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Tudor Giurgiu’s Libra Film has boarded “Oceane,” Romanian Eva Pervolovici’s fiction follow-up to 2013 Berlinale entry “Marussia.” Giurgiu will co-produce the film with Clémentine Mourão-Ferreira, whose Bordeaux-based label so-cle launched in 2020. The French-Portuguese producer, who has over two decades of experience in the industry, has worked with the likes of Manoel de Oliveira, Aida Begic, and André Téchiné.

“Oceane” has also lined up its lead in up-and-coming French actor Celeste Brunnquell (“Being Maria”), with renowned French director Lucile Hadžihalilović (“The Ice Tower”) acting as a script consultant.

Pervolovici’s will follow Brunnquell’s titular Oceane, a hypersensitive, climate-anguished young woman who works as a technician on offshore wind turbines. When Oceane is sent to rural Romania for work, she meets two people who will change her life: anti-corruption activist Alex and Iulian, a non-verbal 7-year-old boy who shares the young woman’s hypersensitivity. These meetings take Oceane on a...

Just like American cinema never wearies of road movies, French cinema has long been littered with sexual coming-of-age films: tales of young people exploring their bodies, appetites and identities over the course of a sun-soaked summer vacation, a tumultuous school year or a few formatively horny days.

As with any popular category of movie, a certain numbing redundancy — if not laziness — sets in after a while; few recent entries have had the tingle of discovery that allowed Maurice Pialat’s To Our Loves, André Téchiné’s Wild Reeds and various Catherine Breillat works to fire up our memories and imaginations, to say nothing of our loins.

Occasionally, however, a new one comes along that cuts right through the crowd with its confidence and texture, its erotic charge and lingering nostalgic ache. Hafsia Herzi’s superb The Little Sister (La petite dernière), about a French Muslim teenager’s lesbian awakening, is such a film,...

UK director, screenwriter and cinematographer Molly Manning Walker has been named as president of the Un Certain Regard Jury at the 78th edition of the Cannes Film Festival this May.

She will be joined by French-Swiss director and screenwriter Louise Courvoisier, Croatian director of the International Film Festival Rotterdam Vanja Kaludjercic, Italian director, producer and screenwriter Roberto Minervini and Argentinian actor Nahuel Pérez Biscayart.

They will be decided the prizes in Un Certain Regard section, which showcases art and discovery films by young auteurs and features 20 titles this year, including nine debut features.

The section opens with Tunisian-French director Erige Sehiri’s Promised Sky on May 14, the day after the festival’s opening ceremony.

Manning Walker has a special connection with Un Certain Regard having won its main prize for first feature How To Have Sex in 2023. She turned up late for the ceremony, leading then Jury President John C. Reilly...

An all-star line-up, including actors Halle Berry, Jeremy Strong, and Alba Rohrwacher, auteur directors Hong Sangsoo, Payal Kapadia, and Carlos Reygadas, French Moroccan writer Leïla Slimani, and Congolese documentarist Dieudo Hamadi will join Oscar-winning French star Juliette Binoche on this year’s international jury for the 2025 Cannes Film Festival.

The group will pick the winners of this year’s Palme d’Or for best film.

From left to right: Jeremy Strong, Alba Rohrwacher, Dieudo Hamadi, Leïla Slimani, Juliette Binoche, Halle Berry, Carlos Reygadas, Payal Kapadia, Hong Sangsoo

Strong and Kapadie return to Cannes after a triumphant 2024, which saw the U.S. actor impress on the Croisette as Roy Cohn in The Apprentice, a turn that would earn him a best-supporting Oscar nomination this year, and the Indian director win the festival’s Grand Prix with her debut feature, All We Imagine As Light.

Rohrwacher and Reygadas are Cannes regulars. The...

Belgian actress Emilie Dequenne, known for her breakout role in Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne’s Palme d’Or winning Rosetta, has died aged 43.

Her agent announced that she had died of a rare cancer at a hospital just outside of Paris on Sunday evening.

Dequenne, who starred in more than 50 films during her long career,won the best actress prize in Cannes for Rosetta in 1999 and has been nominated for five Cesar awards, including a win in 2021 for Emmanuel Mouret’s Love Affair(s).

She balanced commercial films with more auteur fare and worked with acclaimed filmmakers including Claude Berri,...

French cinema star Juliette Binoche will preside over the 78th Festival de Cannes, marking a remarkable full-circle moment in her celebrated career. The acclaimed actress has been selected as the international jury president for the 2025 festival, exactly 40 years after her breakthrough performance launched her to global stardom.

