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Highest honors go to this stylish, cinematically refined adaptation of a George Simenon thriller. Michel Blanc becomes a person of interest for a murder investigation mainly because he’s disliked and anti-social; Sandrine Bonnaire is the neighbor that he peeps at nightly, to stir his secret passion. Director Patrice Leconte directs with almost perfect control, turning the show into an emotional workout.

Monsieur Hire

Blu-ray

Cohen Film Collection

1989 / Color / 2:35 widescreen / 79 min. / Street Date October 25, 2022 / Available from / 29.95

Starring: Michel Blanc, Sandrine Bonnaire, Luc Thuillier, André Wilms, Eric Bérenger, Marielle Berthon, Philippe Dormoy, Marie Gaydu, Michel Morano, Nora Noël.

Cinematography: Denis Lenoir

Production Designer: Ivan Maussion

Costume designer: Elisabeth Tavernier

Film Editor: Joëlle Hache

Original Music: Michael Nyman

Scenario, adaptation and dialogue by Patrice Leconte, Patrick Dewolf from the book Les fiançailles de M. Hire by Georges Simenon

Produced by Philippe Carcassonne, René Cleitman

Directed by Patrice Leconte

We’re fond...

Strand Releasing has acquired all U.S. rights to Oscar-nominated Cambodian director Rithy Panh’s “Irradiated,” which world premiered at the Berlin Film Festival and won best documentary. The film is represented in international markets by Playtime.

Through “Irradiated,” Panh sheds light on the human horrors perpetrated by the Khmer Rouge regime which he experienced during his childhood. Narrated by Rebecca Marder and André Wilms (“Le Havre”), the film brings together black-and-white archival war footage across a tryptic of panels juxtaposing images of war and suffering across the 20th century and around the world. The cinematic documentary is scored by Panh’s longtime collaborator Marc Marder.

“What it means to be a survivor cannot be put into words. To live on, to make contact with this irradiation, for which there may be no cause, no knowledge, but from which there is no protection,” said Panh about his film. “Evil radiates.

The 1988 French Comedy Life Is A Long Quiet River is currently available on Blu-ray From Arrow Academy.

An outrageously wicked comedy about two families from award winning debut filmmaker Étienne Chatiliez, this fast-paced satire became the most popular French comedy of the decade.

The radiantly bourgeois Le Quesnoys with their immaculate children and perfect manners and the grubby, disreputable Groseilles are thrown together in absurd chaos by an act of revenge as they discover that twelve years prior their babies were switched at birth.

A witty send up of class relations and family ties, Life Is a Long Quiet River was celebrated with a host of trophies at France s César Awards ceremony winning for best screenplay, best debut work and acting prizes for Héléne Vincent and Catherine Jacob.

Special Edition Contents:

High Definition digital transferHigh Definition Blu-rayTM (1080p) presentationOriginal Mono audioNewly translated optional English subtitlesArchival interviews with director Étienne Chatiliez,...

Director Agnieszka Holland pulls off a difficult task — her true-life Holocaust tale neither trivializes the horror nor glamorizes individualized victims at the expense of the big picture. Marco Hofschneider is the inexperienced German teenager who by strange quirks of fate becomes a staunch Stalinist in a Communist school, then a Nazi war hero and candidate for Hitler Youth honors and adoption by a Nazi officer… if he can avoid being uncovered as a Jew in hiding. It sounds tasteless but it’s not — the true story of Solomon Perel reveals the ‘fluidity’ of ideology when survival is on the line. Our young hero must keep ‘becoming’ what he pretends to be. With André Wilms, René Hofschneider and Julie Delpy as a rabid Hitlerite.

Europa Europa

Blu-ray

The Criterion Collection 985

1990 / Color / 1:66 widescreen / 112 min. / available through The Criterion Collection / Street Date July 9, 2019 / 39.95

Starring: Marco Hofschneider, André Wilms, René Hofschneider, Julie Delpy,...

Philippe Garrel’s modus operandi since 2013’s Jealousy has been unfussy, melancholic, black-and-white tales of Parisian men in the throes of romance, typically under 75 minutes. His latest, The Salt of Tears, which played in competition at the Berlin Film Festival, stretches to 100 minutes, but retains much of the lo-fi monochrome aesthetic, here centering on a cocky, shaggily attractive 20-something whose predilection for spurning women won’t win admirers from the MeToo generation.

But The Salt of Tears, with its title that sounds like a philosophical tract by Sartre, is a distant, ruminative film that refrains from wallowing in snide judgments of its characters. Perhaps to its fault, it’s a sober, adult, sincere film that seeks to consider some truth of the fallacy present in all human relationships.

The story follows trainee carpenter Luc through a trio of romantic misadventures, as he moves from the French countryside for something akin to a sentimental Parisian education.

Early in “Irradiated,” a powerful but troublesome documentary howl of despair from Cambodian director Rithy Panh, the narration describes an act that must be familiar to anyone similarly transfixed by history. Referring to the black and white archival war footage that marches in triplicate across a screen that’s divided into three panels, the narrator speaks of “searching the eyes of the soldiers… but finding nothing there.” Anyone who has ever stared long and hard at a photograph of a deceased loved one, or at a picture of conflict reportage must relate to the frustration: It’s as though somehow we believe that an image must have within it some clue to the understanding of the incomprehensible loss or tragedy it depicts, and we can be acutely disappointed to find no such enlightenment.

This urge informs and complicates “Irradiated,” a film that is broader, wider and more ambitious in scope...

