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French sales outfit Ginger & Fed has unveiled a first look at EFM market title Gregory Gadebois inLes Miserables: The Story of JeanValjean,Eric Besnard’s prequel to Victor Hugo’s legendary novel.

The film followsValjeanafter he is released from prison embittered, ostracised and considered a danger to society until he meets a kind bishop whose humanity inspires him to become a better man.

Shooting kicked off in France in January and features a starry local cast including Bernard Campan, Isabelle Carré and Alexandra Lamy. It is Besnard’s follow-up to 2024 historical dramaLouise Violetthat also stars Gadebois and Lamy.

Mediawan-owned Radar Films produces,...

Cheers! Bernard Campan and Isabelle Carré in Ivan Calbérac’s The Tasting Photo: UniFrance If there is one moniker that Ivan Caldérac, playwright, film director, producer and script doctor, would be delighted to assume it would be “wordsmith”.

Unlike many in the profession he loves writing, can barely find a keyboard that keeps up with his bursts of creativity and is even happy to help friends who may have writer’s block as well as hiring out his talents on a professional basis.

He has made something of speciality of transferring his hit stage plays to the screen such as The Tasting (La Dégustation) about an odd couple. They comprise: Jacques, whose wine business is on the brink of bankruptcy, and Hortense, a nurse with a penchant for babies, who stumbles into his shop and eventually reveals she is determined to find love and have a child of her own.

Easygoing tale has Hortense meet Jacques while buying a bottle at his shop, but the real star is the picturesque setting of Troyes

Chateau average? There’s not much complexity to this romantic comedy about love in middle-age, set in the medieval city of Troyes in France’s Champagne region. It’s easy-going but lacking a bit of oomph, and the comedy never properly fizzes. Isabelle Carré and Bernard Campan give warm, likable performances as a couple meeting in their 40s; he owns a wine shop, she’s a midwife. But the real star is Troyes itself, with its cobbled alleyways, surrounded by vineyards. You might find yourself planning a mini-break during the slower bits.

Carré plays midwife Hortense as an interesting and believable contradiction of eager-to-please and spiky – though there’s something a bit off in the script’s depiction of her as single woman desperately filling up her spare time: choir practice,...

Jean Valjean is basically a superhero already (he lifts a whole cart off a guy by himself at one point), and now he's getting the requisite origin story to boot. Anyone who's ever so much as breathed near a theater kid knows that the Les Misérables protagonist steals a loaf...

The origin story of Jean Valjean, the iconic protagonist of Victor Hugo’s masterpiece “Les Misérables,” is being brought to the bigscreen by Éric Besnard, the French director of 18th-century set movie “Delicieux.”

The movie, which just started filming on Jan. 14 amid the lush landscapes of Southern France, has been boarded by Federations Studios’ sales label Ginger & Fed spearheaded by Sabine Chemaly. The project is being teased to buyers at the Unifrance Rendez-Vous in Paris which kicked off on Monday (Jan. 13).

“Valjean” reteams Besnard with French actor Gregory Gadebois who starred in his previous film, the 19th-century set movie “Louise Violet.” Gadebois stars as Valjean, opposite Bernard Campan, Isabelle Carré and Alexandra Lamy.

Clément Miserez and Matthieu Warter at Mediawan-owned banner Radar Films is producing. Warner Bros. France will release the film locally. France 3 Cinéma is a co-producer. “Valjean” is also backed by Ciné+, Ocs, HBO Max,...

A French comedy following an oddball duo on an unconventional road trip and an Australian documentary about four refugees that compete in the World Wine Blind Tasting Championships have topped the audience awards at this year’s Sydney Film Festival.

Bernard Campan and Alexandre Jollien’s Beautiful Minds and Robert Coe and Warwick Ross’ Blind Ambition were voted number one feature film and documentary respectively, following the announcement of the official awards on Sunday.

Inspired by the real-life experiences of Jollien, Beautiful Minds details an unlikely friendship between workaholic funeral director Louis (Campan) and Igor (Jollien), a grocery worker with cerebral palsy, as a chance encounter leads them on a journey across France, during which they discuss everything from Nietzsche to being pigeon-holed.

France also features heavily in Blind Ambition as the setting for World Wine Blind Tasting Championships that Zimbabweans Joseph, Tinashe, Marlvin, and Pardon set out to attend.

Film is inspired by the experiences of co-director Alexandre Jollien who was born with cerebral palsy.

Paris-based sales company Elle Driver has sealed a slew of deals on Bernard Campan and Alexandre Jollien’s pioneering French comedy-drama Beautiful Minds, following its launch as the European Film Market at the beginning of March.

