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“Hell is waiting for you. I’ll be your nightmare forever,” Yoshii (Masaki Suda) is told at gunpoint in one of the most thrilling sequences of Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s career in “Cloud.”

It’s a line, though, that could apply across the Japanese filmmaker’s work, whether the specters in the machine stalking a post-Y2K digital realm in “Pulse” or the elusive serial killer who seems to operate by hypnosis in “Cure,” one of the very best horror movies ever made.

“Cloud” is Kurosawa’s first movie to weld his techno anxieties to a Western framework, as his movie about a sociopath-adjacent internet reseller and hoarder culminates in what I wouldn’t quite call a glorious shootout, but certainly the grandest action set piece yet from the filmmaker. “Cloud” is out in U.S. theaters from Sideshow/Janus Films on July 18, and IndieWire shares the exclusive trailer below.

Suda,...

Janus Films has picked up the North American rights to Sergei Loznitsa’s Cannes competition drama Two Prosecutors.

The Ukrainian director’s Soviet-era thriller set during Stalin’s Great Purge in 1937 earned the François Chalais Prize in Cannes. Two Prosecutors centers on a law school grad who tries as a young prosecutor takes on corruption in the Soviet system and winds up facing the consequences.

The drama is based on the novella by Soviet scientist and political prisoner Georgy Demidov and stars Aleksandr Kuznetsov, Alexander Filippenko, Anatoli Beliy, Andris Keišs and Vytautas Kaniušonis.

“Impeccably directed and impressively acted, this slow-burn story of political injustice is filled to the brim with atmosphere — specifically the stifling, claustrophobic atmosphere of the U.S.S.R. at the height of Stalin’s Great Purge,” The Hollywood Reporter film critic Jordan Mintzer said of the historical drama in his Cannes festival review.

Director Loznitsa in...

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.

Bonjour Tristesse (Durga Chew-Bose)

There was slight trepidation going into Bonjour Tristesse. Justifying itself as another “adaptation” of Françoise Sagan’s text rather than remake of Otto Preminger’s masterpiece of mise-en-scène, there’s still some hesitation about the chutzpah that must go into thinking you can top that great craftsman at the height of his power. As directed by writer-turned-filmmaker Durga Chew-Bose with a great deal of formal assurance, this 2024 iteration is a highly respectable effort that’ll speak to countless people the original didn’t. One major difference being that Preminger made the film as a showcase for the muse he was having an affair with, Jean Seberg, casting some leering-male element onto the whole project. Chew-Bose’s project isn...

June! It’s always such a refreshing chunk of Gregorian real estate, the promise of summer looming in its most ideal form, not yet curdled into the desultory, bedraggled blast-furnace blood factories of late August and September. It’s also when cinema begins to stretch her legs again after an invariably prolonged awards season hangover. And yes, this means a lot of sweaty studio would-be blockbusters. But it also means Don’t-Miss Indies. So! Seek out your local art house and keep those summertime blues at bay.

The Actor

When: Now

Where: Theaters, VOD

Director: Duke Johnson

Cast: André Holland, Gemma Chan, May Calamawy, Asim Chaudhry

Why We’re Excited: Somehow it’s been a full decade since Charlie Kaufman’s melancholic stop-motion feature Anomalisa left audiences both dazzled by its technical brilliance and disconsolate by its gutting existential questioning. Kaufman of course has gone on to direct 2020’s I’m Thinking of Ending Things...

For a long time in the popular cinematic imagination, the French countryside was a golden place, of haybales, wildflowers and uncannily beautiful goatherdesses. More recently, mainly thanks to the darker sensibilities of Bruno Dumont and Alain Guiraudie, it has become the dank breeding ground for peculiar stories of rural spite and small-town perversity. This is the new tradition to which Julia Kowalski’s “Her Will Be Done” belongs — not least because it features two Guiraudie familiars in “Misericordia”‘s Jean-Baptiste Durand and “Standing Vertical”‘s Raphaël Thiéry. And though it promises more than it ultimately delivers, mostly Kowalski’s sophomore title is a solid addition to the subgenre, developing into an intriguing mix of heady and earthy, in which folk-horror eeriness fuses with provincial narrow-mindedness, and mysticism oozes through the muck.

The opening moments cement its tonal dissonance as, with a twang of Daniel Kowalski’s spare, uneasy score, a brief prologue with fire,...

Janus Films has acquired all North American rights to “The Love That Remains,” the new film from “Godland” director Hlynur Pálmason, which world premiered in Cannes Premieres at this month’s Cannes Film Festival. The deal was negotiated by Janus Films and New Europe Film Sales.

The acquisition marks the second collaboration between Janus Films and Pálmason, following “Godland, which premiered in Un Certain Regard at the Cannes Film Festival and was shortlisted for best international feature film at the 2024 Academy Awards.

“The Love That Remains” centers around a year in the life of a family as the parents navigate their separation. “Through both playful and heartfelt moments, the film portrays the bittersweet essence of faded love and shared memories amidst the changing seasons,” according to a statement.

