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Every streaming service offers a wide range of films from many genres to watch, but only Criterion Channel adds films to its library based on their cinematic or cultural significance. Founded in 1984, the Criterion Collection focuses on preserving and restoring films deemed important or worthy of further attention. In 2019, the company launched the Criterion Channel as a means to house its film library online.

Celebrated by cinephiles and academics alike, Criterion Channel has become the king of all streaming services in terms of the quality of content it features, especially when it comes to older films. Criterion defines itself as an arbiter of taste, creating a canon of noteworthy cinema.

However, with over 3,000 films available on the platform, it's challenging to know where to begin. Just because a film has been deemed important or in need of restoration doesn't necessarily mean it's good, as film taste is inherently subjective. Keep...

In 1978, journalist Elizabeth Becker was one of three westerners granted permission to enter Cambodia while under the communist rule of the Khmer Rouge. “We were all conscious of our role as singular witnesses of the revolution,” she writes in When the War Was Over. “And, perhaps, of the war everyone was predicting.” Oddly enough, when they arrived in Phnom Penh, apart from armed guards who accompanied them wherever they went, the city was deserted of any signs of life, “a tropical twilight zone.” It was no longer the vibrant city she had once known. They were expected to have a meeting with the party’s dictator––the ambiguous, charismatic Pol Pot––but soon they learned not to believe what they were being told: that the facade, which appeared to have been created just for them, was beginning to crack.

Inspired by this singular sojourn, Rithy Panh’s Meeting With Pol...

In Rithy Panh’s Meeting with Pol Pot, three French journalists are invited to meet with Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot in 1978. Looking to discover the truth, they find themselves made accomplices of an elaborate public relations effort meant to hide the regime’s atrocities from the outside world. Loosely based on Elizabeth Becker’s When the War Was Over, the film is hard-hitting yet illusive, much like the story its characters are hunting.

Largely confined to an unused airstrip, the journalists are led through a series of stilted presentations on the magical land of equality now known as “Democratic Kampuchea.” Asking repeatedly when they can interview “Brother #1,” the journalists are instead invited to take pictures of the ascetic quarters where Pol Pot supposedly sleeps. A copy of Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s The Social Contract is ostensibly displayed to impress the French visitors. In response to a question about where the intellectuals have gone,...

Cambodian filmmaker Rithy Panh will serve as jury president of the international competition at the 78th Locarno Film Festival in August.

“Cinema offers the opportunity to discover new perspectives, cultures and stories,” Panh said. “If we have patience, cinema rewards us with its grace. Cinema can also preserve history, influence mindsets, and provide a space for reflection and escape. I am convinced that the diversity of viewpoints and narrative experiences enriches our understanding of the world. As the president of the jury, I wish to highlight films that celebrate this diversity and offer unique perspectives.”

Giona A. Nazzaro, Locarno’s artistic director, said: “Rithy Panh is widely regarded as a key figure in 20th-century cinema. His gaze has reinvented the forms of contemporary filmmaking, creating a historiography in images that has exerted an incalculable influence on countless film directors.

“As an authoritative witness of our time, his passionate search for truth,...

Rithy Panh, the Cambodian filmmaker and “chronicler of his country’s traumas and gradual social recovery,” will serve as jury president of the Locarno Film Festival’s main competition jury, the Concorso Internazionale, overseeing the process that will decide the winner of the Pardo d’Oro, or Golden Leopard, at the 78th edition of the Swiss festival this summer.

“Acclaimed around the world for his investigations into Cambodian history both during and after the years of the Khmer Rouge dictatorship, Rithy Panh is one of contemporary cinema’s most courageous and consistent defenders of artistic freedom and an indefatigable champion of the power of historical truth,” the fest said. “Since 1994, his feature films have been acclaimed around the world, giving voice to those whose lives were destroyed through horrifying state violence.”

His most recent film, Meeting With Pol Pot (2024), starring Irène Jacob and Grégoire Colin, debuted last year at the Cannes Film Festival.

Cambodian filmmaker Rithy Panh is to serve as jury president of the international competition at this year’s Locarno Film Festival, which takes place August 6-16.

Panh is known for investigations into Cambodian history both during and after the years of the Khmer Rouge dictatorship. His most recent film, Meeting with Pol Pot, starring Irène Jacob and Grégoire Colin, debuted last year at Cannes.

His very first feature documentary Site 2 in 1989, about a refugee camp on the Cambodian-Thai border, won an award at the Festival of Amiens. He also picked the top prize for Un Certain Regard in Cannes with...

MobLand season 1 episode 7, "Crossroads," might be my favorite of the season thus far, as it finally brings us into the heart of this crime family war. Spoilers below.

While episode 6 kept us glued to the screen for its revelatory insight in the wake of Vron’s (Annie Cooper) death, this week’s episode brings some heated action that is heart-pounding, nerve-wracking, and full of absolute carnage. Brendan (Daniel Betts) only thought he saw carnage as he and Seraphina (Mandeep Dhillon) were being kidnapped, but he has no idea what awaits him.