“Evil will hunt us if we don’t throw it out from us with open palms,” a disembodied voice declares to us in French at the start of “Irradiated,” Rithy Panh’s mesmerizingly bleak montage of war in the 20th century. “At the top of the sky is pain. It always comes as a surprise.” And so the great onslaught begins as the bombs rain down from the heavens and the image cracks into three perfect squares that stretch across the screen in a narrow sliver of light; together they create an anamorphic slot machine of needless suffering.

More often than not, each column shows the same snippet of archival footage, as Nazi rallies bleed into the Khmer Rouge before napalm glazes the treetops of Vietnam. Sometimes, however, the square in the center is out of sync with the two on either side; shots of a bombed out church frame...

It takes a few beats to get through the quaint setup in “The Salt of Tears” and recognize its protagonist is an asshole. That’s Luc (sullen newcomer Logann Antuofermo), the young aspiring cabinetmaker at the center of French director Philippe Garrel’s latest stab at generational angst and ill-fated love. Over the course of this spry black-and-white sketch of a movie, Luc seduces one woman, rekindles love with another, and rejects them both for a third before everything finally collapses on top of him. There’s not a lot of sophistication to Luc’s arc, as his self-centered universe of problems accelerates to grating extremes, but

Few filmmakers have held as tight to their themes as Garrel, who has cranked out intimate portraits of young men doomed by delusions of romantic grandeur for decades. Though the filmmaker technically completed his so-called “trilogy of love” with 2017’s “Lover for a Day,...

The Berlinale lineup already includes films from Jia Zhangke, Matías Piñeiro, and more, but now the competition slate has arrived and it’s an incredibly promising selection. Headed by Carlo Chatrian, it includes many of our most-anticipated films of the year with Christian Petzold’s Undine, Hong Sang-soo’s The Woman Who Ran, Tsai Ming-Liang’s Days, Philippe Garrel’s The Salt of Tears, Abel Ferrara’s Siberia, and Caetano Gotardo & Marco Dutra’s All the Dead Ones, plus recent festival favorites: Kelly Reichardt’s First Cow and Eliza Hittman’s Never Rarely Sometimes Always.

Check out the lineup below and return for our coverage.

Competition

Berlin Alexanderplatz

Germany / Netherlands

by Burhan Qurbani

with Welket Bungué, Jella Haase, Albrecht Schuch, Joachim Król, Annabelle Mandeng, Nils Verkooijen, Richard Fouofié Djimeli

World premiere

Dau. Natasha

Germany / Ukraine / United Kingdom / Russian Federation

by Ilya Khrzhanovskiy, Jekaterina Oertel

with Natalia Berezhnaya, Olga Shkabarnya, Vladimir Azhippo,...

The Berlin International Film Festival on Wednesday morning revealed the main competition lineup and gala selections for festival’s 70th edition.

The festival, which begins February 20, will screen 18 films in competition, including movies from Sally Potter, Kelly Reichardt, and Eliza Hittman. Six are from female directors.

Among the gala presentations is Pixar’s” Onward.” The Dan Scanlon-helmed urban fantasy includes the voices of Tom Holland, Chris Pratt, Julia-Louis Dreyfus, Octavia Spencer, Mel Rodriguez, Kyle Bornheimer, Lena Waithe, and Ali Wong.

Here is the complete list:

Competition

“Berlin Alexanderplatz” (Germany/Netherlands)

Director: Burhan Qurbani

Cast: Welket Bungué, Jella Haase, Albrecht Schuch, Joachim Król, Annabelle Mandeng, Nils Verkooijen, and Richard Fouofié Djimeli

“Dau. Natasha” (Germany/Ukraine/United Kingdom/Russia)

Directors: Ilya Khrzhanovskiy and Jekaterina Oertel

Cast: Natalia Berezhnaya, Olga Shkabarnya, Vladimir Azhippo, Alexei Blinov, and Luc Bigé

“Domangchin yeoja” (“The Woman Who Ran”) (South Korea)

Director: Hong Sangsoo

Cast: Kim Minhee,...

The Berlin International Film Festival has unveiled its 2020 line-up, with 18 films playing in competition from directors such as Abel Ferrara, Sally Potter, Christian Petzold, Hong Sangsoo, Kelly Reichardt and Eliza Hittman.

Abel Ferrara’s Willem Dafoe starrer “Siberia” is a world premiere in competition, as is Sally Potter’s “The Roads Not Taken.”

Among the U.S. films at the Berlinale, Reichardt’s “First Cow” is an international premiere, and so too is Hittman’s “Never Rarely Sometimes Always.”

Pixar’s latest animation, “Onward”, also has its international premiere out of competition in the Special Galas section.

Previous Berlin Silver Bear winner Christian Petzold’s latest, “Undine”, world premieres, while Iranian director Mohammed Rasoulof, who is not allowed to travel outside his home country, world premieres his latest, “There is No Evil.”

Six out of the 18 films in competition are helmed by female directors.

The 70th edition of the festival...

As Cannes approaches, one of our most-anticipated of the festival is Ira Sachs’ new drama Frankie, and today brings a new look with a batch of images. Written by Mauricio Zaccharias and Sachs, the film stars Isabelle Huppert, Marisa Tomei, Greg Kinnear, Brendan Gleeson, Jérémie Renier, Ariyon Bakare, and André Wilms. Ahead of the premiere, Sony Pictures Classics have also acquired the film for a release in North America, Eastern Europe (including Cis), Scandinavia, the Middle East, South Africa, Spain, and India. Check out a synopsis below.

Three generations of a European family come together in the fabled town of Sintra, Portugal, for one last vacation before the family matriarch faces the next, and last, chapter of her life. Over the course of one crisp October day, the fairy tale setting brings about everyone’s most romantic impulses, revealing both cracks between them, as well as unexpected depth of feeling.