The film stars Saga Garðarsdóttir (“Woman at War”), Sverrir Gudnason (“Borg Vs. McEnroe”), Ída Mekkín Hlynsdóttir (“Godland”), Þorgils Hlynsson (“Nest”) and Grímur Hlynsson (“Nest”).

Janus Films commented,...

Exclusive: Cloud, written and directed by Japanese veteran director Kiyoshi Kurosawa, will open in U.S. theaters on July 18.

Released by Sideshow and Janus Films, the film will open in New York on July 18, followed by Los Angeles on July 25, before kicking off a nationwide rollout.

The film stars Masaki Suda (The Boy and the Heron), Kotone Furukawa (Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy), Daiken Okudaira, Amane Okayama, Yoshiyoshi Arakawa and Masataka Kubota.

Cloud premiered at the Venice Film Festival, played at the Toronto International Film Festival, and was also Japan’s selection for the Oscars.

After releasing Kurosawa’s Cloud, Janus Films is also set to release Ira Sachs’ Peter Hujar’s Day in the fall.

Produced by Japan’s Nikkatsu, the thriller follows Yoshii, an ambitious, yet directionless, young factory worker from Tokyo, who side-hustles in black market reselling, cheating both buyers and sellers. After swindling his way into loads of cash,...

Janus Films has acquired all North American rights to “Resurrection,” the Special Award winner at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival from visionary Chinese filmmaker Bi Gan.

The film, which premiered in competition at Cannes, marks the third feature from Bi Gan, whose previous credits include “Kaili Blues” and “Long Day’s Journey Into Night.”

Told in six parts spanning a century, “Resurrection’s” framing story takes place in a world where humanity has lost the ability to dream, with one creature remaining entranced by the fading illusions of the dreamworld. The film stars Chinese superstar singer and actor Jackson Yee and veteran actor Shu Qi, known for her collaborations with Hou Hsiao-Hsien.

“Resurrection” was praised by Variety critic Jessica Kiang as “a marvelously maximalist movie of opulent ambition that is actually five or six movies, each at once playful and peculiar and part of an overarchingly melancholy elegy for the dream of...

Mubi’s June 2025 selections have arrived, featuring the previously announced mammoth drop of David Lynch and Mark Frost’s Twin Peaks: Season 1 & 2 and Twin Peaks: The Return. Additional highlights include Trương Minh Quý’s acclaimed second feature Việt and Nam, plus films by Gregg Araki, Ira Sachs, Alain Guiraudie, and Michael Almereyda.

Luke Hicks said in his review of Trương Minh Quý’s Cannes and NYFF selection, “The opening shot of Việt and Nam, writer-director Trương Minh Quý’s sophomore film, is a feat of cinematic restraint. Nearly imperceivable white specs of dust begin to appear, few and far between, drifting from the top of a pitch-black screen to the bottom, where the faintest trace of something can be made out in the swallowing darkness. The sound design is cavernous and close, heaving with breath and trickling with the noise of running water. A boy incrementally appears, walking gradually from...

Even after winning an Oscar, a Palme d’Or and six Cesar awards with Justine Triet’s “Anatomy of a Fall,” French producer Marie-Ange Luciani isn’t resting on her laurels. The Paris-based producer, who runs the company Les Films de Pierre, still strives to work with emerging filmmakers and newcomers, such as Laura Wandel, whose second feature, “Adam’s Sake,” opened this year’s Cannes Critics Week to warm reviews. She’s also cultivated relationships with established auteurs, such as Robin Campillo, who won Cannes’ 2017 Jury Prize with “Bpm (Beats Per Minute)” and opened Directors’ Fortnight this year with “Enzo,” which he finished after his close friend Laurent Cantet, the helmer of the Palme d’Or winning “The Class,” died before he could finish the drama.

Aside from developing Triet’s follow up to “Anatomy of a Fall,” Luciani is looking ahead at a busy 2026.

She’ll next work...

When I spoke to Alan Rudolph a couple months ago, he confirmed that Criterion had sought to release his Remember My Name but were held up by music rights––a situation so complicated that a lawyer hired by the director himself simply gave up. I like to think something’s changed in less than 60 days: the Criterion Channel will stream Remember My Name as part of a quartet featuring Afterglow, Trouble In Mind, and Breakfast of Champions, the latter recently given a 4K restoration. It’s part of a retrospective-heavy month that also includes a 12-title Johnnie To series, numerous films by René Clair, highlights of Amy Holden Jones and Ougie Pak, and Michael Winterbottom’s The Trip saga in both television and theatrical editions. Meanwhile, Gene Hackman is celebrated with six titles.

One of those, Night Moves, gets a Criterion Edition; so do Les Blank’s A Poem Is...

More than 350 film world figures, including Richard Gere, Susan Sarandon and Javier Bardem, have published an open letter on the eve of the Cannes Film Festival condemning “silence” over the deadly impact of Israel’s ongoing military campaign in Gaza.

The letter, published on the website of France’s Libération newspaper on Monday evening, was headed “In Cannes, the horror Gaza must not be silenced”. It was addressed “For Fatem”, in memory of 25-year-old Gaza artist and photojournalist Fatima Hassouna.

