News

Kino Lorber’s subscription streaming service Kino Film Collection is expanding with an exciting new home. The subscription channel has launched today on The Roku Channel, IndieWire has learned exclusively, giving the indie and arthouse film catalogue an even wider reach.

Kino Film Collection launched in 2023 on Prime Video Channels, where it remains, but it also gets the chance to spread its wings to The Roku Channel users as a direct-to-consumer offering, which should bring more eyeballs and more revenue for Kino Lorber. It’s also available as a standalone app downloadable through Apple, Roku, and Fire TV. In July, Kino Lorber is adding to the streaming collection some classic films by Jafar Panahi, the Iranian auteur whose next feature “It Was Just an Accident” won the Palme D’Or at this year’s Cannes and will release later this year from Neon.

The Panahi films being added are “Jafar Panahi’s Taxi,...

In 2018, political journalist and writer Vanessa Schneider released Tu t’appelais Maria Schneider (My Cousin Maria Schneider), a deeply personal memoir exploring the turbulent life and career of her late cousin, actress Maria Schneider. Offering a window into the darker, somewhat socially accepted side of the film industry, the small tome looked at Maria’s struggles with fame, exploitation, and personal demons. Far from a straightforward rise to stardom, her story is one of resilience and shattered dreams—a poignant reflection on the cost of art and ambition. Fast-forward to the 2024 Cannes Film Festival (Cannes Premiere section), French filmmaker Jessica Palud revisits what the before, during and after consequences of the “Last Tango in Paris,” with Being Maria (the film was released by Kino Lorber in March).…...

From the moment “Being Maria” opens on a sun-dappled Paris street, you feel the pull of an unwritten destiny. Maria Schneider (Anamaria Vartolomei) isn’t just a young woman chasing stardom—she’s a vessel for something far more volatile: the collision of art and personal integrity.

Director Jessica Palud and co-writer Laurette Polmanss adapt Vanessa Schneider’s memoir with a keen eye for how fleeting moments on camera can haunt an entire lifetime. At 19, Maria’s leap from obscurity into Bernardo Bertolucci’s world-altering “Last Tango in Paris” sets the stage for a narrative that asks: when “truth” on film comes at the cost of a performer’s agency, who truly benefits?

Palud’s rhythm shifts from hushed, intimate sequences—Maria practicing lines, stealing a shy smile from her estranged father—to jolting recreations of on-set betrayal. The film’s tone vacillates between warm nostalgia for a restless teen...

Jessica Palud’s “Being Maria” (2024) takes a hard, unflinching look at one of film history’s most hotly debated scenes, the infamous ‘butter’ moment in Bertolucci’s “Last Tango in Paris.” The film has some of the most polarised reception ever, with most attention fixated on one scene when Marlon Brando’s character forces himself on Maria Schneider’s. The actress went on to call out the scene as being entirely improvised and being utterly abased by the moment, of which she had no foreknowledge.

Palud’s film, co-written with Laurette Polmanss, reckons with the impact of that particular scene, its earlier iterations in the life and larger career of the actress. Adapting loosely from the actress’ cousin’s memoir, this is by no measure a piercing, acute portrait of an artist in emotional duress but stays afloat somewhat on the commitment of its lead, Anamaria Vartolomei, who broke out...

The 2025 Sarasota Film Festival has announced its winners, and one film in particular will draw attention for having screened to much acclaim in this bright red county, ultimately winning the top documentary prize: Kim A. Snyder’s “The Librarians,” a film that’s sounding the alarm strongly about right-wing attacks on free speech, won Best Documentary Feature, after screening at New College, a university itself subjected to a right-wing takeover and attacks on free speech.

The win for “The Librarians” caps another edition of the festival known for its strong curation (largely due to senior programmer Brian Gordon), that brings to Florida’s Gulf Coast titles from Sundance, Cannes, Palm Springs, Mill Valley, and more.

The documentary jury, comprised of freelance journalist Addie Morfoot, Impact Partners co-founder Geralyn Dreyfous, and “Lovers” director Taylor McFadden also awarded a Special Jury Mention to Sasha Wortzel’s “River of Grass,” an environmentally-focused documentary about the Everglades.

“I had four feet of water in my living room. When I got back in there, there were dead fish in my house.”

The film world has been no stranger to natural disasters the past few months — as we all know, having seen the horrific images of the Los Angeles wildfires that engulfed Pacific Palisades and Altadena this January. And Mark Famiglio is no exception.

That scene of flooding was what greeted the Sarasota Film Festival president last September when he returned to his Siesta Key home after evacuating from Hurricane Helene. In fact, his house was largely inaccessible to repair work, as his driveway had almost washed out in its entirety. As was common all over the Florida Gulf Coast, the road nearby was lined with a canyon of refrigerators and cabinets and other household items ruined by the flood waters and left out by the curb for the city to haul away.

