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When François Truffaut made his feature directorial debut with “The 400 Blows” in 1959, it quickly became an international sensation and the French New Wave’s first smash hit. Along with Jean-Luc Godard‘s “Breathless,” it established many of the conventions for which the French New Wave would become known: documentary-style location shooting, playful experimentation with editing and film form, and most importantly, a direct connection between the filmmaker’s personality and the action on screen.

Many of the New Wave directors aspired to theorist Alexandre Astruc’s dream of using the film camera as intimately and personally as a writer uses a pen, but few realized that dream and its possibilities with as much artistic success as Truffaut. Anyone with even a cursory awareness of the director’s biography can see the direct link between him and “The 400 Blows” hero Antoine Doinel, a 14-year old constantly at odds with...

Italy is celebrating scoring a rare double whammy in the selection for the Hollywood Walk of Fame class of 2026 list.

Along with Timothée Chalamet, Demi Moore, and Miley Cyrus, the 35-name list – announced by The Hollywood Chamber of Commerce on Wednesday – includes both Spaghetti Westerns icon Franco Nero and special effects artist Carlo Rambaldi who is best known for creating the iconic E.T. character for Steven Spielberg’s “E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial.”

Italian undersecretary for culture Lucia Borgonzoni in a statement underlined Italy’s pride in the rare double honors for non U.S. talents and thanked marketing guru Tiziana Rocca, who is artistic director of Italy’s Taormina and Filming Italy festivals, for mounting the campaign that led to Nero getting a Hollywood star.

Nero, who gained worldwide fame in Sergio Corbucci’s 1966 classic Spaghetti Western “Django,” has since appeared in over 200 movies and TV shows, working with directors such as John Huston,...

After countless misfires and successive rejiggings of its committee, France came close to winning its first Oscar for best international feature in over three decades with Jacques Audiard’s “Emilia Perez.” But in a last-minute twist worthy of a movie, “Emilia Perez’s” chances of winning the statuette evaporated following the scandal surrounding Karla Sofia Gascon’s offensive tweets. Ultimately, nothing could stop Brazil from winning with Walter Salles’ heartfelt family saga “I’m Still Here.”

France’s misfortune in this category has often been blamed, among other things, on the abundance of French films to choose from, hence the large margin of error. And it appears that France will once again face an embarrassment of riches and some heated discussions within its selection board.

At this point, no films have been submitted for consideration, but the most likely candidate and probable frontrunner is “Nouvelle Vague,” Richard Linklater’s homage to...

Exclusive: Richard Linklater’s love letter to the New Wave Nouvelle Vague has sold to more than 20 theatrical distributors worldwide for Goodfellas following its buzzy Cannes premiere, as one of four French majority productions in Competition this year.

They join Paris-based distributor Arp Sélection which will release the film in cinemas in France on October 8 on 500 screens, having produced the film under the banner of Arp Production with Linklater’s Austin-based Detour Film.

The French-language production about the making of Jean-Luc Godard’s 1960s New Wave classic Breathless has sold out in Europe for Paris-based sales company Goodfellas.

It has unveiled deals to Benelux (Cherry Pickers), the UK & Ireland (Altitude), Switzerland (Filmcoopi), Germany, (Plaion), Spain (Elastica Films), Greece (Cinobo), Italy (Lucky Red /Bim), Portugal (Alambique), Scandinavia (TriArt Film), Ex-Yugoslavia (McF Megacom), Romania (Independenta), Baltics (Scanorama) and Cis (Mjm Group).

In the rest of the world, it has been acquired for...

Isao Tashiro, a taciturn publishing executive in his forties, is having an early after-work beer when he is spotted by his neighbor and architect friend, Ryukichi Sugimoto. After they return to their regular dive bar, Sugimoto receives a call: his wife, Sayuri, has just been found dead in a friend’s apartment, not far from where the two had met earlier in Tokyo. Known for having several male friends – a situation Sugimoto seemingly accepted without concern – she appears to have been murdered by strangulation.

The Whole Family is screening at Metrograph as part of the Mikio Naruse: The World Betrays Us program

Here is how “The Stranger Within a Woman” opens after a meaningful tracking shot gradually closing in on a elusive Isao from behind. What immediately draws attention is the dated aesthetic: a moderately contrasted black and white within a square 1.31 ratio. Sounding a bit outdated? Undeniably. By 1966, Oshima...

Richard Linklater’s latest film, Nouvelle Vague, has found a home, with Netflix purchasing the rights for $4 million. That deal, according to Deadline, is the highest-ever domestic plan for a French-language film. Ooh la la!

Nouvelle Vague is undoubtedly a love letter to cinema, as Richard Linklater chronicles the making of 1960’s Breathless, which wasn’t only Jean-Luc Godard’s debut film but also changed the landscape of international film through its innovative use of camerawork, sound and editing, most notably seen in its famed jump cuts.

To bring the production of Breathless (À bout de souffle) to life in Nouvelle Vague, Linklater recruited Guillaume Marbeck to play Goard, Zoey Deutch as lead Jean Seberg and Aubry Dullin as star Jean-Paul Belmondo. There, too, are a number of other iconic international figures featured in Nouvelle Vague, including cinematographer Raoul Cotard (Matthieu Penchinat), along with fellow French New Wave directors François Truffaut...