Binoche’s appointment carries deep personal significance. In 1985, she first climbed the festival’s famous steps in André Téchiné’s “Rendez-vous,” a film that catapulted her into the international spotlight. “I was born at the Festival de Cannes,” Binoche has often said, reflecting on that pivotal moment.

“In 1985, I walked up the steps for the first time with the enthusiasm and uncertainty of a young actress,” Binoche shared. “I never imagined I’d return 40 years later in the honorary role of Jury President.” She emphasized her appreciation for the responsibility, noting the need for humility in such a prestigious role.

The actress brings...

French actress Juliette Binoche has been named President of the Jury for the 2025 edition of the Cannes Film Festival in May.

The honor, which was announced on Tuesday morning Paris time, will fall exactly 40 years after the Oscar-winning The English Patient star first touched down at the festival with André Téchiné’s Palme d’Or contender Rendez-vous in 1985.

Binoche follows in the footsteps of U.S. director Greta Gerwig whose jury feted Sean Baker’s Anora with the Palme d’Or last year.

“I’m looking forward to sharing these life experiences with the members of the Jury and the public. In 1985, I walked up the steps for the first time with the enthusiasm and uncertainty of a young actress; I never imagined I’d return 40 years later in the honorary role of President of the Jury. I appreciate the privilege, the responsibility and the absolute need for humility,” said Binoche.

Juliette Binoche has been named this year’s Cannes Film Festival jury president.

The news, announced by the festival early on Tuesday morning, comes nearly 40 years after Binoche’s Croisette debut in André Téchiné’s Rendez-vous.

The French star won the Cannes best actress prize for Abbas Kiarostami’s Certified Copy in 2010. That same year sheprotested against the imprisonment of Jafar Panahi, brandishing a placard bearing the director’s name on stage.

Binoche has been a frequent attendee on the red carpet through roles innumerous Cannes selections, including Michael Haneke’sCode Unknown in 2000 andHidden in 2005, Olivier Assayas’Clouds Of Sils Maria...

Juliette Binoche, the Oscar- and César-winning actress who’s a regular at the Cannes Film Festival, will serve as its jury president for the 2025 edition. The festival runs May 13 – 24 on the French Riviera, where Binoche will be responsible for overseeing the main competition jury, comprised of an international crop of actors and filmmakers.

The iconic Binoche has been a Cannes mainstay since André Téchiné’s “Rendez-vous” made her the belle of the festival in 1985. That’s exactly 40 years ago come this year’s Cannes. In other words, Binoche was born at Cannes. She’s taken many projects to the festival, including the films of Michael Haneke and Claire Denis, and she won Best Actress for Abbas Kiarostami’s “Certified Copy” in 2010. Last year, she gave Meryl Streep (perhaps the equivalent of an actress of Binoche’s stature here in the United States) the Honorary Palme d’Or. In 2023, filmmaker Anh Hung Tran...

Touting her lifelong “love affair with the camera,” the Cannes Film Festival announced Monday that Oscar-winning actress Juliette Binoche has been named president of the 2025 main competition jury. The 78th edition of the festival will run from May 13th to 24th.

Binoche, 60, is the winner of best actress prizes from all three of the major international film festivals. She first walked on the Cannes red carpet with her early role in André Téchiné’s “Rendez-vous,” which caused a stir at Cannes 40 years ago.

The Paris-born actress quickly made her name as an international star, appearing in acclaimed French and English-language dramas such as “The Unbearable Lightness of Being,” “Three Colours: Blue,” “Damage” and “The English Patient,” for which she won an Oscar and a BAFTA in 1997.

“I’m looking forward to sharing [my] life experiences with the members of the jury and the public,” Binoche said in a statement. “In 1985, I...

Catherine Deneuve will preside over the 50th edition of the Cesar Awards, France’s equivalent to the Oscars.

As part of her honorary role as president of this milestone edition, Deneuve will be delivering the opening speech at the ceremony. The gala event will take place on Feb. 28 at the Olympia concert hall and will be broadcast on French pay TV group Canal+, a media partner of the Cesar Awards.

“Who better than an extraordinary actress to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Césars? Thanks to exceptional talent, a unique career and timeless grace, Catherine Deneuve embodies the very essence of the seventh art,” said the Académie des Arts et Techniques du Cinéma.

The French star, whose career spans nearly seven decades, has starred in a raft of iconic films directed by some of the world’s most revered filmmakers, from Luis Buñuel (“Belle de jour”) to François Truffaut (“Le Dernier Metro...

