News

The BBC has picked up Jean-Xavier de Lestrade’s TV thriller Sambre – Anatomy of a Crime.

Starring Alix Poisson and Clémence Poesy, the series is based on true events and follows the extraordinary legal case of a serial rapist who attacked women across three decades in the same location. The France Télévisions thriller came fresh off the back of the smash success of French movie Anatomy of a Fall.

Produced by Federation Studios, Sambre starts in Northern France in the late 1980s, where women are being sexually assaulted along the same road by the Sambre river, with attacks taking place early mornings and in a similar style. The justice system is overwhelmed by the accumulating cases. It will take 30 years to catch a man, who never stopped attacking women and is responsible for at least 54 cases of rape or sexual assault,...

Jean-Xavier de Lestrade, the Oscar-winning filmmaker behind docuseries “The Staircase,” has once again struck a chord with “Samber,” a limited series about a French serial rapist that explores the damages of sexual violence against women and children.

“Samber,” a six-part thriller series directed by de Lestrade, charts the true case of Dino Scala, a seemingly ordinary family man who sexually assaulted and raped more than 50 women and minors over three decades in Northeastern France. In spite of several victims filing complaints, Scala was able to slip through the cracks of France’s judicial system and benefited from a complacent stance toward sexual abuses. He was eventually arrested in February 2018 and found guilty of 17 rapes, 12 attempted rapes and 27 sexual assaults or attempts. In June 2022, Scala was sentenced to 20 years in prison.

Represented in international markets by Federation Studios, the six-part series has captured the zeitgeist in France, which is undergoing a...

Cannes — MipTV and the inaugural edition of Canneseries hosted a joint In Development section for promising early-stage projects from around the world, looking to team them with producers and distributors as early as possible. The event was held April 10-11, to a packed crowd of often young producers.

“It’s our opportunity to make things happen between financing and creative people at a very early stage,” said Benoit Louvet, a former key executive at TF1 Group who last year joined the Cannes International Series Festival as managing director. “We had a very tough process of selection from 344 projects from all over the world. It’s the crème de la crème.”

Of those 344 projects, 12 were selected to pitch. In addition to the exposure, they were competing for co-develppment prizes from Federation Entertainment and La Fabrique des Formats, which eventually went to Germany’s “The Sources of Evil” and Canada’s “Whatever,...

Elephant, a Paris-based collective of creative professionals working in film, TV and digital, will pitch an updated re-telling of Victor Hugo’s “Les Miserables” at this year’s In Development section for Canneseries and MipTV. It will be the first French adaptation of the story in more than two decades.

Hugo’s novel was a revelation when first published in 1862, and has been adapted for stage and screen countless times since. But, executive producer Guillaume Renouil sees a TV series as a way to expand on many of Hugo’s philosophies beyond what can be done in a two-hour film or play.

“All the previous adaptations have concentrated on the story of Valjean’s destiny and redemption,” he explained to Variety, “but ‘Les Miserables’ is a lot more than that.

A series format will allow us to go deeper in others characters’ storylines: Fantine, Cosette, the Thenardier’s, Javert, Marius,...

In today’s second Horror Highlights, we have preview panels from three of Night of the Living Dead: Revival‘s #5 issues (Rise, Soul, and Slab), as well as details on a shirt from Cavity Colors that gives a new twist to John Carpenter’s They Live. We also have release details for Scream Factory’s Fender Bender Blu-ray / DVD, Shudder’s acquisition of Us rights for Beyond the Walls, info on when to watch the short film Bleed the Night on El Rey Network, and two preview videos from Bb.

Night of the Living Dead: Revival #5 Preview Panels: Night of the Living Dead: Revival #5 issues are now available from Double Take. To learn more, visit Double Take’s website. In case you missed it, check out all ten #5 covers, our impressions of the #5 issues, and our exclusive Q&A with Sr. Story Editor / writer Michael Coast.

“Double...

In its first exclusive acquisition of a new TV series, Shudder has picked up the U.S. rights to “Beyond the Walls,” the French mini-series created by Hervé Hadmar and Marc Herpoux, and will debut the show in the coming months.… Continue Reading →

The post Shudder Acquires U.S. Rights to French Mini-Series Beyond The Walls appeared first on Dread Central.

The distributor has picked up Matthew Newton’s award-winning SXSW Narrative Spotlight audience award-winner.

Newton directed From Nowhere from a screenplay he wrote with Kate Ballen about three undocumented high school students in the Bronx who dig into their past when a teacher connects them with a lawyer to help them achieve legal status.

FilmRise struck the deal with Ryan Kampe of Visit Films and plans a winter 2017 theatrical release.

India Eisley and Jason Isaacs have joined psychological thriller Behind The Glass for Ace In The Hole Productions, Primary Wave Entertainment and Dana Lustig Productions. Making his English-language feature debut is Assaf Bernstein, whose Mossad spy thriller The Debt was adapted by Miramax into a Us version starring Jessica Chastain and Helen Mirren.The Vancouver International Film Festival will honour X-Files creator Chris Carter with the Viff Impact Builder Award. As part of the Impact stream, the Builder Award is presented to a key contributor to British...

Yesterday, the nominees for the Globe de cristal were announced. The purpose of this event is to allow the French press hand out awards in arts and culture. The artistic domains in question are cinema, television, architecture/design, literature, music, fashion, cultural exhibitions (read: museums) and stage shows.

1. Cinema:

Best film of 2009:

* Un prophète, by Jacques Audiard.

* Welcome, by Philippe Lioret.

* Oss 117: Rio ne répond plus, by Michel Hazanavicius.

* Le concert, by Radu Mihaileanu.

* À l'origine, by Xavier Giannoli.

Best actress of 2009

* Isabelle Adjani in La journée de la jupe.

* Chiara Mastroianni in "Non ma fille, tu n'iras pas danser".

* Kristin Scott Thomas in Partir.

* Marie-Josée Croze in Je l'aimais.

* Maïwenn Le Besco in Le bal des actrices.

Best actor of 2009

* Vincent Lindon in Welcome.

* Tahar Rahim in Un prophète.

* Yvan Attal in Partir.

* Jean Dujardin in Oss 117: Rio ne répond plus.

* François Cluzet in À l'origine.