Episode 7 on Paramount+ has a lot going on, but our main focus is, of course, on Brendan and Seraphina, as well as Harry’s (Tom Hardy) efforts to find and save them, which also yields total f-ing carnage. Before we recap that, let’s set the stage.

Bella (Lara Pulver) defies Harry’s request to put her business with...

This post contains spoilers from MobLand season 1 episode 4, “Rat Trap.”

The deeper we get into MobLand, the more I feel for Harry (Tom Hardy). He has the weight of the world on his shoulders and is the only thing preventing the fury between two powerful, ready-for-war crime families from unleashing, as both use him to their full advantage.

While episode 3 saw Harry working overtime to keep the warring waters smooth as police received an anonymous tip about where to find Archie’s (Alex Jennings) body, episode 4 sees him go from being a fixer to a suspected rat.

Additionally, Richie (Geoff Bell) makes a decision about Valjon (Peter Ferdinando), a new (suspicious) character claiming to be an old friend of Harry’s shows up, and we're inundated with a bounty of shocking revelations that expose both traumatic secrets and massive secrets, including the full truth behind Tommy’s (Felix Edwards) death.

If you’re hungry for another Gothic vampire period piece in the wake of Nosferatu, sink your fangs into The Vourdalak on Blu-ray on April 8 from Oscilloscope Laboratories.

The 2023 French film is adapted from Aleksey Konstantinovich Tolstoy’s 1839 novella The Family of the Vourdalak, which predates Bram Stoker’s Dracula by over half a century.

Adrien Beau makes his feature directorial debut from a script he co-wrote with Hadrien Bouvier.

Special Features:

Behind the scenes Les condiments irréguliers – 2011 short film by Adrien Beau La petite sirène – 2011 short film by Adrien Beau Theatrical trailer

The film is presented presented with 5.1 surround stereo sound in French with English subtitles.

When the Marquis d’Urfé, a noble emissary of the King of France, is attacked and abandoned in the remote countryside, he finds refuge at an eerie, isolated manor. The resident family, reluctant to take him in, exhibits strange behavior as they await...

As one of the most prolific and successful mystery writers of the past 30 years, it's unsurprising that many of Harlan Coben's novels have been adapted for the small screen by a streamer like Netflix. Featuring more twists and turns than a country lane, Coben's stories are perfectly suited to the miniseries format. However, some have been more successful than others. Of the eight Coben books so far adapted, most have enjoyed a generally positive critical reception.

Productions of Safe, The Stranger, The Woods, The Innocent, Stay Close, and Fool Me Once have all been rated as "Fresh" on the review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes – further highlighting just how suited Coben's writing is to television. However, the burgeoning Coben-verse hasn't been a total success. Gone for Good and Hold Tight have both failed to impress critics, while other shows have been more polarizing than their overall critical scores suggest.

Harlan Coben's...

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If you are a horror fan then there is a big chance that you might have heard about the horror streaming service Shudder, and if you have its subscription you might be wondering what’s in store for you in January 2025. Don’t worry there is a host of new and old horror movies coming to the service in the upcoming month and we have listed the 10 best movies coming to Shudder in January 2025.

The Others (January 1) Credit – Dimension Films

The Others is a gothic supernatural psychological horror film written and directed by Alejandro Amenabar. The 2001 film follows Grace as she moves in a Jersey house with her three children but she soon begins experiencing strange occurrences and becomes convinced that the house is haunted. The Others stars Nicole Kidman, Fionnula Flanagan, Christopher Eccleston, Elaine Cassidy, Eric Sykes,...

"We are so lucky to visit this country at a key moment of its history" Strand Releasing has unveiled the official trailer for Meeting with Pol Pot, a French drama made by acclaimed Cambodian filmmaker Rithy Panh. Yet another film about his homeland and the horrors they went through during the era of Pol Pot and Khmer Rouge. Based on a true story, three French journalists travel to Cambodia in 1978 after receiving an invitation from the Khmer Rouge regime (all without realizing the atrocities his regime was perpetuating), embarking on a perilous adventure. Under the eyes of the journalists, the beautiful picture of communist Cambodia cracks, revealing the horror. Their journey progressively turns into a nightmare... Meeting with Pol Pot was freely inspired by journalist Elizabeth Becker's account in the book "When The War Was Over". The indie film stars Irène Jacob, Grégoire Colin, and Cyril Gueï. This initially...

The Marrakech Film Festival unveiled its 2024 lineup on Thursday and set that Luca Guadagnino would replace Thomas Vinterberg as its jury president. The other jury members will be Andrew Garfield, Jacob Elordi, Virginie Efira, and Ali Abbasi. Vinterberg “had to excuse himself for family reasons,” festival organizers said.

The Marrakech fest on Thursday also unveiled the lineup for its competition, 11th Continent, and Moroccan Panorama sections, as well as gala and special screenings. In the competition, 14 films will compete for the Étoile d’Or, or Golden Star.

