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Exclusive: Cinefrance International, the global sales arm of Paris-based Cinefrance Studios, will kick off sales for Naomi Kawase’s Yakushima’s Illusion starring Vicky Krieps at Locarno Film Festival where it willpremiere in competition. Ad Vitam will release the film in France.

Krieps plays a French coordinator of paediatric heart transplants who is sent to Japan, where she fights to save the life of a young child just as the man she loves suddenly vanishes.

Cinefrance Studios produced the film alongside Kawase for Japan’s Kumie Inc. Co-producers are Belgium’s Tarantula, Luxembourg’s Viktoria Productions, and France’s Prod Lab and Marignan Films.

Valerie Donzelli’s anticipated film “At Work” (“A Pied d’Oeuvre”), one of the three French movies set to compete at this year’s Venice, has been boarded by Gregoire Melin’s international sales banner Kinology.

Adapted from Franck Courtès’s autobiographical novel by the same name, “At Work” is headlined by Bastien Bouillon (“The Night of the 12th”), who stars alongside Virginie Ledoyen (“Just the Two of Us”), André Marcon and Marie Rivière.

“At Work” tells the true story of a successful photographer (Bouillon) who gives up everything to devote himself to writing and is confronted with poverty for the first time. “This radical account, blending clarity and self-depreciation, portrays the journey of a man willing to pay the ultimate price for his freedom,” reads the synopsis.

Kinology has acquired worldwide sales to “At Work” and will introduce it to buyers at the Venice Film Festival.

Donzelli described “At...

Films by Lukas Dhont, Pawel Pawlikowski, Ryusuke Hamaguchi, Marie Kreutzer, Jonas Poher Rasmussen and Radu Jude are among 35 features to share €10.7m in Eurimages’s latest round of funding.

The 35 supported co-productions include five documentaries and two animations. 13 of the projects are to be directed or co-directed by women, representing 39.41% of the total funding awarded.

Scroll down for full list

Flemish director Dhont, who was Oscar nominated for his 2023 feature Close, received €500,000 forCoward. Dhont joins forces again with co-writer Angelo Tijssens for the film, for which plot details are not yet available.

The Reunion, the production company set up by Michiel and Lukas Dhont,...

Even in supposedly enlightened societies it is practically an article of faith that a woman’s identity as a mother must supercede all her other identities. Not only that: any woman not willing to sacrifice all the other love in her life for the love of her child is unnatural, an aberration and the ultimate taboo: a bad mother. Anna Cazenave Cambet’s sweeping, moving “Love Me Tender,” based on the semi-autobiographical novel by Constance Debré, aims at the heart of this pervasive ideology of hypocrisy and unreachably high expectations, and largely thanks to a rivetingly radiant Vicky Krieps, hits its mark with painful accuracy. The paths to what is socially deemed success as a mother are few and narrow and heavily policed, but there are a million ways to fail.

Krieps, lean and rangy in T-shirts and denim, plays Clémence, a divorced writer who used to be a lawyer,...

Caught between sophisticated comedy and silly fluff, between Hitchcockian mystery and zany amateur sleuth caper, A Private Life (Vie Privée) is a lot more fun than it probably deserves to be thanks to the disarming chemistry of its seasoned leads, Jodie Foster and Daniel Auteuil. Rebecca Zlotowski’s latest doesn’t have the intoxicating sun-kissed sensuality of An Easy Girl or the emotional complexity of Other People’s Children, her last two films. This one is too busy careening all over the tonal map for any of that. What it does have is the French director’s customary light touch; it’s chaos with charm.

Foster’s French — at least to these ears — sounds impeccable and this is her first feature in the language since 2004’s A Very Long Engagement. She jumps into it with a spiky vitality and an unexpected playfulness that buoy the movie as much as Zlotowski’s zippy direction.

It came as quite the surprise that acclaimed director Rebecca Zlotowski’s latest film, led by Jodie Foster and an all-star French cast, did not make Cannes competition. If it turns out A Private Life might indeed be too slight for Palme consideration, this up-tempo comedic murder mystery is a breezy, fun means of showcasing delicious chemistry between legendary actors.

Foster plays Lilian, a Paris-based American psychiatrist who learns that her long-term patient Paula (Virginie Efira) has died. An aggressive outburst by Paula’s husband Simon (Mathieu Amalric) at her wake and subsequent meeting with their daughter yield suspicions she did not, as appearances suggest, commit suicide by taking all the drugs Lilian prescribed. Becoming more and more obsessed with learning who killed her patient, Lilian starts seeking answers from hypnosis-induced visions, which also lead to repercussions for her failed marriage with Gabriel (Daniel Auteuil) and strained relationship with son...