Magazine Dreams starring Jonathan Majors is eyeing an estimated $700k weekend in 815 theaters, solid in NY, LA and a handful of urban markets but below the $1 million Deadline hears the distributor had initially been hoping for given strong engagement online with the film, which has a 91% verified audience score on Rotten Tomatoes (81% with critics).

The opening weekend miss for what was a very buzzy Sundance title back in 2023 about a troubled but ambitious bodybuilder follows controversy around its star and comes at a tough time for indie films in general. In the months after the film premiered in Park City, Majors was found guilty of two misdemeanor counts of assault and harassment against an ex-girlfriend.

Briarcliff’s documentary October 8 is an upside surprise with a projected $250k weekend at 113 theaters — up 7% from last weekend’s opening at 14 few theaters. AMC Lincoln Square and Century City are top grossers for the...

Magazine Dreams, which premiered at Sundance in 2023, had a long road to the big screen but arrived this weekend, along with Sami Raimi-produced Locked, sci-fi horror Ash, SXSW 2024 Audience and Grand Jury Award-winner Bob Trevino Likes It and Being Maria, a biopic of Last Tango In Paris actress Maria Schneider.

We’ll see. Last weekend was a box office dud and this one looks quiet too as audiences seems to have forgotten they really liked going to movies last fall.

Magazine Dreams, by writer-director Elijah Bynum, after months in the wilderness found a home with Briarcliff Entertainment, which is opening the film at 815 theaters. This will test the Jonathan Majors bodybuilding psychodrama that debuted at Sundance in 2023 but was derailed by abuse accusations against its star after winning the U.S. Dramatic Special Jury Award for Creative Vision and a distribution deal with Searchlight Pictures, which dropped it. The actor...

Toward the end of Jessica Palud’s “Being Maria,” an uneven but poignantly restorative portrait of “Last Tango in Paris” star Maria Schneider (played here by “Happening” breakout Anamaria Vartolomei), the actress sits for an interview in which she reflects on her recent experience shooting Jacques Rivette’s self-disowned “Merry-Go-Round.”

With a warm smile on her face, Schneider describes the serendipity of the film’s premise, which revolves around a boy and a girl who cross paths in Paris after being summoned there by someone neither of them can find: “It’s about two people who meet because the person they were supposed to meet doesn’t show up.”

The production of Rivette’s creatively unmoored film was not a happy one, but you’d never know that from the way it’s discussed in “Being Maria.” So far as Palud is concerned, there’s more value — more truth — to...

Editor's Note: The following contains the topic of sexual assault.When it was released in 1972, Last Tango in Paris stirred controversy for its graphic depiction of an anonymous sexual relationship between a middle-aged American ex-pat (Marlon Brando) and a younger French woman (Maria Schneider). 53 years after its release, the film remains controversial not just for its subject matter, but for how director Bernardo Bertolucci went about depicting it on set. Conflicting stories have abounded for decades about Schneider's treatment during the shooting of one notorious sequence, although any version of events would have you conclude that a professional line was crossed. For many modern audiences, this has made the film unwatchable. Yet setting the infamy of its production aside, Last Tango in Paris remains a powerful study of erotic entanglement, and the dangers that arise from removing intimacy from sex.

"I told you I wanted it intense." Kino Lorber has unveiled the US trailer for Being Maria, a French indie film about actress Maria Schneider and her experiences on set. This first premiered at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival last year, and it already opened in French cinemas last summer. The film is finally opening in the US in art house theaters starting later this month. The film is an examination of how the idea of a young actress performing might seem exciting to viewers, but it might also be horrifying to the actress playing the role. This profiles Schneider's rise to fame after Last Tango in Paris and its controversial production's impact on her life and career. Based on the behind-the-scenes true story of the making of Last Tango in Paris (director Bernardo Bertolucci's controversial 1972 film originally given the X rating by the MPAA and even banned in...

The Being Maria trailer reveals a new biopic dramatizing the filming of Marlon Brando's most controversial movie. Written and directed by Jessica Palud, the upcoming French film follows actress Maria Schneider's experiences filming the 1972 erotic drama Last Tango in Paris, her subsequent rise to fame, and the impact the controversial production had on her life and career. Being Maria stars Anamaria Vartolomei in the titular role and Matt Dillion as Brando alongside Céleste Brunnquell, Giuseppe Maggio, Yvan Attal, Marie Gillain, and Jonathan Couzinié.

Now, Kino Lorber has released the first official trailer for Being Maria, finding Schneider as a promising young actress who receives a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to star in a film from an acclaimed Italian director, Bernardo Bertolucci (Giuseppe Maggio), and starring a beloved American actor, Brando. They get along great initially, but everything changes when the two men secretly plan an unscripted sexual assault scene without her consent.

Now, it’s time for late actress Maria Schneider’s story to be fully shared onscreen.