The 21st edition of the fest in Morocco will also honor Sean Penn, David Cronenberg and, posthumously, pay homage to Moroccan star Naïma Elmcherqui. The Marrakech fest takes place Nov. 29-Dec. 7.

Check out the full lineup for the 2024 edition below.

Competition

Across The Sea (LA Mer Au Loin)

by Saïd Hamich Benlarbi / France, Morocco, Belgium

with Ayoub Gretaa, Anna Mouglalis, Grégoire Colin, Omar Boulakirba,...

Strand Releasing has acquired all North American rights to Rithy Panh’s “Meeting With Pol Pot” which world premiered at the Cannes Film Festival and represents Cambodia in the international feature film race.

Sold by Playtime, the film is based on real events chronicled by American war journalist Elizabeth Becker in her book “When the War Was Over: Cambodia and The Khmer Rouge Revolution.”

The film, which stars Irene Jacob as Becker, charts the deadly journey of two journalists and an academic who travel to Democratic Kampuchea in the midst of Pol Pot’s dictatorship after accepting an invitation from the regime. The cast is completed by Gregoire Colin and Cyril Guei.

It marks the fourth collaboration between Panh and Strand Releasing who previously teamed on “The Missing Pictures” which went on to earn an Oscar nomination in 2013, followed by “Exile” and “Irradiated” which premiered at the Berlin International Film...

“The first version is the work of a talented amateur,” said Alfred Hitchcock to François Truffaut of his 1934 thriller “The Man Who Knew Too Much,” remade by Hitch himself in 1956. “The second was made by a professional.” Few are the filmmakers who gather sufficient career mileage and goodwill to take a second pass at their own work; fewer are those who make something worthwhile in the process. But Kiyoshi Kurosawa, not unlike Hitchcock, is the kind of tireless genre craftsman who seems to approach every feature as a test of his own proficiency: “Serpent’s Path,” a brisk, harsh and, yes, clinically professional update of his own 1998 thriller of the same title, passes said test without a moment’s strain.

There’s no urgent reason to remake “Serpent’s Path” except, one presumes, the primarily self-serving pleasures of doing so. The original, a cold-blooded little revenge tale that twists itself into ever more perverse psychological contortions,...

A foppish French aristocrat encounters a clan of peasants and their blood-sucking patriarch in a deliriously camp period yarn

Ageing and death are perhaps the foundation of all horror, but this droll French chamber piece, adapted from an 1839 novella by Aleksey Tolstoy, puts a devious spin on that. The titular “vourdalak” – a kind of Mitteleuropean vampire – is Gorcha, wizened patriarch of a family of forest-dwelling peasants, who is driven to feed on the blood of those he loves the most. With the film incarnating this beastie in the form of a toothy puppet resembling Norman Tebbit (voiced by director Adrian Beau), it’s a cruel but funny metaphor for parental authority and late-life dependency. Obviously they didn’t have assisted living in early modern Bohemia.

Arriving in the midst of this folkloric spat is Marquis Jacques Antoine Saturnin d’Urfé (Kacey Mottet Klein), a nervous envoy for the French king...

Entries for the 2025 Oscar for best international feature are underway, and Screen is profiling each one on this page.

The 97th Academy Awards is set to take place on March 3, 2025 at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles.

An international feature film is defined as a feature-length motion picture (over 40 minutes) produced outside the US with a predominantly (more than 50%) non-English dialogue track and can include animated and documentary features.

Submitted films must have been released theatrically in their respective countries between November 1, 2023, and September 30, 2024. The deadline for submissions to the Academy is October 2.

A shortlist of 15 finalists is scheduled to...

Entries for the 2025 Oscar for best international feature are underway, and Screen is profiling each one on this page.

The 97th Academy Awards is set to take place on March 3, 2025 at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles.

An international feature film is defined as a feature-length motion picture (over 40 minutes) produced outside the US with a predominantly (more than 50%) non-English dialogue track and can include animated and documentary features.

Submitted films must have been released theatrically in their respective countries between November 1, 2023, and September 30, 2024. The deadline for submissions to the Academy is October 2.

A shortlist of 15 finalists is scheduled to...

★★★★1/2

‘A visually stunning & emotionally devastating take on a classic scary story.’

Screen Rant

★★★★

‘One of the best horror films of the year so far.’

Dread Central

‘A tasty blend of blood, wit and social commentary.’

Screen International

Lost in a hostile forest, the Marquis d’Urfé, a noble emissary of the King of France, finds refuge in the home of a strange family… An adaptation of Aleksey Konstantinovich Tolstoy’s 1884 vampiric novella of Gothic Romanticism “La Famille du Vourdalak”, published 40 years before Dracula, The Vourdalak is a haunting gothic tale directed by Adrien Beau and starring Ariane Labed, Kacey Mottet-Klein, and Grégoire Colin. The Vourdalak premiered at Venice Film Festival where it was nominated for Best Film at International Critics Week.