Tokyo International Film Festival has unveiled the international competition jury for its 37th edition.

Hong Kong filmmaker Johnnie To, French actress Chiara Mastroianni, Hungarian writer/director Ildiko Enyedi and Japanese actress Ai Hashimoto will join Hong Kong star Tony Leung, who was previously named this year’s jury president.

The full line-up of this year’s programme will be announced in late September ahead of the festival, which is set to run October 28 to November 6.

To is the acclaimed director of films such as Breaking News and Drug War and sat on the Berlinale international competition jury in 2023. He is also a regular at Cannes,...

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...

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...

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

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

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

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

by Eric Blume

A young Magimel in Benoît Jacquot's A Single Girl (1995).

This weekend, we’re celebrating one of French cinema’s greatest actors, Benoît Magimel, who turns 50 today.

Magimel exploded upon the industry in the mid 1990s, making a string of pictures right after his 21st birthday that involved collaborations with several big names. Benoît Jacquot used his broad, handsome face and hooded eyes to great effect in 1995’s A Single Girl opposite Virginie Ledoyen. The two actors have a truthful, easy spark between them that’s quintessential French post-teen. The next year, he was featured in the excellent Thieves, by then-huge director André Téchiné, alongside two of the country’s finest, Daniel Auteuil and Catherine Deneuve...

French producer Sylvie Pialat will replace Spanish director Rogrigo Sorogoyen as Cannes Critics’ Week president.

“Due to personal circumstances, and much to our regret, Rodrigo Sorogoyen has had to step down as president of the jury for the 63rd Semaine de la Critique,” Critics’ Week said on Saturday (May 11).

The 11th-hour changeover will also see French filmmaker Iris Kaltenback join the jury alongside previously announced members Rwandan actress Eliane Umuhire, Belgian director of photography Virginie Surdej, and Canadian journalist and film critic Ben Croll.

Pialat was originally on the jury, and will now act as the group’s president.

Pialat...

Exclusive: Goodfellas has acquired international rights for French director Gaël Morel’s drama To Live, To Die, To Live Again set against the AIDS epidemic in the early 1990s, ahead of its world premiere in Cannes.

Rising French actors Victor Belmondo, Lou Lampros and Théo Christine co-star as a romantically entwined trio whose youthful dalliance takes them into life-changing territory with the arrival of AIDS. While they expect the worse, the destiny of each character will take an unexpected turn.

Morel has taken inspiration from his own teenage fears around AIDS in the 1990s as well as research he did for a planned documentary on people who caught the virus and were saved at the last minute by the development of effective antiretroviral therapies.

Michèle Halberstadt and Laurent Pétin produced the film under the banner of their Paris-based film company Arp Sélection, which will also distribute the feature in France.

More than 100 men working in the French film world have written an open letter in support of the #MeToo movement.

Signatories include filmmakers Jacques Audiard, Abderrahmane Sissako, Cyril Dion, Eric Lartigau, and Emmanuel Mouret, alongside actors such as Mathieu Amalric, Anatomy Of A Fall’s Swann Arlaud, and Reda Kateb.

France Televisions’ head of cinema Manuel Alduy, producer Marc Missonnier, and designer Christian Lacroix have also added ther names.

The letter, spearheaded by actress Anouk Grinberg’s husband and mathematician Michel Broué and published on Elle magazine’s website, stated “it is revolting that theatre and cinema should be used...

More than 100 men working in the French film world have written an open letter in support of the #MeToo movement.

Signatories include filmmakers Jacques Audiard, Abderrahmane Sissako, Cyril Dion, Eric Lartigau, and Emmanuel Mouret, alongside actors such as Mathieu Amalric, Anatomy Of A Fall’s Swann Arlaud, and Reda Kateb.

France Televisions’ head of cinema Manuel Alduy, producer Marc Missonnier, and designer Christian Lacroix have also added ther names.

The letter, spearheaded by actress Anouk Grinberg’s husband and mathematician Michel Broué and published on Elle magazine’s website, stated “it is revolting that theatre and cinema should be used...

Hong Sansoo’s A Traveler’s Needs, starring Isabelle Huppert, has sold North American distribution rights to New York’s Cinema Guild.

The film premiered at the Berlin International Film Festival earlier this year, winning the Silver Bear Grand Jury Prize.

