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Pulsar Content has nabbed worldwide sales on “Two Women,” a Canadian sexy comedy which is slated to world premiere at Sundance.

Directed by Chloé Robichaud, “Two Women” is written by critically acclaimed playwright Catherine Léger based on her own play, “Home Deliveries,” which is itself a modern adaptation of Claude Fournier’s 1970 comedy “Two Women In Gold.”

“Two Women” follows neighbors Violette and Florence who are haunted by a sense of failure despite having successful careers and families. “What if happiness lies in rebelling against a rigid performance-driven society by sometimes choosing short-term satisfaction over success, freedom over being good? In a world where having fun is nowhere near the top of the priority list, having an adventure with the delivery guy can become revolutionary. For Violette and Florence this is the breath of fresh air they’ve been longing for,” reads the synopsis.

The cast is lead by Karine Gonthier-Hyndman,...

Exclusive: Pulsar Content has acquired world sales rights for Joséphine Japy’s upcoming feature The Wonderers following a family navigating the severe disability of the youngest daughter.

Produced by Cowboys Films, the feature marks Japy’s first time in the director’s chair.

The actress was recently seen in Netflix’s BAFTA-winning fictionalized Bernard Tapie biopic Class Act, with previous credits including On The Wandering Paths, Love At Second Sight, Breathe, as well as Claude François biopic My Way, early on in her career.

Set against the backdrop of a summer on the French riviera, the drama revolves around the Roussier family and its fragile equilibrium shaped by the uncertain diagnosis of its youngest daughter, 13-year-old Bertille, who suffers from a severe disability.

Her parents and 17-year-old older sister Marion live in constant fear of losing her. Disconnected from typical teenage dreams, Marion seeks escape in a relationship with an older boy.

It is an ongoing mystery why so many artists’ biopics, though undoubtedly coming from a place of deep admiration, choose to ignore the very thing that makes their subjects extraordinary — their art — in favor of outlining the less extraordinary (however torrid) circumstances of their private lives and loves. The latest example: the attractive but slight directorial debut of French actress Céline Sallette. Her feature “Niki” is a portrait of pioneering French-American painter, sculptor and illustrator Niki de Saint Phalle, in which the closest we ever get to any of her actual pieces is seeing the back of a canvas or two, as Niki (Charlotte Le Bon), bespeckled with paint splatter that highlights her delicate elf-princess beauty, frowns at her efforts in dissatisfaction. What exactly is she looking at? Unless you’re already intimately acquainted with every phase of her multivalent career and can navigate the film’s rather haphazard chronology,...

The world premiere of Agathe Riedinger’s Wild Diamond in Cannes Competition is the only one by a first-time filmmaker and heralds Riedinger as part of a new wave of French female directors to arrive en force on the Croisette.

The film explores western society’s obsession with beauty and fame and the omnipresence of social media through the story of a 19 year-old girl who sets out to earn a spot on a reality TV show.

Also in Competitoin is France-born Coralie Fargeat’s second feature The Substance. The body horror is produced by the UK’s Working Title Films and stars Demi Moore,...

As Cannes Film Festival kicks off, the Paris-based international sales company MK2 Films has revealed it has acquired three films and made substantial investments in new restorations, set against the backdrop of a strong presence at Cannes Classics.

MK2 Films has entered into a collaboration with the Niki Charitable Art Foundation on the global rights (excluding the U.S.) for two films directed by artist Niki de Saint Phalle: “Un Rêve plus long que la nuit” (1976) and “Daddy” (1973). “Un Rêve plus long que la nuit” has been restored in 4K by L’Immagine Ritrovata (Bologna-Paris) under the supervision of Arielle de Saint Phalle and with funding from Dior. It was presented at Il Cinema Ritrovato in Bologna, New York Film Festival and the new Los Angeles Festival of Movies. “Daddy” will soon be available in a restored version. MK2 Films described it as a “unique feminist work by one of...

After announcing a whopping number of English-language films in competition, Cannes Film Festival has added some international titles: Michel Hazanavicius’ animated feature “The Most Precious of Cargoes” and Iranian filmmaker Mohammad Rasoulof’s “The Seed of the Sacred Fig,” Variety has learned.