Salt of Tears (Le Sel des larmes)

Showing no signs of slowing, French director Philippe Garrel commences work on his twenty-seventh feature film Salt of Tears (Le Sel des larmes), which is set to star Logann Antuofermo, Oulaya Amamra, Souheila Yacoub and André Wilms. The project is being produced by Rectangle and co-produced by Arte France Cinema. Garrel has long been one of France’s most innovative directors, ever since his experimental features and documentaries from the late 1960s through the 1970s, including his significant projects which starred Nico.…...

Far and away one of our most-anticipated films of next year is the latest drama from Ira Sachs, whose wonderfully gentle, humane Little Men and Love is Strange were among the best films of their respective years. For his next film, he’s teaming with a titan of international cinema, Isabelle Huppert. Once titled A Family Vacation but now going by Frankie, the first poster has now been unveiled.

Also starring Brendan Gleeson, Marisa Tomei, Greg Kinnear, Jérémie Renier, Ariyon Bakare, and André Wilms, it marks the director’s first time working outside the United States as production just wrapped in Portugal. Backed by Saïd Ben Saïd, it follows “three generations of a family grappling with a life-changing experience during one day of a vacation in the historic town of Sintra, Portugal.”

“I am working with some of my favorite actors in the world to tell this delicate story of a family in crisis,...

French producer Saïd Ben Saïd unveiled a new title, poster and release date via Twitter for Ira Sachs’ next movie starring Isabelle Huppert. Previously titled A Family Vacation, Sach’s upcoming pic now goes by the name of Frankie. The pic is set to open in France September 25.

The family drama, written by Sachs and his longtime co-writer Mauricio Zacharias, is about three generations grappling with a life-changing experience during one day of a vacation in Sintra, Portugal, a historic town known for its dense gardens and fairy-tale villas and palaces.

Saïd released the Paul Verhoeven-directed Elle which also starred Huppert, earning her a Golden Globe win and an Oscar nomination. He is also producing Verhoeven’s upcoming Benedetta.

Frankie also stars Marisa Tomei, Greg Kinnear, Jérémie Renier, André Wilms, Brendan Gleeson, and Ariyon Bakare. The film marks Sachs’ first time working outside the U.

It's not easy to watch the slow deterioration of a good person, especially a woman as intelligent and complex as Hannah (Charlotte Rampling). Her husband (André Wilms) has been carted off to prison in their native Belgium for reasons unknown. But Hannah carries on, trying to live life as she knows it. Then life starts to squeeze her out.

At least, that's the premise of this slow, deliberate film, directed and co-written by Andrea Pallaoro, following a striking 2013 debut with Medeas. He refuses to coddle audiences or fill in the...

Ira Sachs makes the kind of movies we love — intimate, small scale, character driven dramas. They aren’t the kind of movies that light up the multiplex, but they are the kind of you’ll think about for far longer than the latest high calorie blockbuster. Now, two years after his last effort, “Little Men,” the director is lining up faces old and new for an intriguing new project.

An array of film festival and arthouse faves including Isabelle Huppert, Jérémie Renier, Marisa Tomei, Greg Kinnear, and Aki Kaurismaki regular André Wilms have signed up for “A Family Vacation.” Co-written by Sachs and his regular collaborator Mauricio Zacharias, the story follows three generations of a family grappling with a life-changing experience during one day of a vacation in Sintra, Portugal, a historic town known for its dense gardens and fairy-tale villas and palaces.

Love Is Strange helmer Ira Sachs is teaming with Elle star Isabelle Huppert and producer Saïd Ben Saïd for his next picture, A Family Vacation. Production starts this October in Portugal with Marisa Tomei, Greg Kinnear, Jérémie Renier and André Wilms also starring. Ben Saïd’s Sbs International will handle worldwide sales. The family drama, written by Sachs and his longtime co-writer Mauricio Zacharias (Love Is Strange, Little Men), is about three generations grappling…...

For his seventh feature, beloved American auteur Ira Sachs is taking his gig on the road. Sachs’ newest film, “A Family Vacation,” will start production this October in Portugal, and the “Love Is Strange” and “Little Men” filmmaker has lined up a cast of old favorites and new collaborators for the new drama. The film will star Academy Award nominee Isabelle Huppert, Jérémie Renier (“Saint Laurent,” “Summer Hours”), Academy Award winner Marisa Tomei, Academy Award nominee Greg Kinnear, and André Wilms (Aki Kaurismaki’s “Le Havre” and “La Vie de Boheme”).

Billed as a family drama, and written by Sachs and his longtime co-writer Mauricio Zacharias (“Love is Strange,” “Little Men”), the feature is “about three generations of a family grappling with a life-changing experience during one day of a vacation in Sintra, Portugal, a historic town known for its dense gardens and fairy-tale villas and palaces.”

Sachs previously worked...

Exclusive: First image released of Rampling in tale of identity loss and contemporary alienation.

TF1 Studio will launch sales on Italian director Andrea Pallaoro’s drama The Whale, starring Charlotte Rampling as a woman undergoing an identity crisis, at the upcoming Efm.

It is the second feature from La-based Pallaoro after his portrait of family disintegration Medeas, which premiered in Venice’s Horizons section in 2013 and went on to clinch multiple awards.

Revisiting themes explored in that film, The Whale is an intimate portrait of a woman’s progressive loss of identity as she struggles to come to terms with her past and her own sense of reality, exploring contemporary alienation and the human struggle to connect.