A Traveler’s Needs will premiere in North America later in 2024, after which Cinema Guild will release in theaters. The pic is a comedy with a strong Korean connection, with Huppert playing Iris, a woman struggling in Seoul who turns to teaching French to make ends meet. Regular collaborators Lee Hyeyoung and Kwon Haehyo also feature as Huppert’s student and flirty husband respectively.

Sangsoo and Huppert have collaborated twice before, on 2012 comedy-drama In Another Country and 2017’s Claire’s Camera.

“A Traveler’s Needs hits like a meteorite from another galaxy,” said Cinema Guild President Peter Kelly. “Huppert delivers a beguiling and hilarious performance. Her Iris is a character that only Hong and Huppert,...

Cannes’ Critics Week has rounded out the jury for its 63rd edition running running May 15-23.

The previously announced Spanish writer-director-producer Rodrigo Sorogoyen will preside over the festival’s parallel selection dedicated to first and second features alongside Rwandan actress Eliane Umuhire, French producer Sylvie Pialat, Belgian director of photography Virginie Surdej, and Canadian journalist and film critic Ben Croll.

Sorogoyen is known for psychological thriller The Beasts which premiered in the Cannes Premiere strand in 2022 and won nine Goya awards, plus 2019 drama Mother, 2018 Spanish-French thriller The Realm, 2016 crime thriller May God Save Us, 2013 romantic drama Stockholm, and 2008’s 8 Dates co-directed with Peris Romano.

Your Friends & Neighbors: Téchiné Tries for Ethical Sentiments

Now in his eighties, director André Téchiné continues his steady, perennial output with the humanist melodrama My New Friends. Though its English language feels a bit trite, the original French language Les gens d’à côté, which translates to People Next Door, better suggests the murkier sympathies derived through the inescapable propinquity of neighbors. Notably, the film is a reunion long time coming between Téchiné and his star Isabelle Huppert, who last worked together on 1979’s The Bronte Sisters, where she starred as Anne, opposite Isabelle Adjani and Marie-France Pisier.…...

The road to bad movies is often paved with good intentions, and that’s unfortunately the case with My New Friends (Les Gens d’à côté), a sappy social drama from seasoned French director André Téchiné.

Starring Isabelle Huppert as a grieving cop who finds herself living next door to an anti-police activist, the film tells a worthy and timely story, but strains credulity from the get-go and never manages to win us over.

Téchiné, who’s now 80, has had some hits and misses in his long career, which includes a string of arthouse successes from the 1990s (My Favorite Season, Wild Reeds and Thieves) that turned him into an esteemed international auteur. His most memorable recent work was the beautifully acted gay teen drama Being 17, which premiered in Berlin back in 2016. The three features he’s made since then have been less impressive.

On paper, My New Friends, which...

"The New Look" on Apple TV+ explores the rivalry between Christian Dior and Coco Chanel after World War II's end. The series follows Dior's rise to fame and his impact on women's fashion, revolutionizing Paris as a fashion capital. The star-studded cast includes Ben Mendelsohn, Juliette Binoche, Maisie Williams, and John Malkovich.

Apple TV+’s The New Look chronicles iconic French fashion designer Christian Dior’s rise to fame following World War II and his rivalry with the legendary Coco Chanel. The Apple TV+ series is named after his first fashion collection, which was launched in 1947, three years after France was liberated from Nazi occupation. The first few episodes of The New Look focus on the four years of occupation and the different approaches Coco and Christian took to their work and survival at the time.

The New Look was created by Todd A. Kessler, best known for his work on The Sopranos.

Today we feature an exclusive clip of veteran French filmmaker André Téchiné‘s latest oeuvre in My New Friends (aka Les Gens d’à côté) which will be unveiled in the Berlinale’s Panorama section. Formerly going by the title Dans le viseur or La révocation and filmed in late 2022, this drama stars Isabelle Huppert, Hafsia Herzi and Nahuel Perez Biscayart. Huppert plays the role of Lucie who is finds herself in a catch-22 type of situation where her moral linings clash with her ethical beliefs — it goes against her duties as a specialized technical and scientific police officer. Huppert and Herzi would actually re-team shortly after in Patricia Mazuy’s next directing gig, but here, as we see in the clip, we follow Herzi’s character confessing to Huppert’s Lucie that she is up to her neck with her better half not being able to walk in a straight...

