News

Filmmaker Amélie Bonnin wanted her feature debut to carry a personal imprint.

The auteur behind this year’s Cannes Film Festival opener “Leave One Day” had already field-tested the concept of a modern jukebox musical with her César-winning short “Bye Bye,” but once she got to work expanding the premise — and looking for new tracks — she began to question her very focus.

“I had originally chosen a male lead more out of habit than intention,” Bonnin explains. “Once I realized that, I knew I wanted to take a different path. I wanted to bring a specific perspective — that of a forty-year-old woman navigating work, questions of motherhood, and desire. I needed to tell this story through my own lens.”

‘Leave One Day’

Bonnin reshaped her musical dramedy around a rising chef, played by French pop star Juliette Armanet, who returns to her rural hometown to confront a family health crisis...

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

Museum of Modern Art

As the career-spanning Johnnie To retrospective continues, a Samuel L. Jackson series includes Pulp Fiction, Jackie Brown, and Jungle Fever on 35mm.

Bam

A Duras-Akerman double bill plays Sunday.

Film at Lincoln Center

NYFF Revivals continues with films by Robert Bresson, Raymond Depardon, and Clive Barker, Compensation, and more.

Film Forum

A George Stevens retrospective begins; restorations of The Devil, Probably and Lancelot du lac continue; Shane screens on Sunday.

Anthology Film Archives

“Kill Yr Landlords” includes work by John Schlesinger, Hal Ashby, and Nikos Papatakis; films by Dovzhenko and Dreyer play in “Essential Cinema.”

Roxy Cinema

Apocalypse Now: Final Cut plays Friday.

Museum of the Moving Image

A Frank Oz retrospective begins; Burden of Dreams and Fitzcarraldo both screen.

Metrograph

Pulp Fiction, There Will Be Blood, The Flavor of Green Tea Over Rice, Lolita, and...

France’s Les Films du Losange, the iconic distribution company owned by producer Charles Gillibert (“Annette”), has acquired Palmeraie et Desert,” the production company founded by celebrated filmmaker Raymond Depardon.

Les Films du Losange, which was bought by Gillibert from longtime manager Margaret Menegoz in 2021, has been dedicated to preserving and promoting cinematic heritage since its inception. It will now be responsible for the editorial management and global promotion of Depardon’s films.

This year’s Cannes Film Festival is unveiling the 4K restoration of “The Declic Years” as part of Cannes Classics which marks the beginning of the company’s work on their entire body of work. This will be articulated through four cycles covering all the feature films: Reporter, Africa, Citizen, and Peasant.

“Raymond Depardon is one of the greatest contemporary directors and photographers,” said Charles Gillibert, CEO of Les Films du Losange.

“Depardon always followed his intimate...

The section that we criminally need to overlook while covering the festival, the Cannes Classics films (excluding Le Cinéma de la Plage) are the last batch of titles to be programmed for the next edition. Packed with film-related docus, restored prints and anniversary 4K restorations, some of the big names including Jean-Luc Godard’s very last short, Faye Dunaway, Wim Wenders, Sylvia Chang, Costa-Gavras, Raymond Depardon, Marco Bellocchio, Ron Howard, Frederick Wiseman, Dong-ho Kim, Montxo Armendáriz and more…

Events

100 years of Columbia Pictures

Gilda

Charles Vidor

1946, 1h50, United States

A Sony Pictures Entertainment presentation. Restoration from the original 35mm nitrate negative and a 35mm nitrate internegative.…...

Cannes Classics, the festival’s selection for tributes and retrospectives, has announced the rest of its program after the previously-announced opening night film “Napoleon Par Abel Gance.”

Among the highlights are a restoration of Charles Vidor’s 1946 “Gilda” to celebrate the 100th anniversary of Columbia Pictures, with Tom Rothman, Chairman and CEO, Sony Pictures Entertainment Motion Picture Group, attending. Wim Wenders will be on hand for a 40th anniversary screening of Palme d’Or winner “Paris, Texas,” while Faye Dunaway will be present for the screening of “Faye,” the first documentary about her life.

Ron Howard will present his documentary “Jim Henson Idea Man,” while Nanette Burstein brings the premiere of her documentary “Elizabeth Taylor: The Lost Tapes.”

See the full program of Cannes Classics below.

100 years of Columbia Pictures

“Gilda”

Charles Vidor

1946, 1h50, United States

A Sony Pictures Entertainment presentation. Restoration from the original 35mm nitrate negative and a 35mm nitrate internegative.

Though festivals and distributors were very excited to sell you a “final” film by Jean-Luc Godard, Fabrice Aragno made clear Phony Wars would not be the last transmission. Continuing Tupac-like beyond-the-grave releases, it’s been announced this year’s Cannes Film Festival will include in their “Events” sidebar the “ultimate film by Jean-Luc Godard,” Scenarios, which I cannot possibly summarize better than their official description and thus:

Scenarios is the title that Jean-Luc Godard chose to give to a final 18-minute gesture, made, literally, the day before his voluntary death. Furthermore, Jean-Luc Godard recorded a 34-minute film in which, mixing still images and moving images, halfway between reading and vision, he presented the Scenarios project .

Worth noting that Scenario was, with Phony Wars, one of two films with which Godard planned to end his career. A project made with single-digit hours left on Earth… well, one’s mind reels at the potential.