The young woman was killed in an Israeli airstrike in mid-April just 24 hours after it was announced a documentary exploring her life in the Gaza Strip would world premiere in the Cannes. Ten of her relatives, including her pregnant sister, were killed in same strike.

“She was a Palestinian freelance photojournalist. She was targeted by the Israeli army on 16 April, 2025, the day after it was announced that Sepideh Farsi’s...

Chicago – Patrick McDonald of HollywoodChicago.com audio film review for the new film release “Misericordia,” a thriller mystery involving a long lost resident of a small French village coming home to interact once again. In select theaters including Chicago’s Gene Siskel Film Center beginning March 28th.

Jérémie (Felix Kysyl) returns to his French hometown of Saint-Martial for the funeral of a former boss, a baker. When the baker’s wife Martine (Catherine Frot) offers her home for him to stay, it sets off a series of events involving Martine’s son Vincent (Jean-Baptiste Durand), Jérémie’s friend Walter (David Ayala) and the local priest (Jacques Develay). The question is who is Jérémie, why did he come back and why does his presence cause so much disruption?

”Misericordia” is in select theaters (see local listings) beginning March 26th/28th, including Chicago’s (click) Gene Siskel Film Center. Featuring Felix Kysyl,...

Félix Kysyl on Misericordia: 'I already knew the director’s other films and I just plunged in like you would do at a swimming pool – and I didn’t ask too many questions' Photo: New Wave

Being offered the chance to work with one of French cinema’s most original directorial talents Alain Guiraudie, who is instantly remembered for the 2013 queer tale Stranger By The Lake, would be enough for most upcoming actors. But to receive the accolade of the chance of the principal role in Guiraudie’s latest opus Misericordia (Miséricorde) was beyond 30-year-old Félix Kysyl wildest expectations.

After its premiere at last year’s Cannes Film Festival the film has gathered an impressive roll call of awards nominations including a César nod as a “Revelation” for Kysyl as well as a Lumière Awards nods bestowed by international journalists working in France.

Kysyl plays Jérémie who returns to...

After putting out our predictions for the Critics’ Week, Directors’ Fortnight and Un Certain Regard programmes we now look at the Cannes Premiere section. Launched four years directly after the lost, pandemic edition, the section helped re-frame the Un Certain Regard section as a section for discovery from mostly new auteurs and it allows the fest to cast a bigger net grabbing a good quartet of French cinema items that would normally have fought to a place at le Grand Théâtre Lumière. Previously we’ve seen Rodrigo Sorogoyen’s The Beasts, Víctor Erice’s Close Your Eyes, Lisandro Alonso’s Eureka and Alain Guiraudie’s Miséricorde.…...

Misericordia director Alain Guiraudie: 'A film is a mixture of a lot of things including my own personal fantasies, and some fairly intimate feelings' Photo: Films du Losange

Over the last 35 years proudly queer director Alain Giraudie has carved out his own idiosyncratic place in French cinema. Most of his films take place outdoors and feel close to Nature, perhaps understandable given his rural roots. He was born 60 years ago in Villefranche-de-Rouergue in Aveyron in the Midi-Pyrenées region, renowned for its diverse landscapes and historic buildings.

His own village was not unlike the locale for his new film Misericordia but he baulked at the idea of shooting on his home turf and instead chose Saint-Martial in the Cévennes national park about 100 kilometres from where he was born. He was attracted to what he describes as its “fairy-tale quality” with hills and forests and houses clustered around the church.

When...

A man moves in with his employer’s widow in this playful but dreamlike and inscrutable drama from Alain Guiraudie, the director of Stranger By the Lake

Writer-director Alain Guiraudie must surely now be said to match Quentin Dupieux for the weirdest sense of humour in French cinema. But is comedy exactly what is happening here? Because this has to be one of the strangest films of the year – or the most deadpan of deadpan in-jokes. At one point, I thought I saw the performer playing a police officer almost laugh, but perhaps every single actor here was on the verge of cracking up throughout the shoot. It could be that every time Guiraudie yelled “Cut” everyone burst out laughing.

You could also call Misericordia queer cinema, with the word “queer” also working in its non-sexual sense. Guiraudie made his international breakthrough with his 2013 film Stranger By the Lake, but...

Disney’s “Snow White” took the crown at the U.K. and Ireland box office over the weekend, debuting with a strong £3.8 million ($5 million), according to Comscore. The reimagining of the classic fairy tale led a competitive field of new releases and set the tone for the upcoming Easter holiday period.

In second place, Trinity Filmed Entertainment’s animated fantasy sequel “Ne Zha 2” earned $1.6 million. The Chinese blockbuster, which continues the mythological story of its 2019 predecessor, became one of the highest openings for a Chinese film in the territory. It has earned more than $2 billion worldwide and is the highest-grossing animated film of all time and the fifth highest grosser ever.

Universal’s “Bridget Jones: Mad About The Boy” continued its remarkable run in third place, earning $1 million in its sixth weekend. The romcom sequel has now grossed $57.6 million, solidifying its position as the highest-grossing U.K. release of the year so far.