Pallaoro co-wrote the screenplay with long-time collaborator Orlando Tirado.

“We’re very proud to follow Andrea Pallaoro on his next movie. When we discovered Medeas, it was love at first sight and we know that The Whale has this same...

Exclusive: First image released of Rampling in tale of identity loss and contemporary alienation.

TF1 Studio will launch sales on Italian director Andrea Pallaoro’s drama The Whale, starring Charlotte Rampling as a woman undergoing an identity crisis, at the upcoming Efm.

It is the second feature from La-based Pallaoro after his portrait of family disintegration Medeas, which premiered in Venice’s Horizons section in 2013 and went on to clinch multiple awards.

Revisiting themes explored in that film, The Whale is an intimate portrait of a woman’s progressive loss of identity as she struggles to come to terms with her past and her own sense of reality, exploring contemporary alienation and the human struggle to connect.

Pallaoro co-wrote the screenplay with long-time collaborator Orlando Tirado.

“We’re very proud to follow Andrea Pallaoro on his next movie. When we discovered Medeas, it was love at first sight and we know that The Whale has this same...

Guy Maddin in Yves Montmayeur's The 1000 Eyes Of Dr Maddin

Yves Montmayeur, director of the penetrating documentary Michael H - Profession: Director on the career of Michael Haneke has won the Venezia Classici Award for Best Documentary on Cinema this evening at the 72nd Venice International Film Festival for his latest exploration looking into the man and the myth of another mysterious filmmaker, Guy Maddin, in The 1000 Eyes Of Dr Maddin.

Maddin's The Forbidden Room, co-directed with Evan Johnson, is one of the highlights of the 53rd New York Film Festival. With an all-star cast that includes Mathieu Amalric, Charlotte Rampling, Geraldine Chaplin, Maria de Medeiros, Louis Negin, Udo Kier, André Wilms, Clara Furey, Roy Dupuis, Noel Burton with a contribution by John Ashbery, the stories told here may very well resemble one side of the Janus bust, auctioned off and desired by a man and his double.

The Blue Room director Mathieu Amalric stars in The Forbidden Room and Arnaud Desplechin's The Golden Days Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze

Michael Almereyda's Experimenter stars Peter Sarsgaard and Winona Ryder with Jim Gaffigan, John Leguizamo, Lori Singer, Taryn Manning, Kellan Lutz, Anton Yelchin, Josh Hamilton, Dennis Haysbert and Ned Eisenberg supporting the research. Margherita Buy, Giulia Lazzarini, Beatrice Mancini and John Turturro in Nanni Moretti's Mia Madre (My Mother) explore private emotions and public movie work. Guy Maddin and Evan Johnson's The Forbidden Room will haunt your dreams and submarines with Louis Negin, Charlotte Rampling, Udo Kier, Roy Dupuis, André Wilms, Geraldine Chaplin, Adèle Haenel, Maria de Medeiros and Mathieu Amalric. Hou Hsiao-hsien's The Assassin (Nie Yin Niang) engages blow by blow with Shu Qi, Chang Chen, Sheu Fang-yi and Hsieh Hsin-ying.

Here are four early highlights of the 53rd New York Film Festival that dazzle with their superb ensemble casts.

Denmark’s Katja Adomeit and Germany’s Ingmar Trost among upcoming European producers set to be showcased at Cannes.Scroll down for full list

European Film Promotion (Efp) has selected 20 emerging young European producers for the 16th edition of its Producers on the Move networking initiative, which will be held during the upcoming Cannes Film Festival from May 15-18.

The 2014 selection includes Danish producer Katja Adomeit, who produced and co-directed the hybrid film Not At Home with the Afghan director Shahrbanoo Sadat as well as co-producing Ruben Östlund’s Force Majeure as a freelancer for the Copenhagen office of Philippe Bober’s The Coproduction Office.

Cologne-based Ingmar Trost of Sutor Kolonko has also been selected. His credits include Ilian Metev’s award-winniıng documentary Sofıa’s Last Ambulance, Latvian director Juris Kursietis’ Modrıs and Ingo Haeb’s The Chambermaid Lynn, and he has just completed production of his third feature, Isabelle Stever’s The Weather Inside.

Lithuania will be...

Above: Director Benjamin Heisenberg

Benjamin Heisenberg has presented his third feature film and first comedy Superegos (Über-Ich und Du) in the Berlinale this year in the Panorama section. Superegos is an improbable buddy film between Curt Leidig (André Wilms), an octogenarian psychologist with an undefined Nazi history, and Nick Gutlicht (Georg Friedrich), a young small-time crook without either convictions or, seemingly, even a past. When chance brings them together, Dr. Leidig begins his study of his “not uninteresting patient” and, inevitably, Freudian-cinematic acts of transference and counter-transference occur, leaving them both to question their identities. Benjamin Heisenberg’s debut feature Sleeper was screened at Cannes Un Certain Regard in 2005 and his second film The Robber competed for the Golden Bear at the 2010 Berlinale.

Yaron Dahan: Let's talk about your new film. It’s very different from your previous two. You mentioned you had wanted to do a comedy for a long time,...

Chicago – What is amazing about the texture of this 1992 film version of the 1848 Henri Murger novel, “La Vie de Bohéme,” is that it looks like it could have been filmed during the French New Wave period of the late 1950s/early ‘60s. The Criterion Collection offers a stunning new Blu-ray transfer of a now classic adaptation.