A Different Man.The Berlinale have begun to announce the first few titles selected for the 74th edition of their festival, set to take place from February 15 through 21, 2024. This page will be updated as further sections are announced.COMPETITIONAnother End (Piero Messina)Architecton (Victor Kossakovsky)Black Tea (Abderrahmane Sissako)La Cocina (Alonso Ruiz Palacios) Dahomey (Mati Diop)A Different Man (Aaron Schimberg)The Empire (Bruno Dumont)Gloria! (Margherita Vicario)Suspended Time (Olivier Assayas)From Hilde, With Love (Andreas Dresen)My Favourite CakeLangue Etrangère (Claire Berger)Small Things Like These (Tim Mielants)Who Do I Belong To (Meryam Joobeur)Pepe (Nelson Carlos De Los Santos Arias)Shambhala (Min Bahadur Bham)Sterben (Matthias Glasner)Small Things Like These (Tim Mielants)A Traveler’s Needs (Hong Sang-soo)Sleep With Your Eyes Open. ENCOUNTERSArcadia (Yorgos Zois)Cidade; Campo (Juliana Rojas)Demba (Mamadou Dia)Direct ActionSleep With Your Eyes Open (Nele Wohlatz)The Fable (Raam Reddy...

Berlinale co-directors Carlo Chatrian and Mariette Rissenbeek are going out with a bang in their final year, with a lineup unveiled today featuring the latest works by Olivier Assayas, Bruno Dumont, Mati Diop, Hong Sang-soo, Abderrahmane Sissako, Jane Schoenbrun, Alonso Ruizpalacios, Matias Pineiro, Travis Wilkerson, Kazik Radwanski, Annie Baker, and more.

When the co-directors were asked by Screen Daily about their departure, Chatrian said, “It’s quite simple. Mariette and I had a mandate of five years. It is true that at the beginning I said that I was willing to go on because there was a shared will with the [German] Ministry [of Culture] to go on. But then the people who have the responsibility to see the future of the Berlinale thought this structure of two leaders was not the right one and I don’t consider myself able to run the festival alone. And that was the decision of the Ministry.

Martin Scorsese is going down as one of the most consistent directors ever, for no matter how you receive a movie of his, he still maintains his vision and his passion for the craft. The director has cemented himself in film culture with movies like Taxi Driver, Goodfellas, Raging Bull, etc. At 81 years old, Scorsese is still garnering acclaim and accolades for his latest film, Killers of the Flower Moon, which is also featuring a breakout performance by Golden Globe-winner Lily Gladstone. Scorsese would recently receive a special Best Director Award from the National Board of Review, which would bring his former Gangs of New York star, Daniel Day-Lewis, into the public spotlight.

Variety is reporting that Scorsese is set to be honored at the Berlin Film Festival next month with a Golden Bear Award. His ceremony will also be screening his film The Departed. Interestingly, The Departed is also...

The Berlin Film Festival is staying true to its political roots.

The 74th Berlinale on Wednesday unveiled its Panorama, Generation and Forum sidebars, and the selection is packed with features and documentaries with a strong political bent, as is to be expected from a fest that prides itself on the social relevance of its official lineup.

Gender roles and gender politics are in focus in several of the Panorama titles, including the section’s opening film Crossing from director Levan Akin (And Then We Danced), in which an unlikely duo travels to Istanbul in search of a young trans woman; the Norwegian feature Sex from Dag Johan Haugerud, about two chimney sweeps living in monogamous, heterosexual marriages whose experiences change their views on sexuality; Bruce Labruce’s The Visitor, a provocative remake of Pier Paolo Pasolini’s 1968 classic Teorema; and Anthony Schatteman’s debut feature Young Hearts, a Generation Kplus title,...

The Berlinale has announced the full line-ups of its Panorama, Forum and Generation sidebars for the 74th edition running from February 15 to 24. (scroll down for full list)

Panorama will showcase 31 titles including one series and 25 world premieres.

Highlights include Swedish-Georgian director Levan Akin’s Crossing, his first feature since 2019 Cannes breakout And Then We Danced, which opens the selection.

The drama revolves around a retired teacher whose search for her long-lost niece Tekla takes her to Istanbul where she becomes acquainted with a trans rights lawyer.

Other buzzy titles set for a world premiere include André Téchiné’s My New Friends, starring Isabelle Huppert as a solitary police officer, and and Myriam El Hajj’s documentary Diaries From Lebanon, following three people as they navigate their country on the brink of revolution.

A number of Sundance titles will also be making a Panorama splash including Nathan Silver’s Between The Temples,...

The Berlinale has completed the lineup for its Panorama, Generation, Forum and Forum expanded sections, with new films from Levan Akin and Andre Techine, plus the debut feature of US playwright Annie Baker.