The Cannes Film Festival’s Classics sidebar celebrates 20 years this year with a lineup of films including a 4K restoration of Wim Wenders’s Palme d’Or winning Paris, Texas, and a debut screening of Ron Howard’s 2024 doc Jim Henson Idea Man.

Wenders and Howard will be on the ground in Cannes, where they will present the films alongside Faye Dunaway, who will present the feature-long doc Faye about her life and career.

Other Cannes Classics screenings will include a 4k restoration of Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai to mark the late Japanese filmmaker’s 70th birthday while Frederick Wiseman will present his 1969 documentary Law And Order. Sony Pictures Entertainment Chairman and CEO Tom Rothman will also attend to screen Charles Vidor’s 1946 film Gilda as part of a 100-year celebration of Columbia Pictures.

The sidebar will also screen Scénario, an 18-minute film by Jean-Luc Godard. The project was...

Plenty of worthy documentaries manage to tackle a subject from all angles, offering a well-rounded portrait of a specific social issue, historical figure or cultural phenomenon. Much rarer are those that go beyond the subject to reveal something deeply and essentially human, using the camera to uncover truths that aren’t always visible to us.

French director Nicolas Philibert’s latest work, At Averroes & Rosa Parks, is one of those films. On the surface, it’s a long and immersive plunge into two psychiatric wards at the Esquirol Hospital facility, located in a leafy suburb outside of Paris. Through extended sessions between patients and their doctors, we get to know a group of people who’ve been committed with varying levels of mental illness.

By giving the patients considerable time and space to bare themselves before the camera, Philibert grants us access to the the darker sides of the human psyche,...

The observant documentaries of Nicolas Philibert, which include such films as Louvre City, In the Land of the Deaf and his 2002 hit, To Be and To Have, often focus on either a single character or location — the latter usually a French public institution — exploring them with painstaking detail and plenty of compassion.

For his eleventh feature, On the Adamant (Sur l’Adamant), the 72-year-old filmmaker spent months aboard a barge anchored on the Seine in Paris, chronicling a mental health care facility that caters specifically to its patients’ creative needs. What emerges is not only a depiction of psychiatric treatment administered with plenty of warmth and enthusiasm, but a portrait of several individuals who, despite their noticeable disabilities, are capable of producing original and moving works of art.

Like his contemporaries Frederick Wiseman and Raymond Depardon, both whom live in France as well, Philibert never provides voiceover or explanatory titles in his movies,...

It is understood that the names of 129 victims of femicide in France since the last Cannes were listed on the banner.

A group of protesters held aloft a large banner containing the names of French femicide victims, as the red carpet prepared for the premiere of Holy Spider in Cannes today (May 22).

The protestors were dressed in black, posed with their fists raised and let off black smoke bombs. It is understood that the names of the 129 victims of femicide in France since the last Cannes Film Festival were listed on the banner.

It is understood to be the work of a feminist collective,...

Sébastien Lifshitz’s documentary is named Best French Film 2020 while Josep by Aurel is crowned the winner in the first films category. Awarded by a jury composed of critics and key figures from the world of the 7th art and presided over by Gilles Jacob, the prestigious 2020 Louis-Delluc Award for the French film of the year has gone to Sébastien Lifshitz’s Adolescentes, which is the first documentary to have scooped this prize since 2008 (Modern Life by Raymond Depardon) and only the fourth in the award’s history (following the Louis-Dellucs won by Nicole Védrès in 1947 and Jean Rouch in 1958). Unveiled in Critics’ Week during the Locarno Film Festival of 2019, Adolescentes is the 4th documentary feature film by Sébastien Lifshitz after Les Invisibles, Bambi and Les vies de Thérèse. The director has...

We speak with Sompot Chidgasompongse about Railway Sleepers, trains, Thailand, his collaboration with Weerasethakul and many other topics

Tell us a bit about the British you talk to at the end of the film. The dialogues seemed kind of surrealistic.

It’s getting late at night, and you start to talk about your past, about your life. But then the morning comes, and you’re not sure if you were dreaming or not. The British character was constructed from real historical figures who have worked on Thai trains since the very beginning. They are all dead by now, so I needed to re-create the character. The dialogues were also based on actual academic studies, historical research, oral-histories, diaries of many people. I wanted to create a dreamlike feeling where you cannot be sure what is real and what is not. History is also like that.

You have collaborated with Apichatpong Weerasethakul a number of times,...

Considering we are no longer getting a James Bond film this spring, those seeking slick espionage thrills will get a healthy dose (and much more of the unexpected) with The Whistlers, the latest work from Romanian director Corneliu Porumboiu, which is now in theaters. Clearly inspired by a number of noir films, today we’re taking a more general look at his favorite movies of all-time.

As voted on in the latest Sight & Sound poll, as well as a recent feature from our friends at Le Cinéma Club, his picks range include a healthy range of world cinema, from Apichatpong Weerasethakul to Michelangelo Antonioni to Éric Rohmer to Yasujirô Ozu. “All of them influenced my way of making movies and also my way of seeing world,” he said of the majority of the selections. Speaking about La Dolce Vita, he added, “I watched it by chance when I was 18 years old.

The event was due to take place on March 5-15.

The 22nd Thessaloniki Documentary Festival, due to take place March 5-15, has been postponed due to the coronavirus crisis it was announced today.

The decision was reached after two days of consultations between the festival organisers, headed by the president of the board, cinematographer Giorgos Arvanitis and the Culture Ministry which oversees the event.

French director/reporter Raymond Depardon, set to receive one of the honorary awards at the festival, cancelled his trip to Thessaloniki because of his concerns over the virus, as did a member of the international jury.