Every so often a film comes along destined to restore jaded critics’ faith in the joy of cinema.

Director Richard Linklater does just that with this monochrome chronicling of the making of Jean-Luc Godard’s Breathless and its impact on generations of movie brats. Audiences should also be able to indulge in the same sense of pleasure.

The material could not be in better hands. Linklater with his first film in French has managed to assemble an amazing lookalike cast of Guillaume Marbeck as Godard, Aubry Dullin as star Jean-Paul Belmondo and Zoey Deutch as the ingenue Jean Seberg among others. They’re all dead ringers by the time Linklater puts them under his gaze.

Linklater’s sheer audacity in tackling such a revered figure as Godard, known as “the great disruptor,” shines through and knows no bounds. It becomes a legend-spotting parade as everyone from Claude Chabrol, François Truffaut,...

As Richard Linklater basked in a rapturous ovation following the Cannes premiere of “Nouvelle Vague,” his look at Jean-Luc Godard and a movement in French cinema that changed the course of film history, it was impossible not to be reminded of the indie revolution he had played a vital role in three decades ago. It helped, of course, that the biggest rebel in that group of backlot iconoclasts, Quentin Tarantino, was standing just in front of him, leading the cheering.

“I’ve known Tarantino, like for 30 years or whatever. He’s one of my oldest film buddies, so to have him there was cool,” Linklater said the afternoon after “Nouvelle Vague” took Cannes by storm, earning some of the festival’s best reviews.

The film follows Godard as he bluffs his way through the making of “Breathless,” the crime classic that gave the New Wave an irresistible dash of cool...

Richard Linklater’s Cannes Competition title Nouvelle Vague had its world premiere the Palais this evening and was welcomed with a 11-minute ovation.

Quentin Tarantino was at tonight’s screening as well and helped lead the long-lasting applause. It was the second time he’d watched the film in about eight hours, having also caught a special screening late Saturday morning.

Quentin Tarantino greets Richard Linklater as Linklater’s ‘Nouvelle Vague’ (‘New Wave’) has its world premiere in #Cannes2025 pic.twitter.com/lofs7qKWUJ

— Deadline (@Deadline) May 17, 2025

An homage to Jean-Luc Godard’s 1959 classic Breathless, the French-language film reconstructs the story behind the film starring Jean Paul Belmondo and Jean Seberg. French actor Guillaume Marbeck plays Godard, Zoey Deutch is Seberg, and newcomer Aubry Dullin portrays Belmondo.

Five-time Oscar nominee Linklater was last in the Cannes Competition with 2006’s Fast Food Nation and played Un Certain Regard with A Scanner Darkly that same year.

In 1983, Jim McBride attempted an English-language remake of Jean-Luc Godard’s 1959 cinema landmark, Breathless with Richard Gere. It broke one of Godard’s cardinal rules: It was in color. Although not as terrible an idea as Gus Van Sant’s disastrous shot-by-shot 1998 color remake of Hitchcock’s 1960 Psycho — which, like Godard’s forever-influential movie the year before, also broke all the rules of its genre — it is dismissed today with the original still finding new life with young audiences each generation, as France’s New Wave also continues to do.

With the truly wonderful Nouvelle Vague (New Wave), premiering today in Competition at Cannes (where else?), Richard Linklater smartly has not attempted a remake of Breathless but rather a certain regard and respect for the wildly creative cinematic period Godard and his contemporaries achieved with the French New Wave. A cinema revolutionary in spirit and deed himself — just watch his...

The official synopsis for Richard Linklater’s Nouvelle Vague describes it as “the story of Godard making Breathless, told in the style and spirit in which Godard made Breathless.”

It’s a catchy pitch but also a bit deceiving. Godard’s 1960 film broke all sorts of narrative and stylistic conventions, writing its own rules about what a movie could do and paving the way for modern cinema as we know it. Linklater’s charming and well-researched homage is much more traditional: Told in a linear fashion, shot with a sizeable crew, featuring actors who look and act like the famous people they’re playing, relying on tons of VFX shots to recreate Paris at the time, it’s a far cry from the style of Godard. And yet it does an impressive job capturing the spirit of the man at work, highlighting what it took — and often didn’t take...

From Jean Seberg’s sideswept pixie cut to Jean-Paul Belmondo’s aviators, Jean-Luc Godard’s “Breathless” has become more fashionable in today’s cultural imagination for its iconic looks and images than for how the jump-cut-pioneering renegade feature collapsed cinematic hierarchies as we knew them in 1960. That makes one of the greatest films of all time, and the standard bearer of the French New Wave, ripe for discovery for a younger generation — and fresher still for the older ones well familiar with it.

If the best way to criticize a movie, as Cahiers du Cinéma critic Godard once said, is to make one, then director Richard Linklater’s answer to making a tribute to “Breathless” might instead be to not quite criticize but certainly to subvert the tropes of movies about moviemaking. His black-and-white “Nouvelle Vague,” itself a meticulous recreation of a movie made in 1959 with all the celluloid, Academy-ratio crackle and pop,...

