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Exclusive: Belgian film distributor Lumiere is moving back into independent distribution in the Netherlands.

The Flemish company, which also runs cinemas as well as production company Lunamine, has appointed Thomas Fransman as head of theatrical and acquisitions. He will start work at the Amsterdam office in early September.

Lumiere aims to release eight films theatrically across the Benelux each year.

Titles on the Lumiere release slate include Laura Wandel’s Adam’s Sake, which screened in Critics Week in Cannes; Julian by Cato Kusters, produced by Lukas and Michiel Dhont through their production outfit The Reunion; the upcomingMinotaur by Andrey Zvyagintsev...

Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardennes have settled into a comfortable niche over the course of 13 feature films. Well-researched social-realist depictions of marginalized people butting up against intransigent institutions is the way the record goes. To be fair to les frères Dardennes, there is a reliable level of unshowy competence as well as an integrity to their insistence on embedding with unglamorous, recognizable people.

All the while, they facilitate other filmmakers in bringing related French and Belgian slice-of-life visions to fruition. They helped to produce one of the best debuts of last year, “Julie Keeps Quiet” by Leonardo Van Dijl. At this edition of Cannes alone there are two films to bear their names as producers: “Enzo” by Laurent Cantet and Robin Campillo opened Directors Fortnight and, neatly enough, “Adam’s Sake” by Laura Wandel opened Critics’ Week.

Earnest force-for-cinema credentials established, how does “Young Mothers” fit into their body of work?...

Laura Wandel left a lasting impression with her debut feature Playground, a character study of a very young girl during her first school days, and was lauded for the depth of her engagement with the world as seen through the eyes of a child. Informed by the stricter realism of Belgian cinema, Wandel’s directorial approach is one of far-reaching empathy, with subjective shots and handheld camerawork to match on an image-making level. In Adam’s Sake, she swaps a school for a hospital’s pediatric clinic and allows for a wider social critique of the bureaucratic way such institutions are often run.

Léa Drucker (Last Summer) plays the role of Lucy, a senior nurse whose attentiveness is only matched by her strong sense of right or wrong. The first line, spoken by one doctor to another, sums up well all that’s to come: “We’re worried about Adam.

Illustration by Franz Lang.As an American, I usually avoid spending too much time at a festival considering the films from my own country—Notebook has an international lens, and those films will get more than enough attention from the mainstream American press. But it’s hard to ignore the American titles in this year’s Cannes selection; to look at this year’s competitors—Wes Anderson, Ari Aster, Richard Linklater, and Kelly Reichardt—is to experience cultural dissociation that suggests not only that our cinema is fine and dandy, but that, gee whiz, our country might be too. At festivals, art films are often burdened with representing the state of an entire country; perhaps too readily, they are taken as national allegories. The positive artistic force on display at Cannes, however, belies the reality back home, where misanthropic, self-serving leaders are governing with unfathomable authoritarian cruelty. These films seem...

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...

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...

Dominik Moll, the Cesar-winning French director whose film “Case 137” world premiered in competition at Cannes on Thursday evening, talked about the timeliness of his movie which tackles police misconduct through the prism of a meticulous investigation.

“Case 137” is set during France’s yellow vests protests and centers on a young man who gets injured by by a flash-ball projectile. Léa Drucker, who is also at Cannes with Laura Wandel’s “Adam’s Sake,” stars in “Case 137” as an investigator in the French Igpn (internal affairs) department who is assigned the task of determining who is responsible for the incident.

Moll started working on the project years ago, during the violent Gilets Jaunes protests that rocked the country in 2018 and 2019 as a vehicle to probe divides in French society. Yet, the film wasn’t meant to be a bombshell political thriller as was Ladj Ly’s “Les Miserables” or Romain Gavras’ “Athena,...

This is a film about questions. It’s about the official business of asking them, the new ones that instantly supplant answered ones and the squashed ones that poison all chances of social equality. An answer that German-French director Dominik Moll is happy to supply, however, is in response to Inspector Stéphanie Bertrand (Léa Drucker) as she talks to her teenage son. “Why does everyone hate the police?,” she asks as he looks at her from bed, ashamed of her profession.

“Dossier 137” is a dramatization of a specific case of police brutality that took place in Paris in 2018, during what is known as the Yellow Vests protests. Although it takes some time to show its hand, by the end “Acab” would work as its tagline — well, “McAb” with its leading lady as the reason to change the word “all” to “most.”