Director Ladj Ly never expected his first narrative feature, “Les Misérables,” to be selected for official competition at the Cannes Film Festival, but the filmmaker, whose mission is to capture the reality of the Paris suburbs, is understandably thrilled about the surprise.

“I thought maybe there was a small, small chance of getting into the Directors’ Fortnight, but the Competition — wow!” he says. The 39-year-old filmmaker was signed by CAA as the festival got off the ground Tuesday.

Anyone who thinks the story is a retelling of the Victor Hugo classic would be mistaken. But there’s a reason it shares the same title: Part of the book takes place in Montfermeil, the working-classic suburb where Ly grew up. “A century later, there’s still misery in this area,” Ly says. “Police violence remains a factor.”

Although getting “Les Misérables” into Competition represents a major jump forward in visibility, Ly...

French filmmakers Fanny Liatard and Jérémy Trouilh met at university while studying political science before diverging towards separate careers. Trouilh trained in documentary filmmaking; Liatard worked on urban artistic projects in Lebanon and France. They eventually joined back up to film three shorts: “Gagarine,” a Sundance Channel Shorts Competition Jury Prize winner in 2016; “The Republic of Enchanters”; and their latest, “Blue Dog,” which is in competition at UniFrance’s MyFrenchFilmFestival, available on VOD platforms around the world.

In “Blue Dog” the pair weaves a story of inclusion along with one rooted in a father-and-son relationship, all in a mixed tone of realism and fable. “The movie enlightens the strength of the community against isolation, especially in the kind of neighborhood we are filming,” they say.

Can you talk a bit about the story in “Blue Dog”?

It’s the story of Emile, a 60-year-old man, living in a social housing...

Translation Ivana Miloš. This text originally appeared as part of the Siegfried-Kracauer-scholarship of the Verband der deutschen Filmkritik on the blog "Squirrels to the Nuts" hosted by Filmdienst.Mubi's retrospective Angela Schanelec: Showing without Telling is playing from April 5 - June 3, 2018. Angela Schanelec's The Dreamed Path (2016), which is receiving an exclusive global online premiere on Mubi, is showing from May 4 - June 3, 2018 as a Special Discovery. Just as in Jacques Rivette’s cinema, Angela Schanelec’s films begin at a point where the characters have yet to decide whether they will become passive observers of a documentary or enter the realm of fiction. Naturally, since Schanelec, unlike her French colleague, understands the world as something close to a prison, they cannot escape either way. However, the impossibility of escape does not contradict the feeling that the characters in her films do disappear: this disappearance is a direct consequence of the world around them.

There are different ways to celebrate the arrival of Spring. But if you are in New York, there is only one way to do it, in style: you go see some great new French films at the Film Society of Lincoln Center. It's a proud tradition around this neck of the woods. The 23rd edition of Rendez-Vous with French Cinema is here with an array of films by established filmmakers and first-timers alike, including Bruno Dumont (Jeannette: The Childhood of Joan of Arc), Mathieu Amalric (Barbara), Raymond Depardon (12 Days), Toni Marshall (Number One), Léonor Serraille (Montparnasse Bienvenüe), Léa Mysius (Ava), just to name a few. Fslc is partnering again with UniFrance this year, putting emphasis on presenting emerging women directors. To quote Executive Director...

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

The many layers of feeling captured in Mathieu Amalric's Barbara is cinema at its best Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze

New York's Rendez-Vous with French Cinema opens with Mathieu Amalric's spellbinding Barbara, starring César Best Actress winner Jeanne Balibar. They will present the film on March 8. Bruno Dumont, Vincent Macaigne, Xavier Beauvois, Marine Francen, Emmanuel Finkiel, Léonor Serraille with Julie Roué, Rachid Hami, Jean-Paul Civeyrac, Laurent Cantet, Gilles Bourdos with Richard Bausch, Xavier Legrand, Raymond Depardon with Claudine Nougaret, Tonie Marshall, and Eugène Green are also are expected to attend.

Civeyrac's A Paris Education (Mes provincials), starring Andranic Manet; Serraille's Montparnasse Bienvenüe (Jeune femme) with Laetitia Dosch; Dumont's Jeannette, The Childhood of Joan of Arc (Jeannette, l'enfance de Jeanne d’Arc), and Barbara - are four of the early bird highlights.

Mathieu Amalric also can be seen during the festival in Noémie Lvovsky's Tomorrow and Thereafter (Demain et tous les...

“Bpm” triumphed at the César Awards, taking home the prizes for Best Film, Best Original Screenplay, Best Supporting Actor (Antoine Reinartz), Best Male Newcomer (Nahuel Pérez Biscayart), Best Original Score, and Best Editing. Robin Campillo’s drama about AIDS activists in Paris also won the Grand Prix at last year’s Cannes Film Festival, but wasn’t nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign-Language Film — a snub that was met with some controversy.

Andrey Zvyagintsev’s “Loveless,” which is nominated for the Oscar, won the equivalent award. Albert Dupontel’s “Au revoir là-haut” also had a big night, taking Best Director, Best Actress (Jeanne Balibar), and three other prizes. Full list of winners:

Best Film

“Bpm,” Robin Campillo

“Au revoir là-haut,” Albert Dupontel

“Barbara,” Mathieu Amalric

“Le Brio,” Yvan Attal

“Patients,” Grand Corps Malade, Mehdi Idir

“Petit Paysan,” Hubert Charuel

“C’est La Vie,” Eric Tolédano, Olivier Nakache

Best Director

Robin Campillo,...