Cannes film festival

Foster plays a psychoanalyst who suspects her client may not have killed herself, and sets out to investigate with ex-husband Daniel Auteuil

Rebecca Zlotowski serves up a genial, preposterous psychological mystery caper: the tale of an American psychoanalyst in Paris, watchably played by Jodie Foster in elegant French, who suspects that a patient who reportedly committed suicide was actually murdered. Zlotowski is perhaps channelling Hitchcock or De Palma, or even late-period Woody Allen – or maybe Zlotowski has, like so many of us, fallen under the comedy spell of Only Murders in the Building on TV and fancied the idea of bringing its vibe to Paris and transforming the mood – slightly – into something more serious.

Foster is classy shrink Lilian Steiner, stunned at the news that her client Paula Cohen-Solal (Virginie Efira) has taken her own life. She is also furiously confronted by Paula’s grieving widower Simon...

Walking out of Tuesday’s Cannes premiere, a local remarked how delightfully New York-y “A Private Life” felt. At first, the comment struck me as odd – Gallic spirit so suffuses this Paris-set cerebral thriller that even star Jodie Foster spends most of the film drinking wine, puffing on cigs, and speaking in la langue de Molière. But I could also see what my colleague meant, given director Rebecca Zlotowski’s choice to plays her murder mystery as a wry and Woody Allen-esque riff on neuroses.

Flexing her French-language skills for the first time since Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s “A Very Long Engagement,” Jodie Foster ably slips into the role of an expat shrink, and thankfully so, because the filmmaker wrote the film for the American star. And so it should come with little surprise that playing Dr. Liliane Steiner plays to Foster’s strengths; hitting notes of head-strong fragility, she...

Jodie Foster is getting rave reviews for her performance in the new movie A Private Life!

The 62-year-old actress stunned on the red carpet at the premiere of the new film, titled Vie Privée in French, at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival on Tuesday (May 20) in Cannes, France.

Jodie was joined at the event by director Rebecca Zlotowski and co-stars Virginie Efira, Daniel Auteuil, and Vincent Lacoste, among others.

In A Private Life, the renowned psychiatrist Lilian Steiner mounts a private investigation into the death of one of her patients, whom she is convinced has been murdered. The film earned a 10-minute standing ovation at the premiere, according to Deadline.

Jodie opened up to Variety about why she decided to make a French movie.

Keep reading to find out more…

“I’ve been wanting to go back and do a French movie, because I haven’t done one in a long time,...

Director Rebecca Zlotowski and star Jodie Foster unveiled their collaboration Vie Privée (A Private Life) out of competition here in Cannes on Tuesday evening, greeted by a 10-minute ovation.

Foster plays renowned psychiatrist Lilian Steiner in the French-language mystery. When Lilian learns of the death of one of her patients, she is deeply troubled. Convinced that it was murder, she decides to investigate.

Also starring are Daniel Auteuil, Virginie Efira, Mathieu Amalric, Vincent Lacoste and Luana Bajrami.

Sony Pictures Classics acquired North America and Latin America rights in February on the film that Zlotowski also co-wrote. Goodfellas completed a raft of international deals earlier this year. Ad Vitam has French distribution with a release planned later in 2025.

This is Zlotowski’s sixth film, and her second in the Cannes Official Selection as director after 2013’s Un Certain Regard title Grand Central.

Foster told the festival of meeting with Zlotowski, “We reviewed the whole film,...

A sophisticated American in Paris, psychiatrist Liliane Steiner has a habit of recording her sessions. Is it because her patients speak French, and she’s afraid of missing a thought? Or is it because Liliane isn’t really listening to these people, whose problems all sound so frivolous, they practically blend together in a torrent of white noise on the soundtrack of “Private Life”?

In Rebecca Zlotowski’s sleek but slippery psychological thriller, Liliane is caught off guard by the news that Paula Cohen-Solal (Virginie Efira), a woman who failed to appear for her last three appointments, has in fact died by suicide. Liliane didn’t see it coming, and now she’s rattled, wondering what else she might have missed. Paula’s death sends Liliane back to her archives, listening for clues, though she’s not likely to find the truth there.

In fact, Anne Berest and Zlotowski’s...

Jodie Foster has plenty of Oscars, Emmys, Golden Globes and more to prove she can do just about anything on screen, and now she is taking a step further and doing it all in French.

That part is not a huge surprise. On one occasion in 2004 she appeared in a supporting role speaking in French in A Very Long Engagement, which starred Audrey Tatou. But now for the first time she has a starring role in a French production, Vie Privée (A Private Life), that premiered tonight out of competition as an official selection of the Cannes Film Festival, a most appropriate place to debut this new landmark in Foster’s career which just continues to dazzle.

Foster plays psychiatrist Lilian Steiner, a rock-solid professional who has been doing this work a very long time. But when she learns a longtime patient, Paula, whom...

The 78th edition of the Cannes Film Festival continues on Day 8 with the world premieres of A Private Life, starring Jodie Foster, and Eleanor The Great, the directorial debut of Scarlett Johansson, starring June Squibb in the titular role as part of the Un Certain Regard lineup. Other premieres today include It Was Just an Accident, The Disappearance of Josef Mengele, and Fuori.