The Vourdalak arrives on Digital Platforms on 16th September 2024 from Blue Finch Film Releasing

The post Haunting Gothic Tale The Vourdalak – On Digital Platforms 16th September 2024 appeared first on Horror Asylum.

Adrien Beau’s feature debut The Vourdalak is a horror film that brings a unique vibe to the table. A French, period-set vampire tale that utilizes some unique effects work to bring the titular fiend to life. The Serbian folk monster the Vourdalak is not exactly the same thing as a vampire, but they’re close cousins. The legends carry a lot of similarities, and Beau uses those to play with audience expectations, while throwing in some unexpected turns at the same time.

Based on a 19th century novel by Aleksey Konstantonovich Tolstoy, The Vourdalak opens with a young French nobleman, the Marquis d’Urfe (Kacey Mottet Klein), lost in the Serbian woods. He has been robbed by bandits, and is completely alone. He eventually finds his way to the home of Gorcha, where he is taken in by the family. Though Gorcha is the patriarch, he is absent when the Marquis arrives.

Lost in a misty forest one stormy eve, a French diplomat named Jacques comes upon an isolated homestead far from familiar comforts. Its inhabitants seem welcoming yet harbor peculiar secrets. So begins The Vourdalak, an entrancing new folk tale from writer-director Adrien Beau.

Based on a 19th-century Russian novella but feeling fresh, this 2023 film transports viewers to a remote countryside emerging from war. Shot on grainy 16mm, it crafts an eerily charming world where superstition shadows certainty. As Jacques discovers the true nature hiding behind the family’s strange behaviors, Beau steadily builds an unsettling atmosphere you feel wrapped in.

Lead Kacey Mottet Klein brings stately charm to Jacques, an outsider drawn to mystery. But the real star is a looming marionette beast brought to unnerving life. Beau makes the unnatural feel uncannily natural, feeding our need for folk horror’s blend of chills and character drama. Fans of gothic...

The indie market is feeling pretty good. A big film from India Kalki 2898 Ad may unseat Rrr’s North American opening weekend. June Squibb-starrer Thelma is blowing through midweek shows and stands at $3.75 million heading into week 2 steady at 1,280 theaters. Searchlight Pictures Kinds Of Kindness by Yorgos Lanthimos (Poor Things) starring Emma Stone and Jesse Plemons jumps to 500 screens from five after the best limited opening of the year last weekend.

Annie Baker’s Janet Planet from A24 goes from 2 screens to 300 and a handful of interesting indies open in limited release from Catherine Breillat‘s Last Summer to Jake Paltrow’s June Zero. Things are still quite tough but there’s room for optimism. Not clear if that will last, but it’s nice..

New: Telugu sci-fi epic Kalki 2898 Ad on 900+ screens is rivaling crossover blockbuster Rrr as distributor Prathyangira Cinemas said the film grossed $5.56 million in...

Stars: Kacey Mottet Klein, Ariane Labed, Vassili Scheider, Grégoire Colin, Claire Duburcq, Gabriel Pavie | Written by Adrien Beau, Hadrien Bouvier | Directed by Adrien Beau

The Vourdalak, or if you prefer, Le Vourdalak, is the most recent adaptation of Alexei Tolstoy’s novella The Family of the Vourdalak. Written in 1839 and first published in 1850, it has already been filmed several times, most famously as the final segment of Mario Bava’s Black Sabbath, the Italians returned to the story in 1972 with Giogio Ferroni’s The Night of the Devils and most recently as A Taste of Blood by Argentinian director Santiago Fernández Calvete.

This time it’s French filmmakers, director Adrien Beau and co-writer Hadrien Bouvier who are adapting it. They begin the film with Marquis Jacques Antoine Saturnin d’Urfe looking for shelter after an attack that wiped out his entire entourage. The owner of the first house he stops at refuses to help,...

"Everything was fine here before you arrived." Oscilloscope Labs in the US has revealed the official trailer for a very peculiar French film called The Vourdalak, described as "an acclaimed 18th Century vampire tale." This initially premiered in the Critics' Week sidebar of the 2023 Venice Film Festival last year, and it will get a limited art house theatrical opening it the US this summer. For any who dare venture in to explore its darkness. Lost in a hostile forest, the Marquis d'Urfé, a noble emissary of the King of France, finds refuge in the home of a strange family... "Adapted from a novella (Aleksei K. Tolstoï's "La famille du Vourdalak") that predates Bram Stoker's Dracula by over half a century, The Vourdalak is an atmospheric, unexpected, sensorial experience that will leave you reeling and giddy in equal measure." Starring Kacey Mottet Klein as Marquis d'Urfé, along with Ariane Labed,...

Distributor La Vingt-Cinquième Heure has acquired the French rights to Egyptian-American director Dina Amer’s politically sensitive drama “You Resemble Me.” The film tells the story of Hasna Aït Boulahcen, who in 2015 was wrongly believed to be Europe’s first female suicide bomber.