Frederick Wiseman's film will feature in the competition side-bar

The latest works from Manuel Abramovich, Filipa César, Raymond Depardon, Damien Manivel and Kohei Igarashi, Ilian Metev, Hong Sang-soo and Frederick Wiseman join the Zabaltegi-Tabakalera section of this year's San Sebastian Film Festival, which will open with Ruben Östlund's The Square.

The section will also feature documentaries Ex Libris: New York Public Library by Frederick Wiseman and 12 Days (12 Jours) - about mental health assessments in France - by Raymond Depardon.

Hong Sang-soo who won San Sebastian's Silver Shell for Best Director last year for Yourself And Yours (Dangsinjasingwa dangsinui geot) - returns with The Day After (Geu-hu) about a woman whose predecessor had been having an affair with her boss.

Argentine rising star Manuel Abramovich brings his second film Solar which looks at the function of the Argentine Army more than three decades after the end of the dictatorship...

Exclusive: Documentary capturing French psychiatric system premiered at Cannes.

Distrib Films Us has acquired Us rights to Raymond Depardon’s documentary 12 Days (12 Jours), capturing the stories of vulnerable psychiatric patients hospitalised against their will through the special court-room hearings deciding their fate.

The company’s founding co-chief François Scippa-Kohn did the deal with Eva Diederix, head of sales at Wild Bunch which is handling international sales. The film is being lined up for an autumn release.

Under a new French law introduced in 2011, any hospital admitting a person against their consent has 12 days to submit a detention application to a special judge. Before the introduction of the law psychiatrists handled the decision.

Some 90,000 French citizens are sectioned in this way every year. Veteran French photographer and filmmaker Depardon filmed 72 such hearings, focusing on 10 of the cases he witnessed for the documentary.

12 Days premiered in a special screening at the Cannes Film Festival this year to strong reviews...

Raymond Depardon’s documentary follows a judge who must decide whether psychiatric hospital patients can be allowed back into society

A young woman stares across a table at the judge who is reviewing her case. Her gaze is both searingly intense and curiously blank. Holding herself preternaturally still, muscles tensed against the turmoil of emotions, she pleads to see the two-year-old daughter who has been removed from her care. “Not all the time, I accept that. But just to change her diaper, to love her.” If there’s a more achingly sad moment in any film of the 2017 Cannes film festival, it’s hard to imagine what it could be. For 12 Jours, veteran documentarian Raymond Depardon (Modern Life, Journal de France) turns his lens on to the desperate, broken souls of the patients who have been involuntarily committed into the care of a Lyon psychiatric institution.

Related: A Gentle Creature...

After touring the Gallic countryside for his recent documentaries France, Journal de France and Modern Life, photographer-director Raymond Depardon returns to the institutional interiors of some of his most famous work in 12 Days (12 Jours), a film set inside the psychiatric ward of a hospital in Lyon.

A cross between Depardon's Delits flagrants and The 10th Judicial Court: Judicial Hearings, which focused on French criminal law, and his 1988 film Urgences, which was also set in a psychiatric ward, this fascinating study of human behavior chronicles a legal procedure whereby individuals committed by force must appear before a judge within...

A heightened sense of anticipation pervades the days leading up to the 70th anniversary of Cannes Film Festival as we arrange screenings and parties and meetings for an adrenaline filled ten days. May 17 to 28 will be full of surprises as this unique high energy mix of glamour, work, fun and stress unfolds. A broad range of distinctive films in Competition, Un Certain Regard, Directors Fortnight (Quainzaine des realisateurs) and Critics Week (La Semaine de la critique), L’Acid compete with parties from cocktails sponsored by all the countries that are here (60+ including Armenia, Nigeria, Kazakhstan and Singapore) and with late night extravanzas on yachts and at villas in the hills.Claudia Dances! Claudia Laughs! Claudia Lives!

This year’s poster portrays Claudia Cardinale dancing on a fiery red background. The Italian actress moved to Paris a long time ago. As the Cannes Muse this year, her musings illuminate the terrific...

The Festival de Cannes has announced the lineup for the official selection, including the Competition and Un Certain Regard sections, as well as special screenings, for the 70th edition of the festival:

COMPETITIONHappy End (Michael Haneke)Wonderstruck (Todd Haynes)Le Redoutable (Michel Hazanavicius)The Beguiled (Sofia Coppola)Rodin (Jaques Doillon)120 Beats Per Minute (Robin Campillo)Okja (Bong Joon-Ho)In The Fade (Fatih Akin)The Day After (Hong Sang-soo)Radiance (Naomi Kawase)The Killing Of A Sacred Deer (Yorgos Lanthimos)A Gentle Creature (Sergei Loznitsa)Jupiter's Moon (Kornél Mandruczó)Good Time (Benny Safdie & Josh Safdie)Loveless (Andrey Zvyagintsev) L'Amant Double (François Ozon)You Were Never Really Here (Lynne Ramsay)The Meyerowitz Stories (Noah Baumbach)The Square (Ruben Östlund)Un Certain REGARDOpening Night: Barbara (Mathieu Amalric)The Desert Bride (Cecilia Atan & Valeria Pivato)Lucky (Sergio Castellitto)Closeness (Kantemir Balagov)Before We Vanish (Kiyoshi Kurosawa)Beauty and the Dogs (Kaouther Ben Hania)L...