Schneider, who famously starred in controversial “Last Tango in Paris” at age 19 alongside Marlon Brando, is portrayed by “Happening” breakout Anamaria Vartolomei in biopic “Being Maria.” Originally titled “Maria,” the film is adapted from the memoir “My Cousin Maria” by Vanessa Schneider. Molly Ringwald wrote the English translation for the book, which detailed Schneider’s life after filming an exploitative simulated rape scene for “Last Tango in Paris” in 1973. Per the memoir, “Last Tango in Paris” director Bernardo Bertolucci did not tell Schneider the full extent of the film’s plot until right before production.

Matt Dillon portrays Schneider’s “Last Tango in Paris” co-star Brando, with Giuseppe Maggio as Bertolucci. Yvan Attal, Marie Gillain, Stanislas Merhar, Céleste Brunnquell, Jonathan Couzinié, and Alexis Corso co-star. The film, which debuted at Cannes and will make...

A classic Marlon Brando movie that generated both critical acclaim and intense controversy is now available for a new generation of viewers to discover. Last Tango in Paris is streaming on Prime Video.

Directed by Bernardo Bertolucci, Last Tango in Paris stars The Godfather's Marlon Brando and Maria Schneider. The drama follows a grieving American widower who enters a passionate but emotionally complex relationship with a young Parisian woman. The film pushed boundaries with its unfiltered depiction of intimacy, earning both critical acclaim and outrage upon its release.

RelatedMarlon Brando Starred in This 99% Fresh Gangster Movie 18 Years Before The Godfather (& It's Practically Flawless)

18 years before he led The Godfather, the legendary actor Marlon Brando starred in a gangster movie that maintains a 99% Tomatometer score.

Over the years, it has been re-evaluated through a modern lens, with many questioning whether its artistic merits outweigh the ethical concerns surrounding its production. Although...

The 30th annual Rendez-Vous with French Cinema festival, hosted by Film at Lincoln Center and Unifrance, is celebrating the work of acclaimed actor Vincent Lindon.

While the 2025 festival is not entirely honoring Lindon himself, the actor appears in a whopping trio of featured films and also will be onsite for Q&As and introductions. Lindon stars in Quentin Dupieux’s meta-comedy “The Second Act,” which opened the 77th Cannes Film Festival, as well as Gilles Bourdos’ dramatic thriller “Cross Away” and Delphine Coulin and Muriel Coulin’s “The Quiet Son” (Lindon won Best Actor at the 81st Venice Film Festival for that drama).

And Lindon isn’t the only beloved French star to join this year’s Rendez-Vous with French Cinema: Actors Isabelle Huppert and Édgar Ramírez, plus auteurs Olivier Assayas and Bertrand Bonello are among those who will have features screening. Bonello, while known as a director, lent his composing skills to “Planet B.

Drawing upon a 1983 interview the actress Maria Schneider gave to the French TV show Cinéma Cinéma, Elisabeth Subrin’s short film Maria Schneider, 1983 premiered at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival and went on to win in 2023 France’s César award for Best Documentary Short. In Subrin’s film, three actresses — Manal Issa, Aïssa Maïga and Isabel Sandoval — progressively interpret the text of Schneider’s interview throughout the 25-minute piece, with Issa strictly recreating Schneider’s original answers while Maïga and Sandoval adapt the text to reflect their own experiences in the film business, turning the work into, as I wrote […]

The post “… A Singular Biographical Representation of a Subject is Impossible”: Elisabeth Subrin on Maria Schneider, Manal Issa and The Listening Takes first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

Drawing upon a 1983 interview the actress Maria Schneider gave to the French TV show Cinéma Cinéma, Elisabeth Subrin’s short film Maria Schneider, 1983 premiered at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival and went on to win in 2023 France’s César award for Best Documentary Short. In Subrin’s film, three actresses — Manal Issa, Aïssa Maïga and Isabel Sandoval — progressively interpret the text of Schneider’s interview throughout the 25-minute piece, with Issa strictly recreating Schneider’s original answers while Maïga and Sandoval adapt the text to reflect their own experiences in the film business, turning the work into, as I wrote […]

The post “… A Singular Biographical Representation of a Subject is Impossible”: Elisabeth Subrin on Maria Schneider, Manal Issa and The Listening Takes first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

The board of Paris’ French Cinematheque has apologised for failing to contextualise a screening of Bernardo Bertolucci’s 1972 film Last Tango In Paris in December, which was ultimately cancelled.

Filmmaker Costa-Gavras, who is the Cinematheque’s president, joined other members of the directorial board to face a French National Assembly commission on sexual violence yesterday (January 16).

The Cinematheque had programmed a screening of the film, which includes a rape scene shot without the consent of actress Maria Schneider, as part of a retrospective of Marlon Brando’s career on December 15.

The programming decision was harshly criticised by film figures and feminist organisations,...