Related: ‘Eddington’ Cannes Film Festival Premiere Photos: Joaquin Phoenix, Pedro Pascal, Emma Stone, Austin Butler & More

Squibb brings to vivid life the witty and proudly troublesome 94-year-old Eleanor Morgenstein, who, after a devastating loss, tells a tale that takes on a dangerous life of its own. Johansson’s directorial debut is a comically poignant exploration of how the stories we hear become the stories we tell. The cast also includes Erin Kellyman, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Jessica Hecht and Rita Zohar.

The film A Private Life, starring Jodie Foster as Lilian Steiner,...

If there are two things you can say about art house ingenue Vicky Krieps, it’s that she’s the most internationally famous actor to ever emerge from the tiny European nation of Luxembourg, and that she rarely takes on roles that could be considered easy or light.

After breaking out in Phantom Thread, starring as a model who turns the tables on her abusive boss/boyfriend, she’s been drawn towards characters who are either living on the edge or going through hell. In the past three years alone, she’s played a woman stricken with a rare debilitating illness (More Than Ever); a renown Austrian poet whose life was tragically cut short (Ingeborg Bachmann — Journey into the Desert); a tight-lipped U.S. border cop who kills a migrant and tries to get away with it (The Wall); and a frontier wife who’s brutally raped, then winds up...

Alexandre Mallet-Guy’s Memento has bought Harry Lighton’s sexy romance “Pillion” which is world premiering in Un Certain Regard.

The Paris-based Memento, which is at Cannes with three movies in competition, will release the A24 movie in France. Speaking to Variety, Mallet Guy said, “It’s a gay Bdsm rom-com, and it’s pretty wild.”

“Alexander Skarsgård plays the biker, and Harry Melling, who you might know from ‘Harry Potter,’ plays the submissive. The film is hilarious but also quite disturbing, simply because it’s a romantic comedy set in such a specific, unconventional world. But it really works — it’s surprisingly emotional, and there’s something incredible about seeing two stars take such bold risks,” he added.

Memento’s Cannes competition lineup includes Joachim Trier’s “Sentimental Value,” Jafar Panahi’s “A Simple Accident” and Tarik Saleh’s “Eagles of the Republic,” as well as Laura Wandel’s...

Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. To keep up with our latest features, sign up for the Weekly Edit newsletter and follow us @mubinotebook on Twitter and Instagram.News Holes.President Trump announced on social media that he would be instituting a “100% Tariff on any and all Movies coming into our Country that are produced in Foreign Lands.” The film industry continues to ponder the precise meaning and scope of his declaration, which came after a meeting with actor and “special ambassador to Hollywood” Jon Voight. In response, California governor Gavin Newsom has proposed a $7.5 billion federal film tax credit for motion-picture productions.A passionate microcinema culture has emerged in Australia, attracting audiences to watch alternative and experimental films in “independent theatres and ad-hoc spaces such as warehouses, community halls and even pubs.”Over 1,500 UK actors, writers, and other industry professionals have signed an open letter...

While he’d long been rumored to be working in France on a film titled Our Apprenticeship, Ryusuke Hamaguchi told us that project was hardly more than a rumor. He’s now nevertheless set to direct his first feature in the country, with Variety reporting on the imminent start for All of a Sudden, which will star Virginie Efira and Tao Okamoto. Co-scripted by Léa Le Dimna, it loosely follows Makiko Miyano and Maho Isono’s published correspondence You and I – The Illness Suddenly Get Worse, which Hamaguchi said left him “deeply moved”––to the extent that it was the only post-Drive My Car offer that intrigued him––and for the last couple years he’s been traveling to France with some regularity to workshop material with local actors.

All of a Sudden concerns a Japanese theater director (Okamoto) and French nursing-home director (Efira) who connect over illness and death.

Ryusuke Hamaguchi, the director of the Oscar-winning “Drive My Car” and his most recent film “Evil Does Not Exist,” will head from Japan to Paris for his next feature titled “All of the Sudden.”

Hamaguchi is currently in Paris prepping the film based on a script he co-wrote with Léa Le Dimna, according to a report in Variety. And the film is set to star French-Belgian actress Virginie Efira (“Benedetta”) and Japanese actress Tao Okamoto (“The Wolverine”). The film will shoot primarily in Paris.

“All of the Sudden” is loosely based on a published collection of real-life letters by philosopher Makiko Miyano, who wrote two books after being diagnosed with months to live as a result of breast cancer, and exchanged letters with an anthropologist. The film will follow the bond between two women, one a Japanese theater director and the other a French head of a nursing home.

Hamaguchi...

Japanese filmmaker Ryusuke Hamaguchi made huge waves with his fantastic drama “Drive My Car,” which landed an Oscar for Best International Feature Film, and the director is now setting up his next feature, “All of The Sudden.” Poised to be shot in Paris, France, with actresses Virginie Efira (“Benedetta”) and Tao Okamoto (“The Wolverine”) set for leading roles.