Sophia Coppola, Yorgos Lanthimos, Noah Baumbach, ‘Twin Peaks,’ and more…2017 Official Poster © Bronx (Paris). Photo: Claudia Cardinale © Archivio Cameraphoto Epoche/Getty Images

The official lineup for the 70th Cannes Film Festival, which will run from May 18–28, was announced April 13. While a few more screenings will undoubtably be added as we creep nearer to the festival, the selections announced feature a lot worth getting excited over — including, for the first time, two television shows (Twin Peaks and Top of the Lake) and a virtual reality film (Carne y Arena). Also, considering that The Killing of a Sacred Deer and The Beguiled are both in the main competition, there is, assuming equal probability, an 11.1% chance that a film starring Nicole Kidman and Colin Farrell will take home the top prize. Considering

This year, the festival jury will be headed by acclaimed Spanish director Pedro Almodovar, with French actress Sandrine Kiberlain presiding over the Camera d’Or jury and Romanian...

The 2017 Cannes official selection is a mix of brainy competition auteurs, red-carpet star power, and the rarest breed — a handful of players who could return to North America as Oscar contenders.

Nicole Kidman will be stuffing her trunks with evening gowns, as she will need to walk the Palais steps at least four times: twice with Colin Farrell, for Cannes favorite Sofia Coppola‘s Civil War potboiler “The Beguiled” (Focus Features) and Yorgos Lanthimos’ “The Killing of a Sacred Deer” (A24), both in Competition, and again for John Cameron Mitchell‘s midnighter “How to Talk with Girls at Parties” (A24) and a preview of Jane Campion‘s returning Sundance Channel series, “Top of the Lake: China Girl.” How the three films play in Cannes will determine if the Oscar perennial returns for another go-round.

Isabelle Huppert won the Cesar and was close — we think — to winning the Oscar for “Elle.

The 2017 Cannes official selection is a mix of brainy competition auteurs, red-carpet star power, and the rarest breed — a handful of players who could return to North America as Oscar contenders.

Nicole Kidman will be stuffing her trunks with evening gowns, as she will need to walk the Palais steps at least four times: twice with Colin Farrell, for Cannes favorite Sofia Coppola‘s Civil War potboiler “The Beguiled” (Focus Features) and Yorgos Lanthimos’ “The Killing of a Sacred Deer” (A24), both in Competition, and again for John Cameron Mitchell‘s midnighter “How to Talk with Girls at Parties” (A24) and a preview of Jane Campion‘s returning Sundance Channel series, “Top of the Lake: China Girl.”

Isabelle Huppert won the Cesar and was close — we think — to winning the Oscar for “Elle.” She’s back in two movies, “Happy End” (Sony Pictures Classics) by Michael Haneke, rejoining “Amour” co-star Jean-Louis Trintignant,...

Author: Scott Davis

As one award season closes another creeps up behind us and we start all over again as the 2017 Cannes Film Festival has announced its eagerly anticipated line-up for the festival which begins in May and as ever it is a diverse and exciting list of talents and films.

There are many incredible treats in store but here are some of our initial picks of what to look out for: Michel Hazanavicius, the director of Oscar Winner The Artist, returns with Redoubtable, his film about legendary filmmaker Jean Luc Godard; Michael Haneke’s latest, Happy End, makes an apperance, as does The Beguiled, the anticipated new film from Sofia Coppola which stars Nicole Kidman, Elle Fanning, Kirsten Dunst and Colin Farrell. Farrell and Kidman also feature in The Killing of A Sacred Deer, the new film from Yorgos Lanthimas (The Lobster) which also stars Alicia Silverstone.

Acclaimed filmmakers Lynne Ramsey,...

The line-up for our most-anticipated cinema-related event of the year is here. With a jury headed up by Pedro Almodóvar, who came to the festival last year with Julieta, the slate for the 70th Cannes Film Festival has been unveiled live. Kicking off with Arnaud Desplechin‘s Marion Cotillard-led Ismael’s Ghosts, there’s new films from Lynne Ramsay, Yorgos Lanthimos, Todd Haynes, Michael Haneke, Sofia Coppola, Hong Sang-soo (x 2!), Bong Joon-ho, Noah Baumbach, the Safdies, the final work from Abbas Kiarostami, and much more. Check out the full line-up below.

Competition

Loveless – Andrey Zvyagintsev

Good Time – Benny Safdie and Josh Safdie

You Were Never Really Here – Lynne Ramsay

A Gentle Creature – Sergei Loznitsa

Jupiter’s Moon – Kornél Mundruczó

L’Amant Double – François Ozon

The Killing of a Sacred Deer – Yorgos Lanthimos

Radiance – Naomi Kawase

The Day After – Hong Sang-soo

Le Redoutable – Michel Hazanavicius

Wonderstruck – Todd Haynes

Rodin – Jacques Doillon...

The Cannes Film Festival has announced its lineup for the 70th edition, following its tradition of unveiling every competition film (along with Un Certain Regard titles and other assorted offerings) in a morning press conference taking place at 5 a.m. Est.

“Since every day we have another move from Donald Trump, I hope North Korea and Syria won’t cast a shadow on the 70th edition,” said journalist Pierre Lescure before the announcement.

See More17 Shocks and Surprises from the 2017 Cannes Lineup, From ‘Twin Peaks’ to Netflix and Vr

This year’s festival features 49 films from 29 countries, including nine feature debuts and 12 women directors.