The film is a deeply researched character study of the young Muslim woman, who became linked to the November 2015 terrorist attacks in Paris even though she didn’t participate in them. Aït Boulahcen died during an anti-terrorism raid alongside her cousin Abdelhamid Abaaoud, who was one of the ringleaders of the coordinated assaults that killed 130 people in the French capital, including 90 at the Bataclan theater.

In a strong show of support, revered French auteur Claire Denis (“High Life”) is boarding “You Resemble Me” as an executive producer. Denis will also participate in onstage conversations with Amer during the film’s French theatrical run this fall.

“You Resemble Me,...

Rithy Panh has dedicated the lion’s share of his career to interrogating the genocidal Khmer Rouge era in his native Cambodia, and it is no trivial obsession. Panh fled Phnom Penh when he was just 11, and after his family was devastated in the Killing Fields, he escaped to a Thai refugee camp at 15. Now 60, Panh has been committed to keeping the memory of the impact of Pol Pot’s tyrannical regime alive in documentary, narrative and animated film.

His 2013 feature The Missing Picture blended archival footage with clay figures re-creating the atrocities of the genocide, and the film was nominated for an Academy Award after picking up the top prize in Cannes’ Un Certain Regard section. His return to Cannes this year with Meeting with Pol Pot (Rendez-vous avec Pol Pot), in the Premiere lineup, brings that blend back to the screen, interweaving it into a narrative about three...

A chilling historical drama rendered with impeccable sleight of hand, Rithy Panh’s “Rendez-vous avec Pol Pot” (“Meeting With Pol Pot”) reveals its political dimensions through layers of obfuscation. While based partially on real events (and on the writings of American war journalist Elizabeth Becker), it crafts a fictitious tale of three French journalists attempting to interview Cambodian dictator Pol Pot in 1978. Although its outcomes echo the real experiences of Becker, Scottish academic Malcolm Caldwell, and American reporter Richard Dudman, the film is as much about a specific moment in time as it is about the mechanics of propaganda, which it refutes and embodies in equal measure.

A narrow 4:3 frame introduces the movie’s analogues for Becker, Caldwell, and Dudman, who make their approach by air in the hopes of exposing the opaque Cambodian regime. Irene Jacob plays Lisa Delbo; like Becker — whose work influenced Panh’s 1996 documentary “Bophana:...

Indie Sales has hopped aboard Across The Sea, French-Moroccan director Saïd Hamich Benlarbi’s second feature that will premiere as a special screening at Cannes’ Critics’ Week.

Moroccan TV star Ayoub Gretaa stars in the Marseille-set 1990s melodrama as Nour, an undocumented immigrant from Morocco with big dreams whose life turns upside down when he meets a charismatic police officer and his wife and a love triangle unfolds.

Anna Mouglalis and Grégoire Colin co-star in the decade-spanning film that follows Nour as he grows older, explores love and seeks a better life amidst the backdrop of the Rai music-focused party...

Cannes Critics’ Week, spotlighting first and second features, has unveiled the competition and special screenings selection for its 63rd edition running May 15-23.

Scroll down for full list of titles

Artistic director Ava Cahen, now in her third year in the position, announced the selection of 11 features chosen from 1,050 films screened. Seven films will vie for four top prizes in competition, chosen by a jury led by Spanish filmmaker Rodrigo Sorogoyen. Nine are first films that will vie for the Camera d’Or and three are directed or co-directed by women.

The sidebar will open with French director Jonathan Millet...

Cannes Critics’ Week, the sidebar dedicated to first and second films, will open with Jonathan Millet’s psychological thriller “Ghost Trail” and wrap with Emma Benestan’s genre film “Animale.”

“Ghost Trail” and “Animale” are two of the 11 features slated for Critics’ Week, which runs alongside the Cannes Film Festival.

The sole U.S. film of the selection is Constance Tsang’s “Blue Sun Palace,” a bittersweet film about two Chinese immigrants living in Queens who bond following a tragic death and find meaning in each other’s company. “As humble and dignified as its characters, this first, realistic and intimate, film sheds light on a community that is little seen,” said Ava Cahen, Critics’ Week’s artistic director. “Blue Sun Palace” stars Lee Kang-sheng whose recent credits include “Twisted Strings.”

Besides the opening and closing films, the Special Screenings section will comprise of Saïd Hamich Benlarbi’s “Across the...

Update: the first poster for and a new image from Serpent’s Path are below, courtesy Cinefil, which lists the French release date as June 14. Sounds like a Cannes premiere to us!

Few directors loom over 2024 like Kiyoshi Kurosawa, who’s expected to debut two films these next twelve months. We just learned of Chime, a genre-bending Japanese feature, and for some time have anticipated Serpent’s Path, a remake of his (fantastic) 1998 horror thriller that’s set to star Damien Bonnard and Ko Shibasaki (The Boy and the Heron). Today brings a major update courtesy the financier Tax Shelter, who’ve shared three stills featuring Mathieu Amalric (previously of Kurosawa’s Daguerrotype) and Claire Denis regular Grégoire Colin, while further digging has revealed the involvement of Michaël Vander-Meiren.