The new drama revealed by Variety revolves around the bond between two women, a Japanese theater director (Okamoto) and a French nurse (Efria), that will delve into subject matter such as illness and death as the two women share extensively personal details of their lives.

Continue reading ‘All Of The Sudden’: Ryusuke Hamaguchi Paris-Set Bonding Drama Stars Virginie Efira & Tao Okamoto at The Playlist.

Finally one Paris-based project might have leap-frogged another (Our Apprenticeship) as Variety reports that Ryusuke Hamaguchi will direct All of the Sudden – and has Virginie Efira and Tao Okamoto toplining. Hamaguchi is in prep mode, Cinefrance International is in sales mode and among the producers we find Cinefrance Studios’ David Gauquié, Julien Deris, Jean-Luc Ormières and Renan Artukmaç, Office Shirous & Bitters End’s Hiroko Matsuda, Kosuke Oshida and Yuji Sadai, Heimat Film’s Bettina Brokemper and Tarantula’s Joseph Rouschop. No production start date has been provided – but we imagine this is a mid 2025 shoot with a 2026 Cannes Film Festival drop being eyed.…...

“Drive My Car”s Oscar-winning director Ryusuke Hamaguchi is set to make his next film, “All of a Sudden,” in Paris with a glamorous female duo led by Virginie Efira (“Benedetta”) and Tao Okamoto (“The Wolverine”).

Hamaguchi, who is currently in Paris preparing for the movie, penned the script with Léa Le Dimna, loosely inspired by a collection of real-life exchanged letters published in the book “You and I – The Illness Suddenly Get Worse,” by Makiko Miyano and Maho Isono.

“All of a Sudden” is produced by David Gauquié, Julien Deris, Jean-Luc Ormières, Renan Artukmaç at Paris-based Cinefrance Studios; Hiroko Matsuda, Kosuke Oshida, Yuji Sadai at Japan’s Office Shirous & Bitters End; Bettina Brokemper at Germany’s Heimatfilm; and Joseph Rouschop at Belgium’s Tarantula. Diaphana, who handled Hamaguchi’s last three movies, will release “All of a Sudden” in France, while Bitters End will distribute it in Japan.

Cinefrance International...

Netflix’s series 3 Body Problem is gearing up to start shooting seasons two and three back-to-back in Hungary, relocating fromthe UK where it predominantly filmed season one on location and at Shepperton Studios.

Season one also filmed in locations includingNew York, Massachusetts, and Florida, as well as in Spain and Panama.

Filming on the Hungarian shoot is set to start on June 7 in Budapest, with principal photography picking up on July 8 and wrapping on August 2, 2027, according to filings on the Hungarian National Film Office website.The Hungarian production partner is Pioneer, which has credits including Walden Media’s The Billion Dollar Spy starring Russell Crowe,...

Exclusive:Paris-based sales company Lucky Number has taken on international sales for Italian director Francesco Sossai’s debut feature The Last One For The Road, whichwill world premiere in Un Certain Regard at Cannes next month.

The Italy-Germany co-production is about two broke, bar-hopping fiftysomethings who meet a shy and aimless architecture student. Together, the three men embark on a chaotic road trip through the Venetian plains where bad advice, hangovers and unexpected friendship shake up the young man’s future plans for life and love.

The Last One For The Road is produced by Marta Donzelli and Gregorio Paonessa for...

Exclusive: Italian sales firm Intramovies has boarded world sales rights excluding Israel and Poland on Or Sinai’s Mama, which was selected as a Cannes Special Screenings title in the Official Selection yesterday.

Mama is the only Israeli title in Official Selection at Cannes this year. The Hebrew- and Polish-language film follows Mila, a woman forced to temporarily leave her seaside mansion – and her secret romance – to return to her family in a remote Polish village. But the long-awaited reunion is far from what she imagined.

Adi Bar Yossef produces the film, which is a co-production between her Israeli company Baryo,...

Iranian filmmaker Ashgar Farhadi is readying his first film since 2021’s “A Hero,” and the cast sheet is a who’s who of French Cinema’s greatest talents.

Read More: ‘Luz’ Review: Isabelle Huppert Gets Lost In Flora Lau’s Video Game World [Sundance]

Variety reports that Farhadi’s “Parallel Tales” will star Isabelle Huppert, Virginie Efira, Vincent Cassel, Pierre Niney, and Adam Bessa.

Continue reading ‘Parallel Tales’: Asghar Farhadi’s Next Movie Stars Isabelle Huppert, Virginie Efira, Vincent Cassel, Catherine Denevue & More at The Playlist.

Two-time Oscar-winning Iranian director Asghar Farhadi (A Separation, The Salesman) has cast a who’s who of French stars for his next feature, Parallel Tales.

Gallic A-listers Isabelle Huppert (Elle), Virginie Efira (Benedetta), Vincent Cassel (Black Swan) and Pierre Niney (The Count of Monte-Cristo) are set to headline the French-language feature, alongside Adam Bessa, an up-and-comer nominated for a French César as best newcomer this year for his turn in Jonathan Millet’s Ghost Trail. The film will also feature a cameo from French film legend Catherine Deneuve.