Richard Linklater — paragon of American cinema — has decided to go French. In addition to unveiling his Lorenz Hart chamber piece “Blue Moon” at this year’s Berlinale, Linklater went intercontinental by premiering his ode to the French New Wave, “Nouvelle Vague,” in competition at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival. Watch a teaser for the film below.

“Nouvelle Vague” is set during the 1959 Paris-set shoot of Jean-Luc Godard’s debut feature, “Breathless.” Starring Jean-Paul Belmondo and American actress Jean Seberg, “Breathless” follows an aimless criminal and his unwitting romantic interest as they fall in love, while at the same time being pursued by the law. Aubry Dullin and Zoey Deutch fill the roles of Belmondo and Seberg, while Guillaume Marbeck takes on the maestro himself, Godard. Other luminaries of the French New Wave featured in the film include François Truffaut (Adrien Rouyard), Suzanne Schiffman (Jodie Ruth-Forest), Claude Chabrol (Antoine Besson), Agnès Varda...

After releasing two films last year with Hit Man and the rather-overlooked God Save Texas: Hometown Prison, the ever-prolific Richard Linklater returns in 2025 with another pairing. Earlier this year he premiered Blue Moon at Berlinale. Ahead of that film’s October release, he’s at Cannes to premiere Nouvelle Vague, his tribute to the French New Wave and chronicle of the making of Breathless––all directed in the style of Jean-Luc Godard’s landmark debut. A first trailer has arrived for the feature (still seeking U.S. distribution) ahead of the premiere.

The cast includes Guillaume Marbeck as Jean-Luc Godard, Zoey Deutch as Jean Seberg, Aubry Dullin as Jean-Paul Belmondo, Matthieu Penchinat as Raoul Coutard, Adrien Rouyard as François Truffaut, Antoine Besson as Claude Chabrol, Roxane Rivière as Agnès Varda, Jean-Jacques Le Vessier as Jean Cocteau, Côme Thieulin as Éric Rohmer, Laurent Mothe as Roberto Rossellini, Jonas Marmy as Jacques Rivette,...

The Cannes Film Festival is nearly here and while it’s easy to get swept up in the glitz and glamor and very big yachts, there’s another, equally important side to the festival as a marketplace for films from all over the world seeking distribution.

And there are some very big movies at this year’s festival which don’t have distribution, either domestically or internationally, that are very much worth keeping an eye on. They could be some of the festival’s biggest splashes.

“Die My Love” (Courtesy Cannes Film Festival) Die, My Love (Lynne Ramsay)

Scottish director Lynne Ramsay is one of the most exciting filmmakers working today and the fact that she has only made five features total, beginning with her outstanding debut feature “Ratcatcher” (back in 1999), turning the release of each new film into a verifiable event. “Die, My Love,” her first since 2017’s “You Were Never Really Here,...

As the 15th Beijing International Film Festival (Bjiff) commences on April 18, the annual event is presenting an array of riches for cinephiles and industry professionals alike, marking a trifecta of milestones: the 130th anniversary of world cinema, the 120th anniversary of Chinese cinema, and the festival’s own 15th year.

Headlining this year’s Workshop & Masterclass series is a triumvirate of cinematic heavyweights. French acting legend Isabelle Huppert, who has appeared in over 100 films and earned multiple accolades including best actress at Cannes for “The Piano Teacher” and a Golden Globe for “Elle,” will explore “The Undercurrent Beneath the Ice” – an examination of her distinctive artistic approach that has made her a force in European cinema. The masterclass promises insights into her celebrated collaborations with directors like Claude Chabrol and Michael Haneke.

Chinese auteur Jia Zhangke, whose works like “Still Life” and “Ash Is Purest White” have earned him acclaim at Cannes and Venice,...

A scene from Menus-plaisir – Les Troisgros

Good food and the French are a natural combination, so it is only natural that this year’s French Film Festival in St. Louis would pair them to make French cuisine it’s theme. Cinema St. Louis dropped the “classic” in the title for it’s annual Robert French Film Festival, at the Hi-Pointe Theater, from April 4 – 12. This year’s festival is titled “Cuisine Francaise,” in celebration of St. Louis’ French heritage, and still features mostly classic French films. On the menu this year are French-language films, narrative and documentary, that have cooking, chefs, food or restaurants at their center.

Among these mouth-watering films is the acclaimed documentary Menus-plaisir – Les Troisgros, a deep-dive look at a French family of restaurateur-chefs and their Michelin-starred restaurant. Other treats are Holy Cow, Sugar And Stars, Merci Pour Le Chocolat, Babette’S Feast, Delicatessen, and Kings Of Pastry,...

After releasing two films last year with Hit Man and the rather-overlooked God Save Texas: Hometown Prison, the ever-prolific Richard Linklater returns in 2025 with two more features. Earlier this year he premiered Blue Moon at Berlinale. Now Sony Pictures Classics, in the official CinemaCon program guide, has confirmed a fall release window for the drama.

Described as “a funny Valentine to old Broadway,” here’s the synopsis: “On the evening of March 31, 1943, legendary lyricist Lorenz Hart confronts his shattered self-confidence in Sardi’s bar as his former collaborator Richard Rodgers celebrates the opening night of his ground-breaking hit musical Oklahoma!“

Meanwhile, Linklater looks to have locked his next feature Nouvelle Vague, his tribute to the French New Wave and chronicle of the making of Breathless, directed in the style of Jean-Luc Godard’s landmark debut. While it’s still seeking U.S. distribution, French distributor Arp Sélection has confirmed an...