Stéphanie Bertrand works in Paris for the Igpn...

Sylvie Pialat (“Timbuktu”), the producer of Cannes’ opening night movie “Leave One Day” directed by Amelie Bonnin, is on the roll. The Cesar-winning producer, who runs the Paris-based banner Les Films du Worso, is currently developing a raft of new projects from renown European auteurs and up-and-comers, including Alain Gomis, Emmanuelle Bercot, Atiq Rahimi, Hu Wei and Felipe Gálvez.

Pialat will be working for the first time with Emmanuelle Bercot, the critically acclaimed French actress and filmmaker whose directorial effort “Leaving” world premiered at Cannes in 2021 and earned Benoit Magimel a best actor prize at the Cesar Awards in 2022. Bercot also had her 2015 movie “Standing Tall” open the Cannes Film Festival.

Bercot’s untitled next movie, which will reteam Pialat with Pathé Films, her partner on “Leave One Day,” is an adaptation of the book called “L’Enragé,” written by journalist Sorj Chalandon. The movie will tell the gripping true story...

From its opening moments, Adam’s Sake doesn’t ease you in; it thrusts you directly into the unfiltered, high-stress environment of a pediatric ward. We meet four-year-old Adam, frail and bearing a broken arm—a stark indicator of severe malnutrition.

His young mother, Rebecca, hovers nearby, her presence both a comfort to Adam and a complication for the hospital due to a court order. Navigating this tightrope is Lucy, the head nurse, tasked with balancing medical necessity, bureaucratic rules, and raw human fear. Director Laura Wandel employs a raw, almost documentary-like sensibility here, pulling us into an immediate, affecting study of a crisis.

The film quickly forces us to confront some deeply resonant contemporary questions: what are the limits of parental love when pitted against institutional judgment, and who truly advocates for a child when the system itself is under duress?

Under Pressure: A Day Unravels in Adam’s...

No Bandaid Solutions: Wandel’s Suffocating Drama Explores Collective Collateral Damage

Following her remarkable debut Playground (read review), Belgian auteur Laura Wandel moves from a harrowing portrait of schoolyard cruelty to shifting her focus to another intense microcosm in L’intérêt d’Adam (Adam’s Sake). This time, she plunges into the overburdened world of hospital workers, crafting a suffocating, relentless examination of systemic neglect—where solutions exist, yet alternatives are complicated by protocol. Steeped in separation anxiety, the film captures the frantic rhythms of a single working shift through calm, tightly observed cinematography. Léa Drucker and Anamaria Vartolomei deliver seamless performances as two women straining to provide care — with the film being a moving target on who and how that care is offered within a system that does its best at not adding more burden to those who are already victimized.…...

Who decides what’s best for a child? In “Adam’s Sake,” a scrawny 4-year-old boy is admitted to the pediatric ward with a broken arm, which the doctors attribute to malnutrition. A social worker is called, and Adam’s mother — who’s hardly more than a child herself — is forbidden access to her son while hospital staff try to nurse him back to health. But Adam refuses to eat unless his mother is present, fighting against the feeding tubes the doctors have ordered.

All that is backstory that we piece together on the trot during the opening minutes of Belgian director Laura Wandel’s emotionally wrenching whirlwind, which is bolstered by a pair of terrific performances from Léa Drucker as Lucy, the pediatric department’s head nurse, and “Happening” star Anamaria Vartolomei as Adam’s mom, Rebecca — to say nothing of soulful newcomer Jules Delsart, the remarkable young actor who plays Adam.

Belgian helmer-writer Laura Wandel nabbed Cannes’ Un Certain Regard prize in 2021 with her feature debut, “Playground,” about two siblings at primary school. She returns to the festival to open the Critics’ Week with her second feature, “Adam’s Sake.” It centers on a compassionate nurse, a sick child and his mother. Indie Sales has the rights.

What inspired the narrative?

I felt drawn to the world of pediatric wards — another Belgian institution, in fact — because it offers a beautiful representation of society and because it refers to the world of childhood. Institutions interest me because they are, for the most part, mini-societies with hierarchical relationships, their own well-defined rules and laws, which most often end up causing systemic violence. I quickly felt the need to go there to document and confront the reality on the ground by meeting with the health care staff. … From there, I came up with the...