Parallel Tales is set to begin shooting in Paris this fall, marking Farhadi’s first French feature since 2013’s The Past starring Tahar Rahim and Berenice Bejo. The film is being set up as a French-Italian-Belgian coproduction between Alexandre Mallet-Guy’s Memento Production, Andrea Occhipinti’s Lucky Red, and André Logie’s Panache Productions and Gaëtan David’s La Compagnie Cinématographique. U.

While Asghar Farhadi’s first ventures working internationally with the French-set The Past, starring Bérénice Bejo and Tahar Rahim, and the Spanish-language drama Everybody Knows, starring Javier Bardem and Penélope Cruz, didn’t quite Iive up to the Iranian director’s finest works, he’s going to give it another go. Following his Cannes Grand Prix winner A Hero back in 2021, the director has announced his next feature, which will shoot in France and has amassed quite the ensemble.

Variety reports Isabelle Huppert, Virginie Efira, Vincent Cassel, Pierre Niney, and Adam Bessa will star in Parallel Tales, along with an “appearance” by Catherine Deneuve. With production set to begin in Paris this fall, a spring 2026 France release in the works, making it primed for a Cannes Film Festival debut next year.

While no plot details have been unveiled yet, one can expect another dramatically knotty, searing drama from the director,...

Megawatt quintet Isabelle Huppert, Virginie Efira, Vincent Cassel, Pierre Niney and Adam Bessa (plus a bonus appearance by Catherine Deneuve) will populate Asghar Farhadi‘s “Parallel Tales,” — which sees the Iranian filmmaker return to Paris — the lieu of where he shot 2013’s “The Past.” Variety reports that filming on his tenth film will take place in the fall with the hopes of bringing this to Cannes in 2026. We don’t have a logline yet, but this should be full of mental gymnastics like his previous work. Look for this to be a top sales project (Charades and UTA Independent Film Group) on the Croisette next month.…...

Before Virginie Efira can be seen reteaming with her Other People’s Children director Rebecca Zlotowski in the Cannes-bound Vie privée, one of the actor’s previous festival selections is finally arriving stateside. Delphine Deloget’s drama All to Play For, which premiered at the 2023 edition of Cannes in Un Certain Regard, follows Efira as a bohemian single mother who fights the full weight of the French court system to save her son.

The film’s been picked up by Hope Runs High, who’ll release it beginning on May 14 at LA’s Laemmle Theatres, with a special NYC sneak preview taking place this Monday at NYC’s Nitehawk in Williamsburg. Ahead of the run, we’re pleased to exclusively premiere the new U.S. trailer for the directorial debut also starring Mathieu Demy.

“All To Play For grabbed me from the first scene and never let go. Virginie Efira is...

Iranian filmmaker Asghar Farhadi has announced his next film, four years after winning the Cannes Grand Prix in 2021. The Oscar-winning director will helm “Parallel Tales,” also known as “Histoires Parallèles,” with Isabelle Huppert and Vincent Cassel starring. Farhadi is set to begin production in Paris in fall 2025, with a release in France planned for spring 2026.

“Parallel Tales,” which will be a French-language film, brings Farhadi back to France after he previously filmed 2013’s “The Past” there. The “Parallel Tales” cast marks the first collaboration between iconic French stars Huppert and Cassel, who will also be joined by Virginie Efira, Pierre Niney, Catherine Deneuve, and “Ghost Trail” breakout Adam Bessa. No other details on the plot are available at this time.

The film will be an official French-Italian-Belgian coproduction between Alexandre Mallet-Guy’s Memento Production in France, Andrea Occhipinti’s Lucky Red in Italy, and André Logie’s Panache Productions...

Asghar Farhadi is set to direct the French-languageParallel Talesin Paris later this year, with a cast led byIsabelle Huppert, Virginie Efira, Vincent Cassel, Pierre Niney and Adam Bessa.

Catherine Deneuve is also set to star.

The film is being produced by Alexandre Mallet-Guy’s Memento Production in France with Andrea Occhipinti’s Lucky Red in Italy, and Andre Logie’s Panache Productions and Gaetan David’s La Compagnie Cinematographique in Belgium.

Anonymous Content will co-produce the film from the US.

Charades is handling international sales and will introduce the film to buyers at Cannes next month.Bessa was namedaScreenArab Star...

Asghar Farhadi has united a strong cast for his next feature Parallel Tales, with Isabelle Huppert, Virginie Efira, Vincent Cassel, Pierre Niney and Adam Bessa all set to star.

Parallel Tales (French title: Histoires Parallèles) is scheduled to shoot on location in Paris this autumn, and is aiming for a theatrical release in France in spring 2026 via Memento Distribution. French icon Catherine Deneuve will also make an appearance in the film, which is produced by Alexandre Mallet-Guy with Farhadi and David Levine.

The plot has not yet been disclosed. French-language Parallel Tales is a co-production between Mallet-Guy’s Memento Production in France,...