He caused a scandal with his erotic tale of lakeside cruising. Now the French film-maker is back – with a funny yet tragic story of lofty ideals, base passions and a lusty priest

There’s a wonderfully frank clifftop scene in Misericordia, Alain Guiraudie’s new rural thriller, in which a priest seems to give absolution to a murderer. Not through some great act of clemency, though, but because of what he wants in return. “He’s a lot like me,” says the director, laughing. “He’s navigating between his greater ideals and his desires as a man. I think a lot of us do that.”

Morally flexible clergymen, vacillating killers, characters whose desires lead them into terra incognita – this is Guiraudie’s morally unstable terrain. Misericordia is the mirror image of his much-praised 2013 psychological drama Stranger By the Lake. Where that film made a murderer a dimly grasped object of desire,...

Magazine Dreams starring Jonathan Majors is eyeing an estimated $700k weekend in 815 theaters, solid in NY, LA and a handful of urban markets but below the $1 million Deadline hears the distributor had initially been hoping for given strong engagement online with the film, which has a 91% verified audience score on Rotten Tomatoes (81% with critics).

The opening weekend miss for what was a very buzzy Sundance title back in 2023 about a troubled but ambitious bodybuilder follows controversy around its star and comes at a tough time for indie films in general. In the months after the film premiered in Park City, Majors was found guilty of two misdemeanor counts of assault and harassment against an ex-girlfriend.

Briarcliff’s documentary October 8 is an upside surprise with a projected $250k weekend at 113 theaters — up 7% from last weekend’s opening at 14 few theaters. AMC Lincoln Square and Century City are top grossers for the...

We’ve had more than our fair share of riffs on Pasolini’s “Teorema” as of late, from Bruce Labruce’s explicit and unwatchable remake this year to Emerald Fennell’s Tik Tok-ified (and unwatchable) retooling from the year before. Some more directly indebted to Pasolini’s transgressive blueprint than others, these reinterpretations all share an affinity for a strangely (sometimes inexplicably) alluring central figure who seduces his way into a small, elite circle. But everybody knows that the French can never be excluded in a game of horny wits, so “Misericordia” has entered the fray with its own particular spin on the material—one that, in practice, is far more intriguing (and chaste?) than any of those other desperate plays at shock value.

Where most films taking inspiration from “Teorema” bring the subject into an unattainable class that they can only infiltrate from below the belt, Alain Guiraudie...

A long, quiet road slices through the French countryside. There’s no dialogue, no sounds from the engine, just the ambient hum of Marc Verdaguer’s slightly menacing score. We follow this road the way we follow a thought, one that begins benignly but deepens into something harder, darker, and more difficult to name. This is how the new film Misericordia begins — like a memory you didn’t expect to revisit.

Alain Guiraudie’s Misericordia is a film about returning, not just to a place, but to buried feelings, to unresolved tensions, to the unspeakable acts we commit in the name of tenderness. As in his earlier works, Guiraudie continues to traffic in exquisitely unsettling narratives, films that are sexually charged, morally murky, and tonally ambidextrous, where eroticism and violence unfold with disarming nonchalance. Misericordia is no exception. It's a pastoral thriller where intimacy and transgression often look like the same thing.

Alain Guiraudie‘s extraordinary and wonderfully twisted new queer noir, “Misericordia,” begins on a long, snaking, winding drive and ends with a man and a woman, who are unrelated and unmarried, in bed, and a light turned out. The French director of “Stranger by the Lake” and “Staying Vertical” reunites with cinematographer Claire Mathon (“Portrait of a Lady on Fire”) for a bleakly funny tragicomedy about how teenage desires, when left unsublimated, rear their grotesque head into your adulthood.

Guiraudie is most celebrated for “Stranger by the Lake,” which Cahiers du Cinema named the best film of 2013 (as they did with “Misericordia” last year). That film is a cult classic in the West that most millennial gay men, even those not proclaiming to be cinephiles themselves, have seen. It was basically gay porn wrapped up in a pseudo-murder-mystery about a gay cruiser’s unhealthy obsession with a mustached killer of men.

Note: This review was originally published as part of our Cannes 2024 coverage. Misericordia will be released in theaters on March 21 from Janus Films/Sideshow.

In a career spanning four decades and eight features, Alain Guiraudie has cemented himself as one of our most astute chroniclers of desire. If there’s any leitmotif to his libidinous body of work, that’s not homosexuality (prevalent as same-sex encounters might be across his films) but a force that transcends all manner of labels and categories. His is a cinema of liberty: of vast, enchanted spaces and solitary wanderers who wrestle with their passions, and in acting them out, change the way they carry themselves into the world. Desire becomes an exercise in self-sovereignty, a way of reasserting one’s independence––a rebirth. It is often said that cinema is an inescapably scopophilic realm, where the act of looking is itself a source of pleasure,...

With his latest feature, Misericordia, French filmmaker Alain Guiraudie again evinces his preoccupation with de-sensationalized depictions of male sexuality and the murky morasses of carnal desire. The film, which enjoyed its world premiere at last year’s Cannes Film Festival, also finds Guiraudie operating at the intersection of openness and opacity.