Ozon’s drama mixes implied horror with sentimentality as it examines dangerous secrets and the disastrous ramifications of an (accidental?) poisoning

That amazingly prolific film-maker François Ozon returns with an intriguing, if tonally uncertain, mystery drama about a suspected murder. In it, the implied Chabrol-esque horror is made to coexist with an odd mood of gentleness and even sentimentality as we witness the loneliness of an ageing woman with secrets and regrets in the autumn of her life.

This is Michelle, played by 81-year-old actor-director Hélène Vincent; at one point, Ozon allows us to notice she is reading a book by Ruth Rendell, whose thrillers were famously adapted by Claude Chabrol and indeed by Ozon himself (The New Girlfriend). This film is not a Rendell adaptation, but I wonder if Ozon and his co-screenwriter Philippe Piazzo were inspired by the Rendell short story Means of Evil, which also involved mushroom...

There's nothing movie audiences love more than poking around in a character's brain, especially when said character is, well, not particularly well-adjusted. Since the birth of film, movies have been unpacking what makes people tick, using the psychological thriller genre -- which often verges on horror -- to delve into the inner workings of fascinating yet unsettling characters. Whether it's a serial killer, an abusive husband, or an obsessive housekeeper, these cinematic figures give our protagonists plenty to be dealing with as they unleash chaos on all who surround them. 

Dark, twisted, and often disturbing, the psychological thriller keeps audiences on the edge of their seats and constantly wrongfooted, as they attempt to parse the complexity of what they're seeing. This type of movie isn't the best choice to have playing on in the background while you're absentmindedly folding laundry or making dinner, but for the viewer who's willing to give it their full attention,...

NYC Weekend Watch is our weekly round-up of repertory offerings.

IFC Center

Hideaki Anno’s Love & Pop plays in a new restoration; Herzog’s Nosferatu, Mulholland Dr., Funeral Parade of Roses, The Thing, and Irreversible show late.

Roxy Cinema

Saturday brings Bruce Labruce introducing Ciao! Manhattan and Melody of Love on 16mm; Claude Chabrol’s Ten Days Wonder shows on 16mm this Sunday alongside the rare Iranian feature Dead End.

Japan Society

Masahiro Shinoda’s Pale Flower shows on 35mm this Friday.

Film at Lincoln Center

The newly restored Compensation begins screening while a career-spanning Frederick Wiseman retrospective continues.

Film Forum

Tales from the New Yorker includes films by Nicholas Ray, Orson Welles, and John Huston. Godard’s A Woman Is a Woman continues in a new 4K restoration; Meet Me In St. Louis screens on Sunday.

Anthology Film Archives

Willem Dafoe: Wild at Heart continues.

Museum of the...

The history of any important film festival is the history of the films and filmmakers they’ve showcased and championed: what’s their tally of breakthrough filmmakers and esteemed auteurs who have defined the past century of cinema?

This is why Berlin, Cannes and Venice, after nearly a century of annual unspoolings (as Variety likes to call them) retain their reputations and the vitality of their programming and festival operations.

There is a parallel history as well, one that charts the important fests’ cultural and economic impacts upon the communities and countries where they’re held.

The French film industry is a primary European powerhouse of collaborative private and public financing and film promotion, and it has coordinated beautifully for decades with the Cannes Film Festival. To the good fortunes of both.

Itay’s official cinematic and cultural organizations and departments have partnered effectively with the Venice Festival, even if...

Quick Links Diane Lane Gives the Performance of a Lifetime in 'Unfaithful' 'Unfaithful' Powerfully Showcases How an Affair Can Destroy a Marriage

Halina Reijn's Babygirl represents an erotic thriller that explores the balance of power and sexuality as a professional high-ranking CEO, portrayed by Nicole Kidman, engages in a forbidden affair with a younger intern, played by Harris Dickinson. The director has said that some of her inspiration for the film was the psychosexual thrillers of the '80s and '90s from directors like Paul Verhoeven and Adrian Lyne.

It's fitting then that after a trip to see Babygirl, moviegoers should revisit Lyne's 2002 erotic thriller, Unfaithful. While the director is known more for his Oscar-nominated hits Fatal Attraction and Indecent Proposal, Unfaithful's simplicity, as it explores a woman's need for the excitement that she seems to be missing, is its biggest strength.

Reflecting the breadth of her legacy across different continents, French actor Isabelle Huppert was celebrated by the likes of Alfonso Cuarón, Claire Denis, Alejandro Jodorowsky and François Ozon at the 15th edition of the Lumiere Film Festival in Lyon where she received a sprawling career tribute on Oct. 18.

Huppert kicked off the festivities as she entered the 3000-seat auditorium dancing to the 1980’s disco beats of “Nuit de folie,” dressed in a shimmery champagne gown.