Check out the full lineup below (refresh for latest updates):

Opening Night Film

“Ismael’s Ghost” directed by Arnaud Desplechin

Competition

“The Day After” directed by Hong Sangsoo

“Loveless” directed by Andrey Zvyagintsev

“Good Time” directed by Benny Safdie and Josh Safdie

“You Were Never Really Here...

All you need to know about Cannes 2017 line-up announcement.Scroll down for the line-up

The films chosen for the Cannes Official Selection will be announced on April 13 at 11am Cet (10am GMT).

Festival President Pierre Lescure and General Delegate Thierry Frémaux will reveal the line-up at a press conference, which you can watch below (or on mobile Here).

The 70th Cannes Film Festival is scheduled to run from May 17-28. The films as they are announced are below:

Competition

Wonderstruck, Todd Haynes

Le Redoutable, Michel Hazanavicius

Geu-Hu (The Day After), Hong Sangsoo

Hikari (Radiance), Naomi Kawase

The Killing Of The Sacred Deer, Yorgos Lanthimos

A Gentle Creature, Sergei Loznitsa

Jupiter’s Moon, Kornél Mundruczó

L’amant Double, François Ozon

You Were Never Really Here, Lynne Ramsay

Good Time, Benny Safdie & Josh Safdie

Loveless, Andrey Zvyagintsev

The Meyerowitz Stories, Noah Baumbach

Ismael’s Ghosts, Arnaud Desplechin (opening film)

In The Fade, Fatih Akin

[link...

Sergei Eisenstein. Leni Riefenstahl. Michael Moore. Steve Bannon? At an event entitled “Alternative Facts: The Steve Bannon Reality Show” on the opening weekend of the Copenhagen International Documentary Festival (Cph:dox), writer and host Lars Trier Mogensen argued that Trump’s chief strategist might just be the most influential filmmaker among these titans of polemical documentary. A year ago, that claim might have seemed far-fetched.

Back then, the young crowd now packed into the “Social Cinema,” a performance hall in festival’s new center Kunsthal Charlottenborg, had likely never heard of this alt-right auteur. Lounging on stylish sofas, they were willing to sit through nine tedious Bannon trailers and a two-hour analysis of populism and propaganda with a Princeton professor, political scientist Jan-Werner Müller, and artist Christian von Borries. Given Bannon’s disdain for factual integrity, it would be hard to claim that his 90-minute political screeds could even be called documentaries.

Exclusive: Paris-based company reshuffles sales team as Carole Baraton steps down as head of sales.

Wild Bunch will launch sales on new films by Jean-Luc Godard, Christian Carion, Michel Ocelot, Raymond Depardon as well as a feel-good, Senegal-set drama starring Omar Sy at Unifrance’s upcoming Rendez-vous with French Cinema in Paris (Jan 12-16).

The event will also mark the first outing for the company’s reconfigured sales team following Carole Baraton’s decision to step down as head of sales to set-up her own company.

Baraton’s long-time territories the Us, France and the UK will be carved up between the sales team, now consisting of Silvia Simonutti, Emilie Serres, Olivier Barbier, recent hire Fanny Beauville and Esther Devos for festivals.

Notably, Beauville will co-handle Canada and the Us in partnership with La’s Creative Artist Agency (CAA), working closely with the agency’s film finance and sales group co-chief Roeg Sutherland and his team.

Bilingual...

Cristi Puiu. Photo by Alexi Pelekanos, courtesy of the ViennaleSieranevada, Cristi Puiu's latest fictional feature film is not only a fictional film, it is a film about fiction. It is about the fictions and lies we escape to in order to live on. Moreover, it is about the impotence when realizing that we are living in this net of fictions and lies. When asked about his viewing habits the Romanian director loves to stress that he prefers documentary to fictional cinema. Many of those who have written about Puiu focus on the so-called documentary qualities of his cinema, meaning his kind of realism, the way his camera and editing does not interfere too much with the action. Such observations are arguable to say the least because for Puiu, who has made some documentaries inspired by Raymond Depardon like 25.12.1995, București, Gara de Nord (1996) or 13 - 19 iulie 1998, Craiova, Azilul de batrani...

Miguel Gomes’s three-part modern Portuguese version of Scheherezade’s stories concludes on a flat note

Anyone who has already sat through the cumulative 257 minutes of Volumes 1 and 2 of Miguel Gomes’s idiosyncratic portrait of contemporary Portugal (released in consecutive weeks last month) is unlikely to want to skip the third instalment. However, it is fair to say that this is the least essential of the three films. The narrator Scheherazade (Crista Alfaiate) is fleshed out as a character. Her adventure – a brief escape to an archipelago populated by outlaws – is a playful tangle of anachronisms. But charm dissipates with the final story, an overlong documentary-style portrait of a working-class bird-trapping community. Tonally, it’s reminiscent of Raymond Depardon’s glum portraits of French rural life, spiked with surreal flashes. If this was Scheherazade’s final story, it would have been unlikely to stave off her execution.

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We've posted a roundup of interviews: Lucile Hadzihalilovic, whose Evolution is released in the UK next week; Zelimir Zilnik, whose 1995 award-winning Marble Ass was revived at the Berlinale this year; Richard Linklater, who talks about all his films and the current presidential primaries; Albert Magnoli, who directed Prince's Purple Rain; Raymond Depardon, whose Les Habitants has just opened in France; Juliette Binoche, who talks about L’Attesa; Whit Stillman on his 90s trilogy and his latest, Love & Friendship; and Interview has posted Ingrid Sischy's 1994 conversation with Tom Hanks. » - David Hudson...