Asghar Farhadi will shoot his next film Parallel Tales in Paris this coming fall, with Isabelle Huppert, Virginie Efira, Vincent Cassel, Pierre Niney and Adam Bessa in the cast.

It is the Oscar-winning Iranian director’s first feature since A Hero, which won the Grand Prix at Cannes in 2021.

Parallel Tales marks Farhadi’s second French-language film after The Past with Tahar Rahim and Berenice Bejo, who won Best Actress award for her performance at Cannes in 2013.

The feature will be produced by Alexandre Mallet-Guy alongside Farhadi and David Levine. Mallet-Guy has worked with Farhadi on all of his films starting with and since The Past, having originally connected with the director as the French distributor of his earlier titles including About Elly and A Separation.

The film is an official French-Italian-Belgian coproduction between Mallet-Guy’s Memento Production in France, Andrea Occhipinti’s Lucky Red in Italy, and André Logie...

Twelve years after making his French-language directorial debut with “The Past,” two-time Oscar-winning Iranian director Asghar Farhadi is set to return to Paris for his next film, “Parallel Tales.”

The film, whose plot remains under wraps, brings together a powerful French cast, including Isabelle Huppert (“Elle”), Virginie Efira (“Benedetta”), Vincent Cassel (“Black Swan”), Pierre Niney (“The Count of Monte Cristo”) and Adam Bessa (“Ghost Trail”). Iconic French actor Catherine Deneuve will also make an appearance in the film.

Produced by long-time collaborator Alexandre Mallet-Guy alongside with Asghar Farhadi and David Levine, the prestige project will be launched by Charades and UTA Independent Film Group at the upcoming Cannes Film Market. Charades will handle international sales, while UTA Independent Film Group will rep U.S. rights. Farhadi is set to begin production on “Parallel Tales” in Paris this fall.

The Iranian director’s most recent film, “A Hero,” earned the Grand...

Cannes Film Festival general delegate Thierry Fremaux and president Iris Knobloch unveiled the official line-up for the event’s 78th edition featuring a signature blend of auteur and red- carpet glamour during the event’s annual press conference in Paris today (April 10).

Knobloch, now in her third year as president, kicked off the anticipated unveiling by referencing the festival’s long history since its creation in 1939 with “the will to offer to films and filmmakers a refuge – sometimes in the literal sense.” She said the festival remains “daring, curious and open”.

Addressing a professional audience at the Ugc Montparnasse in Paris’ 6th arrondissement,...

France’s #MeToo movement is back in the spotlight today (March 24) as actor Gerard Depardieu is expected at a Paris criminal court to face charges of sexual assault on a film set.

The now 76-year-old French actor is being tried for the sexual assault of two women – an assistant director and a set designer – during the 2021 film shoot for Jean Becker’s The Green Shutters (Les Volets Verts) released in 2022 that co-stars Anouk Grinberg and Fanny Ardant.

If he is found guilty, he could face five years in prison and a €75,000 fine. He is also facing other charges in separate cases.

With just three weeks until the line-up for the Cannes Film Festival 2025 is announced on April 10,Screentakes a look at the films from around the world looking increasingly likely to debut on the Croisette.

North America

English-language auteurs Wes Anderson, Lynne Ramsay, Spike Lee, Jim Jarmusch and Kelly Reichardt could all unveil their anticipated next films at the Cannes – and if they do, it will drum up the kind of red-carpet glamour Thierry Fremaux loves.

Two years after The French Dispatch played in Competition, Anderson looks a safe bet to return with The Phoenician Scheme, a spy comedy thriller featuring...

Paris Fashion Week just kicked off with a bang thanks to the Louvre Museum’s inaugural “Le Grand Dîner du Louvre” event, which featured a star-studded guest list!

Gigi Hadid, Tyra Banks, and the Beckhams were some of the many celebs who stepped out for the event on Tuesday night (March 4) at the Louvre in Paris, France.

“This is really the first time that the Louvre has decided to create an exhibition about the relationship between fashion and its own collections,” the museum’s director Olivier Gabet told Wwd.

Paris Fashion Week officially began on March 3 and runs through March 11. Stay tuned to see all the celeb sightings!

Head inside to see all of the celebs who attended Le Grand Diner…

Keep scrolling to see all of the celebs who attended the dinner…

David and Victoria Beckham

Anna Wintour

Gigi Hadid

Fyi: Gigi is wearing a custom Moschino look with...

Sony Pictures Classics has acquired the North and Latin American rights to Rebecca Zlotowski’s French murder mystery film “Vie Privée,” TheWrap has learned.

The project stars Jodie Foster as a renowned psychiatrist who investigates the suspicious death of one of her patients. She is joined by Daniel Auteuil, Virginie Efira (“Other People’s Children”), Mathieu Amalric (“Serpent’s Path”), Vincent Lacoste (“Lost Illusions”) and Luàna Bajrami (“Portrait of a Lady on Fire”).