The joyful ceremony, emceed by Huppert’s longtime friend (and Cannes boss) Thierry Fremaux who runs the Lumiere Film Festival, was punctuated by live musical numbers ranging widely from Camelia Jordana’s singing a capella “I Will Survive,” to Julien Clerc performing his 1978 cult song “Ma Preference” by the piano, and French actor Sandrine Kiberlain playfully singing “Nuit de folie” which was said to be Huppert’s unexpected all-time favorite song.

The most vibrant homage...

Isabelle Huppert, the Oscar-nominated star of “Elle,” spoke candidly about her career choices and made the audience laugh with her self-deprecating humor at a masterclass held at the Lumière Film Festival in Lyon.

The French actor, who is also being honored with the fest’s lifetime achievement Lumière prize, revealed that she had seen very few movies when she started acting some 50 years ago. But that didn’t prevent her from working with some of Europe’s most talented filmmakers, including Claude Chabrol, Michael Haneke and Paul Verhoeven.

“We didn’t go to cinemas as much back then,” she said during the on-stage conversation with Lumiere Film Festival’s boss Thierry Fremaux, who is also Cannes chief. Claire Denis (“White Material”) and Francois Ozon, who have directed Huppert in several films, were sitting on the front row.

“When I started making films, I had seen very few. I’ve still seen few by the way.

Exclusive: Daniel Auteuil, Virginie Efira, Mathieu Amalric, Vincent Lacoste and Luana Bajrami have been unveiled as supporting cast members in Rebecca Zlotowski’s murder mystery movie Vie Privée starring Jodie Foster.

The production has also unveiled the plotline for the film which follows renowned psychiatrist Lilian Steiner, played by previously-announced Foster, who mounts her own private investigation into the death of one of her patients, whom she is convinced has been murdered.

The supporting cast news and plot reveal comes as filming – running from September 30 to November 22 between Paris and Normandy – enters its third week.

The feature is Zlotowski’s sixth film after 2023 Venice Golden Lion contender Other People’s Children, An Easy Girl, Planetarium, Grand Central and Dear Prudence.

Zlotowski co-wrote the screenplay with Anne Berest, whose credits include Audrey Diwan’s Venice Golden Lion winner Happening and Other People’s Children, as well as long-time collaborator Gaëlle Macé.

The film...

Useful as it may be for facts and stats, an actor’s Wikipedia page isn’t ever the go-to place for a complete, nuanced description of their thespian essence, and so it proves for Isabelle Huppert. “Known for her portrayals of cold, austere women devoid of morality, she is considered one of the greatest actresses of her generation,” states the introduction, in a strikingly selective encapsulation of over half a century on screen. Huppert can certainly do froideur and severity with flair — she’s imposing beyond the bounds of her diminutive frame in such rigorous, chill-carrying films as Claude Chabrol’s “La Cérémonie,” Michael Haneke’s “The Piano Teacher” and of course Paul Verhoeven’s “Elle,” though whether these complex, conflicted women are “devoid of morality” isn’t a call for any one web editor to make.

But it does Huppert an injustice to paint her, however admiringly, as some...

Rock on: Jury president Arielle Dombasle welcomes her 'amazing family' of cohorts at the Dinard Festival of British and Irish Film Photo: Richard Mowe With a new title to reflect the upsurge in prominence of Irish cinema the 35th edition of the Dinard Festival of British and Irish Film in the Brittany resort on the Emerald Coast, launched last night with a glittering ceremony at the Palais des Arts overlooking the beach where such film-makers as Eric Rohmer and Claude Chabrol have been seduced by its picturesque charms.

One of the highlights of the opening marathon was the presence of Arielle Dombasle, French icon who embraced her fellow jurors as “my amazing family” - at least for the next two days. The jury comprises Julie Depardieu, Stanislas Mehrar, Phoebe Campbell, Oliver Jackson-Cohen, Colm Bairéad, Charlotte Colbert and Alba Gaia Bellugi.

Dombasle who had a beach cabin named after her earlier in the day,...

Above: Official poster by Yves Tinguely for the 12th New York Film Festival in 1974.The twelfth edition of the New York Film Festival, which took place 50 years ago this week, in September 1974, could have been convincingly called the New York European Film Festival. Out of the seventeen new feature films playing, all but two were European: seven French, three German, two Italian, two Swiss, and one British. Though festival director Richard Roud wrote in the program that “one of the most exciting developments in world cinema these past two years has been the re-emergence of the American film,” there was in fact only one American film in the main lineup (the world premiere of John Cassavetes’s A Woman Under the Influence) though there was also a program of four American shorts by Mirra Bank, Martha Coolidge, William Greaves, and an exciting upstart named Martin Scorsese. There was just one...

She’s worked with most of the great names of European cinema, from Godard to Haneke, and on one of Hollywood’s greatest disasters. Now she’s ready for your closeup quizzing

France has quite a few grandes dames of cinema, with Catherine Deneuve, Juliette Binoche and Isabelle Adjani all very much in the game. But none can hold much of a candle to Isabelle Huppert, who is firing on all cylinders as she enters her 70s, in her sixth decade of headline acting performances. Tightly wound and fiery, while simultaneously self-contained and tough as nails, Huppert’s acting persona has been instrumental to a string of masterpieces – and even if the film around her isn’t that great, she’s always magnificent to watch.