Rating: 4.5/5.0

Directed by Aki Kaurismäki (“Le Havre”), a Finnish filmmaker, but co-produced by France, Italy and Sweden as well, this version of “La Vie de Bohéme” – there have been over a dozen versions, including the opera “La Bohéme” and the Broadway musical “Rent” – has an international cast and beguiling black & white cinematography by Timo Salminen. It plays like a verité documentary, as all of the performers have such a naturalistic virtue in their portrayals. They are desperate but free, and even a woman searching for love cannot resist their slovenly grace. Each ne’er...

John Michael McDonagh’s Calvary and new films by Michel Gondry, Kutlug Ataman and Robert Lepage are to feature in the Berlinale’s Panorama strand, which will open with Jalil Lespert’s Yves Saint Laurent.Scroll down for first batch of titles

A total of 50 features will be chosen for the Panorama section of the 2014 Berlinale (Feb 6-16), films that “provide insight on new directions in art house cinema”, and the first 19 have been announced. A total of 11 of those selected are world premieres.

The opening film will mark the international premiere of Jalil Lespert’s Yves Saint Laurent, a look at the life of the French designer from the beginning of his career in 1958 when he met his lover and business partner, Pierre Berge.

The opening screening on Feb 7 will see Berlin’s flagship cinema, the Zoo Palast, re-inaugurated as a Berlinale venue after extensive renovations.

Also in the line-up are new films from Michel Gondry, Kutluğ...

Blu-ray & DVD Release Date: Jan. 21, 2014

Price: Blu-ray/DVD Combo $39.95

Studio: Criterion

A group of impoverished, outcast artists living the bohemian life in Paris in La vie de bohème.

The 1992 film La vie de bohème by Finnish director Aki Kaurismäki (Le Havre, Leningrad Cowboys Go America) is a deadpan tragic-comedy about a group of impoverished, outcast artists living the bohemian life in Paris.

Based on stories from Henri Murger’s influential mid nineteenth-century book Scènes de la vie de bohème (the basis for the opera La bohème), the film features a marvelous trio of Kaurismäki regulars, André Wilms, Matti Pellonpää, and Karl Väänänen, as a poet, painter, and composer who scrape by together, sharing in life’s daily absurdities.

Gorgeously shot in black and white, La vie de bohème is a vibrantly scrappy rendition of a beloved tale and one of Kaurismäki’s most beguiling works.

Presented in French with English subtitles,...

Actor-turned-director Valeria Bruni-Tedeschi has given us probably the worst film of the Cannes competition so far: a smug, twee confection about a family losing their house

This is turning out to be a tricky Cannes competition for French film-makers. François Ozon's Jeune et Jolie was interestingly made, but Arnaud Desplechin's Jimmy P: Psychotherapy of a Plains Indian was a baffling, cumbersome bore. And now performer-turned-director Valeria Bruni-Tedeschi has given us what may well turn out to be the most insidiously awful film in the entire festival: a strained jeu d'ésprit which is smug, precious, carelessly constructed, emotionally negligible, and above all fantastically annoying. It's a terrible waste of real acting talent, including that of Bruni-Tesdeschi. The director presumably intended gaiety and pathos. What she created was clunkingly misjudged strains of comedy and high drama — that is: individually misjudged and misjudged in their combination.

It's a truly baffling little...

Spiritismes

Director: Guy Maddin

Writer(s): Evan Johnson, Robert Kotyk

Producer(s): Phyllis Laing

U.S. Distributor: Rights Available

Cast: Charlotte Rampling, Geraldine Chaplin, Maria de Medeiros, Mathieu Amalric, Udo Kier, Amira Casar, Adèle Haenel, Ariane Labed, Elina Löwensohn, Mathieu Demy, Jean-François Stévenin, André Wilms, Grégory Gadebois, Jacques Nolot

High set of profile actors join one crazy project which is best described by the avant-gardist himself – “Over eighty percent of silent films are lost. I’ve always considered a lost film as a narrative with no known final resting place — doomed to wander the landscape of film history, sad, miserable and unable to project itself to the people who might love it.”

Gist: Every day, Guy Maddin invites visitors of the Centre Pompidou to witness the making of a new film inspired by a long-lost movie. Summoning these wandering spirits of cinema in theatrical “séances”, Maddin and his actors inhabit their ghostly scenarios.

Un chateau en Italie

Director: Valeria Bruni-Tedeschi

Writer(s): Bruni-Tedeschi, Noémie Lvovsky, Agnès de Sacy

Producer(s): Sbs Productions’ Saïd Ben Saïd

U.S. Distributor: Rights Available

Cast: Louis Garrel, Valeria Bruni Tedeschi, Xavier Beauvois, Filippo Timi, Marisa Borini, André Wilms

With well over fifty films under her belt, Valeria Bruni-Tedeschi is obviously at ease working with fellow thesps. Her third trip behind and in front of the camera follows her It’s Easier for a Camel…, her 2003 debut was critically well received and then she followed that up with the Cannes winning Actresses (2007). No problems with the location nor the dual languages, this Euro dramedy sees her once again team with creative folk such as her hubby Louis Garrel on screen and she penned the project alongside actress/director/writer Noémie Lvovsky. This should resonate if it carries much of the same elements we loved the most...

At the end of a bumper year for film-making, Guardian film critic Peter Bradshaw unveils the contenders for his very own – imaginary – film awards

Most critics compile year-end roundups in a mood of shrugging acceptance that not every year can be great. But actually 2012 has been vintage, with some really brilliant films from the biggest names doing their best work – and some fascinating documentaries. So once again, I have created my imaginary awards nominations in the following categories: best film, best director, best actor, best actress, best supporting actor, best supporting actress, best documentary and best screenplay. You will have to imagine me, in full tuxedo-style evening wear announcing the Braddies at the Dorchester. (I have put Seth MacFarlane, Michael Haneke and Kylie Minogue on my table.)