An auteur-driven allegorical feature, “The Most Precious of Cargoes” (first-look still below) is adapted from Jean-Claude Grumberg’s bestselling novel of the same name, set during World War II against the backdrop of the Holocaust. It will be the first animated feature to compete in more than a decade, since Ari Folman’s “Waltz With Bashir” in 2008.

The film is co-produced and represented internationally by Studiocanal, which also has Gilles Lellouche’s “Beating Hearts” in competition. “The Most Precious of Cargoes” is a passion project for Hazanavicius, the Oscar-winning filmmaker behind “The Artist,” who has been developing the project for years. Hazanavicius penned the script with Grumberg and created the drawings,...

Awards courting, auctioning among distributors and corporate-sponsored parties can really take the “film” out of “film festival,” with moviegoing sometimes becoming an afterthought to more market-oriented activities at the industry’s legacy gatherings. The Los Angeles Festival of Movies is not one of those film festivals.

Launching this coming weekend, Lafm is screening an eclectic and diverse slate of independent features across a trio of theaters on the east side of Los Angeles, a world away from the shadows of studio lots and agencies. The festival is co-presented by the world cinema streamer Mubi and the non-profit Mezzanine, which has been programming in L.A. for more than two years, screening contemporary indies, avant garde work and underseen repertory features for an audience that has grown to trust its adventurous taste.

Lafm represents a new endeavor for Mezzanine: providing a sustained weekend of contemporary programming for a city that has...

From a pandemic and Hollywood’s dual strikes to fundraising issues, film festivals have faced a number of challenges in recent years. But a new one is braving the scene and about to hit the circuit.

The Los Angeles Festival of Movies will present its inaugural edition on April 4-7, co-presented by Mubi and Mezzanine and featuring 12 titles (one world premiere), three 4K restorations, a featured artist talk, documentary series and a short film program. Passes are currently on sale with single tickets on sale March 14. Lafm screenings will take place at three recently opened venues across Los Angeles: Vidiots in Eagle Rock, 2220 Arts + Archives in Historic Filipinotown and Now Instant Image Hall in Chinatown.

A24’s I Saw the TV Glow from filmmaker Jane Schoenbrun will open the fest with a West Coast premiere at Vidiots on April 4. Closing Lafm three days later will be the world premiere of...

The LA film festival scene just got a bit brighter.

The Los Angeles Festival of Movies (Lafm), co-presented by Mubi and Mezzanine, announced the full lineup for its inaugural festival taking place April 4-7, 2024. The new festival will screen 11 titles including one world premiere, three 4K restorations, plus a featured artist talk, documentary series, and a curated short film program. Passes are currently on sale, and single film tickets go on sale March 14.

Per the festival’s organizers, Lafm was created to redefine Los Angeles as a destination for independent film. There are many film festivals in LA, primarily led by AFI Fest in the fall, but rarely do they make independent film their only focus.

The festival’s screenings will all take place at three recently opened venues on the east side of Los Angeles: Vidiots in Eagle Rock, 2220 Arts + Archives in Historic Filipinotown, and Now Instant Image Hall in Chinatown.

Pulsar Content has closed major deals on “Niki,” a biopic of French-American artist Niki de Saint-Phalle.

“Niki” marks the feature debut of popular French actor Céline Sallette and stars Charlotte Le Bon (“The Walk” “Saint-Laurent”) as de Saint-Phalle. Pulsar closed deals with Neue Visionen (Germany), Movies Inspired (Italy), Paradiso (Benelux), Praessens (Switzerland), Vercine (Spain), Magic Films (Cis), Best Films (Baltics), Shaw (Singapour), Sky Digi (Taiwan) and Immovision (Brazil).

The movie portrays Saint-Phalle from the age of 23, when she’s still a model and an aspiring actor who is married and has a two-year-old daughter, Laura. Together, they flee the U.S. during the oppressive McCarthy era and come to France, where they experience a short-lived euphoria. Soon, distant and frightening memories begin to emerge in Niki’s mind. Her vocation as an artist will be her salvation.

Le Bon is an actor-turned-director whose feature debut “Falcon Lake” bowed at Cannes.