Left-Handed Girl, directed by Shih-Ching Tsou and co-written by filmmaker Sean Baker, has been selected to compete in the 2025 Critics’ Week at the Cannes Film Festival. The Taipei-set family drama is one of seven features included in this year’s lineup for the parallel section, which focuses on first and second works from emerging directors.

Tsou, who previously collaborated with Baker on Take Out, Tangerine, Starlet, The Florida Project, and Red Rocket, directs the film solo. Baker also co-edited the project while overseeing the awards run for his film Anora, which won Best Picture, Best Director, and three other Oscars earlier this year.

Left-Handed Girl follows a single mother and her two daughters as they navigate the complexities of life in the Taiwanese capital. Janel Tsai, an actress and model based in Taiwan, leads the cast. The film blends social realism with a focus on working-class life, continuing themes explored...

The 64th Cannes Critics’ Week will open with Adam’s Interest by Belgian director Laura Wandel and close with Dandelion’s Odyssey, the animated feature debut by Japanese filmmaker Momoko Seto. This year’s edition, which runs May 14–22, includes seven feature films in competition and four presented out of competition.

Wandel’s new film follows a young mother, a malnourished child, and a hospital nurse, played by Anamaria Vartolomei and Léa Drucker. Shot with handheld camerawork, Adam’s Interest marks Wandel’s return after Playground, her 2021 feature that portrayed schoolyard bullying with stark realism. The film will screen as a special presentation.

Among the films selected for competition is Left-Handed Girl, the first solo feature by Taiwanese director Shih-Ching Tsou. Set in Taipei, the film centers on a single mother and her two daughters attempting to rebuild their lives. Sean Baker, known for The Florida Project and Tangerine, co-wrote, produced,...

Critics’ Week Artistic Director Ava Cahen unveiled her fourth selection as head of the Cannes Film Festival parallel selection on Monday, ahead of the fest’s 64th edition running May 14-22.

The section run by the French Syndicate of Cinema Critics will showcase 11 first and second features, seven of which play in competition, selected from 1,000 submissions. Another 13 short films will also be showcased, selected from 2,340 entries.

Deadline caught up with Cahen for some first impressions on the 2025 lineup.

Deadline: The section opens with Laura Wandel’s second feature Adam’s Interest, starring Ana Vartolomei as a mother whose son is admitted to hospital with signs of malnutrition. Why did you select this film for your opening?

Ava Cahen: Laura shook spectators with her first film [Playground]. There, we were at the level of a child. Here we are at the level of an adult. It has the same directorial mechanics,...

Today, it was announced the feature films that will be screened at the 64th Cannes Critics Week selection and will see Belgian director Laura Wandel’s child custody drama “Adam’s Sake,” starring Anamaria Vartolomei and Léa Drucker, opening the 2025 event.

Other feature films include the following entries, as the official festival website also provided synopses for the lineup, which you can check out below.

Continue reading 64th Cannes Critics’ Week Selection Announced at The Playlist.

The Cannes Critics’ Week 2025 selection boasts Best Picture winner Sean Baker’s latest project.

Baker collaborates once more with his “Take Out” co-director and co-writer Shih-Ching Tsou, who makes her directorial debut with “Left-Handed Girl.” Tsou also produced Baker’s “Tangerine” (which she starred in) and “The Florida Project,” and executive-produced “Starlet.” Now, “Left-Handed Girl” incorporates Baker’s social-realist approach with the Taipei-set tragicomedy “Left-Handed Girl,” which follows a single mother and her two daughters building a new life in the Taiwanese capital. Baker cowrites, edits, and produces the film.

“The film was edited by Sean. It’s true that there’s a connection, I’m not going to hide it, and I don’t think Shih-Ching Tsou will either,” Cannes Critics’ Week artistic director Ava Cahen told Deadline. “It’s a bit reminiscent of ‘Tangerine’ and ‘The Florida Project,’ for the way it captures reality, with a form of wonder,...

Seven films will compete in the 2025 International Critics Week section at the Cannes Film Festival, Critics Week organizers announced on Monday morning.

The films, all from first- and second-time directors, include “Left-Handed Girl” a family film set in Taipei, directed by Shih-Ching and produced and co-edited by reigning Palme d’Or and Oscar Best Picture winner Sean Baker. Baker was working on the film during the awards campaign for his film “Anora.”