Félix Kysyl’s Jérémie returns to the rural French town of Saint-Martial to mourn his former boss, yet his homecoming opens up more emotions than the grief that spurred the trip in the first place. In short order, the young man finds himself enmeshed in a web of competing attractions between the newly widowed Martine (Catherine Frot), an estranged childhood friend (Jean-Baptiste Durand), and a particularly perceptive priest (Jacques Develay).

It’s the latter figure of divine authority who proves capable of assessing the developing and dangerous situation created by Jérémie’s impulsive instincts with stark clarity. Yet even...

If Alain Guiraudie has still not quite transcended festival obscurity to become an American art-house staple, all the more credit to the films––they’ve never approached niceties, comfortability, or a distillation of bleak perspectives for co-production amenability. But if anything must break through, Misericordia might as well be the one: ten months after its Cannes debut, his existentialist thriller comes to U.S. theaters with Guiraudie participating in a nationwide Q&a tour.

That the dozen years since Stranger by the Lake did little to elevate Guiraudie’s stateside profile––his previous feature, Nobody’s Hero, went effectively unreleased––is no fault of his own. Situated at the Criterion offices last fall, he active an engaged and peripatetic interview subject, returning to points and underlining ideas that characteristically tall language barriers couldn’t fell.

My thanks to Assia Turquier-Zauberman, who provided on-site interpretation.

Alain Guiraudie: Where am I supposed to sit?...

Sideshow and Janus Films have unveiled a five U.S. cities tour for Alain Guiraudie’s Misericordia later this month.

After opening the film at the IFC Center and Film at Lincoln Center in New York and the Landmark’s Nuart Theatre in Los Angeles on March 21, the film head to Boston, Chicago and more cities on March 28 and San Francisco on April 4.

Misericordia premiered at the Cannes Premiere section in 2024, and has since screened at Telluride, Toronto, New York and AFI.

The film was nominated for eight César Awards and was one of three films considered for the French Oscar entry.

Félix Kysyl stars as a seemingly benign, out-of-work baker who drifts back to his small hometown after the death of his beloved former boss.

Staying on after the funeral, he begins to insinuate himself into his late mentor’s family, living with his kind-hearted widow (Catherine Frot), in...

French auteur Alain Guiraudie is exploring the implications of mercy in his new noir, “Misericordia.” The title, which literally translates to “mercy,” encompasses the “Stranger by the Lake” filmmaker’s interrogation into grief during a thriller set in the pastoral countryside.

Félix Kysyl stars as Jérémie, a man who returns to his hometown for the funeral of his beloved former boss, the village baker, and decides to stay for a few days with the man’s widow, Martine (Catherine Frot). Yet after a threatening former rival appears, leading to another mysterious disappearance, it seems as though Jérémie’s visit has unraveled the community.

The official synopsis reads: “Set in an autumnal, woodsy village in his native region of Occitanie, his latest follows the meandering exploits of Jérémie (Kysyl), an out-of-work baker who has drifted back to his hometown after the death of his beloved former boss, a bakery owner. Staying long after the funeral,...

In the end, Emilia Pérez went two for 13. Jacques Audiard’s unclassifiable Mexican cartel transgender musical went into the 97th Academy Awards as the theoretical frontrunner. It’s 13 nominations — for best picture, director, actress, supporting actress, adapted screenplay, international feature, cinematography, film editing, makeup/hairstyling, original score, sound and two for original song — were the most ever for a non-English-language film, beating the 10 noms each for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Roma, and within touching distance of the all-time record held by All About Eve, Titanic and La La Land, which earned 14 each.

But when the votes were counted, Emilia Pérez walked away with just two awards: A best supporting actress nod for Zoe Saldaña and the best original song honor for “El Mal.”

We all know why. Emilia Pérez suffered the most spectacular derailing of an Oscar campaign in recent memory. There was just a week between the Jan.

Jacques Audiard’sEmilia Pérez was named best French film of the year at the 50th César awards on Friday night (February 28), taking home seven awards from 12 nominations.

The Mexico-set musical crime thriller that won the jury prize and shared best actress award at Cannes Film Festival last May also earned a best director and adapted screenplay prize for Audiard and awards for cinematography, original music, visual effects, and sound. The film has sold some 1.2million tickets at the French box office since its August 2014 release for Pathé.

Scroll down for the full list of winners

Stars Karla Sofia Gascon and...

Jacques Audiard’sEmilia Pérez was named best French film of the year at the 50th César awards on Friday night (February 28), taking home seven awards from 12 nominations.

The Mexico-set musical crime thriller that won the jury prize and shared best actress award at Cannes Film Festival last May also earned a best director and adapted screenplay prize for Audiard and awards for cinematography, original music, visual effects, and sound. The film has sold some 1.2million tickets at the French box office since its August 2014 release for Pathé.

Scroll down for the full list of winners

Stars Karla Sofia Gascon and...

“Emilia Pérez” won Best Film from the French 2025 César Awards, a major win for the Netflix film ahead of the Oscars. Jacques Audiard’s movie had earned 13 Oscar nominations but then fell out of frontrunner status.