Above: 1973 New York Film Festival poster designed by Niki de Saint Phalle.The 61st edition of the New York Film Festival, which opens tonight, has 32 films in its Main Slate, fifteen films in its Spotlight section, ten films and seven collections of shorts in the Currents sidebar, and eleven revivals. That's over 60 feature films. Fifty years ago, in 1973, the 11th edition of the festival had just eighteen feature films and nineteen shorts. Just like this year’s opener—Todd Haynes’s May December—1973’s opening night film, François Truffaut’s Day for Night, had premiered four months earlier at the Cannes Film Festival. And as with this year’s festival, the 1973 edition opened, fifty years and one day ago exactly, in the shadow of an artists' strike. Local 802 of the American Federation of Musicians had been picketing the New York Philharmonic outside Lincoln Center’s Avery Fisher Hall, where the festival was taking place,...

While it’s understandable that many’s most-anticipated films at a festival are also some of the biggest titles of the season––evidenced by the instant sell-outs of the latest from Hayao Miyazaki, Yorgos Lanthimos, Sofia Coppola, Andrew Haigh, Jonathan Glazer, and more at the 61st New York Film Festival––one of the true joys of the experience is seeing work one may never find again. For this year’s edition of Film at Lincoln Center’s annual celebration of world cinema, we’ve gathered eight recommendations that currently don’t have U.S. distribution. While we imagine news will be announced soon for some of these selections, a release might not occur until next year, so be sure to catch them if you can.

We should also make a special note for Revivals, NYFF’s lineup of restorations, which features Paul Vecchiali’s haunting, captivating portrait of alienation The Strangler...

Pulsar Content has secured international rights on “Pacific Fear,” a French survival horror film which has started filming in French Polynesia.

The movie is directed by Jacques Kluger, who previously directed the Belgian horror movie “Play or Die,” and is produced by Nolita, whose recent credits include the Netflix hit action franchise “Lost Bullet.” Darklight Content is co-producing. Pulsar Content will be launching international sales at Toronto.

“Pacific Fear” stars a young cast, including Adèle Galloy, Marilyn Lima, Marie Zabukovec (“Masquerade”) and Vaimiti Teiefitu.

The film, which is set to be completed by early 2024, follows a group of surfer friends looking out for waves in a mysterious island that’s been erased from all maps. “Pacific Fear” will launch in France in early 2024 on the pay TV Ocs.

“Pacific Fear” joins Pulsar Content’s roster which boasts “The Opera!,” an ambitious musical starring Vincent Cassel, Fanny Ardant and Rossy De Palma...

Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.NEWSAggro Dr1ft.NYFF have announced a few new lineups, including their adventurous-looking Spotlight section, with new work by Harmony Korine, Hayao Miyazaki, Nathan Fielder & Benny Safdie, and more. They've also shared the experimental program for Currents, which opens with Eduardo Williams’s The Human Surge 3 and features James Benning, Deborah Stratman, and Pham Thien An. And finally, their Revivals section includes restorations of Jean Renoir’s “almost ghostly last film in Hollywood,” The Woman on the Beach (1947); Niki de Saint Phalle's first solo feature Un rêve plus long que la nuit (1976); and a 4K restoration of Horace Ové’s Pressure (1976), world-premiering in conjunction with the London Film Festival. Following news last week that Leila’s Brothers (2022) filmmakers Saeed Roustayi and Javad Noruzbegi have been sentenced to six months in prison, suspended over five years,...

Vincent Cassel and Caterina Murino (“Casino Royal”) will show off their acting range in “The Opera!,” an €11 million film starring famed opera singers Mariam Battistelli and Rame Lahaj.

Pulsar Content is repping the hot project which is produced by Showlab and Rai Cinema, with Dolce&Gabbana on board to co-produce and design the costumes.

“The Opera!” is based on a modern version of the famous Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice, and will be directed by longtime opera partners Davide Livermore and Paolo Gep Cucco who are the only ones to have presented the world premiere of La Scala four times in a row. The movie, teased by Pulsar at the Cannes Market, showcases different musical references spanning from opera, pop and electro.

Longtime opera partners Davide Livermore and Paolo Gep Cucco are directing the film. The pair have broken records as they have presented the world premiere of La Scala four times in a row.

Morgan Simon’s completed second feature also stars Félix Lefebvre, and Lubna Azabal and is screening first footage at the Cannes market.

Paris-based sales company Pulsar Content has boarded French director Morgan Simon’s completed second feature A Free Woman, starring Valeria Bruni-Tedeschi, Félix Lefebvre, and Lubna Azabal and is screening first footage at the Cannes market.

A Free Woman is produced by Trois Brigands Productions and Wild Bunch Productions, with Wild Bunch releasing in France.