Campan and Jollien co-star as a workaholic funeral director and a solitary vegetable delivery man and philosopher born with cerebral palsy, who embark on a road trip in a hearse.

European deals include to Benelux (Cineart), Spain, Cis (Paradise Film Distribution), Poland (Monolith), Germany (X-Verleih), Israel, Italy (Notorious Pictures...

’Beautiful Minds’ is inspired by the real-life experiences of co-director Alexandre Jollien who was born with cerebral palsy but overcame his disabilities to study philosophy

Elle Driver has launched sales on Bernard Campan and Alexandre Jollien’s pioneering French comedy-drama Beautiful Minds, about a workaholic funeral director and a solitary vegetable delivery man and philosopher born with cerebral palsy, who embark on a road trip in a hearse.

It is inspired by the real-life experiences of Jollien who was born with cerebral palsy but overcame his disabilities to study philosophy and become became a major thinker and spiritual teacher, who has written several best-selling books.

The French actor-director and the Swiss philosopher are fine-tuning a film they’ve directed and acted in together, produced by Pan-Européenne and Jmh. Halted mid-March on account of the health crisis, filming on Almost by France’s Bernard Campan and Switzerland’s Alexandre Jollien wrapped in June following a two-week film shoot in the French department of Hérault. This is the 4th feature film directed by actor Bernard Campan (the winner of 1996’s Best First Film César for Les trois frères and nominated for the Best Actor César in 2003 via Beautiful Memories) and the first cinematic foray of writer and philosopher Alexandre Jollien, who was born with a cerebral-motor disability, spent 17 years of his life in a specialised institution - all the while managing to keep up with his schooling - and went on to study philosophy...

New projects by Ali Abbasi, Juho Kuosmanen, Santiago Mitre and Lisandro Alonso get funding, while the mandate of executive director Roberto Olla is renewed for a new term starting on July 2020. At its 157th meeting held from 9 to 12 December in Berlin, the Board of Management of the Council of Europe's Eurimages Fund agreed to support 15 fiction films and one documentary project for a total amount of €3,399,600. The share of eligible projects with female directors examined at this Eurimages Board of Management meeting was 14.71%; 18.75% of the projects supported were directed by women; €764 000 was awarded to these projects, representing 22.47% of the total amount awarded. The projects selected: Margrete - Queen of the North - Charlotte Sieling (Denmark/Sweden/Norway/Poland)The Blue Star - Javier Macipe (Spain/Argentina)Almost - Bernard Campan, Alexandre Jollien (France/Switzerland)Compartment Number 6 - Juho Kuosmanen (Finland/Estonia/Germany)Matadero - Santiago Fillol...

Pierre Javaux Prods.

Montreal World Film Festival

MONTREAL -- Former film journalist and scriptwriter Marc Esposito's directorial debut was a big crowd-pleaser in French-speaking Montreal, where it played in competition. The dialogue is often witty and performances are certainly crisp, but a very talky script (by Esposito) and a story line that focuses wholly on domestic ructions will mean that it's too ordinary a picture to do much business outside of French-speaking territories.

"French Men" details the various midlife crises of four male friends: Alex (Marc Lavoine), a habitual philanderer whose sexploits are starting to interfere with his otherwise happy marriage

Jeff (Gerard Darmon), a separated fiftysomething who's having a fun-filled relationship with a much younger woman

Manu (Jean-Pierre Darroussin), a lonely shopkeeper who falls into an unexpected affair

and Antoine (Bernard Campan), a troubled husband who ditches his wife when he discovers that she had a one-night stand. The story follows each of their adventures and uses the distressed Antoine's marital strife -- should he or shouldn't he divorce? -- as an emotional core.

The script offers an impressive array of one-liners, and the ensemble cast works hard to keep things moving. All four men come across as quite charming in spite of their peccadilloes, and the setup would have certainly have made an attractive television drama. But on the big screen, the material's just too thin. More backstory about how they all met and managed to remain friends despite differing lifestyles would have helped add depth.

"French Men" is very much a "boy's own" film. Women are presented as an array of stereotypes which include jealous wives, adoring younger girlfriends, sexy office flirts and the like. Jeff's girlfriend even pretends to be a machine so that he can rewind her to give him a hug, a scene which sums up the film's attitude toward women.

Structurally, Esposito manages to interlock the four stories with some skill. But last year's Montreal crowd-pleaser "See How They Run" -- also a French-language ensemble piece -- examined similar problems with more verve and originality.