French Cinémathèque was due to show 1972 film that features rape scene filmed without actor Maria Schneider’s prior consent

A prestigious French cinema has cancelled a screening of Last Tango in Paris after women’s rights groups protested at its infamous rape scene filmed without the consent of the leading actor, Maria Schneider.

The French Cinémathèque in Paris said it had dropped the film after receiving threats.

The French-Danish actor Niels Arestrup passed away on Sunday, Dec. 1, 2024, according to his wife, the actor and writer Isabelle Le Nouvel. While he may not be well-known by mainstream Western audiences, he holds the record in France for the most César Awards for Best Supporting Actor, and has starred in films by many of Europe's best directors — Alain Resnais, Chantal Akerman, Claude Lelouch, Marco Ferreri, Jacques Audiard, Julian Schnabel, Bertrand Tavernier, Volker Schlöndorff, and Albert Dupontel, not to mention American directors like Steven Spielberg and Angelina Jolie. His wife wrote in an Afp press release:

I am extremely sad to announce the death of my husband, the immense actor Niels Arestrup, after a courageous fight against illness. He passed away surrounded by the love of his family.

Born to working-class parents and spending his youth in public housing projects, Arestrup failed school and took on odd jobs until he found...

Actors are often lauded for their striking performances or contributions to the industry, but some become immortalized due to their works. Marlon Brando is one such name who is considered to have revolutionized acting and the entertainment industry.

The Godfather actor was as phenomenal onscreen as he was controversial off it. Matt Dillon got the golden opportunity to step into the shoes of his senior but soon came to regret his choice. However, the American Dreamer star didn’t shy away from the role due to the actor’s tricky past. Rather, it was his legacy that made things challenging.

The reason behind the hesitation: Not the past

Marlon Brando created waves in Hollywood, charming the audience with his god-like looks and moving performances. The A Streetcar Named Desire actor had innumerable hits, but his personal life was embroiled in controversies.

Marlon Brando in The Godfather | Credits: Paramount Pictures

Jessica Palud...

Kino Lorber has acquired North American distribution rights to “Being Maria,” a French movie revolving around the controversial production of Bernardo Bertolucci’s 1972 film “Last Tango in Paris.”

Directed by Jessica Palud, the movie stars “Happening” breakout Anamaria Vartolomei as Maria Schneider and Matt Dillon as Marlon Brando.

“Being Maria” had its world premiered at the Cannes Film Festival where it was the only female-directed film selected for the Premieres section. It’s now playing at the American French Film Festival at the DGA. where Kino Lorber’s boss Richard Lorber will be receiving an honorary tribute over the weekend.

The movie charts the turbulent life and career of the late French actress Maria Schneider, who was a promising young actress struggling to break into film when she was cast by Bertolucci, then still rising as a face of Italian cinema, to star in “Last Tango in Paris” alongside an American superstar,...

Despite blue skies over Greece’s second city ahead of the opening ceremony, the 65th Thessaloniki Film Festival kicks off Oct. 31 under clouds of uncertainty, with the war in Ukraine raging toward its three-year anniversary and the year-old Israel-Hamas conflict spilling into neighboring countries and threatening to engulf the entire Middle East. The U.S., meanwhile, heads to the polls next week for an election that’s been framed as a referendum on the fate of American democracy itself — with the eyes of the world watching.

For Thessaloniki festival director Orestis Andreadakis, a veteran film critic who’s been at the helm of the festival since 2016, global events have only brought a renewed sense of urgency “to find movies that matter,” he tells Variety on the eve of opening night. “Movies that say something about our lives, our situation in the world, with so many changes, so many dangers — wars,...

Veteran actor Matt Dillon will receive the prestigious Golden Alexander award at the upcoming Thessaloniki Film Festival in Greece. Organizers will honor Dillon for his long acting career and diverse artistic contributions to cinema. The 65th annual festival runs from October 31 to November 10.

During the festival, Dillon will showcase several of his recent projects. This includes his portrayal of legendary actor Marlon Brando in the film “Being Maria.” The movie explores actress Maria Schneider’s experience filming the controversial 1972 film “Last Tango in Paris.” Dillon both acts in and directed “Being Maria,” which had its premiere earlier this year at the Cannes Film Festival.

Festival organizers will also honor Dillon by screening his 2002 directorial debut “City of Ghosts.” In addition, Dillon will participate in an experimental art installation called “Interfears.” The piece will use Mri scans to visualize Dillon’s brain activity while he performs a monologue. Both the installation...

Matt Dillon will be feted at the 65th edition of Greece’s Thessaloniki Film Festival, where he will present his recent film “Being Maria,” in which he plays Marlon Brando.

Dillon will receive the festival’s honorary Golden Alexander award on Nov. 4, before a screening of his 2002 film “City of Ghosts,” which was his debut as a film director and screenwriter.