We've posted a roundup of interviews: Lucile Hadzihalilovic, whose Evolution is released in the UK next week; Zelimir Zilnik, whose 1995 award-winning Marble Ass was revived at the Berlinale this year; Richard Linklater, who talks about all his films and the current presidential primaries; Albert Magnoli, who directed Prince's Purple Rain; Raymond Depardon, whose Les Habitants has just opened in France; Juliette Binoche, who talks about L’Attesa; Whit Stillman on his 90s trilogy and his latest, Love & Friendship; and Interview has posted Ingrid Sischy's 1994 conversation with Tom Hanks. » - David Hudson...

The Festival de Cannes has announced the lineup for the official selection, including the Competition and Un Certain Regard sections, as well as special screenings, for the 69th edition of the festival:COMPETITIONOpening Night: Café Society (Woody Allen) [Out of Competition]Toni Erdmann (Maren Ade)Julieta (Pedro Almodóvar)American Honey (Andrea Arnold)Personal Shopper (Olivier Assayas)La Fille Inconnue (Jean-Pierre Dardenne & Luc Dardenne)Juste La Fin du Monde (Xavier Dolan)Ma Loute (Bruno Dumont)Paterson (Jim Jarmusch)Rester Vertical (Alain Guiraudie)Aquarius (Kleber Mendonça Filho)Mal de Pierres (Nicole Garcia)I, Daniel Blake (Ken Loach)Ma' Rosa (Brillante Mendoza)Bacalaureat (Cristian Mungiu)Loving (Jeff Nichols)Agassi (Park Chan-Wook)The Last Face (Sean Penn)Sieranevada (Cristi Puiu)Elle (Paul Verhoeven)The Neon Demon (Nicolas Winding-Refn)The Salesman (Asgha Farhadi)Un Certain REGARDOpening Film: Clash (Mohamed Diab)Varoonegi (Behnam Behzadi)Apprentice (Boo Junfeng)Voir du Pays (Delphine Coulin & Muriel Coulin)La Danseuse (Stéphanie Di Giusto)La...

Section to include world premiere of Bertrand Tavernier doc; a cinema masterclass with William Friedkin and a tribute to documentary giants Raymond Depardon and Frederick Wiseman.

Bertrand Tavernier’s documentary about French cinema Voyage à Travers le Cinéma Français will receive a world premiere at the Cannes Classic section of the Cannes Film Festival (May 11-22).

The revered French filmmaker has described his latest work as an expression of “gratitude to all the filmmakers, writers, actors and musicians that have appeared suddenly in my life.”

Voyage à Travers le Cinéma Français is a Little Bear-Gaumont-Pathé co-production and was made in participation with Canal+, Cine+ and the Sacem, with the support of Région Ile-de-France and Cnc. Gaumont will handle international sales and Pathé have distribution in France. The film will be released in theaters in October 2016.

As in previous years, Cannes Classic will also feature nine documentaries about cinema and restored prints of 20 international classics including rare gems...

Section to include a cinema masterclass with William Friedkin, the 70th anniversary of the Fipresci prize, a tribute to documentary giants Raymond Depardon and Frederick Wiseman and the double Palme d’Or of 1966.

Bertrand Tavernier’s documentary about French cinema Voyage à Travers le Cinéma Français will receive a world premiere at the Cannes Classic section of the Cannes Film Festival (May 11-22).

The legendary French filmmaker has described his latest work as an expression of “gratitude to all the filmmakers, writers, actors and musicians that have appeared suddenly in my life.”

Voyage à Travers le Cinéma Français is a Little Bear-Gaumont-Pathé co-production and was made in participation with Canal+, Cine+ and the Sacem, with the support of Région Ile-de-France and Cnc. Gaumont will handle international sales and Pathé have distribution in France. The film will be released in theaters in October 2016.

As in previous years, Cannes Classic will also feature nine documentaries about cinema and restored...

Now that most of the Cannes Film Festival 2016 line-up has been settled when it comes to new premieres, their Cannes Classics sidebar of restored films is not only a treat for those attending, but a hint at what we can expect to arrive at repertory theaters and labels like Criterion in the coming years.

Today they’ve unveiled their line-up, which is toplined by Bertrand Tavernier‘s new 3-hour and 15-minute documentary about French cinema, Voyage à travers le cinéma français. They will also be screening William Friedkin‘s Sorcerer following his masterclass. Along with various documentaries, both classics in the genre and ones about films, they will also premiere new restorations of Andrei Tarkovsky‘s Solaris, Jean-Luc Godard‘s Masculin féminin, two episodes of Krzysztof Kieślowski‘s The Decalogue, as well as films from Kenji Mizoguchi, Marlon Brando, Jacques Becker, Mario Bava, and more.

Check out the line-up below.

Exclusive: Company also reveals more details about Claire Denis’s High Life and will show fresh footage of Emir Kusturica’s On The Milky Road.

Wild Bunch will kick-off sales on an authorised, no-holds-barred documentary about legendary Italian porn star Rocco Siffredi at the upcoming Efm.

Simply entitled Rocco, the documentary features a candid interview with the star in which he speaks about his true life, touching on his early career, fame and life with his wife of 20 years, Rosa Caracciolo, who he co-starred with in Tarzan X: Shame Of Jane- before they married and went on to have two children together.