The film also won both Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay for Jacques Audiard, though Zoe Saldaña, who has dominated the awards circuit all year, lost in an upset to Hafsia Herzi for the film “Borgo.” Saldaña though was nominated alongside Karla Sofía Gascón in the Best Actress category, and not in Best Supporting Actress.

In all, “Emilia Pérez” took home seven Césars out of 12 nominations, including Best Visual Effects, Best Sound, Best Original Music, and Best Cinematography. “The Count of Monte Cristo,” a new version of the Dumas revenge tale, led all nominees with 14, and it won two.

While the Césars this year largely did not resemble the Oscars, a few others won...

Jacques Audiard’s Oscar contender Emilia Pérez was the big winner at the 50th César Awards, France’s equivalent of the Oscars, taking best film and best director among multiple honors.

Audiard won best director and best adapted screenplay for Emilia Pérez, and the film also took honors for best sound, best cinematography, best visual effects and best original music.

But Emilia Pérez star Karla Sofía Gascón, who walked the red carpet at the Paris gala, returning to the spotlight for the first time since the eruption of the controversy surrounding her offensive resurfaced tweets, lost out in the best actress race to Hafsia Herzi, who won for her role as a female prison guard in Stéphane Demoustier’s drama Borgo.

Gascón, who is Spanish, skipped Spain’s national film awards, the Goyas, earlier this month following the backlash over her past social media posts. Netflix removed the actress, the...

"Surprisingly hilarious yet unsurprisingly horny." Janus Films has revealed an official US trailer and a new poster for the acclaimed French indie film titled Misericordia, which first premiered at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival last year. This thriller from French director Alain Guiraudie (also of Strange by the Lake) also played at the Telluride, Toronto, New York, London, and Busan Film Festivals last year. In the film, Jérémie returns to his hometown for an old baker friend's funeral, staying even longer after. In this village where so much goes unsaid, he must contend with rumours and suspicion, until he commits an irreparable act and finds himself at the center of a police investigation. Starring Félix Kysyl as Jérémie, with Catherine Frot, Jacques Develay, Jean-Baptiste Durand, and David Ayala. In Alain Guiraudie's quietly carnal world, violence & eroticism explode with little anticipation, and criminal behavior seems like a natural extension of physical desire.

Few 2024 films yet to be released theatrically in the US have the same buzz as Alan Guiraudie‘s “Misericordia.” After a remarkable festival tour last year, the latest from the “Stranger By The Lake” director finally hits theaters in NYC and LA next month, with a wider rollout to follow.

And “Misericordia” is a tense, nervy queer thriller in the same vein as Guiraudie’s 2013 masterwork.

Continue reading ‘Misericordia’ Trailer: Alain Guiraudie’s Latest Erotic Thriller Hits NYC & LA Theaters On March 21 at The Playlist.

That it has been nine months since Alain Guiraudie’s Misericordia premiered at Cannes should do nothing to diminish the excitement of its U.S. release finally commencing next month. I saw the film right in the heart of a busy NYFF schedule and have found it retaining more than most, still disturbing me well after a first encounter. As Guiraudie fans should find themselves pleased, newcomers might come away hoping to see as much as they can; few working directors are so brilliant with tone and temperament, so fearless towards concepts of moral judgement.

Ahead of Misericordia‘s March 21 opening from Janus and Sideshow, we’re pleased to exclusively debut a poster that melds its three great strengths: Félix Kysyl’s unknowable expression, autumnal atmosphere, and a splash of blood where needed (or desired). Extra credit for a tagline that got a genuine smirk out of me.

As Leonardo Goi...

“Stranger by the Lake” director Alain Guiraudie is back with another unsettling queer exploration, this time with 2024 Cannes premiere “Misericordia.” Here, Jérémie (Félix Kysyl) comes back to his hometown in rural France to mourn the death of his former boss. Who he also might have been in love with. It’s complicated, but if you’ve never known what it’s like to be the only hot person in a small town, Jérémie’s arrival makes the case that it’s less than desirable, and even dangerous. Especially as the townspeople, including a local bishop, start feasting on him.

The film opens in select theaters from Sideshow and Janus Films on March 21, with Guiraudie traveling to the U.S. for Q&As. IndieWire shares the trailer exclusively below.

Returning to Saint-Martial, Jérémie stays longer than one should, reconnecting with his boss’ now-widowed wife, and his childhood best friend Vincent (Jean-Baptiste Durand...

No streaming service does a director retrospective like the Criterion Channel, and March offers two masters at opposite ends of exposure. On one side is Michael Mann, whose work from Thief through Collateral (minus The Keep) is given a spotlight; on the other is Alain Guiraudie, who (in advance of Misericordia opening on March 21) has five films arriving. (2001’s duet of That Old Dream That Moves and Sunshine for the Scoundrels have perhaps never streamed in the U.S. before.) Meanwhile, three noirs from Douglas Sirk are programmed alongside a Lee Chang-dong retrospective that features three new restorations.