The competing features come from Spain, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Taiwan, Thailand, Singapore, Germany, the United States and the United Kingdom.

Critics Week, or La Semaine de la Critique, also announced four special screenings, including “L’intérêt d’Adam” (“Adam’s Sake”) from director Laura Wandel, which will serve as the sidebar’s opening-night film.

Critics Week, which celebrated its 60th anniversary in 2021, is an independent sidebar section in Cannes. It was the section that brought the Cannes debuts of Guillermo del Toro,...

Following last week’s unveiling of the Cannes 2025 lineup, the first sidebar slate has been unveiled with the Cannes Critics’ Week lineup. Particularly of note is the Opening Night film, Laura Wandel’s Playground follow-up Adam’s Interest starring Anamaria Vartolomei and Léa Drucker, as well as Shih-Ching Tsou’s Left-Handed Girl, co-wrote and edited by Sean Baker, and Pauline Loquès’ Théodore Pellerin-led Nino.

See the lineup below via Screen Daily and learn more about each film in the lineup here.

Competition

A Useful Ghost (Thai-Fr-Sing-Ger)

Dir. Ratchapoom Boonbunchachoke

Kika (Belg-Fr)

Dir. Alexe Poukine

Sleepless City (Sp-Fr)

Dir. Guillermo Galoe

Nino (Fr)

Dir. Pauline Loquès

Reedland (Neth-Belg)

Dir. Sven Bresser

Imago (Fr-Belg)

Dir. Déni Oumar Pitsaev

Left-Handed Girl (Taiwan-Fr-us-uk)

Dir. Shih-Ching Tsou

Special screenings

Adam’s Interest (Belg-Fr) – Opening Film

Dir. Laura Wandel

Baise-en-Ville (Fr)

Dir. Martin Jauvat

Love Letters (Fr)

Dir. Alice Douard

Dandelion’s Odyssey (Fr-Belg) – Closing Film

Dir.

Playground‘s Laura Wandel‘s highly anticipated sophomore feature L’intérêt d’Adam (Adam’s Interest) is indeed premiering in Cannes – as the opening film for the 64th edition of La Semaine de la Critique (Critics’ Week). An edition that is heavy on Belgian co-production cinema, Léa Drucker and Anamaria Vartolomei topline L’intérêt d’Adam – a drama that takes place in the pediatric unit of hospital and follows a distraught mother, her son and the nurse who look after them. After Wandel’s breakout debut claimed a top prize from the Un Certain Regard section we were thinking she might be in the running for a competition slot for the Palme.…...

The Cannes Critics’ Week, the festival sidebar focusing on directors’ first and second features, unveiled its 2025 lineup Monday.

Competition highlights include Left-Handed Girl, the solo directorial debut of Taiwanese filmmaker Shih-Ching Tsou, known for her long-standing collaboration with Anora director Sean Baker (Tsou co-directed 2004’s Take Out and was a producer on Baker’s Tangerine, The Florida Project and Red Rocket). Baker co-wrote and edited the Taipei-set urban melodrama, which centers on a single mother and her two daughters navigating life on the margins of the Taiwanese capital.

Also debuting in Critics’ Week is Thai director Ratchapoom Boonbunchachoke with A Useful Ghost, a surrealist take on motherhood in which a woman reincarnates as a vacuum cleaner. Thai actress Mai Davika Hoorne leads the cast.

European features in competition include Pauline Loquès’ Nino, starring fast-rising Quebecois actor Théodore Pellerin (Lurker) as a young man adrift in the city after losing his...

Cannes Critics’ Week, the festival sidebar spotlighting first and second features, has revealed the 11 competition and special screenings titles for its 64th edition running May 14-22.

Scroll down for full list of titles

Seven films will vie for four top prizes in competition, awarded by a jury helmed by Spanish filmmaker Rodrigo Sorogoyen. Five of those are first films that will compete for the Camera d’Or. Six films in the line-up are directed by women.

Ava Cahen, now in her fourth year as artistic director, told Screen this year’s selection is “a daring combination of films with panache that celebrates new voices.

Cannes Critics’ Week has unveiled the lineup of its 64th edition, which will be dominated by French and Belgian movies, kicking off with Laura Wandel’s tense social drama “Adam’s Interest.”