Other honorees at the festival, which runs Oct. 31-Nov. 10, include Juliette Binoche and Ralph Fiennes, as previously announced.

“Being Maria,” which will screen at Thessaloniki on Nov. 3, had its world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival. Directed by Jessica Palud, it revolves around the troubled life of Maria Schneider, played by Anamaria Vartolomei.

When Schneider, a young, struggling actress with promise, is offered the lead role in “Last Tango in Paris,” playing opposite Brando, her dreams seem to be coming true. But what seems like a big break turns...

It is nearly impossible for Luca Guadagnino to discuss one of his films without folding his cinematic hero, Bernardo Bertolucci, into the conversation. While on an upcoming episode of IndieWire’s Filmmaker Toolkit podcast about his forthcoming release, A24’s “Queer,” Guadagnino revealed his documentary about the great Italian director behind such films as “The Last Emperor” and “The Conformist,” who passed away in 2018, is much further along than we thought.

“I’m editing it now,” said Guadagnino while on the podcast. “I have a few more conversations I want to have. Actually, Marty Scorsese, I want to talk to him about it. We’ve been shooting for a while now. They’re not interviews; it’s a conversation. It’s a very personal movie. I am the protagonist of the movie. It could be called, ‘Bertolucci and I,’ which it’s not going to be.”

The current working title is “Joie de Vivre,...

Production has begun on “Merteuila,” a new French original series for Max adapted from Pierre Choderlos de Laclos’ 18th century classic novel “Dangerous Liaisons.”

Directed by by Jessica Palud and created by Jean-Baptiste Delfaon, the show stars Anamaria Vartolomei (playing Isabelle de Merteuil), Diane Kruger (Madame de Rosemonde), Vincent Lacoste (Vicomte de Valmont) and Lucas Bravo (Comte de Gercourt). It’s produced by Clément Birnbaum and Joachim Nahum of Nabi Productions (Ugc Group) and Marie Guillaumond of Felicita Films (Newen Studios Group).

Filming is now underway in Normandy, France and will run until December. The ambitious show will stream on Max where the platform in available. The service launched in June in France and will soon roll out its first French series original, “The Confidante,” a psychological thriller (previously called “The Mythomaniac of the Bataclan”) based on a true story, starring Laure Calamy (“The Origins of Evil”) as a woman...

Rachel Griffiths wants people to start respecting sex workers. Now.

“If we disrespect sex workers, we are disrespecting women. It’s the same thing,” she says.

“In Australia, we are in the throes of terrible violence against women. We’ve had more of them die at the hands of their partners or ex-partners in the first three months of the year than in all of last year. People used to talk about what a woman was wearing if something bad happened to her. If she was a sex worker, nobody investigated these cases. I really hope we grow out of it.”

In her new show “Madam,” Griffiths – a “Six Feet Under” and “Brothers & Sisters” star, nominated for an Academy Award for “Hilary and Jackie” – plays Mack Leigh. The show had its world premiere Saturday at the Monte-Carlo Television Festival.

After discovering her husband has been hiring a sex worker,...

“Being Maria” is a flawed but fascinating look at the turbulent life of actor Maria Schneider, played by a game Anamaria Vartolomei (“Happening”). It limns her rebellious teen years, her big breakthrough at 19 in Bernardo Bertolucci’s “Last Tango in Paris,” and how her trauma on set and the film’s notoriety impacted her subsequent career and mental health. Helmer Jessica Palud (“Back Home”) and co-scripter Laurette Polmanss loosely adapt a memoir by Schneider’s younger cousin to show events through the star’s eyes. Despite a clunky air of earnestness and some soap opera-like scenes, plus the overly familiar arc of a celebrity spiraling out of control, the film resonates because the central topic is so of the moment. It’s a cautionary tale about a naïve and powerless young talent abused in the name of art, as well as the agonizing aftermath of her maltreatment.

The narrative depicts...

Anamaria Vartolomei, the breakout star of Audrey Diwan’s Venice prizewinning “Happening,” is under the spotlight at this year’s Cannes Film Festival playing strong women in a pair of movies, “Being Maria” and “The Count Monte Cristo.” Both movies are supported by Chanel for which Vartolomei is an ambassador.

Vartolomei says since starring in Diwan’s drama “Happening,” which was set in the 1960s and centered around the then-illegal act of abortion, she has continued being lured to demanding roles with political and social themes.

“I think movies are the expressions of my engagements as a woman, and as such I often star in films that are engaged because when you’re an actress you contribute to change and we must continue to wage this battle that other women have led before,” says Vartolomei, who was wearing a glamorous dark khaki and black silk jacquard muslin dress by Chanel.

