News

The fifth edition will see the TV festival return to its original springtime slot to run alongside MipTV.

French Oscar-winning director Xavier De Lestrade’s investigative thriller The Inside Game, Seeds Of Wrath and Danish bio-series The Dreamer – Becoming Karen Blixen are among the 10 new series selected for competition in the upcoming edition of French TV festival Canneseries (April 1-6).

The fifth edition sees the event return its traditional springtime slot coinciding with the MipTV content market (April 4-6), after the festival moved to September in 2021 due to the Covid-pandemic.

Political thriller The Inside Game, Seeds Of Wrath stars Alix Poisson...

Streaming services are boosting French TV production. Pascal Breton, whose Paris-based company Federation Entertainment co-produced “Marseille” and most recently “Marianne,” said the biggest benefit of streaming services, and Netflix in particular, is the way in which it has created a world audience for French shows. “Netflix amplifies the appeal of French shows abroad, and we expect that ‘Marianne’ will get a bigger audience outside of France than locally,” says Breton.

“That’s the model of Netflix — they’re counting as much on the Spanish, French and British series than on the American and Korean series to attract and retain subscribers,” adds Breton, whose company now has several projects in the pipeline with streaming services.

At Mipcom, the international biz will get a look at these buzzy French TV titles:

“They Were Ten”

Director: Pascal Laugier

Six-part psychological thriller adapted from the Agatha Christie novel involves 10 people at a luxury hotel...

Warning: This article contains spoilers that some readers may prefer to avoid.

Good news - The Returned is back, with its beautiful people, Gallic drama and Mogwai chords. Bad news - the first series aired in 2013 and, two years on, all we can remember is "the Lake Pub".

Great news - Digital Spy has prepared a handy guide, for anyone looking to refresh their memories ahead of tonight's (superb) series two premiere:

The basics

The dead have begun returning to life in a small French mountain town. But these are no flesh-chomping zombies - beyond a ferocious appetite, the 'Returned' appear perfectly healthy and normal.

The town, though, is plagued by other strange phenomena - power outages, the reservoir's water level dropping dramatically and strange marks appearing on the bodies of both the living and dead.

What happened in series one's finale?

Remember Toni (Grégory Gadebois), manager of the Lake Pub?...

Toronto brass on Thursday paid homage to arguably the most dynamic and provocative content format in entertainment, announcing the festival’s inaugural slate of six TV projects from the likes of Baltasar Kormákur, Jason Reitman and Lucía Puenzo.

The selections highlight what Tiff director and CEO Piers Handling called a “cross-pollination” of the film and TV worlds from international storytellers, broadcasters and streaming services.

The six selections appear below. All are world premieres except The Returned, which is an international premiere.

Casual (Us), created by Zander Lehmann and directed by Jason Reitman.

Episodes 1 and 2 of the comedy from Hulu and Lionsgate that follows a dating site entrepreneur and his therapist sister who move in together after the latter’s recent divorce.

Starring Tommy Dewey, Michaela Watkins and Tara Lynne Barr.

Cromo (Argentina), created by Lucía Puenzo and Nicolás Puenzo.

Episodes 1, 2 and 8 of the eco-thriller from directors Lucía Puenzo (Xxy, Wakolda), Pablo Fendrik (Blood Appears, El Ardor) and Nicolás Puenzo...

Toronto brass on Thursday paid homage to arguably the most dynamic and provocative content format in entertainment, announcing the festival’s inaugural slate of six TV projects from the likes of Baltasar Kormákur, Jason Reitman and Lucía Puenzo.

The selections highlight what Tiff director and CEO Piers Handling called a “cross-pollination” of the film and TV worlds from international storytellers, broadcasters and streaming services.

The six selections appear below. All are world premieres except The Returned, which is an international premiere.

Casual (Us), created by Zander Lehmann and directed by Jason Reitman.

Episodes 1 and 2 of the comedy from Hulu and Lionsgate that follows a dating site entrepreneur and his therapist sister who move in together after the latter’s recent divorce.

Starring Tommy Dewey, Michaela Watkins and Tara Lynne Barr.

Cromo (Argentina), created by Lucía Puenzo and Nicolás Puenzo.

Episodes 1, 2 and 8 of the eco-thriller from directors Lucía Puenzo (Xxy, Wakolda), Pablo Fendrik (Blood Appears, El Ardor) and Nicolás Puenzo...

The Returned (original French title: Les Revenants)

Written by Fabrice Gobert, Emmannuelle Carrère, Fabien Adda, Nathalie Saugeon

Directed by Fabrice Gobert (episodes 1-4) and Frédéric Mermoud (episodes 5-8)

Premiered on November 26th 2012 on Canal+

Satisfying the hunger of movie and television consumers in dire need of original content grows more difficult with each and every passing year. Not only do the people who produce content want to release more of the same, but the very fact of the matter is that nearly every story has already been told. What bold, creative new ideas can emerge in this early 21st century, where the quantity of the content grows exponentially at a dizzying rate? Making a television show that looks, sounds, and most importantly feels like no other is no small order. One option is to genre mash; that is, splicing two or more disparate genres together to make something that, while familiar,...