Though it had been reported this new Serpent’s Path (perhaps officially subtitled La vengeance du serpent) would be female-led, Tax Shelter’s synopsis...

Look out, Hong Sangsoo. Your distinction as the most prolific director working today is being challenged. It’s been nearly four years since Kiyoshi Kurosawa last released a film with 2020’s Wife of a Spy, but in 2024, the Japanese director will make up for lost time, premiering a trio of new films.

As featured in our 2024 preview, he remade his own film with Serpent’s Path, starring Damien Bonnard, Mathieu Amalric, Grégoire Colin, and Ko Shibasaki. Before that feature sets its premiere, his 45-minute thriller Chime will debut at Berlinale this month. Now, a third 2024 film has been unveiled with Cloud.

Screen Daily reports he’s already finished shooting the project, with the first still featured above, and is in the editing process with a Japanese release planned for this September. Backed by Nikkatsu Corporation and Tokyo Theatres Company Inc., the Kurosawa-scripted project stars The Boy and the Heron‘s Masaki Suda as Ryosuke Yoshii,...

After landing in Cannes with outstanding French-Moroccan cinema items in the Un Certain Regard selected Kamal Lazraq’s Hounds (read review) and Directors’ Fortnight selected Faouzi Bensaïdi’s Déserts (see interview) Saïd Hamich Benlarbi will be taking his producer’s hat and alternating with the director’s clapperboard for his sophomore feature which just added some new players. According to Le Film Francais reports Saïd Hamich Benlarbi will direct Anna Mouglalis and Grégoire Colin (along with the already cast Ayoub Gretaa) in that La Mer Au Loin. Benlarbi will produce via his label Barney Production along with The Jokers’ Manuel Chiche. His debut film Return to Bollene received a prestigious Louis Delluc award nomination.…...

Among the ten competition films selected for TIFF’s prestige Platform programme, Héléna Klotz makes her long-awaited return to features with Spirit of Ecstasy (aka La Vénus d’argent). Starring Claire Pommet (the singer goes by the name of Pomme) in her debut, we also find Niels Schneider, Sofiane Zermani, Anna Mouglalis, Grégoire Colin and Denis Ménochet among the cast. Les Films du bélier’s Justin Taurand produced the film. We have your first looks with a couple of exclusive clips. The film is set to have its world premiere on September 11th.

In the first clip we have the pairing of Pommet as Jeanne Francoeur and Schneider (who was featured in Klotz’s debut 2012 film) who clearly have a past (were they old flames) with Francoeur having undergone some fundamental personal changes – breaking away from forces that keep her close at bay.…...

An edgy new voice within the world of French genre, Adrien Beau worked as a designer and scenographer for the likes of Dior, John Galliano and Agnes B before making his feature debut with the offbeat vampire movie “Vourdalak.”

Produced by Judith-Lou Levy at Les Films du Bal, “Vourdalak” will world premiere at Venice Critics’ Week and will likely be one of its boldest entries. At a time when horror has become a mainstream genre overloaded with special effects, “Vourdalak” couldn’t be more radical. Lensed in Super 16, the film’s central character is a vampire patriarch named Gorcha, played by a marionette that Beau operates and lends his voice to.

In an interview with Variety ahead of the festival, Beau says he got the idea for the film after he and Levy came across “La Famille du Vourdalak,” a strange vampire novella penned by Alexeï Konstantinovitch Tolstoï, published in...

Cinema can be a powerful tool for tackling contemporary anxieties, but it’s rarely done as sensitively and artfully as in Alice Winocour’s poignant mass shooting drama “Revoir Paris.” While one could argue that certain terrors should never be recreated, Winocour proves that with a sensitive touch, even the most harrowing of tragedies can be alchemized into a stirring contemplation of societal ills. Filtering the intensity through one woman’s struggle to piece together her memories of a fateful night, “Revoir Paris” tells a sobering story of survival, trauma, and the power of human connection.

Illuminated by a masterful performance by French actress Virginie Efira, “Revoir Paris” makes the unimaginable experience of surviving a violent attack beautifully real and painfully universal. The film never wallows in sentimentality or dwells in the violence (leave it to the French to be so matter-of-fact about a mass shooting), instead grounding the narrative...

Picking up the pieces of her life after a terrorist attack in Paris, Mia attempts to reconcile fragmented memories and relationships old and new in Alice Winocour’s powerfully nuanced drama Revoir Paris. Also starring Pacifiction‘s Benoît Magimel and Claire Denis regular Grégoire Colin, the film is another example of Winocour’s mastery of immersing her audience in the headspace of her characters, creating an empathetic portrait of searching for slivers of happiness and meaning in the wake of trauma.

While at Film at Lincoln Center’s Rendez-Vous with French Cinema and ahead of the film’s U.S. release this Friday, I spoke with Winocour about her filmmaking process, being inspired by David Cronenberg and Agnès Varda, capturing the emotional intricacies of trauma, casting her ensemble, reactions to the film in Paris, and more.

The Film Stage: In all of your films you do an incredible job putting...