Take your pick. There have been countless film and TV productions adapting Alexandre Dumas’ classic 19th century tale of revenge and deception, The Count of Monte Cristo. We have seen it in different versions in 1934, 1954, 1975, 2002 and probably up to 15 more iterations. Now we have the latest, the lavish widescreen French production Le Comte de Monte-Cristo, which had its world premiere Wednesday night Out of Competition to a wildly approving full audience at the Grand Lumiere — an appropriate place to launch this film as the screen might be the best in the world, and this movie is big.

In addition to all those past film versions on the book, there are countless other movies that have stolen from this complexly plotted tale. For some reason I kept thinking of the Ocean’s movies as, like this, they involve lots of complicated plotting, and once our title character begins planning his revenge...

There has been a lot of noise at this year’s Cannes Film Festival about France’s accelerated MeToo movement, particularly by female cinema stars leading the charge. So whether coincidental or not, the world premiere in the Cannes Premiere section last night of Being Maria (aka Maria) seemed like perfect timing and more relevant than ever

Jessica Palud directs and co-wrote the screenplay with Laurette Polmanss (inspired by cousin Vanessa Schneider’s 2018 book) focusing on the life of actress Maria Schneider, who at age 19 was cast in 1973’s notorious sexual drama Last Tango In Paris, a scandal-riddled production from director Bernardo Bertolucci and starring Marlon Brando that got so heated the stars and director were even threatened with six months jail time in Italy upon its release, even as critics hailed the film as a masterpiece. Long before MeToo and the focus on treatment of women in Hollywood, Schneider...

When New Yorker film critic Pauline Kael wrote a long and heated rave of Bernardo Bertolucci’s Last Tango in Paris after its premiere in 1972, she stated, among other things, that “this is a movie people will be arguing about for as long as there are movies.”

Kael may have been overdoing it when she stressed Last Tango‘s monumental importance, claiming it was a “movie breakthrough” and that it “altered the face of the art form.” But in terms of people arguing years later about the film’s legacy, she was spot-on.

Case in point: Being Maria, a new biopic of tormented French actress Maria Schneider, who at age 19 starred opposite Marlon Brando in the Bertolucci movie — a feat that launched her career as a promising new international actress while destroying her life at the same time.

The reasons for this are well known, and resurfaced over the past...

The world premiere of Agathe Riedinger’s Wild Diamond in Cannes Competition is the only one by a first-time filmmaker and heralds Riedinger as part of a new wave of French female directors to arrive en force on the Croisette.

The film explores western society’s obsession with beauty and fame and the omnipresence of social media through the story of a 19 year-old girl who sets out to earn a spot on a reality TV show.

Also in Competitoin is France-born Coralie Fargeat’s second feature The Substance. The body horror is produced by the UK’s Working Title Films and stars Demi Moore,...

Studiocanal ex-Orange Studio (sic), the sales company in transition following Canal+’s acquisition of Orange Studio and Ocs earlier this year, has taken on All For One, the anticipated second feature from Camera d’Or-winning Divines director Houda Benyamina.

The comedy drama reteams Beyamina with Divines actresses Oulaya Amamra and Déborah Lukumuena who star alongside Daphné Patakia and Sabrina Ouazani. Set in France in 1625, All For One is a feminist retelling of The Three Musketeers and follows four women tasked with protecting the Queen of France.

Orange Studio’s head of sales Charlotte Boucon will be at the market selling the film,...

Matt Dillon is taking on the legacy of Marlon Brando for a biopic about the making of Bernardo Bertolucci’s controversial “Last Tango in Paris.”

Dillon portrays Brando alongside Anamaria Vartolomei as Maria Schneider for Jessica Palud’s upcoming “Maria,” which is set to debut at Cannes later this week in the Cannes Premiere section. “Maria” follows Schneider’s life after starring in “Last Tango in Paris” at age 19, during which she filmed an unsimulated rape scene with Brando in 1973 at director Bertolucci’s (Giuseppe Maggio) instruction. The film is based on Vanessa Schneider’s 2018 memoir “My Cousin Maria Schneider,” which was translated by Molly Ringwald.

Per the memoir, Bertolucci did not tell Schneider the full extent of the film’s plot until right before production. Schneider allegedly was unaware of the pivotal scene in which Brando’s character anally rapes her character using a stick of butter as lubricant.

The first look at Jessica Paluds biographical drama film Maria has been unveiled as the movie sets a world premiere at the upcoming Cannes Film Festival, Variety reports. The movie is based on Vanessa Schneider's 2018 memoir My Cousin Maria Schneider about the actress Maria Schneider and dramatizes her experiences working on Bernardo Bertolucci's film The Last Tango in Paris alongside Marlon Brando.

Studiocanal has unveiled an exclusive first-look still of Matt Dillon and Anamaria Vartolomei (“Happening”) starring as Marlon Brando and Maria Schneider in Jessica Palud’s movie “Maria,” which is slated to bow at the Cannes Film Festival.

