughout the lineups — including four out of the 21 films in the Official Selection. Also of note last year, Mati Diop became not only the first black female filmmaker to have a film play in the main competition, she also went on to win the festival’s jury prize.

This year’s committee includes Virginie Apiou, Paul Grandsard, Laurent Jacob and Johanna Nahon.

The Cannes Film Festival has unveiled its selection committee for its 72nd edition, which runs May 12-23.

The committee was selected by general delegate Thierry Frémaux, film department director Christian Jeune and artistic advisor of the film department Stéphanie Lamome ((a member of the selection committee for 10 years).

This year’s committee has nine members, up by one from last year. Seven of the members are the same; script doctor and producer Johanna Nahon and film journalist Caroline Veunac are the new members, with Marie Sauvion no longer a member.

Kino Lorber resurrects Diabolically Yours, the final film from French auteur Julien Duvivier, arguably the most neglected member of the “Big Five” of classic French cinema. However, Duvivier, who died in a tragic car accident several months before the premiere of his final feature, was in his seventies by this time, and his last film plays like a gender reversal of Clouzet’s classic 1955 title Diabolique.

Adapted by Roland Girard and Jean Bolvary (a duo better known as producers on many of Claude Sautet’s titles) from a novel by Louis C.…...

Claude Sautet took home a Best Director Cesar and lead Michel Serrault nabbed Best Actor for their work on the subtle melodrama Nelly and Monsieur Arnaud, which would stand as the director’s final feature before his death in 2000.

From our 2015 Claude Sautet Retrospective Review:

“Winning Best Director as well as Best Actor for Michel Serrault at the 1995 Cesars, Nelly and Monsieur Arnaud would stand as the final film of director Claude Sautet. The achingly rendered central relationship makes for a curious case study in the deep emotional undercurrents exchanged between two people unable to properly communicate their actual feelings, and as is typical of many Sautet films, it’s a master class of finely attenuated performances.…...

As part of Kino Lorber’s resurrection of Jean Gabin classics once owned by Criterion, on top of bringing Port of Shadows to Blu-ray, the label also re-releases 1954’s Touchez Pas au Grisbi (aka Don’t Touch the Loot or Honor Among Thieves), a classic which revitalized the French icon’s film career. A crime saga which inspired Melville and Claude Sautet, Gabin stars as an aged gangster struggling to see his final heist to its conclusion, which happens to be the daring robbery of 96 kilos of gold bullion from the Orly airport.

The plan couldn’t be simpler—Gabin’s Max the Liar simply has to filter the kilos through his family contact, Uncle Oscar (Paul Oettly), who needs to melt the gold down so it’s untraceable.…...

Jean-Pierre Marielle played in more than 100 films Photo: Unifrance

The death of veteran French cinema and theatre actor Jean-Pierre Marielle, at the age of 87, leaves another gap in the group who became known as “the band of the Conservatoire” whose ranks included his late life-long friend Jean Rochefort, as well as Claude Rich and Jean-Paul Belmondo.

He played in more than 100 films, both comic and tragic, with such directors as Michel Audiard, Bértrand Blier, Claude Sautet, Bértrand Tavernier, Claude Miller and Alain Corneau for whom memorably he created the role of Monsieur de Sainte-Colombe (opposite Gérard Depardieu) as the musician Marin Marais in All The Mornings Of The World (Tous Les Matins Du Monde) in 1991.

With his warmly distinctive deep vocal timbre, imposing stature and pepper and salt beard and moustache, Marielle – who was born in Paris on 12 April, 1932 and died yesterday (24 April) in hospital after a long illness –started his career.

After an increased uptick in attention regarding a lack of female filmmaker-backed features debuting at the annual event, the Cannes Film Festival has announced this year’s full selection committee, which includes four prominent women from the world of film.

In addition to reaching parity among its committee members — something it has never been able to do among its film selections — Thierry Frémaux, General Delegate of the Festival de Cannes, and Christian Jeune, Director of the Film Department and Deputy General Delegate, have appointed Stéphanie Lamome as Artistic Advisor of the Film Department. Lamome is already a member of the eight-person selection committee, and she now joins the official organizing team of the festival, while she will continue to officiate for the selection, with an eye towards young French cinema.

The 2018 competition lineup included new works from Nadine Labaki, Eva Husson, and Alice Rohrwacher. On average, the festival’s competition...

Stéphanie Lamome appointed as artistic advisor of the film department.

The Cannes Film Festival has unveiled the composition of its selection committee for its 71st edition running May 14-25 this year.

The festival also announced that general delegate Thierry Frémaux and film department director Christian Jeune had appointed Stéphanie Lamome as artistic advisor of the film department.

Lamome was already a member of the eight-person selection committee. In her new role, she joins the festival’s organising team, while continuing to work on the selection, particularly around young French cinema.

The festival noted that as well as the selection committee,...

Above: French poster for Max and the Junkmen.There is the usual treasure trove of international cinema currently playing on Mubi in the United States, but in among the Ealing Comedies, the second part of an essential Heinz Emigholz retrospective, and the jamboree bag of past Cannes favorites, for me the current standouts are the four films by Claude Sautet that still have over a week left to run. One of the less well-known of the great French filmmakers of the second half of the 20th century, Claude Sautet’s films are hard to see but they are gems that should not be missed. And they also have terrific posters. Here are my favorite French and international posters for the four films that Mubi is currently showing: Max and the Junkmen (1971), César and Rosalie (1972), Vincent, François, Paul and the Others (1974) and A Bad Son (1980).Above: Polish poster for Max and the Junkmen.