Swedish filmmaker Akin, who scored an international hit in 2019 with And Then We Danced, will open the Panorama strand with Crossing, about two people travelling from Georgia to Istanbul in search of a young transgender woman.

Scroll down for the full list of Panorama, Generation and Forum features

Also among the 31 films in Panorama are My New Friends from French filmmaker Techine, starring Isabelle Hupert, Hafsia Herzi...

When Martin Scorsese is lauded with Berlin Film Festival’s Honorary Golden Bear next month, the awards ceremony will be accompanied by a screening of his 2006 film “The Departed.”

The crime thriller, which won four Oscars including best picture and director, stars Leonardo DiCaprio, Matt Damon, Jack Nicholson and Mark Wahlberg. The film tells the story of an Irish mob boss who plants a spy within the Massachusetts State Police just as the police assign an undercover cop to infiltrate the gang. What follows is a race to expose the other’s identity first.

The Berlinale on Wednesday also announced that Levan Akin’s “Crossing” will open this year’s Panorama section, which will focus on “bridges between lived experiences and cinematic possibilities.” “Crossing” follows an unlikely duo who travel “from Batumi, Georgia to the urban, labyrinthine Istanbul in search of a young trans woman named Tekla,” according to the fest’s description.

Pyramide is also handling the directorial debut of Johanna Pyykkö, former assistant to Joachim Trier.

Paris-based Pyramide International has acquired Emmanuel Mouret’s comedy drama Une Honnête Femme, starring Camille Cottin, Sara Forestier and India Hair.

It will launch the film at next week’s Rendez-Vous in Paris, along with Thierry de Peretti’s drama A Son Image and Johanna Pyykkö’s My Wonderful Stranger.

Une Honnête Femme zooms in on three friends with different views on love – one who has just left a relationship, one who advocates for a relationship without love, and one who sees love as an adventure.

Pyramide is also handling the directorial debut of Johanna Pyykkö, former assistant to Joachim Trier.

Paris-based Pyramide International has acquired Emmanuel Mouret’s comedy drama Une Honnete Femme, starring Camille Cottin, Sara Forestier and India Hair.

It will launch the film at next week’s Rendez-Vous in Paris, along with Thierry de Peretti’s drama A Son Image and Johanna Pyykkö’s My Wonderful Stranger.

Une Honnête Femme zooms in on three friends with different views on love – one who has just left a relationship, one who advocates for a relationship without love, and one who sees love as an adventure.

Pyramide is also handling the directorial debut of Johanna Pyykkö, former assistant to Joachim Trier.

Paris-based Pyramide International has acquired Emmanuel Mouret’s comedy drama Une Honnete Femme, starring Camille Cottin, Sara Forestier and India Hair.

It will launch the film at next week’s Rendez-Vous in Paris, along with Thierry de Peretti’s feature documentary A Son Image and Johanna Pyykkö’s My Wonderful Stranger.

Une Honnête Femme zooms in on three friends with different views on love – one who has just left a relationship, one who advocates for a relationship without love, and one who sees love as an adventure.

No reasonably intelligent person imagines an artist’s statement about the horrors in Gaza would, in fact, end those horrors, but there are always limits to what one can take and hopes for what one could do. It might even be said that, as observers of the world and human behavior, filmmakers are especially inclined to recoil. When I interviewed Pedro Costa last month he spoke, unprompted, of a situation that’s only grown worse: “It’s very clear that we cannot stand images anymore. I can’t. I can’t. The images of the world for me [Exhales] I can’t. I turn my eyes, and I’m sure you do the same. It’s unbearable.” When I spoke with Anthony Dod Mantle a couple of weeks later it, again, emerged––vis-a-vis The Zone of Interest, whose own cinematographer alluded to it the next day. It’s difficult being a person in the world,...

Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.NEWSSubscribe to Notebook magazine before November 1 to receive Issue 4, which explores cinematic soundscapes in their diverse sonic forms and includes contributions from filmmakers like Pedro Costa, Garrett Bradley, and Dominga Sotomayor, pop musician Julia Holter, plus a wide range of artists, writers, and scholars. Subscribers will also receive with this issue a very special gift, a seven-inch record featuring a song by filmmaker Gus Van Sant and a field recording by sound designer Leslie Shatz.This week brought the sad, shocking news that the legendary Taiwanese director Hou Hsiao-hsien has retired from filmmaking due to illness. Hou's family confirmed in a statement that he is battling Alzheimer's, and the effects of long Covid have forced him to stop making films; they requested privacy during this time, adding that he is healthy overall, in the presence of family.