“Adam’s Interest” marks Wandel’s follow up to “Playground,” which won a Cannes’ Un Certain Regard prize in 2021. The film takes place in the pediatric unit of hospital and follows a distraught mother, her son and the nurse who look after them. “Adam’s Interest” stars two of France’s biggest stars, Léa Drucker (“Custody”) and Anamaria Vartolomei (“Happening”).

Curated by artistic director Ava Cahen and her selection committee, the lineup spans 11 feature films, six of which are directed by women. As many as 1,000 films from 102 countries were submitted to this year’s Critics’ Week. The selection is dedicated to first and second features, running alongside the Cannes Film Festival.

Some of the most anticipated films in the lineup include “Left-Handed Girl,...

Belgian director Laura Wandel’s child custody drama Adam’s Interest, starring Anamaria Vartolomei and Léa Drucker, will open the 64th Cannes Critics’ Week, which unveiled its 2025 selection today.

The second feature from Wandal after gritty childhood bullying drama Playground, the handheld camera-shot feature follows three characters in a paediatric ward: a helpless mother (Vartolomei), her malnourished son, and a nurse (Drucker).

The film, which premieres out of competition, is one of 11 first and second feature films, seven in competition, selected out of 1,000 submitted film for the upcoming edition running from May 14 to 22.

Another 13 short films selected from 2,340 submissions will be announced on April 17.

Competition

Competition seven titles include Taiwanese director Shih-Ching Tsou’s Taipei-set urban melodrama Left-Handed Girl. It marks a first solo feature for Tsou, a long-time collaborator of Sean Baker, who co-wrote and edited the work.

The tragicomedy follows the odyssey of a single mother and her...

Paris-based Indie Sales has closed a raft of deals for “Last Swim,” Sasha Nathwani’s debut which won the Crystal Bear at the Berlin Film Festival, including in the U.S. and the U.K.

Vertigo, whose track record include “Sound of Metal” and “Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point,” has picked up the film and will set a theatrical release for it on April 4th in the U.K. and in the summer in the U.S. “Last Swim” had its U.K. premiere at BFI London Film Festival last October.

Set over a hot summer day in London, the film follows British-Iranian teen Ziba as she leads her friends on an eventful journey across the city, culminating in a once in a lifetime astronomical event. The high-school year is ending, but despite the celebratory atmosphere, “Ziba struggles to retain her characteristic optimism as she finds herself battling the intrusive...

Paris-based Indie Sales has acquired international rights to Leonora Carrington biopic LeonoraIn TheMorning Light about the English surrealist artist who died in 2011

Directed by filmmaking duo Lena Vurma and Thor Klein, the 1930s-set film follows Carrington as she rebels against society’s expectations, mingles with iconic figures including André Breton and Salvador Dalí in Paris and has a whirlwind love affair with Max Ernst before fleeing to Mexico during the war.

Indie Sales will launch the film at Unifrance Rendez-Vous with French Cinema in Paris later this month.

The film is based on Elena Poniatowska’s best-selling book Leonora and...

Paris-based Indie Sales has acquired international rights to Leonora Carrington biopic LeonoraIn TheMorning Light about the English surrealist artist who died in 2011

Directed by German filmmaking duo Lena Vurma and Thorsten Klein, the 1930s-set film follows Carrington as she rebels against society’s expectations, mingles with iconic figures including André Breton and Salvador Dalí in Paris and has a whirlwind love affair with Max Ernst before fleeing to Mexico during the war.

Indie Sales will launch the film at Unifrance Rendez-Vous with French Cinema in Paris later this month.

The film is based on Elena Poniatowska’s best-selling book Leonora...

Paris-based sales agent Indie Sales has boarded “Maya, Give Me a Title,” a stop-motion project directed by Michel Gondry (“Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind”) and narrated by Pierre Niney (“The Count of Monte Cristo”).

The film revolves around Gondry’s long-distance relationship with his daughter. As they live in two different countries, Gondry asks his daughter every evening, “Maya, give me a title.” Based on her answer, he creates a short animated reply in which Maya is the hero. Gondry’s long-time partner, Georges Bermann at Partizan Films, is producing, while The Jokers Films will release it in France.

Besides “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,” Gondry’s well known films also include “The Science of Sleep,” “Be Kind Rewind” and more recently “The Book of Solutions.”

Stop-motion has been a personal trademark of the director since his early music videos such as Björk’s “Human Behaviour” and The...