The start of any month brings with it batches of movies added to streaming services’ libraries. As of this week, Netflix has “Girl, Interrupted,” “Steel Magnolias” and “Traffic,” HBO Max has “Blue Valentine,” “Hustle & Flow” and “Parasite,” and Hulu has “Atonement” and “Boogie Nights.” A handful of newer titles are also premiering digitally. First up is a spellbinding thriller featuring some of Hollywood’s hottest young actors.

The contender to watch this week: “How to Blow Up a Pipeline”

Neon picked up this eco-thriller out of last year’s Toronto International Film Festival, after which it won raves for its gripping portrait of young DIY environmental activists who band together to destroy oil pipes in West Texas. Based on Andreas Malm‘s nonfiction book of the same name, “How to Blow Up a Pipeline” stars Ariela Barer (“Runaways”), Sasha Lane (“American Honey”), Lukas Gage (“The White Lotus”), Marcus Scribner...

Revoir Paris Trailer — Alice Winocour‘s Revoir Paris (2022) movie trailer has been released by Music Box Films. The Revoir Paris trailer stars Benoît Magimel, Nastya Golubeva, Virginie Efira, Grégoire Colin, Maya Sansa, and Amadou Mbow. Crew Alice Winocour wrote the screenplay for Revoir Paris. “Written in collaboration with Jean-Stéphane Bron and Marcia [...]

Continue reading: Revoir Paris (2022) U.S. Movie Trailer: Virginie Efira is a Mass-shooting Survivor in Alice Winocour’s Film...

Each week we highlight the noteworthy titles that have recently hit streaming platforms in the United States. Check out this week’s selections below and past round-ups here.

All the Beauty and the Bloodshed (Laura Poitras)

It is a fascinating thing to watch someone’s history of protest and addiction collide and conspire to hold a pharmaceutical company accountable and expose its parent family as reprehensible. Academy Award-winning filmmaker Laura Poitras profiles the renowned photographer and activist Nan Goldin and her fight through the AIDS and opioid crisis, but this is bigger than a biographical documentary. Through slideshows, interviews, and family videos, Poitras weaves a riveting, heartbreaking interconnected story of generational pain, its influence over the blurry boundaries between life and art. – Jake K-s.

Where to Stream: VOD

Close (Lukas Dhont)

Dhont’s sophomore feature offers no narrative or stylistic fireworks, but it captures feelings so fine and true they...

While she had been working for two decades, Virginie Efira received much-deserved wider acclaim leading Benedetta and Sibyl a few years back. She returned to the festival circuit last year with a pair of staggeringly great performances, in Alice Winocour’s Paris Memories and Rebecca Zlotowski’s Other People’s Children.

With both set to arrive in the U.S. over the next few months, along with playing at Film at Lincoln Center’s Rendez-Vous with French Cinema over the next few days, the trailer for Winocour’s drama has now landed. The film, in which Efira picked up César award for Best Actress, follows her character trying to pick up the pieces of her life after experiencing a terrorist attack in Paris. Also starring Pacifiction lead Benoît Magimel and Claire Denis regular Grégoire Colin, the drama is another example of Winocour’s mastery of immersing her audience in the headspace...

This month’s installment of Deep Cuts Rising features a variety of horror movies. Some selections reflect a specific day or event in March, and others were chosen at random.

Regardless of how they came to be here, or what they’re about, these past movies can generally be considered overlooked, forgotten or unknown.

From dinosaurs to a killer clown, here are five hidden horror gems and deep cuts that you can check out in March 2023.

The Fantasist (1986)

Directed by Robin Hardy.

Despite her family’s mixed reaction to her decision, Moira Harris‘ sheltered but curious character moves to Dublin to be a teacher. There she becomes the next target of a serial killer who gradually escalates from phone calls to murder. The protagonist of The Fantasist eventually suspects her pushy American neighbor (Timothy Bottoms) to be the culprit.

While best known for directing The Wicker Man, and to a lesser extent The Wicker Tree,...

"Someone was with me. He held my hand." Music Box FIlms has revealed the official US trailer for a French drama titled Revoir Paris, translated in English to Paris Memories. This initially premiered at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival last year and then recently won a Cesar Award (France's Oscars) for Best Actress. It's opening in June in art house theaters in NYC, and it will also play at the Rendez-Vous with French Cinema event this spring at the Lincoln Center if anyone wants to give it an early look. A meditation on healing, the film tells the story of Mia, who survives a mass shooting in a Paris restaurant, and still feels haunted by the trauma, yet unable to recollect memories of the tragic attack. Determined to reconstruct the sequence of events and reestablish a sense of normalcy, Mia finds herself repeatedly returning to the bistro where the shooting happened.

Music Box is unveiling the trailer for “Revoir Paris,” a French drama boasting a Cesar-winning performance by Virginie Efira. The movie, which bowed at Cannes’ Directors Fortnight and played at Toronto, will have its New York premiere on June 23 at Film at Lincoln Center and IFC Film Center.