The project’s promo was unveiled at the European Film Market by Goodfellas, which has sold it nearly everywhere worldwide. In France, the film will be released by Ad Vitam.

The film reunites Zlotowski with her longtime producer, Frédéric Jouve, at Les Films Velvet. Zlotowski’s previous credits include 2023 Venice Golden Lion contender “Other People’s Children,” “An Easy Girl,” “Planetarium,” “Grand Central” and “Dear Prudence.”

It also marks Foster’s first French-language role in two decades following her role...

In one of the first major deals unveiled at the European Film Market, Sony Pictures Classics (“I’m Still Here”) has bought “Vie Privée,” a highly anticipated, humor-laced murder mystery movie starring Jodie Foster and directed by Rebecca Zlotowski (“Other People’s Children”), for North America and Latin America territories.

The Oscar winner stars in the film as renowned psychiatrist Lilian Steiner who mounts a private investigation into the death of one of her patients, whom she is convinced has been murdered. Foster last starred in a French-language film 20 years ago in Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s Oscar-nominated “A Very Long Engagement.”

Foster, who recently won an Emmy and a Golden Globe her turn in HBO’s “True Detective: Night Country,” stars in “Vie Privée” alongside a flurry of international stars, including Daniel Auteuil and Efira (“Other People’s Children”), Mathieu Almaric (“The Diving Bell and the Butterfly”), Vincent Lacoste (“Lost Illusions”) and Luana Bajrami...

Nabil Ayouch, a well-known French-Moroccan filmmaker, is about to take on his first French-language project. This new movie will be a psychological thriller with a strong female lead, starring Virginie Efira and Maryam Touzani.

Ayouch recently presented his film Everybody Loves Touda at the Cannes Film Festival, which was also Morocco’s official entry for the Oscars. His past works include the acclaimed Casablanca Beats, which was featured at Cannes in 2021, and Much Loved, which got significant praise.

His next project is set to start filming later this year. This will be the first time Ayouch works with Virginie Efira, one of France’s top stars. Though plot details are still a secret, it’s been revealed that Efira will play a woman who adopts a child in Morocco. The story will explore adoption and the moral dilemmas faced by a couple.

Set in Morocco but shot in French, this...

Exclusive: Goodfellas has posted a slew of deals for Rebecca Zlotowski’s French-language murder mystery movie Vie Privée, starring Jodie Foster alongside a host of top French talent including Daniel Auteuil and Virginie Efira, and unveiled a first look.

The movie – which shot last fall between Paris and Normandy – is currently in post-production, with an expected festival push this year.

It has sold out in Europe, with deals to UK (Altitude), Spain (Caramel Films), Germany (Plaion Pictures), Italy (Europictures), Benelux (September Film), Switzerland (Frenetic Films), Portugal (Pris Audiovisuais), Bulgaria (Cinelibri), ex-Yugoslavia (McF), Hungary (Cinetel Ltf), Romania (Independenta Film), Poland (Best Film), the Baltics and Cis (Pro:vzglyad).

Danish distributor Another World Entertainment has struck a multi-territory deal for Scandinavia, covering Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden.

Outside of Europe, it has been acquired for Israel (Lev Cinemas) and Turkey (Yeni Bir Films) and Australia and New Zealand (Transmission)

North America, Latin...

Nabil Ayouch, who sits on this year’s Berlin Film Festival jury, is set to make his French-language debut with a female-led psychological and sensual thriller starring Virginie Efira and Maryam Touzani.

The French-Moroccan filmmaker and producer presented his latest film, “Everybody Loves Touda,” at the Cannes Film Festival this year, and it was Morocco’s official Oscar entry. Ayouch’s best-known credits include “Casablanca Beats,” which competed at Cannes in 2021, as well as the critically acclaimed “Much Loved.”

His next film, which will start production during the last quarter of this year, will see Ayouch work for the first time with Efira, one of France’s biggest and most bankable stars. While the movie’s plot remains under wraps, Ayouch says Efira will play a woman adopting a child in Morocco. It’s film that questions adoption and a couple faced with moral choices.

Ayouch will work in French...

"The gendarmes on it." "Humans are useless." Kino Lorber has finally revealed an official US trailer for The Empire, the strange French sci-fi film from filmmaker Bruno Dumont. After first being unveiled in 2023 and premiering in early 2024, it's only now getting a US release starting in March 2025 - it already opened in Europe last year and didn't do very well. We also posted the first French trailer for this way back in 2023. Dumont's sci-fi The Empire (called L'Empire in French) is set in a quiet fishing village on the Opal Coast in Northern France, and tells the story of a child who's apparently so unique & peculiar it unleashes a secret war between extraterrestrial forces of good & evil. Starring a very French cast including Virginie Efira, Lily-Rose Depp, Camille Cottin, Lyna Khoudri, Anamaria Vartolomei, & Fabrice Luchini. This received quite a few negative and mixed reviews, apparently it's a bit too...