So, the nominations are …

Best film

Amour (dir. Michael Haneke)

The Master (dir. Paul Thomas Anderson)

Holy Motors (dir. Leos Carax)

Killing Them Softly (dir.

Aki Kaurismäki’s Le Havre is a charming and engrossing fable – a sort of Fractured Fairy Tale for adults – that interprets one of today’s most contentious political issues through the director’s distinctly eccentric prism. A strong Palme d’Or contender at Cannes in 2011, Le Havre relocates classic Kaurismäki production elements from Finland to a harbor town in northern France. And, not surprisingly, the veteran director finds this sleepy Britannic burg as rife with idiosyncrasy as any snowbound suburb of Helsinki. Under thick gray clouds, Kaurismäki’s diorama of quirky characters gradually meander their way to moments of epiphany and catharsis, while viewers marvel at the director’s mystical moments of compassionate humanity and playful cinematic homage.

The film takes us through a couple of weeks in the life of Marcel Marx (Andrè Wilms), an unremarkable 60-ish shoe shiner who eeks out a living at the town’s bustling train station.

Chicago – It takes a French village in the sweet, optimistic, good-natured “Le Havre,” a film about a kind man who does something to help another and how the community doesn’t just rally around him but the world produces a miracle for him in the end. It is such a kind-hearted film that suggests without cynicism that doing good not only will bring more good but will essentially be supported by the world around you. Incredibly well-made and memorable, “Le Havre” is a stellar modern addition to The Criterion Collection.

Rating: 4.0/5.0

Aki Kaurismaki takes his unique eye to the title city in the North of France for this tale of an immigrant boy who is first protected by a kind gentleman and then essentially guarded by the entire community. Sweet, surprising, smart, and very subtle, “Le Havre” is a gentle film that builds its story through character, setting, and humanity...

by Vadim Rizov

Fatalist Finn Aki Kaurismäki's Le Havre is a comic-strip-colored take on France's inability to find a humane response to an illegal immigrant influx. The story follows the familiar contours of old-man-softened-by-young-boy sagas: shoeshiner Marcel Marx (André Wilms) helps stranded Gabonese youth Idrissa (Blondin Miguel) evade the law and make it to London. Soothing turquoise paint covers the walls, natural light floods the outdoors and Kaurismäki's usual taciturn deadpan comedy is swapped out for brisk dialogue bonding sessions. It's a change of pace for Kaurismäki, who—like the early work of aesthetic fellow traveler/friend Jim Jarmusch—prefers jokes that don't noticeably raise the surface temperature. Having effectively exhausted this mode into self-parody in his last feature (2006's Lights in the Dusk), Le Havre represents a major, much-needed artistic reset.

Marcel was a feckless unpublished writer in Kaurismäki's 1992 travesty of French artistic dissolution La Vie de Boheme.

Le Havre from internationally acclaimed director Aki Kaurismäki comes to DVD and Blu Ray on 6 August, and to mark the release we’ve got 3 Blu-rays to give away!

Le Havre sees Finnish director Aki Kaurismäki (The Man Without a Past) tackle the subject of Northern Europe’s attitude to refugees from the developing world. His approach is dramatic, funny, heart-warming and, like his other work, beautifully offbeat. Featuring superb performances from its cast that includes André Wilms (La Vie de Bohème), Jean-Pierre Darroussin (Red Lights) and the young Blondin Miguel.

Marcel Marx (Wilms), a former author and a well-known Bohemian, has retreated into a voluntary exile in the port city of Le Havre, where he feels he has reached a closer rapport with the people serving them in the occupation of the honourable, but not too profitable, of a shoe-shiner. He has buried his dreams of a literary breakthrough and...

Blu-ray & DVD Release Date: July 31, 2012

Price: DVD $29.95, Blu-ray $39.95

Studio: Criterion

André Wilms means business in Le Havre.

Le Havre (2011) is a surprisingly warm-hearted comedy film from the usually deadpan Finnish filmmaker Aki Kaurismäki (Leningrad Cowboys Go America).

In the French harbor city Le Havre, fate throws the young African refugee Idrissa (Blondin Miguel) into the path of Marcel Marx (André Wilms, La vie de bohème), a kindly, aging bohemian who shines shoes for a living. With inborn optimism and the support of most of his tight-knit community, Marcel stands up to the officials doggedly pursuing the African boy for deportation.

Tagged by Criterion as “a political fairy tale that exists somewhere between the reality of contemporary France and the classic French cinema of the past, especially the poetic realist works of Jean Duvivier and Marcel Carné,” the acclaimed Le Havre rang up some $620,000 at the U.S. box office since...

In what he intends to be a trilogy of movies set in ports, the Finnish moviemaker Aki Kaurismäki turns his affectionate, whimsical eye on the impoverished but generous folk of a run-down, waterfront community in the Normandy port of Le Havre. Led by the emblematically named Marcel Marx (André Wilms), a one-time bohemian who has given up novel-writing to work as a shoeshine boy, these outsiders protect a Congolese teenager in flight from the authorities after escaping from a container taking him and other refugees to London.

The movie is a homage to French cinema, shot and acted in the flat, carefully composed style of Bresson and celebrating les petits gens, those kindly ordinary people who populate the poetic, popular-front movies of the 1930s associated with Renoir, Clair and Carné. One of the characters is called Arletty, and a benevolent local detective dresses like a cop in a Melville thriller.