Showcases will be staged for Dogme 95, Best Supporting Actor winners, and French Poetic Relaism. Welles’ The Trial gets a Criterion Edition alongside Demon Pond; Horace Ové’s newly restored Pressure makes a streaming premiere alongside spruced-up copies of Amadeus, Love Is the Devil, Port of Shadows, and Burning an Illusion, as...

“Night Stage,” the gay erotic thriller by Brazil’s Filipe Matzembacher and Marcio Reolon, has been acquired by German distributor Salzgeber, which will release the film in Germany and Austria. The film will world premiere in Berlinale’s Panorama sidebar next week.

M-Appeal is handling international sales for the film, and has released the international trailer.

“We have followed the careers of filmmakers Filipe Matzembacher and Marcio Reolon since their first feature, ‘Seashore,’ premiered at the Berlinale in 2015,” Jakob Kijas from Salzgeber said. “In 2017, we released their miniseries ‘The Nest’ in Germany. Now we are delighted to welcome ‘Night Stage’ in our program – a bold and beautiful drama about love, sex, performances and politics, that takes risks and fully delivers.”

Salzgeber plans to release ‘Night Stage’ theatrically in autumn this year. The film joins the distributor’s upcoming slate alongside “Misericordia” by Alain Guiraudie, “Baby” by Marcelo Caetano (also represented...

The Count of Monte Cristo, Matthieu Delaporte and Alexandre de La Patellière’s retelling of the classic French revenge tale, is the front-runner for this year’s César Awards, scoring 14 nominations, including in the best film and best directing categories.

The period drama, starring Pierre Niney, beat out Jacques Audiard’s Oscar frontrunner Emilia Pérez, which got 12 noms, and Beating Hearts, Gilles Lellouche’s contemporary reimagining of Romeo and Juliet featuring François Civil and Adèle Exarchopoulos, which earned 13 nominations.

Matthieu Delaporte and Alexandre de la Patelliere’s lavish adaptation of Alexandre Dumas’ classic was the biggest French box office hit of last year, drawing close to 10 million viewers for a $40 million local take. Globally, the film has grossed more than $75 million.

Sean Baker’s Palme d’Or winner, and Oscar contender, Anora, is up for the Cesar for best foreign film, against Academy Award hopefuls including Coralie Fargeat’s The Substance,...

Matthieu Delaporte and Alexandre De La Patelliere’s epic literary adaptation The Count Of Monte-Cristo leads the nominations for France’s Cesar Awards with 14.

There were also strong showings from Gilles Lellouche’s Beating Hearts with 13 and Jacques Audiard’s Oscar and Bafta-nominated Emilia Perez with 12.

Scroll down for the full list of nominations

The Count Of Monte-Cristo and Emilia Perez are in the running for best film alongside Boris Lojkine’s Souleymane’s Story, Alain Guiraudie’s Misericordia and Emmanuel Courcol’s The Marching Band.

All of the films nominated for best film had their world premiere at the...

“The Count of Monte Cristo,” a three-hour epic adventure adapted from Alexandre Dumas’s literary classic, is leading the race at the Cesar Awards, France’s equivalent to the Oscars, with a whooping 14 nominations. “Beating Hearts,” Gilles Lellouche’s sprawling crime romance, follows shortly with 13 nominations.

A favorite in the Oscar race, Jacques Audiard’s “Emilia Perez” is nominated for 12 Cesar Awards, including best film and actress for Karla Sofía Gascón and Zoe Saldana. The French awards show has highlighted international performers before, notably Kristen Stewart, who won a Cesar nod in 2015 for her supporting role in Olivier Assayas’ “Cloud of Sils Maria.”

It’s worth noting that the two Cesar frontrunners — “The Count of Monte Cristo” and “Beating Hearts” — were also France’s second and third highest grossing local films in 2024. Both movies are produced by Mediawan-owned banners, Chapter 2 and Chi-Fou-Mi (the latter produced “Beating Hearts...

The Count of Monte Cristo has topped the nominations for France’s prestigious César awards, followed by Beating Hearts and Oscar frontrunner Emilia Pérez.

The film has made it into 14 categories in the nominations, which were announced in Paris on Wednesday morning. Beating Hearts clinched 13, followed by Emiia Pérez with 12.

Matthieu Delaporte and Alexandre de la Patelliere’s lavish and fast-paced adaptation of Alexandre Dumas’ classic novel starring Pierre Niney was one of France’s top performing movies at the local box office in 2024, drawing close to 10M spectators and its top international export.

Gilles Lellouche’s modern Romeo and Juliet tale Beating Hearts – co-starring François Civil and Adèle Exarchopoulos – has also performed well at home, drawing more than five million spectators.

The 12 nominations for Jacques Audiard’s Cannes Jury prize-winning musical film Emilia Pérez continue its buzzy awards season run which has seen it clinch four Golden Globes and...

Jacques Audiard’s musical film Emilia Pérez swept the 30th edition of France’s Lumière Awards on Monday evening, winning Best Film, Director and Screenplay as well Actress for Karla Sofia Gascón and Music for Camille and Clément Ducol.