Sometimes referred to as the “Italian stallion”, Siffredi has appeared in more than 1,500 films over his 30-year career and also dabbled briefly in the French arthouse cinema world, appearing in Catherine Breillat’s Romance and Anatomy Of Hell.

The film also follows Siffredi’s recent decision to quit the porn business for good, shortly after appearing...

Exclusive: Slate also includes new films by Alain Guiraudie and Raymond Depardon.

Wild Bunch will launch a new biopic of legendary sculptor Auguste Rodin at Unifrance’s January event Rendez-vous with French Cinema in Paris.

Vincent Lindon (The Measure Of A Man) will star in the film entitled Rodin, which will shoot in 2016 for a 2017 release to coincide with the centenary of the sculptor’s death in November 1917.

French director Jacques Doillon (Love Battles) will direct from his own screenplay.

It is Lindon’s first major role since his Palme d’Or-winning performance in social drama The Measure Of A Man at Cannes last May.

Casting is currently underway for the role of Rodin’s tragic collaborator and lover Camille Claudel and his long-suffering, life-long companion Rose Beuret.

The picture will start as Rodin turns 40 and enters one of the most productive periods of his artistic career in which he created works such as The Thinker and The...

Newsroom (Real and Algerian): Malek Bensmail’s Checks and BalancesOn the eve of the general election for President of the Algerian Republic in 2014, Algerian filmmaker Malek Bensmail set off to Algiers to document the campaign that will eventually lead to the 4th mandate of Abdelaziz Bouteflika. As he did in 2004 for his Le grand jeu, Bensmail uses documentary cinema to examine the struggle of his country to conquer real democracy, come out of an infernal cycle of political crisis and civil conflicts, and to break with the "old ways" (structured by corruption, confiscation of power by a caste and the lack of a modern project).In 2004, Bouteflika campaigned for his second mandate and Bensmail was in the "war room," examining the mechanisms of control and corruption under the mask of a civilian regime. This time, the campaign is seen from the offices of the most important and respected independent French-speaking daily,...

The fall festival rush is upon us. Locarno is currently ramping up. Venice has released their line-up and Thom Powers and the Toronto International Film Festival team have dropped a bomb with a previously unannounced new feature from powerhouse docu-provocateur Michael Moore. It is truly a miracle that the production of a film such as Moore’s upcoming Where To Invade Next (see still above) managed to go completely undetected by the filmmaking community until it was literally announced to world premiere at one of the largest film festivals in the world. Programmed as a one of the key films in the Special Presentations section at Tiff, the film sees Moore telling “the Pentagon to ‘stand down’ — he will do the invading for America from now on.” Also announced to premiere at Tiff was Avi Lewis’ This Changes Everything, which has slowly been rising up this list, as well as...

It’s been a surprisingly interesting month of moving and shaking in terms of doc development. Just a month after making his first public funding pitch at Toronto’s Hot Docs Forum, legendary doc filmmaker Frederick Wiseman took to Kickstarter to help cover the remaining expenses for his 40th feature film In Jackson Heights (see the film’s first trailer below). Unrelentingly rigorous in his determination to capture the American institutional landscape on film, his latest continues down this thematic rabbit hole, taking on the immensely diverse New York City neighborhood of Jackson Heights as his latest subject. According to the Kickstarter page, Wiseman is currently editing the 120 hours of rushes he shot with hopes of having the film ready for a fall festival premiere (my guess would be Tiff, where both National Gallery and At Berkeley made their North American debut), though he’s currently quite a ways away from his $75,000 goal.

Well folks, after a rather long and brutal winter (at least for me here in Buffalo), we are finally heading into the wonderful warmth of summer, but with that blast of sunshine and steamy humidity comes the mid-year drought of major film fests. After the Sheffield Doc/Fest concludes on June 10th and AFI Docs wraps on June 21st, we likely won’t see any major influx in our charts until Locarno, Venice, Telluride and Tiff announce their line-ups in rapid succession. In the meantime, we can look forward to the intriguing onslaught of films making their debut in Sheffield, including Brian Hill’s intriguing examination of Sweden’s most notorious serial killer, The Confessions of Thomas Quick, and Sean McAllister’s film for which he himself was jailed in the process of making, A Syrian Love Story, the only two films world premiering in the festival’s main competition.

Galerie Cinéma founder Anne-Dominique Toussaint strikes an elegant Michelangelo Antonioni pose Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze

Anne-Dominique Toussaint’s Parisian Galerie Cinéma is here in New York with an exhibition featuring works by Cédric Klapisch, Atiq Rahimi, Edward Lachman, Agnès Godard, James Franco, Vincent Perez, Kate Barry, Harry Gruyaert and Raymond Depardon as a special event of the 20th Anniversary of Rendez-Vous with French Cinema. The exhibition includes photographs of Charlotte Gainsbourg, Chiara Mastroianni and Catherine Deneuve who star in Benoît Jacquot's 3 Hearts (3 Coeurs), Isabelle Huppert, Sofia Coppola, Julianne Moore, Emmanuelle Bercot, Gérard Depardieu, Patrice Chéreau and a video loop of James Franco channeling Janet Leigh in Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho.

Kate Barry photographs: "Barry did a lot of pictures of actresses. You will recognize Charlotte, Isabelle Huppert, Sofia Coppola, Chiara Mastroianni and Catherine Deneuve." Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze

Just before the opening reception, attended by SK1 (L’Affaire SK1) star Nathalie Baye...