With so many amazing credits, stretching back to the 1970s, it’s hard to pick out a few, but we’ll have a go: early...

Alain Delon, the dark and dashing leading man from France who starred in some of the greatest European films of the 1960s and ’70s, has died. He was 88.

“Alain Fabien, Anouchka, Anthony, as well as (his dog) Loubo, are deeply saddened to announce the passing of their father. He passed away peacefully in his home in Douchy, surrounded by his three children and his family,” a statement from the family released to Afp news agency said.

Delon had been suffering from poor health in recent years and had a stroke in 2019.

With a filmography boasting such titles as Luchino Visconti’s Rocco and His Brothers (1960) and The Leopard (1963), René Clément’s Purple Noon (1960), Michelangelo Antonioni’s The Eclipse (1962), Joseph Losey’s Mr. Klein (1976) and Jean-Pierre Melville’s Le Samouraï (1967) and The Red Circle (1970), Delon graced several art house movies now considered classics.

His tense and stoical performances, often as...

Yvonne Furneaux, the glamorous actress who had memorable performances in Michelangelo Antonioni’s Le Amiche, Federico Fellini’s La Dolce Vita and Roman Polanski’s Repulsion, has died. She was 98.

Furneaux died July 5 at her home in North Hampton, New Hampshire, of complications from a stroke, her son, Nicholas Natteau, told The Hollywood Reporter.

She also was the female lead in the Hammer horror film The Mummy (1959), starring Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee. Though she considered the project less than ideal, she said she ultimately learned from those actors that “if you don’t take a film like The Mummy seriously and put your heart and soul into it, then you can bring it down,” she explained in Mark A. Miller’s 2010 book, Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing and Horror Cinema.

She starred in Italian, French, German and Spanish films during her career.

In Le Amiche (1955), a hit at the...

Iconic French actress Isabelle Huppert will be honored at this year’s Lumière Festival in Lyon with the prestigious Lumière Award for her contribution to cinema.

“Her career encompasses an immense part of the history of contemporary cinema,” the Institut Lumière, which oversees the festival, said of the French star of Elle, 8 Women and The Piano Teacher.

The institute gave just a sampling of Huppert’s more than 155 acting credits, which include collaborations with such French directing legends as Claude Chabrol, Claire Denis, François Ozon and Bertrand Tavernier, as well as international filmmakers including Michael Haneke, Paul Verhoeven and Hong Sang-soo. Her few U.S. films include Michael Cimino’s Heaven’s Gate (1980), David O. Russell’s I Heart Huckabees (2004) and Frankie (2019) by Ira Sachs.

Huppert’s Lumière Award will take its place alongside a trophy case of other honors, including two Cannes best actress prizes — for Violette Noziere (1978) and...

Isabelle Huppert has been announced as this year’s recipient of the Lumière Award at the 16th edition of the classic film-focused Lumière Festival in Lyon this fall.

“Her career encompasses an immense part of the history of contemporary cinema,” the Institut Lumière, which oversees the festival, declared of the French actress.

The institute cited some of the top directors she has worked with across her more than 155 acting credits including French directors Claude Chabrol, with whom she made seven features early on in her, as well as Jean-Luc Godard, Claire Denis, Bertrand Tavernier, Diane Kurys, Maurice Pialat, Catherine Breillat, Michel Deville, François Ozon and André Téchiné.

Internationally, Huppert has also collaborated with Joseph Losey, Marco Ferreri and Michael Haneke, Michael Cimino’s Brillante Mendoza, Hong Sang-soo and Paul Verhoeven, with whom she clinched a Best Actress Oscar nomination for her performance in his 2017 thriller Elle.

The actress has also...

Beloved French actor Isabelle Huppert will receive the Lumière Award in the city of Lyon in October.

Created by Cannes chief Thierry Frémaux, the Lumière Film Festival celebrates classic and contemporary cinema each fall. The Lumière Award honors a leading figure in the world of cinema and their entire body of work.

Huppert succeeds German director Wim Wenders who was awarded the prize in 2023. Former recipients include Tim Burton, Jane Campion, Martin Scorsese, Quentin Tarantino, Clint Eastwood, Francis Ford Coppola, Ken Loach, Catherine Deneuve, Jane Fonda, Pedro Almodóvar, Miloš Forman, the Dardenne brothers and Wong Kar-wai, among others.

“It’s a great honor for me to receive the Lumière Award. It’s a magnificent prize, and so is its festival. It’s an award that bears the name of the inventors of cinema! Receiving it fills me with joy and pride,” said Huppert.

A prolific actor who shoots an average...

Isabelle Huppert will receive the 16th annual Lumiere Award at Lyon’s classic film-focused Lumiere Festival set to run October 12-20.

The prolific French actress will be honoured for her career during the week-long celebration of heritage film complete with a parallel classic film market run by Cannes’ Thierry Fremaux that typically draws a host of acclaimed talent from across the globe.

Huppert has earned two best actress prizes at Cannes for Michael Haneke’s The Piano Teacher and Claude Chabrol’s Violette, plus 16 Cesar nominations and two wins. She earned an Academy Award nomination and won the Golden Globe...