A meditation on healing, the film tells the story of Mia (Efira), a married translator who survived a mass shooting in a Paris restaurant, and feels haunted by the trauma, yet unable to recollect memories of the tragic attack. Determined to reconstruct the sequence of events and reestablish a sense of normalcy, Mia finds herself repeatedly returning to the bistro where the shooting happened. In the process she forms bonds with fellow survivors, including banker Thomas (Benoît Magimel) and teenager Félicia (Nastya Golubeva). Efira, who just won a Cesar Award for her role in the film, stars opposite Magimel, the Cesar-winning actor of “Pacifiction,...

Women at War (Les Combattantes) is a French series created by Camille Treiner and Cécile Lorne starring Audrey Fleurot, Julie De Bona, Camille Lou and, Sofia Essaïdi.

TF1 offers this luxury series in French style which is epic and heroic and tells us the story of four women during World War I.

It is a lavish production as far as scenes and atmosphere created in which we delve into chapter by chapter in a first class recreation led by four women who offer us a choral and polyedric point of view of an epoch.

Women at War (2022)

This is a series that artfully combines genres and, which, in the tradition of the genre, gives its all in the editing and composition that rests on a spectacular soundtrack.

A delight that is a French super production now on Netflix and which will ver surely be enjoued by those who like epic...

Paris-based sales company is hosting several market premieres at Rendez-Vous.

Paris-based sales company The Party has acquired Happy! (working title), Pascal Plisson’s upcoming documentary about children with disabilities who chase their dreams despite the obstacles they face.

Writer and filmmaker Plisson’s doc On The Way To School was a box office success in France with 1.4 million admissions and sold to 18 countries worldwide in addition to winning the best documentary award at the Cesars in 2014. He is also behind recent docs Grand Jour, released in 2015, and Gogo in 2019 about a 94 year-old woman attending school in Kenya.

With Happy!, Plisson...

For our most comprehensive year-end feature we’re providing a cumulative look at The Film Stage’s favorite films of 2022. We’ve asked contributors to compile ten-best lists with five honorable mentions—a selection of those personal lists will be shared in coming days—and from tallied votes has a top 50 been assembled.

Without further ado, check out our rundown of 2022 below, our ongoing year-end coverage here (including where to stream many of the below picks), and return in the coming weeks as we look towards 2023.

50. A Night of Knowing Nothing (Payal Kapadia)

Payal Kapadia’s breakthrough work is a quasi-documentary with something of Chris Marker’s postmodern essay films, following a young film school student, “L,” who experiences a romantic and political coming-of-age amidst the anti-democratic changes wrought in Modi’s India. Yet it boldly eschews the informational and concrete approach of many political documentaries, allowing us a filmic...

Amazon Prime Video has come a long way since launching in France in 2016. The streamer, whose first French film original, “The Mad Women’s Ball,” recently picked up an International Emmy Award, unveiled a landmark deal with French guilds during a posh dinner with industry players and talent in Paris on Wednesday evening (Nov. 30).

On the guest list at the chic Lutetia Hotel was a laundry list of talent that’s in business with Prime Video, including Philippe Lacheau (“Lol”), Franck Gastambide (“Medellin”), Eloise Lang (“La Graine”), Melha Bedia (“Miskina”), Ziad Doueiri (“Coeurs Noirs”), as well as producers Alain Goldman, Pathé Films’ Ardavan Safaee, Mandarin’s Eric Altmayer, CG Cinema’s Charles Gillibert, Metropolitan FilmExport’s Victor Hadida, Newen’s Romain Bessi, and Asasha Group’s Gaspard de Chavagnac, among many others.

Announced by Brigitte Ricou-Bellan, Prime Video’s country manager in France, the four-year deal was signed with the guilds AnimFrance,...

Claire Denis’s Both Sides of the Blade, starring Juliette Binoche, joins other classics where three’s a crowd, from The Piano to The Favourite

Call it the original triangle of sadness. As much as the mores and taboos of screen romance have shifted over the decades, the love triangle has remained a constant: a problem that screenwriters rarely manage to solve without someone being hurt or worse. Ménage à trois solutions are rare; heteronormative coupledom must usually prevail. And yet our fascination endures with the simultaneously simple and wildly complicated crisis of loving two people at once – rarely depicted with more adult candour than in Claire Denis’s new drama Both Sides of the Blade, now streaming on Mubi.

The story is slender but urgent: radio presenter Sara (Juliette Binoche) is happy in her 10-year marriage to former rugby player Jean (Vincent Lindon) until a chance sighting of her...

The series is about an intersex teen dealing with a new high school.

Disney+ Emea has signed a deal with France TV Distribution to distribute the French high school drama series About Sasha throughout Europe (excluding France), the UK, the Middle East and Africa in 2023.

The French-language series about an intersex youth struggling with questions of identity recently aired on France TV’s online Gen Z-oriented platform Slash.

About Sasha follows its eponymous intersex title character who must navigate the turmoil of starting a new high school and dealing with embracing her feminine side after being born and raised a boy.