French filmmaker Rebecca Zlotowski, who’s just wrapped filming of “Vie Privée” starring Jodie Foster in Paris, received the French Cinema Award at a jam-packed ceremony held in an ornate room of the Ministry of Culture on Jan. 16.

The tribute, which is given by the film promotion body Unifrance, was introduced by Gaëtan Bruel, chief of staff of Rachida Dati, the minister of culture, as well as Unifrance president Gilles Pelisson and managing director Daniela Elstner.

Created in 2016, the French Cinema Award honors actors, filmmakers and producers who have contributed to making French cinema shine abroad. Past recipients include actors Juliette Binoche, Virginie Efira and Melvil Poupaud, director Olivier Assayas and producers Aton Soumache and Dimitri Rassam, among others.

Zlotowski, who is perfectly bilingual and has worked with a number of international talent, from Natalie Portman to Lily Rose-Depp and more recently Foster, has been actively promoting each movie she...

Scandar Copti’s “Happy Holidays” won top honors at the Marrakech Film Festival on Saturday, capping an emotional and politically resonant ceremony, while adding Marrakech’s Étoile d’Or to a list of accolades for the film that also includes best screenplay from Venice’s Orizzonti and best in show from the Thessaloniki Film Festival.

The acclaimed title also claimed a shared best actress prize for leads Manar Shehab and Wafaa Aoun.

Split into four chapters, the Palestinian film follows an ensemble of characters – Arab and Jewish alike – living in contemporary Haifa. Family secrets and domestic tensions underscore scenes from everyday life as the film traces out an expansive social circle with a novelistic attention to cultural and interpersonal dynamics.

This year’s jury – led by Luca Guadagnino alongside Andrew Garfield, Jacob Elordi, Virginie Efira, Patricia Arquette, Zoya Akhtar, Ali Abbasi, Nadia Kounda and Santiago Mitre – together awarded the winning title with a unanimous vote.

Palestinian director Scandar Copti’s drama Happy Holidays has clinched the Étoile d’Or for Best Film at the Marrakech Film Festival.

The Jury Prize was awarded ex aequo to Argentinian director Silvina Schnicer’s The Cottage and Somali and Austrian filmmaker Mo Harawe’s The Village Next to Paradise. Damian Kocur won the Best Directing Prize for his drama Under the Volcano, which is Poland’s Oscar entry this year.

The prize for Best Performance by an Actress was shared by Wafaa Aoun and Manar Shehab for their performances in Happy Holidays, while Roman Lutskyi won the award for Best Performance by an Actor for his work in Under the Volcano.

Happy Holidays is a contemporary Haifa-set drama in which a minor car accident sets off a chain of events, unraveling lies and unspoken truths that sow division within a multifaceted patriarchal society.

The film world premiered in the...

Sean Penn blamed the Oscars for “limiting different cultural expressions” and voiced his support for Ali Abbasi’s Donald Trump movie “The Apprentice” while at Marrakech Film Festival, where he received a career tribute.

“The Academy have exercised really extraordinary cowardice when it comes to being part of the bigger world of expression, and in fact, have largely been part of limiting the imagination and very limiting of different cultural expressions,” Penn said at a press conference during which he was casually smoking.

Ceremonies like the Oscars should best be seen as “television shows first” and less as barometers of artistic merit, he continued.

“So I don’t I get very excited about what we’ll call the Academy Awards [except for] when a film like ‘The Florida Project,’ or ‘I’m Still Here,’ or, you know, ‘Emilia Perez,’ of the things that are likely to happen this year,” he added. He also...

A regular on the red carpet this time last year as she participated in the 2023-2024 awards season with Anatomy of a Fall, Justine Triet has been off the circuit since the spring as she writes two new projects.

The director – who shared the Academy Award and Golden Globe for best screenplay with Arthur Harari for her Cannes Palme d’Or winning courtroom drama – took a breather from her writing this weekend to attend the Marrakech Film Festival.

Triet would not divulge details on her new features projects but did do a deep dive into her earlier career in an onstage conversation, moderated by her long-time producer Marie-Ange Luciani at Paris-based Les Films de Pierre.

‘Anatomy of a Fall’ Oscar winner Justine Triet reflects on 2023-24 awards trail and reveals she has two projects on the boil: “I am so happy to get back to work. I’m in the writing process…...

While at the jury press conference at Marrakech Film Festival, Luca Guadagnino said on Saturday that he’ll be “happy” if people download “Queer” in Turkey, where the movie, starring Daniel Craig as a gay American expat in 1950s Mexico City, was banned by authorities who deemed it “too provocative.”

“They banned the movie because they said the movie was creating social disorder,” Guadagnino said. “I wonder if they’ve seen the movie or if they are just judging it by the outline or let’s say the facetious stupidity of some journalism focusing on James Bond going gay.”

He rejoiced about the fact “Queer” is an “object that shatters our house of values in a way that is so powerful” and hopes that the “form of the movie brings the possibility of societal collapse.”

“I am scandalized by cinema. I am shocked by it, that I’m going to...