Marking a welcome re-embrace of the streamlined murdery perversities of his terrific “Stranger by the Lake,” Alain Guiraudie gives the Cannes Premiere section one of its darkly sparkling standouts with the unsettlingly offbeat “Misericordia.” In the director’s best work, Guiraudie’s trademark is to infuse genre dalliances with mordant wit and a deliciously peculiar, defiant queerness. And while it may initially appear to be straightforward — and while it thankfully avoids the wild tonal swings of muddy tragicomedy “Staying Vertical” (2016) and rather baffling terrorism sex-farce “Nobody’s Hero” (2022) — nobody could ever accuse this increasingly twisted psychodrama of playing it straight.

From the start, there’s something off. The prologue is a driving sequence, shot from the point of view of the unseen driver, through the narrowing country roads of hilly southwestern France. There is nothing overtly odd going on, even the landscape is banal, shot in hazy earth tones by Claire Mathon’s clever,...

French actor Isabelle Huppert has been named president of the international competition jury at the 81st Venice Film Festival.

The prolific Huppert was Oscar-nominated for her performance in 2016 crime drama Elle.

“There is a long and beautiful history between the Festival and I,” said Huppert. ”Becoming a privileged spectator is an honour. More than ever, cinema is a promise. The promise to escape, to disrupt, to surprise, to take a good look at the world, united in the differences of our tastes and ideas.”

Huppert has twice won the Coppa Volpi for best actress at Venice, in 1988 for Story Of Women...

Isabelle Huppert will preside over the main jury of the upcoming Venice Film Festival.

The revered French actor has a longstanding rapport with the Lido, having won Venice’s

Coppa Volpi for best actress twice, first with “Story of Women” in 1988, and subsequently with “La Cérémonie” in 1995, both directed by Claude Chabrol.

Huppert – who has made a total of eight films with Chabrol – also has a close bond with the Cannes Film Festival where in 1978 she won the best actress statuette for Chabrol’s “Violette.” In 2001, Huppert won her second best actress award at Cannes for her tour-de-force performance as a sado-masochistic music professor in Michael Haneke’s “The Piano.” In 2005, Huppert was honored by Venice with a Special Golden Lion for her titular role in “Gabrielle,” Patrice Chéreau’s costume drama about an imploded marriage.

In 2017 she gained her first Academy Award nomination for her role as a rape...

Call My Agent’s Laure Calamy stars as a scheming factory worker with designs on a mega-rich fortune in this classy feast of backstabbing, double cross and venal greed

Succession meets Knives Out in this comedy-thriller directed by Sébastien Marnier in what is an extremely French comic style: tongue-in-cheek, a little frothy, tiptoeing close to camp. It stars Call My Agent’s brilliant Laure Calamy as a scheming factory worker who wheedles her way into a dysfunctional mega-rich family. Calamy is often cast as likable, relatable women but here she does a very convincing Isabelle Huppert (circa her Claude Chabrol years); there’s something a bit off about her character from the start, possibly even unhinged.

Calamy is Stéphane – at least that’s what she calls herself. Bored of her job on the production line at a fish factory, and broke, out of the blue she calls her father, a self-made hotel and restaurant tycoon.

French cinema revolutionized film history with groundbreaking masterpieces like Breathless and The 400 Blows. Iconic directors like Godard and Truffaut paved the way for modern classics with the French New Wave movement. From Bresson's realism to Tati's slapstick to Chabrol's suspense, French films offer an innovative and diverse cinematic experience.

From Breathless to The 400 Blows to Au Hasard Balthazar, there are some groundbreaking French masterpieces that every movie lover around the world should watch. France is responsible for some of the most influential revolutions in film history. Robert Bresson created a new kind of cinematic realism with his restrained, ascetic shooting style. Jacques Tati pioneered his own brand of filmed slapstick, and those timeless sight gags are still just as funny today. Claude Chabrol’s Hitchcockian suspense thrillers and Éric Rohmer’s naturalistic, semi-improvised comedies reimagined familiar genres and styles with a whole new way of approaching a story on film.

Claude Chabrol was a prolific French New Wave director active between 1958 and 2009. Over those five decades, he directed dozens of movies and acted in many more. Like his peers Jean-Luc Godard and François Truffaut, Chabrol started out as a film critic before stepping behind the camera himself. He primarily specialized in thrillers, most of which paid homage to the works of Alfred Hitchcock while maintaining Chabrol's idiosyncratic perspective. Chabrol's movies tend to be slow-burners, with the tension steadily ratcheting up to an explosive climax.

Streaming now in various virtual cinemas in new restorations, Éric Rohmer’s “Tales of the Four Seasons,” the last of his three major film cycles, offers a fresh chance to consider the methods of one of cinema’s most quietly perceptive artists. Compared to his “Six Moral Tales” and “Comedies and Proverbs,” films that probed the strident yet misplaced confidence of young people as they attempt to find their place in the world, the “Tales of the Four Seasons” found Rohmer—70 years old the year that the first film in the series, 1990’s A Tale of Springtime, premiered—turning his attentions to middle-aged characters.

Perhaps for that reason, this is the most narratively driven cycle in Rohmer’s oeuvre, focusing on characters who may still show flashes of impertinence but generally have a far more solid grasp of self than the pseudo-intellectuals and flighty dreamers of his earlier work. This...