Headhunters (15)

(Morten Tyldum, 2011, Nor/Ger) Aksel Hennie, Synnøve Macody Lund, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, Eivind Sander. 100 mins

It's a Scandinavian crime thriller, but for once, this isn't like The Killing or The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo. It's closer to the Coen brothers, with enough unpredictable plot turns, eccentric touches and morbid laughs to banish the Nordic darkness. There's something of Steve Buscemi about its hero, too: Hennie plays a slimy corporate headhunter/secret art thief who meets his match, loses his grip and literally ends up in the toilet as a result.

Le Havre (PG)

(Aki Kaurismäki, 2011, Fin/Fra/Ger) André Wilms, Kati Outinen, Jean-Pierre Darroussin. 93 mins

Applying his gentle, silent-comical approach to the tale of an illegal immigrant and his French protectors reaps rewards for Kaurismäki in a movie that's whimsical on the surface but built on firm foundations.

This Must Be The Place (15)

(Paolo Sorrentino, 2011, Us) Sean Penn, Frances McDormand,...

Guardian.co.uk/film are co-hosting a stream of Aki Kaurismäki's Le Havre, which will screen at the Curzon Soho and be available through Curzon on Demand from 18:40 this evening. Join us as we watch the film and liveblog a Q&A between Curzon's Ian Haydn Smith and evolutionary biologist and author Mark Pagel

9.28pm: Right ... the Q&A's finished. The audience in the Curzon are heading for the door. I can see them streaming through into the foyer and ... Yes! ... people are holding the door for each other. Mark's theory seems to be playing out.

Thanks very much for reading and joining the watch-a-long. Le Havre is available on Curzon on Demand here and via the Watch Now banner.

Keep your comments on the film coming below. You can also get into the debate on Twitter where we'll be under the #GuardianCurzon hashtag. Look out for news...

Aki Kaurismaki is as offbeat as always, but this immigration-themed film gives him a new heartfelt urgency

The Finnish director Aki Kaurismäki has come to France for his latest film, making explicit his indebtedness to figures like Tati and Vigo. It is seductively funny, offbeat and warm-hearted, like the rest of his films, but with a new heartfelt urgency on the subject of northern Europe's attitude to desperate refugees from the developing world. The movie is set in the port city of Le Havre, maybe summoning a distant ghost of L'Atalante, and it has a solid, old-fashioned look; but for the contemporary theme, it could have been made at any time in the last 50 years. André Wilms is Marcel, a phlegmatic shoe-shine guy who plies his trade around the streets as best he can. He discovers a young boy called Idrissa (Blondin Miguel), an illegal immigrant on the run, and hides him from the authorities,...

Written by Lewis Bazley

An African boy finds an unlikely ally in the form of a Bohemian-turned-shoeshine pensioner and a temporary home in the titular Normandy port in Aki Kaurismaki’s frustrating comedy-drama.

Marcel Marx (André Wilms) is an ex-author sleepwalking into old age in Le Havre, filling his days with the passing trade of shining shoes, the camaraderie of his local bar and the devotion of his dutiful but ailing wife Arletty. A chance encounter with Gabonese illegal immigrant Idrissa (Blondin Miguel) disrupts Marcel’s comfortable routine but before long Marcel’s enlisting his neighbours and angering the local gendarmes as he keeps the boy hidden and plans Idrissa’s escape.

It’s a premise full of promise, both dramatic and comic. How will Marcel keep Idrissa safe in such a small community? What kind of scrapes will they get into together? Will the youngster help the old man rediscover his joie de vivre?...

The director and writer has learned from the greats – and with his latest, Le Havre, he proves that he's earned his place among them, says John Patterson

With Aki Kaurismäki's movies, as with Yasujirô Ozu's, familiarity breeds contentment. Taken cumulatively, they extol and embody the pleasures of repetition – the comforts of familiarity – without ever seeming repetitious or familiar themselves, even though Kaurismäki basically tells the same stories over and over again.

Returning to the Finn's work after 20 years of not seeing it (he was poorly distributed here in the Us for much of that time), my first impression was of an old, reliable and rewarding vibe-cum-sensibility still chugging along productively, the work perhaps wiser and kinder now, always evolving in tiny ways here and there, but always offering the same combination of deadpan fatalism (1988's Ariel has the funniest suicide in the history of cinema) amid a rigorously...

From April 6, Cannes favourite Le Havre will be in cinemas. But for those who might prefer (and live in the UK or Ireland), you can stream it here via Curzon on Demand. Either way, be sure to tune in for our Q&A with top evolutionary theorist Mark Pagel next Friday night

Cannes 2011, on reflection, looks an absolutely vintage year. Not only did it introduce us to The Artist and Melancholia, The Tree of Life and Take Shelter, it also gave us The Skin I Live In, Footnote, Drive, The Kid on the Bike and Once Upon a Time in Anatolia.

And now we're approaching the release one of the films which Peter Bradshaw wrote about most warmly last May: Le Havre.

Reviewing the latest from Aki Kaurismäki – the deadpan Finnish film-maker behind I Hired A Contract Killer, The Match Factory Girl, Leningrad Cowboys Go America and The Man Without...

"Over eighty percent of silent films are lost. I've always considered a lost film as a narrative with no known final resting place — doomed to wander the landscape of film history, sad, miserable and unable to project itself to the people who might love it." That's Guy Maddin, as quoted by Kim Morgan, introducing Maddin's Spiritismes, happening now at the Centre Pompidou in Paris ("During 'séances'... Maddin and his actors will allow themselves to be possessed by the wandering spirits of the dead, to bring their movies back to life") through March 12:

Filmmaking, dead made undead, is happening live at the Centre — lost or unrealized films by directors as diverse as Jean Vigo, Kenji Mizoguchi, Lois Weber, William Wellman, von Stroheim (I will appear in that particular Poto-Poto), Alexandre Dovjenko and more are coming — rising from the dead, in their own unique way. Maddin will be shooting one film a day.