Locarno Film Festival runs August 2-12.

French actor Lambert Wilson has been named president of the jury at the upcoming Locarno Film Festival (August 2-12).

The prolific actor and his fellow jurors will award the summertime Swiss festival’s Golden Leopard Pardo d’oro to one of the yet-to-be-ennounced titles in the festival’s international competition.

Locarno’s artistic director Giona A. Nazzaro said Wilson, who has worked with top French filmmakers during his decades long career including Claude Chabrol, Jacques Demy, Andrzej Żuławski and André Techiné, “has left a lasting mark on European and international cinema” and called him “ versatile performer,...

Lambert Wilson Named President Of Locarno Jury

The Matrix franchise actor Lambert Wilson will be the President of the Jury at the 76th Locarno Film Festival this year. The French star will chair the panel, which will award the Pardo d’oro (Golden Leopard) to the winning film on the final night of the Switzerland fest. Wilson has worked with many top European directors, such as Claude Chabrol, Andrzej Żuławski and André Téchiné, and is best known in the U.S. for his role as the Merovingian in The Matrix Reloaded, The Matrix Revolutions and The Matrix Resurrections. His acting credits include Julia, La Boum 2 and Five Days One Summer. Recently he appeared in Prime Video series Totem and starred in Éric Besnard’s Les Choses Simples. The Locarno Film Festival will run from August 2-12.

Cineflix Launches First Fast Channels

UK-based Cineflix Rights is the latest distributor to...

Rights to ‘Man in Black,” one of two documentary films by China’s Wang Bing to appear in Official Selection at Cannes this year, have been picked up by specialty sales agency Asian Shadows.

The 60-minute film, which will debut as a special screening, is a portrait of 86-year-old Wang Xilin, one of China’s most important modern classical composers and is now lives in exile in Germany. It was made in close collaboration with French cinematographer Caroline Champetier, whose credits include Leos Carax’s “Holy Motors,” Amos Gitai’s “Promised Land” and Andre Techine’s “Alice and Martin.”

During the 1960s, when China’s Cultural Revolution forced intellectuals into the fields and stripped the middle classes of their wealth, Wang Xilin was the was the target of severe persecution, including beatings, imprisonment and torture. The film examines the body and soul of a man scarred by a life of suffering,...

The Cannes Film Festival has unveiled the poster for the 76th edition featuring none other than Gallic cinema icon Catherine Deneuve.

The black and white photo pictures the noted performer in the film “La Chamade” (Heartbeat), directed by Alain Cavalier. Shot in 1968 on Pampelonne beach, near Saint-Tropez, the film stars Deneuve as Lucile, who the festival describes as living a “worldly and superficial life, tinged with ease and a taste for luxury. Her heart beats frantically, hurriedly, passionately.”

Cannes official 2023 poster featuring Catherine Deneuve

The festival called her “an embodiment of cinema, far from what is conventional or appropriate. Without compromise and always in tune with her convictions, even if it means going against the grain of the times,” recalling that Deneuve has been the muse of filmmakers including Jacques Demy, Agnès Varda, Luis Buñuel, François Truffaut, Marco Ferreri, Manoel de Oliveira, André Téchiné, Emmanuelle Bercot and Arnaud Desplechin.

In...

The Cannes Film Festival has unveiled the poster for its upcoming 76th edition which pays tribute to iconic French actress Catherine Deneuve. Scroll down to see it.

The image shows Deneuve standing on Pampelonne beach, near Saint-Tropez, for the shoot of Alain Cavalier’s 1968 romantic drama Heartbeat (La Chamade), adapted from the novel by Françoise Sagan.

Deneuve stars as a beautiful woman who oscillates between her older businessman lover and a charming young man of her own age, played by Michel Piccoli and Roger Van Hool.

“She plays Lucile, who leads a worldly and superficial life, tinged with ease and a taste for luxury. Her heart beats frantically, hurriedly, passionately,” said the festival in a statement. “Like the heart of cinema that the Festival de Cannes celebrates every year: its lively and embodied pulse can be heard everywhere. The heart of the 7th Art – of its artists, professionals, amateurs, press – beats like a drum,...

Screen’s team looks at which titles are lining up for a potential slot in either Official Selection or one of the parallel sections.

Speculation is mounting about which titles could make the line-up for the 76th edition of the Cannes Film Festival, which runs May 16-27 this year.

The submission process for Official Selection officially closes on March 21, ahead of the traditional Paris press conference in mid-April (the date is currently to be confirmed).