Earlier last month we reported that actresses Léa Drucker and Noémie Merlant were going to topline Laura Wandel’s highly anticipated sophomore feature, L’Intérêt d’Adam. We now learn via the Cineuropa folks that Anamaria Vartolomei will instead take the role that was originally assigned to Merlant. Vartolomei recently gave a masterful performance in Jessica Palud’s Being Maria (read review) and has Ana Teodora Mihai’s highly anticipated Heysel 85 in the pipeline. Production begins tomorrow until the first week of September and we’ll likely be looking at a possible Cannes premiere – a competition slot is not out of the cards.…...

Among the most anticipated sophomore features we’ll already look forward to for the 2025 campaign received a Cannes blurb update in the Le film français with no fanfare from the major trades to follow. Originally slated for a shoot in the fall, Belgian filmmaker Laura Wandel‘s L’intérêt d’Adam (formerly titled Hors la loi) is set to move into production next month (July 29th) with two heavyweights in Noémie Merlant and Léa Drucker – we can already guess which part they’ll play with the synopsis below. The drama benefitted from the support from the La Résidence of the Festival de Cannes.…...

For teenage tennis prodigy Julie, discipline isn’t merely a virtue but a survival strategy. Repressing adolescent urges and emotional swings has long been part of her routine at the high-level youth tennis academy where she’s currently the star student: Years of concentrating all her time and attention on her game — all work and all play, as it were — look likely to reward her with the pro career she dreams of. Yet as whispers build of inappropriate behavior by her coach, Julie’s deliberate tunnel vision seems less a rigorous regimen than a fragile defense against interior collapse. A tense, taut, artfully hushed debut feature by Belgian writer-director Leonardo van Dijl, “Julie Keeps Quiet” also knows the value of control — though its own calm is fraught with anxiety and anger.

A standout of this year’s Critics’ Week programme at Cannes — where it won the Sacd Award and scored sales including a U.

Belgian director Leonardo Van Dijl’s assured debut feature, Julie Keeps Quiet, builds a riveting psychological drama around the choice of a star player from an elite youth tennis academy not to speak up in the wake of tragedy. In her first acting role, young tennis ace Tessa Van den Broeck internalizes the title character’s brooding unease with slow-burn intensity. The movie’s silence is so loaded with the anxiety, obstinance, inchoate anger and desire for anonymity of the traumatized teenage sportswoman that the constant thwack of her racquet hitting the ball cuts through the tension like violent shocks.

Unfolding predominantly in static frames that keep the story laser-focused, with pinpoint use of American contemporary classical composer Caroline Shaw’s needling vocal score, this is an austerely effective work. It has a kinship with Laura Wandel’s Playground from 2021 and last year’s The Teachers’ Lounge by İlker Çatak,...

Blandine Lenoir’s completed family drama Juliette In Spring, starring Izia Higelin, has sold to key buyers including Palace Films for Australia and New Zealand, Polyfilm in Austria, Pandora in Germany, Surstey in Spain, and Cineworx in Switzerland for Indie Sales.

The film, based on Camille Jourdy’s graphic novel, is about a woman who returns to her hometown to spend time with her family as buried memories, unspoken truths and long-buried secrets bubble up to the surface in what Indie Sales calls “a sweet, tender and sometimes extravagant family portrait.”

Jean-Pierre Darroussin, Noémie Lvovsky and Sophie Guillemin co-star in...

Indie Sales is re-teaming with rising Belgian filmmaker Laura Wandel on her sophomore feature “In Adam’s Interest,” having previously sold around the world her critically acclaimed feature debut “Playground” which premiered at Cannes’ Un Certain Regard.

“In Adam’s Interest” also reunites Wandel with producer Stéphane Lhoest at Belgium’s Dragons Films, and is produced by Delphine Tomson at Les Films du Fleuve, the Dardenne’ brothers banner. Co-producers are Jan de Clercq at Lunanime, who will release the film in Benelux under his distribution company Lumière; and Marie-Ange Luciani’s Les Films de Pierre, the Oscar-nominated outfit behind “Anatomy of a Fall.” Memento will release “In Adam’s Interest” in French theaters.

A tense social drama, “In Adam’s Interest” follows four-year-old Adam who is suffering from malnutrition and has been taken to hospital following a court’s decision. Lucy, a pediatrics head nurse, authorizes Rebecca, Adam’s mother,...