From its subtly orchestrated opening scene to its devastating and explosive climax, writer-director Chloe Domont’s “Fair Play” is one of the most confident and controlled feature debuts in years, a provocative and brainy drama with the propulsive aggression of a classic thriller. As in the best films of Alfred Hitchcock and Claude Chabrol, Domont uses the mechanisms of genre to explore personal and complicated ideas about class, sex, gender, and power; and like those directors, Domont is a master when it comes to marshaling all of the cinematic tools at her disposal to pull it off. “When I was writing the script, I described it as an emotional thriller,” Domont told IndieWire. “The intention was to use genre to shine a light on an emotional terror that I feel is too often normalized.”

Although “Fair Play” contains only a few minutes of overt physical violence, emotional violence is pervasive and relentless.

Cinema professionals from across Europe are gathering in Berlin this weekend for the ceremony of the 36th European Film Awards on Saturday evening.

This younger cousin of Hollywood’s near hundred-year-old Academy Awards is overseen by the Berlin-based European Film Academy.

The body’s 4,600 members – hailing from “geographical Europe” as well as Israel, Palestine and Russia, – vote on an official Academy Selection made up of around 40 films selected by the European Academy Board and a group of experts.

Finnish filmmaker Aki Kaurismäki’s Fallen Leaves and UK director Jonathan Glazer The Zone Of Interest top the nominations this year, followed by Justine Triet’s Cannes Palme d’Or winner Anatomy Of A Fall and Poland’s Agnieszka Holland’s Green Border, which won the Venice Special Jury Prize.

Awards for the craft categories were decided by an expert jury and announced ahead of tonight’s ceremony.

The European Film Academy...

The phrase 'eat the rich' might be partly a joke, but it did originate in France, during the Reign Of Terror - it was pointed out by the leader a commune that, if the poor had nothing left to eat, they would eat those who left them in their poverty. As the phrase, and the recognition of what capitalism and the class system have done to our world, it's perhaps fitting to have a new edition of Claude Chabrol's The Ceremony (La Cérémonie) for our enjoyment and edification. The 1997 film, based on the novel by UK author Ruth Rendell, which itself draws from a true story, tells of Sophie Bonhomme (Sandrine Bonnaire), a young woman who finds employment as a housekepper for the well-off...

[Read the whole post on screenanarchy.com...]...

Paul Vecchiali’s moody, labyrinthine The Strangler suggests the visual style of Jacques Demy’s Model Shop coupled with the psychosexual fervor of Michael Powell’s Peeping Tom. Or maybe it’s more accurate to say that it’s a queer version of Jean-Pierre Melville’s Le Samouraï by way of the story machinations of Claude Chabrol’s The Champagne Murders. Either way, it’s clear that Vecchiali’s interests are cinephilic in nature, and that this 1970 psychological thriller was his self-conscious attempt during the waning years of the Nouvelle Vague to take the movement’s genre-defying sensibilities in a new direction.

Throughout, Vecchiali is concerned less with plot than with mood and setting, which he largely establishes by showing people moving around colorful apartments and through the bustling streets of Paris. Take Anna (Eva Simonet), who rushes to a television station fearing for her safety after Simon (Julien Guiomar...

Clockwise from left: The Departed (Warner Bros.), True Lies (20th Century Studios), Some Like It Hot (United Artists), 12 Monkeys (Universal)Graphic: The A.V. Club

Of all the challenges in the moviemaking universe, redoing a beloved foreign film for an American audience would seem pretty low on the list. You already...

MK2 Films has acquired a collection of films and TV series directed by Bruno Dumont, the award-winning French director behind “Life of Jesus” and “Humanity.”

The acquisition, unveiled during Mipcom Cannes, covers the bulk of the director’s work, spanning eight films and TV series including “Li’l Quinquin,” which premiered at Cannes’ Directors’ Fortnight. MK2 Films will represent rights to some of these titles, in France and/or international markets, apart from a few titles like “Slack Bay” whose global rights are still handled by Memento International.

“Bruno Dumont is, of course, a major figure of contemporary cinema,” said Nathanaël Karmitz, MK2’s chairman of the executive board. Karmitz praised Dumont for the “originality of his unusual, unpredictable [films], veering from gravitas to some unnerving, comedic tangents.” He continued, “Iconoclastic and consistently courageous in its form, his work perfectly represents the free and ambitious cinema that we are proud to promote.

Self-destructive characters who grift and deceive are ever the province of French filmmakers, from Claude Chabrol to “Tell No One” director Guillaume Canet. In Sébastien Marnier’s sinister and sly domestic thriller “The Origin of Evil,” Laure Calamy plays a woman whose lies can’t stop falling out of her mouth. Calamy is one of the MVPs of the French show business satire “Call My Agent!,” in which she plays a flustered assistant at a fictional talent agency run by ridiculous people. In “The Origin of Evil,” Calamy gives an unsettling performance as Stéphane, a grifter crawling out of a busted relationship and a toxic job at a cannery and into the life of a wealthy man, Serge, played by Jacques Weber. She contacts him out of the blue and insists she’s his long-lost daughter, and the two form a parasitic relationship that recalls the uneasy power dynamics of...