Omar Sy, Maïwenn Best Film L'Apollonide – Souvenirs de la maison close / House of Tolerance by Bertrand Bonello * The Artist by Michel Hazanavicius L'Exercice de l'État by Pierre Schoeller Le Havre by Aki Kaurismaki Intouchables / Untouchable by Eric Toledano, Olivier Nakache Best Director Bertrand Bonello for House of Tolerance Michel Hazanavicius for The Artist Aki Kaurismaki for Le Havre * Maiwenn for Polisse Pierre Schoeller for L'Exercice de l'État Best Actress * Bérénice Bejo in The Artist by Michel Hazanavicius Catherine Deneuve, Chiara Mastroianni in Les Bien-Aimés / Beloved by Christophe Honoré Valérie Donzelli in La Guerre est déclarée / Declaration of War by Valérie Donzelli Marina Fois, Karin Viard in Polisse by Maïwenn Clotilde Hesme in Angèle et Tony / Angèle and Tony d'Alix Delaporte Best Actor Jean Dujardin in The Artist by Michel Hazanavicius Olivier Gourmet in L'Exercice de l'État by Pierre Schoeller Joey Starr in Polisse by Maïwenn * Omar Sy in Untouchable d'Eric Toledano,...

House of Tolerance, The Artist, and the other nominations for the 2012 Prix Lumière Awards have been announced. The 17th Annual Prix Lumière Awards are “The Price of Enlightenment international criticism, sometimes also called Enlightenment Trophies” and were “created by leading producer Daniel Toscan du Plantier and U.S. journalist Edward Behr to honor French-language cinema from France and abroad. 200 journalists (international media correspondents in Paris) from around 50 countries vote each year to award their own prizes to members of the French film industry.” This year’s ceremony “will take place on Friday, January 13, 2012.”

The full listing of the 2012 Prix Lumière Awards nominations is below.

Best Film

L’Apollonide, souvenirs de la maison close (House of Tolerance), Bertrand Bonello

The Artist, Michel Hazanavicius

L’exercice de l’Etat (The Minister), Pierre Schoeller

Le Havre, Aki Kaurismäki

Intouchables, Eric Toledano and Olivier Nakache

Best Foreign Film in French

Curling, Denis Cote, Canada

Et maintenant,...

Kirsten Dunst, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Melancholia Melancholia Tops European Film Awards, Lars von Trier Bypassed, Colin Firth Beats Jean Dujardin Lars Von Trier/Melancholia Dominate European Film Awards European Film 2011 The Artist, France Written & Directed By: Michel Hazanavicius Produced By: Thomas Langmann & Emmanuel Montamat Le Gamin Au Velo (The Kid with a Bike), Belgium/France/Italy Written & Directed By: Jean-Pierre & Luc Dardenne Produced By: Jean-Pierre & Luc Dardenne, Denis Freyd & Andrea Occhipinti HÆVNEN (In a Better World), Denmark Directed By: Susanne Bier Written By: Anders Thomas Jensen Produced By: Sisse Graum Jørgensen The King's Speech, UK Directed By: Tom Hooper Written By: David Seidler Produced By: Iain Canning, Emile Sherman, Gareth Unwin Le Havre, Finland/France/Germany Written & Directed By: Aki Kaurismäki Produced By: Aki Kaurismäki & Karl Baumgartner * Melancholia, Denmark/Sweden/France/Germany Written & Directed By: Lars von Trier Produced By: Meta Louise Foldager & Louise Vesth European Director 2011 * Susanne Bier for...

The live stream of the European Film Awards from Berlin this evening was pretty spotty, but a few fine moments came through, particularly the moment when a special honorary award was inaugurated and presented to a very surprised Michel Piccoli by Volker Schlöndorff and Bruno Ganz.

Another special award was given to producer Mariela Besuievski, Stellan Skarsgård presented the European Achievement in World Cinema Award to Mads Mikkelsen, and Stephen Frears received this year's Lifetime Achievement Award.

The full list of winners and nominees:

European Film 2011: Melancholia, Denmark/Sweden/France/Germany

Written and Directed by Lars von Trier

Produced by Meta Louise Foldager and Louise Vesth.

Also nominated:

The Artist, France

Written and Directed by Michel Hazanavicius

Produced by Thomas Langmann and Emmanuel Montamat

Le Gamin au Velo (The Kid with a Bike), Belgium/France/Italy

Written and Directed by Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne

Produced by Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne,...

Melancholia, The Artist, Le Havre and the other nominations for the 2011 European Film Awards have been announced. The 24th Annual European Film Awards are presented “by the European Film Academy to recognize excellence in European cinematic achievements. The awards are given in over ten categories of which the most important is the Film of the year. They are restricted to European cinema and European producers, directors, and actors.” This year’s European Film Awards “ceremony will be held on December 3, 2011 in Berlin’s Tempodrom near Potsdamer Platz.”

The full listing of the 2011 European Film Awards nominations is below.

European Film 2011

The Artist, France

Written and Directed by: Michel Hazanavicius; Produced by: Thomas Langmann & Emmanuel Montamat

Le Gamin au Velo (The Kid with a Bike), Belgium/France/Italy

Written and Directed by: Jean-Pierre & Luc Dardenne; Produced by: Jean-Pierre & Luc Dardenne, Denis Freyd & Andrea Occhipinti

Hævnen (In a Better World), Denmark...