Palud’s film sheds light on the tragic life of Maria Schneider, who starred opposite Marlon Brando in Bernardo Bertolucci’s “The Last Tango in Paris” at the age of 19 and never recovered from the shoot. The film depicts how Schneider was imposed an un-simulated rape scene on the set of “The Last Tango in Paris” by Bertolucci and Brando.

“Maria,” the only movie directed by a female filmmaker that’s set for Cannes Premiere, is based on “Tu t’appelais Maria Schneider,” a book written by Vanessa Schneider, the actress’ cousin. Haut et Court, the banner behind the Cesar-winning movie “The Night of the 12th,” will release “Maria” in French theaters on...

by Cláudio Alves

Michel Hazanavicius joins the Official Competition with an animated film.

As expected, a few more titles have been added to this year's Cannes Film Festival lineup. In the Premiere section, Jessica Palud's Maria Schneider biopic joins a star-studded selection. One of this year's two Count of Monte-Cristo adaptations will screen Out of Competition, while a pair of buzzy documentaries will bow in the Special Screenings program. They are Oliver Stone's Lula and Lou Ye's An Unfinished Film. Other new titles in that section include Arnaud Desplechin's latest Paul Dedalus film and Nasty, directed by Tudor Giurgiu, Cristian Pascariu, and Tudor D. Popescu. But of course, the most important announcements concern the Main Competition, where three films complete the 22-title lineup…...

Films from Oliver Stone, Michel Hazanavicius and Arnaud Desplechin have been added to the Official Selection of the 77th Cannes Film Festival. They join previously announced titles from David Cronenberg, Yorgos Lanthimos, Francis Ford Coppola and Paul Schrader. Greta Gerwig is the president of this year’s jury.

Stone’s film, “Lula” is a documentary about Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and will have its world premiere as part of the Special Screenings section, which also features “Spectators,” from Arnaud Desplechin. His latest stars “Anatomy of a Fall” child actor Milo Machado Graner as well as Mathieu Amalric (“The Diving Bell and the Butterfly”).

Hazanavicius, a Best Director Oscar winner for “The Artist,” joins the Competition lineup with “La Plus Précieuse des Marchandises” (“The Most Precious of Cargoes”), an animated film about a Jewish child during World War II whose father, in a desperate attempt to save his son’s life,...

Cannes Film Festival has completed its 2024 Official Selection with 13 new films, including three new Competition titles.

Michel Hazanavicius’ The Most Precious Of Cargoes, Emanuel Parvu’s Three Kilometres To The End Of The World and Mohammad Rasoulof’s The Seed Of The Sacred Fig join the Competition line-up, bringing it to 22 films.

There are four additional special screenings, including Oliver Stone’s documentary Lula, about Brazilian president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva. Also added are Arnaud Desplechin’s Filmlovers! [pictured], Lou Ye’s An Unfinished Film and Tudor Giurgiu’s Nasty.

Un Certain Regard will open with Runar Runarsson’s When The Light Breaks,...

After announcing a whopping number of English-language films in competition, Cannes Film Festival has added some international titles: Michel Hazanavicius’ animated feature “The Most Precious of Cargoes” and Iranian filmmaker Mohammad Rasoulof’s “The Seed of the Sacred Fig,” Variety has learned.

An auteur-driven allegorical feature, “The Most Precious of Cargoes” (first-look still below) is adapted from Jean-Claude Grumberg’s bestselling novel of the same name, set during World War II against the backdrop of the Holocaust. It will be the first animated feature to compete in more than a decade, since Ari Folman’s “Waltz With Bashir” in 2008.

The film is co-produced and represented internationally by Studiocanal, which also has Gilles Lellouche’s “Beating Hearts” in competition. “The Most Precious of Cargoes” is a passion project for Hazanavicius, the Oscar-winning filmmaker behind “The Artist,” who has been developing the project for years. Hazanavicius penned the script with Grumberg and created the drawings,...

On what would be his 100th birthday, Marlon Brando remains synonymous not with acting, but great acting — even if this ranked list of all his performances represents what may be the most wildly uneven filmography for any talent of his caliber. But that’s the power of Brando: A handful of his performances are so great and influential they shook up the art of acting forever. Even among his lesser performances, there’s compelling work deserving of rediscovery.

In order to best exemplify what made him such a singular onscreen presence, we ranked all 39 of his films (and one TV appearance), reflecting a spectrum as wide as the man’s broad shoulders. Based on the quality of Brando’s performances rather than the overall films themselves, there are some placements that may surprise you; for example, as great as Brando is in “The Godfather,” it’s still just the fourth-best...

Yesterday we tossed filmmaker names like Ala Eddine Slim, Alexandre Koberidze, Marco Dutra and the tandem of Fabio Grassadonia & Antonio Piazza into the prognostication Un Certain Regard mix. Today we present another ten options and make sure to tune in on Monday for 25 firm Palme d’Or competition guesses. The official line-up will be revealed on April 11th.