In the mood for Cannes - star kiss between Jean-Paul Belmondo and Anna Karina from this year’s Cannes Film Festival poster Photo: Festival de Cannes

With just a day to go before the official launch of the full programme in Paris, the organisers of the Cannes Film Festival have unveiled the poster for the 71st edition.

It features a still taken from Jean-Luc Godard’s Pierrot Le Fou (1965), and is said to be inspired by the work of Georges Pierre (1927-2003), stills photographer who worked on the shoots of more than 100 films in a 30-year career that began in 1960 with Jacques Rivette, Alain Resnais and Louis Malle. The image features a passionate embrace between stars Jean-Paul Belmondo and Anna Karina.

Pierre also worked in partnership with Robert Enrico, Yves Robert, Claude Sautet, Bertrand Tavernier, Andrzej Zulawski, Andrzej Wajda, and of course Jean-Luc Godard. Committed to achieving recognition for stills...

For the second time in recent memory, a Jean-Luc Godard film has inspired the annual Cannes Film Festival poster — this year with an image from his 1965 crime/romance pic Pierrot Le Fou. It’s a fitting tribute to have another Godard movie memorialized given this year’s event marks half a century since the legendary filmmaker played a part in halting the 1968 proceedings amid a wave of civil unrest throughout France. The last Godard movie to inspire the poster was Contempt (Le Mépris) in 2016.

The fest has been teasing out info ahead of tomorrow’s lineup reveal and today unveiled the official affiche — a collectible that’s annually anticipated and dissected.

Pierrot Le Fou, based on the 1962 novel Obsession, starred Jean-Paul Belmondo and Anna Karina. He’s a TV executive bored by his bourgeois Parisian life who drops everything and runs off with an old girlfriend (Karina) who’s being chased by hitmen.

The Cannes Film Festival has unveiled its official poster for this year’s 71st edition, featuring an image from Jean-Luc Godard’s 1965 film “Pierrot le Fou.”

The poster, designed by 27-year-old graphic designer Flore Maquin, is inspired by the work of French stills photographer Georges Pierre and features “Pierrot le Fou” stars Jean-Paul Belmondo and Anna Karina.

The new poster shows Belmondo and Karina leaning out of their cars to share a kiss. The two play lovers on the run who settle for a time on the French Riviera, which is also where the Cannes Film Festival takes place.

Across a 30-year career starting in 1960, photographer Pierre, who died in 2003, worked with some of the biggest names in French cinema, including Godard, Jacques Rivette, Alain Resnais, Louis Malle, Robert Enrico, Claude Sautet and Bertrand Tavernier, as well international filmmakers such as Polish directors Andrzej Żuławski and Andrzej Wajda. He also...

One of Stéphane Audran’s best-known roles as the cook in Babette’s Feast Photo: UniFrance

Veteran French actress Stéphane Audran, who was a favoured collaborator with the late Claude Chabrol, has died at the age of 85.

Audran, whose son Thomas announced the news of his mother’s death after a long illness today (27 March 2018), married Chabrol (his second wife) and they were together from 1964 to 1980.

Her golden years were in the 1960s and 1970s when she appeared in such titles as Les Biches, a huge success for Chabrol in which Audran won the best actress award at the Berlin Film Festival.

Stéphane Audran has died at the age of 85 - after a long illness. Photo: UniFrance

Although she worked frequently with Chabrol she also appeared under the direction of Claude Sautet in Vincent, François, Paul et les autres and with Michel Audiard in Comment Réussir Quand On Est Con Et Pleurnichard.

By Jacob Oller

Finding closeness in the glass barriers between us. irector and author Claude Sautet is best known in the U.S. for his Oscar-nominated film A Simple Story, but the Frenchman made several stunners over his career (including Un cœur en hiver and Vincent, Paul, François, et les Autres). Many of these films contain a moving visual […]

The article The Intimate Reflections of Claude Sautet appeared first on Film School Rejects.

He’s fast on his feet, quick with a gun, and faster with the to-die-for beauties that only existed in the swinging ’60s. The superspy exploits of Oss 117 were too big for just one actor, so meet all three iterations of the man they called Hubert Bonisseur de La Bath . . . seriously.

Oss 117 Five Film Collection

Blu-ray

Oss 117 Is Unleashed; Oss 117: Panic in Bangkok; Oss 117: Mission For a Killer; Oss 117: Mission to Tokyo; Oss 117: Double Agent

Kl Studio Classics

1963-1968 / B&W and Color / 1:85 widescreen + 2:35 widescreen / 528 min. / Street Date September 26, 2017 / available through Kino Lorber / 59.95

Starring: Kerwin Matthews, Nadia Sanders, Irina Demick, Daniel Emilfork; Kerwin Matthews, Pier Angeli, Robert Hossein; Frederick Stafford, Mylène Demongeot, Perrette Pradier, Dominique Wilms, Raymond Pellegrin, Annie Anderson; Frederick Stafford, Marina Vlad, Jitsuko Yoshimura; John Gavin, Margaret Lee, Curd Jurgens, Luciana Paluzzi, Rosalba Neri, Robert Hossein, George Eastman.

Cinematography: Raymond Pierre Lemoigne...