As filmmakers, producers and sales agents scramble to submit final titles, Screen’s team assesses which films from around the world are lining up for...

Running Jan. 10-17, Unifrance’s Rendez-Vous in Paris – an export focused market that unites buyers, producers, talent and press from film and television – will fête its 25th edition with a return to pre-pandemic (in-person) attendance numbers, and a once-more ebullient social calendar, rife with the cocktails, awards ceremonies and evening events that fell by the wayside over the past few vintages.

“We’ll have a renewed effervescence,” says Unifrance director of cinema, Gilles Renouard, of this year’s event. “People are finding each other again, [and] our goal was to get back toward a normal edition with our European distributors.”

Indeed, with 87 films brought to market and more than 400 international film distributors present, such figures mark highs unseen since 2019 – with those numbers bolstered by 100 TV buyers, who have come onboard once Unifrance merged with TV France International in 2021, thus creating a one-stop-shop for film and TV promotion.

“Our objective is not to increase each year,...

Les âmes soeurs

For his thirtieth feature film, the great André Téchiné filmed in two seasonal time frames (in June of ’21 and the following winter of southwestern France’s Ariège region) for a drama (or possible melodrama) that sounds nestled in human relations. Formerly known as Les Pieds sur Terre, Téchiné collected Noémie Merlant and Benjamin Voisin who topline with supporting players of Audrey Dana and André Marcon on board. Les âmes soeurs (aka Soul Mates) could make for a strong competition slot bid at the Berlinale before its late March domestic release at home.

Gist: A lieutenant from a contingent of the French army stationed in Mali, who is seriously injured when his armoured vehicle explodes.…...

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Thirty-three-year-old French director Léa Mysius launched onto the international scene with her 2017 debut, Ava, the story of a teenager slowly losing her sight, which won the Sacd Award at the Cannes festival’s Critics’ Week and was a hit at the French box office.

Her ambitious follow-up, The Five Devils, moves closer to genre territory with the story of Vicky (Sally Dramé), a young girl with a magical sense of smell who is able to transport herself into the buried memories of her mother (Adèle Exarchopoulos) and her love affair with Vicky’s father’s sister Julia (Swala Emati). Besides directing, Mysius is a busy screenwriter, working with Claire Denis on her Cannes Grand Jury prize winner Stars at Noon, and contributing to Jacques Audiard’s Paris, 13th District, Arnaud Desplechin’s Oh Mercy! and André Téchiné’s Farewell to the Night. The Five Devils,...

A restored version of Iván Zulueta’s ground-breaking 1979 film “Arrebato” (“Rapture”) is screening at the Lumière Festival’s International Classic Film Market (Mifc) in Lyon, France, thanks to Los Angeles distributor Altered Innocence and Madrid’s Mercury Films.

The cult film, considered a milestone in Spanish cinema from the post-Franco years, is seen as metaphor for how directors can be consumed by filmmaking. It centers on José, a frustrated low-budget horror movie director trying to complete a film while struggling with drug addiction. When he receives a package from past acquaintance Pedro — a Super-8 film reel and audiotape – José soon finds himself sucked back into the eccentric young man’s vampiric orbit.

“‘Arrebato’ has such a rich mix of horror influences, punk aesthetics, arthouse vibes, and queer cinema history that audiences can’t help being enraptured by this total gem of a film,” says Frank Jaffe, founder and head of Altered Innocence.

After shoring up in Jerzy Skolimowski’s Eo, Isabelle Huppert will now work with another octogenarian in horror helmer Dario Argento. Currently showcasing Dark Glasses at the Sitges Film Festival, we got some surprise news (via chaosreign) that Argento is prepping for a Spring shoot in Paris next year. He mentions that it is a remake of a Mexican film from the 40s – a country that made their own gothic and horror films beginning in the 30s. We’ll await further producer and casting in the months to come. Huppert has several items that are in the works François Ozon’s Mon Crime, André Téchiné’s La révocation, Patricia Mazuy’s Portraits trompeurs and Elise Girard’s Sidonie In Japan.…...

France is struggling to adapt to changing audience habits.

The French film world is gearing up for a second week of high-stakes drama as two key industry-wide meetings aim to take on the windows issue and, in a related move, France’s cherished independent film financing model.

They come hot on the heels of a week that saw France’s big three free-to-air broadcasters slam the US streamers in a letter in ‘Le Monde’, the Cnc was forced to defend its president Dominque Boutonnat, following news he would stand trial for sexual assault, and an industry backlash against the latest...