European film executives Christian De Schutter and Barbara Van Lombeek have teamed up to launch The FYC Academy, an agency for global awards strategies.

FYC – which stands for For Your Campaign – will launch officially in Cannes next month. The company’s focus is to set up international campaigns and develop strategies aimed at achieving optimum visibility for films during awards season.

It will include, but is not limited to Academy Awards campaigns, and will work initially on around five titles per year, from any international territory.

The FYC Academy will operate separately from Van Lombeek’s The PR Factory and...

Anatomy of a Fall French producer Marie-Ange Luciani put in a flying appearance at the Berlinale this week with Claire Burger’s coming-of-age drama Langue Étrangère which received a warm reception in competition.

With the Berlin premiere taking place the day after the Baftas in London (where Anatomy of a Fall won Best Screenplay) and eight days before the January 27 voting deadline for this year’s Academy Awards, Luciani was also in the thick of the awards campaign.

She co-produced the Oscar hopeful with David Thion at Les Films Pelléas under the banner of her Paris-based banner Les Films de Pierre, the company created by Yves Saint Laurent’s long-time business and life partner Pierre Bergé which she acquired on his death in 2018.

New production Langue Étrangère is a bittersweet coming-of-age tale starring Lilith Grasmug as French teenager Fanny who travels to Germany on language exchange trip. Her German counterpart...

If the shooting schedule remains intact, we can circle a 2025 Cannes Film Festival playdate for the next Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne film project and quite possibly a 2025 Lido premiere for Laura Wandel‘s sophomore project — which could logically be L’intérêt d’Adam – a project that was workshopped at the 44th Cannes Residence. Both of these films would be housed by the Dardenne’s les Films du Fleuve prod company label.

For the Dardennes, casting is currently underway for what is tentatively August to October 2024 shoot. No word on the title, synopsis or location, but we imagine this will be shot in their own backyard and tonally will once again fall under the social realism umbrella.…...

The folks at the Centre du Cinéma et de l’Audiovisuel de la Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles folks are throwing some coin support towards 27 fiction feature films. We find several top Belgian filmmakers setting up projects for 2024 shoots and for probable 2025 playdates. At the top of the list we find sophomore features from the likes of Harpo and Lenny Guit (Sundance preemed Mother Schmuckers (2021) and Laura Wandel (Cannes Un Certain Regard breakout Playground) joining established vets such as Jessica Woodworth (who is now working on L’Incubatrice), Joachim Lafosse (who is setting up Les Petits Voleurs for a Spring 2024 shoot) and Baloji (an Un Certain Regard winner this year) who is already moving into his sophomore feature.…...

’The Worst Person In The World’, ’Everything Everywhere All At Once’ among international selections.

Joachim Trier’s The Worst Person In The World and Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert’s Everything Everywhere All At Once are among the titles in the 17-strong longlist for best international independent film at the 2022 British Independent Film Awards (Bifa).

Laura Poitras’ Venice Golden Lion winner All The Beauty And The Bloodshed also made the longlist. As did Park Chan-Wook’s Decision To Leave; Colm Bairead’s The Quiet Girl; Lukas Dhont’s Close; Carla Simon’s Alcarras; and Santiago Mitre’s Argentina, 1985.

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The British Independent Film Awards (BIFAs) have revealed the nomination longlists for Best Feature Documentary and Best International Independent Film categories. In addition, BIFA’s Raindance Discovery Award longlist has also been unveiled.

Of the 15 films longlisted for Best Feature Documentary, eight are directed by women. The 17 films longlisted for Best International Independent Film have already won top prizes from this year’s premier international festivals.

The final five nominations in each category will be announced in early November and winners will be revealed at the 25th annual BIFA ceremony on Dec. 4.

Best International Independent Film Sponsored By Champagne Taittinger

“Alcarràs” – Carla Simón, María Zamora, Stefan Schmitz, Tono Folguera, Sergi Moreno

“All The Beauty And The Bloodshed” – Laura Poitras, Howard Gertler, Nan Goldin, Yoni Golijov, John S. Lyons

“Argentina, 1985” – Santiago Mitre, Mariano Llinás, Axel Kuschevatzky, Federico Posternak, Agustina Llambi Campbell, Ricardo Darín, Santiago Carabante, Chino Darín, Victoria Alonso

“Broker” – Kore-eda Hirokazu,...