Inspired by his own mother’s life and shot in the suburb he grew up in, Simon’s film is about the relationship between...

Exclusive: Peter Sarsgaard and Mackenzie Davis have signed on to star in The Damning Of A Country Merchant, a horror pic from Anonymous Content, Two Independent Eyes, and Anti-Worlds, who have partnered to produce.

We understand Brooklyn-based artist and filmmaker Matthew Rosenbaum has been tapped to direct from a screenplay he wrote. The pic will mark Rosenbaum’s feature directorial debut. Pulsar Content is handling international sales, while XYZ Films, UTA Independent Film Group, and CAA Media Finance have partnered for North America. All four companies will introduce the project to buyers at the upcoming Cannes Market.

Billed as a “twisted horror,” the pic is set in 1910 Indiana and follows the patriarch of a rural mercantile family (Sarsgaard) whose way of life is suddenly disrupted by a charismatic industrialist who has entered into a secret affair with his wife (Davis). When rising...

Giuseppe Fiorello’s first feature has already racked up sales to Japan, Eastern Europe, Spain and Portugal.

Cinephobia Releasing has acquired North American rights from Pulsar Content to Fireworks, the first feature from Italian actor Giuseppe Fiorello.

Set in Sicily in 1982, the film follows two teenage boys who develop a profound friendship that blossoms into love. However, when their conservative families discover the truth, the consequences are violent.

Fireworks was released on March 23 in Italy via Bim Distribuzione where it has generated over $1m to date at the box office according to Box Office Mojo.

Pulsar Content has already closed...

Pulsar Content has acquired “Niki,” a film about the famous French-American artist Niki de Saint-Phalle, for international sales. The Paris-based banner will introduce the period project to buyers at the Cannes market with exclusive first stills.

“Niki” marks the feature debut of popular French actor Céline Sallette and stars Charlotte Le Bon (“The Walk” “Saint-Laurent”) as de Saint-Phalle.

Le Bon recently made her feature debut with “Falcon Lake” — which bowed at Cannes last year — and previously starred in Robert Zemeckis’s “The Walk,” as well as Terry George’s “The Promise” and Jalil Lespert’s “Saint-Laurent.” Le Bon stars in “Niki” opposite Damien Bonnard (“Les Misérables“).

The movie will portray Saint-Phalle from the age of 23, when she’s still a model and an aspiring actor who is married and has a two-year-old daughter, Laura. Together, they flee the U.S. during the oppressive McCarthy era and come to France, where they experience a short-lived euphoria.

Charlotte Le Bon, the Quebec-born actor and filmmaker who is presenting her feature debut, “Falcon Lake,” at Cannes’ Directors’ Fortnight, has already enjoyed several careers. She moved to Paris over 10 years ago after a working as a model, and became an instant star with her hilarious comedy sketches that she delivered on a Canal Plus primetime talk show. She went on to become an actor and worked with Lasse Hallström (“The Hundred-Foot Journey”), Michel Gondry (“L’ecûme des jours”), Jalil Lespert (“Yves Saint Laurent”) and most recently, Mimi Cave (“Fresh”). Le Bon then stepped behind the camera to direct her first short, “Judith Hotel,” which played at Cannes in 2018, and launched an online art gallery showcasing her illustrations and paintings. Memento Intl. is handling sales on “Falcon Lake.”

“Falcon Lake” is an usual coming-of-age story that is about first love, melancholy, adolescence and ghosts. How did it become your first feature project?...

No one makes movies quite like French husband-and-wife team Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani. The directing duo first made a splash in 2009 with “Amer,” a postmodern homage to Italian giallo films that was followed up by another giallo homage, 2013’s “The Strange Color of Your Body’s Tears.” Both films are filled with a stunning blend of eye-popping and provocative visuals, a kaleidoscope of colors that evokes Dario Argento’s sumptuous technicolor nightmares, woven together with scores lifted from giallos from yesteryear. With this intoxicating cinematic formula, Cattet and Forzani quickly became must-watch genre filmmakers.

Rather than sticking with this successful formula, they branched out with their latest film, “Let the Corpses Tan,” putting their own spin on the western. “Let the Corpses Tan” takes place on a sun-soaked, isolated island hideaway, where a grizzled thug named Rhino (Stéphane Ferrara) and his gang plan to hide away with an eccentric artist,...