The wins add further steam to the Cannes Jury Prize winner’s awards season run following its quadruple Golden Globes triumph and European Film Awards victory, where it also clinched Best Film, Director, Screenplay and Actress for Gascón.

The movie is currently on six of the 10 announced category shortlists for the 97th the Academy Awards and nominated in 11 categories for the 2025 Baftas film awards.

Further awards seasons hopefuls also featured in the Lumière prizes, with Mati Diop’s Berlinale Golden Bear winner Dahomey – which made it into Best International Feature Film (for Senegal) and Documentary Academy Award shortlists – won Best Documentary.

Latvian director Gints Zilbalodis’s Flow – which is also on...

If you’ve never known what it’s like to be the only hot person in a small town, Alain Guiraudie’s “Misericordia” is here to show you just that, in all its darkly comic anguish.

The “Stranger by the Lake” director’s latest film, which premiered at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival before touring Telluride, Toronto, and New York, will open in select theaters on March 21. IndieWire exclusively announces the film’s release from Sideshow and Janus Films here. “Misericordia” finds Guiraudie returning to the land of queer desire, though this time with Jérémie (Félix Kysyl) coming back to his hometown to mourn the death of his former boss. Whom he may have been in love with.

A national rollout will kickoff after the film opens at IFC Center and Film at Lincoln Center in New York and the Landmark’s Nuart Theatre.

While back in his hometown of Saint-Martial in rural France,...

French films took an estimated €250.2m in overseas markets in 2024 from 38.1 million admissions, according to projected annual figures released by Unifrance today (January 13).

This represents an 11% drop from 2023’s final tally of €271.4m and 42.7 million admissions although the final 2024 figures won’t be announced until October. Last year’s January predicted figures for 2023 (€234m and 37.4 million admissions) ended up being surpassed by the final numbers.

Dramatic films led the way with 26.1% of ticket sales abroad, followed by comedies at 21.8%, and action and adventure films with 21.3%;animation – 2023’s top genre – dropped to 17.7%.

Europe remains the continent with the largest appetite for French fare,...

Illustration by Stephanie Lane Gage.It's that time of the year again! Here at Notebook, we celebrate the season of light in the traditional way: with a gift guide, of course, stuffed with all manner of goodies to delight the lucky cinephile in your life—and why not get yourself a little something while you’re at it?You might start with a Mubi subscription and a Notebook print subscription if your recipient is still without either: these are the gifts that keep on giving. Plus: get a jump on next year’s holiday rush by preordering Read Frame Type Film, the just-announced first book by Mubi Editions. Naughty? Nice? Who are we to judge? Whatever your pleasure, we hope you’ll enjoy this twice-checked list.Jump to a category:BooksHome videoMusic and soundtracksPosters, prints, and memorabiliaApparel and home goodsMiscellanyBOOKSIf this first category is somewhat overrepresented in the scope of the overall guide,...

Jacques Audiard’s musical film Emilia Pérez is the frontrunner at the nomination stage for the 30th edition of France’s Lumière awards.

The prizes, which are regarded as the French equivalent of the Golden Globes, will be voted on by members of the international press hailing from 38 countries this year.

They cover 13 categories spanning film, direction, screenplay, actress, actor, female revelation, male revelation, first film, animation, documentary, international co-production, cinematography and music.

Audiard’s Cannes Jury Prize winner Emilia Pérez has clinched six nominations, followed by Boris Lojkine’s Souleymane’s Story, which won the Un Certain Regard Jury Prize this year, and Alain Guiraudie’s Misericordia, with five nominations each.

Other frontrunners with four nominations each, include François Ozon’s When Fall Is Coming and Jonathan Millet’s Ghost Trail.

The winners will be announced in a ceremony at the Forum des images in Paris on January 20, 2025.

The full...

Jacques Audiard’s Emilia Perez has topped the nominations for France’s Lumière Awards.

The French-made, Spanish-language film earned six nominations for best film, director, screenplay, cinematography, music and actress for Karla Sofía Gascón in her starring role as the titular transitioning Mexican drug lord.

The Lumière nominations cap a strong week for Emilia Perez, which garnered 10 nominations for the 2025 Golden Globes,and was the big winner at the European Film Awards with five prizes.

Scroll down for full list of nominees

Boris Lojkine’s Souleymane’s Story, which tracks the daily life of an undocumented Guinean asylum seeker in Paris,...

As the final weeks of 2024 roll on, more and more critics and publications will release lists of the best films of the year. But The Playlist missed covering one of the most anticipated annual lists when it hit social media last week: the Top 10 Films of 2024 for the esteemed French film magazine Cahiers du Cinema.

Read More: ‘Misericordia’ Review: Alain Guiraudie’s Nerve-Rattling Thriller Is A Dostoevskian Masterwork [Cannes]

Not to worry, we’ll cover it now, although fair warning: Cahiers’ choices stem from theaters that hit French cinemas this calendar year, so there’s a bit of carry-over from 2023.

Continue reading Alain Guiraudie’s ‘Misericordia’ Tops Cahiers du Cinema’s Top Films Of 2024 List, With Todd Haynes’ ‘May December’ At #2 at The Playlist.