Maria –...

Natasha Lyonne has shared a creepy story about James Woods hitting on her during the filming of Scary Movie 2 as part of a darkly comedic riff on the history of sexual assault in Hollywood that left even Conan O’Brien uncomfortable.

The actor told the story during her recent appearance on the Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend podcast after revisiting her earlier experience with Marlon Brando holding her boob as part of the script for Scary Movie 2 before he dropped out due to illness.

Woods replaced Brando as Father McFeely in the scene, a spoof of The Exorcist in which Lyonne plays Megan Voorhees, a parody of Linda Blair’s possessed character from the original movie. Speaking on the podcast, Lyonne remembered Woods “hitting on me as a teenager in full monster makeup,” adding, “It’s a crazy move, dude.” Watch the segment below.

Lyonne went on to...

French film promotional organization Unifrance put talent in the spotlight at this year’s Rendez-Vous in Paris, where the 10 actors and filmmakers selected as 2024’s Talents to Watch were fêted with flutes of champagne at France’s Ministry of Culture before being introduced to the international press at a dedicated event.

For more than a decade, the 10 to Watch program has pinpointed the creative talents breathing modernity and vitality into contemporary French cinema. Think of a Gallic artist that’s made international waves over the past decade, and chances are they made this list. Here are the voices taking the industry forward in the years to come.

Sofia Alaoui

Sofia Alaoui

Franco-Moroccan filmmaker Sofia Alaoui will build on the rugged eeriness of her 2023 Sundance jury prize winner “Animalia” with “Tarfaya” – a slow-burn thriller that mines Morocco’s sweeping landscapes for ambient unease.

The upcoming film will follow Meryam, a 40-something...

Jessica Palud’s showbiz drama “Being Maria” reframes the short career and tragic life of “Last Tango in Paris” star Maria Schneider in a post-#MeToo light. “Happening” breakout Anamaria Vartolomei plays Schneider, while Matt Dillon takes on the role of her co-star Marlon Brando. Orange Studio is handling international sales.

Currently in post-production and aiming for a festival premiere later this year, the film in part tracks the controversial production and wrenching fallout of Bernardo Bertolucci’s 1972 masterpiece — a landmark that made Schneider an icon while locking her into a sexualized image she never could escape. Palud’s sophomore feature also marks a fitting echo for the Gallic auteur, who kicked off her professional life on the set of Bertolucci’s “The Dreamers.”

Stepping into Brando’s shoes gave Dillon a unique task, not least because the French-language film required the actor to work in an unfamiliar tongue. “I thought to myself,...

YouTube has earned yet another win in the court of law. In San Francisco, U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria dismissed a 2020 lawsuit brought by nine creators of color, who argued that YouTube’s recommendation algorithm discriminated against their videos on the basis of race.

The plaintiffs — including Black and Hispanic creators Lisa Cabrera, Catherine Jones, Denotra Nicole Lewis, and Kimberly Carleste Newman — filed a suit against YouTube in June 2020. The case began less than a month after the killing of George Floyd, which sparked a nationwide referendum on racial justice. In their original complaint, the creators alleged that YouTube and parent company Google “knowingly, intentionally, and systematically” used algorithmic de-ranking to “restrict access and drive them off YouTube.”

Chhabria did not contest the idea that YouTube’s algorithm could have a racial bias, but the federal judge ruled that the suing creators had not done enough to substantiate their allegations.

For three years, musician Maria Schneider has battled YouTube in court in hopes of challenging the platform’s Content ID system. With the case set for a trial, prospects are looking grim for the Grammy winner. Schneider has called for the trial to be delayed so that she can respond to a judicial decision she described as “erroneous.”

In her lawsuit, Schneider argues that YouTube’s rights management system protects powerful interests through its Content ID technology while leaving independent artists out in the cold. That dichotomy, according to Schneider, creates a “hotbed of copyright infringement through [YouTube’s] development and implementation of a copyright enforcement system that protects only the most powerful copyright owners such as major studios and record labels.”

Schneider hoped to gather support from other aggrieved YouTube creators by turning her court case into a class-action lawsuit. YouTube protested that decision, describing the class-action status as a “moving target.

Anamaria Vartolomei (who broke out big in Audrey Diwan’s Happening) will be surrounded by the likes of Céleste Brunnquell (who’ll be seen in Critics’ Week Closing Film La Fille de son père by Erwan Le Duc), Jérémie Renier, Edoardo Pesce, Matt Dillon and Marie Gillain in Jessica Palud‘s highly anticipated sophomore feature Maria. At this point we have no idea how much screen time the likes of Bardot, Brando and Bertolucci might take up in the film but the above mentioned players might fill up those shoes. This is of course the troubling, tormented true life story of actress Maria Schneider who paid a huge price for her fame.…...