When is a zombie not a zombie? Do you have to be a full-fledged skull-munching, low-moaning, slow-walker to qualify? Or is being “undead” more of a philosophical problem, one that’s less about the flesh than it is about the braaain?

My coworkers and I have been debating this lately, because many of us are addicted to the French drama The Returned, one of the coolest, creepiest new shows on TV. (It premieres Halloween night on Sundance. Watch it now so you’re up to speed when Carlton Cuse of Lost adapts it for American television.) It’s nothing like The Walking Dead.

After the sumptuous promise of the rousing La Traviata (The Strayed Woman) operatic music filling the senses, the second thought that springs to mind when beginning to watch this docu-opera is, why is Pierre from Channel 4’s creepy The Returned taking time out from harbouring zombies to masquerading as a theatre/opera director? It throws you just for a second; is it actually a fictional recreation on offer?

The truth is, French actor Jean-François Sivadier has more strings to his bow, and film director Philippe Béziat’s intriguing (but equally frustrating) behind-the-scenes look at getting a production of Verdi’s famous opera off the ground is in fact directed by Sivadier who has a list of theatre credits as a ‘metteur en scène’ (stage director) for at least three other operas.

The story of La Traviata (in three acts) – originally named Violetta after the lead character (played by Met...

Feature Louisa Mellor 9 Jul 2013 - 07:00

Can we divine any clues from The Returned's symbolic, atmospheric opening credits? Louisa takes a look...

Spoiler warning: do not read if you’re not up-to-date with The Returned episode five. Additionally, could anyone who's seen the remaining episodes please keep it zipped for the rest of us, ta.

American Horror Story does it. Banshee does it. Game of Thrones sort of does it. Stowing clues to what’s to come in the opening credits of a TV show is the hip new TV trend, and nobody’s hipper than the French.

The Returned’s opening credits, like the rest of it, are atmospheric, beautiful, and very deliberately staged. A man stands in a crucifix pose, a child in the middle of the road, a girl is reflected in a steamed-up mirror… Each image holds symbolic meaning for the story to follow, but do they hold something else?...

"A great singer, chandeliers, champagne, and costumes—we see this at a distance," Jean-François Sivadier says deep into Becoming Traviata, a spare and ravishing doc that positions viewers in the rehearsal room in the weeks leading up to his minimalist production of Verdi's La Traviata. Sivadier is encouraging his star, Natalie Dessay, before a gutsy, scraping-out-the-soul performance of "È Strano" on a stage stripped of the usual operatic extravagance. His vision—shared by the film's director, Philippe Béziat—is of that distance obliterated, of arias and singers and feelings laid bare. Dessay, as much a trouper as she is a brilliant vocalist, puts her head in her hands and then digs deep, pulling from herself a bruised and gorgeous l...

Director Philippe Béziat brings La Traviata to the screen with Jean-François Sivadier’s Aix-en-Provence production, broken down to its essence, with an intimate portrait of the fiery soprano Natalie Dessay. There are no elaborate sets here, no ornate costuming, powdered faces or lipstick, with the beauty of Becoming Traviata resting in Béziat’s ability to lay bare the creative process while preserving the emotive power of Dessay’s magnificent voice, as well as the story of Verdi’s classic nineteenth century opera. Becoming Traviata is a beautiful documentary that begins with shots of an outdoor theater, the gathering of patrons, a rainy day, and stage craftsmen at work. We move inside, greeted by a stark studio that will soon come to life with the voice of Ms. Dessay as Violetta, our doomed courtesan. Dessay’s frenetic movements cause dizziness, her voice creating a heightened emotional state that leaves one in a joyful paralysis of sorts.

Becoming Traviata is not La Traviata, nor should it be. It isn’t a concert documentary. It is about the creation of a single instance of the opera, specifically the 2011 production at the Aix-en-Provence Festival, directed by Jean-François Sivadier and starring Natalie Dessay. A documentary about the creation of a work of art can capture a handful of its greatest moments, but cannot replicate the impact of experiencing the work itself. The film’s director, Philippe Béziat, understands this. Rather than try to capture every facet of this production from start to finish Becoming Traviata focuses on Dessay’s transformation into the protagonist, the courtesan Violetta Valéry. All of this might seem a little much for someone who isn’t entirely familiar with opera in general, or La Traviata in particular. That’s fair, and this film will certainly be more immediately appealing to cognoscenti. Yet Béziat has not made a film solely for its built-in audience...