After 18 days of in-person screenings, over 370 movies and the allocation of a new prize fund totaling 210,000 Aud the Melbourne International Film Festival (Miff) has to be one of the lengthiest, liveliest and now most lucrative film festivals in the world. The winning films were announced at Saturday evening’s closing gala, with Afrofuturist sci-fi musical “Neptune Frost,” a U.S.-Rwandan co-production directed by Saul Williams and Anisia Uzeyman, taking the Bright Horizons top prize of 140,000 Aud. Jub Clerc, the Indigenous Australian director of coming-of-age road movie “Sweet As,” scooped the Blackmagic Design Australian Innovation Award of 70,000 Aud.

This is the first year of the Bright Horizons competition. After being selected from an exceptionally strong 11-film lineup, which included festival favourites like Charlotte Wells’ “Aftersun,” Laura Wandel’s “Playground” and Natalia López Gallardo’s “Robe of Gems,” Williams and Uzeyman were clearly moved while accepting the award via Zoom.

“It...

A total of 11 titles to compete at 70th anniversary edition of festival.

The 70th Melbourne International Film Festival (August 4-28) has unveiled the 11 titles set to compete in its first ever international competition.

The Miff Bright Horizons competition has a focus on first and second features, and a prize of A140,000 – the biggest film prize in Australia.

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Miff artistic director Al Cossar’s line-up includes several debut features from female directors including Aftersun from UK director Charlotte Wells and magical realist eco drama The Cow Who Sang A Song Into The Future from Chilean filmmaker Francisca Alegría.

It’s another eclectic month for Mubi releases as they’ve announced their July 2022 slate. When it comes to new releases, highlights include Albert Birney and Kentucker Audley’s inventive Sundance hit Strawberry Mansion, Andrew Dominik’s new Nick Cave and Warren Ellis documentary This Much I Know to Be True, Camilo Restrepo’s Los conductos, Laura Wendel’s Oscar-shortlisted drama Playground, and Lucrecia Martel’s new short North Terminal.

They’ll also be featuring Johnnie To’s Drug War, King Hu’s Raining in the Mountain, Terence Davies’ Sunset Song, Bertrand Bonello’s Zombi Child, a pair of features from both Diao Yi’nan and Athina Rachel Tsangari, and much more.

Check out the lineup below and get 30 days free here.

July 1 – Strawberry Mansion, directed by Albert Birney, Kentucker Audley | Mubi Spotlight

July 2 – The Wild Goose Lake, directed by Diao Yi’nan | The Electric Dark: Two Neo-noirs by Diao Yinan

July 3 – Little Girl,...

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A Chiara

Jonas Carpignano completes his Southern Italian trilogy about a Calabrian town where African refugees, the Romani community and Mafia exist side by side, for the first time focusing on a young female protagonist: a teen girl (Swamy Rotolo) absorbing shocking discoveries about her adored father. The result is a film of haunting intimacy. — David Rooney

After Yang

Colin Farrell and Jodie Turner-Smith play a couple whose family harmony suffers when the android sibling they purchased for their adopted Chinese daughter breaks down in writer-director Kogonada’s exquisite, meditative sci-fi drama. The film’s stealthy emotional power creeps up on you. ­— D.R.

ANAïS In Love

A restless young Parisian woman (Anaïs Demoustier, charming) falls in love with her ex’s partner, a famous writer played by a brilliant Valeria Bruni Tedeschi, in Charline Bourgeois-Tacquet’s seductive debut feature. It’s a...

Belgium’s Lukas Dhont takes a deserved step up to the Cannes Film Festival competition with Close, only his second film — a minimalist melodrama that shows a definite growth in visual style but may be confronting to some with its deliberately unhurried, Eric Rohmer-esque aesthetic. The international success of Dhont’s well-intentioned debut Girl, about a young trans-female ballet dancer, was somewhat blunted in the U.S., where G.L.A.A.D. amplified complaints of misrepresentation on behalf of the trans lobby. Close is a much safer proposition, but may yet sail into choppy waters with its themes of youth suicide.

Most certainly mined from personal experience, it stars newcomer Eden Dambrine as Léo, a 13-year-old boy who lives in a rustic idyll with his best friend Rémi (Gustav De Waele). Léo’s family runs a flower farm, and flowers are a constant motif throughout, whether growing, blooming, being threshed,...

Spoiler Alert: The penultimate paragraph of this review contains spoilers.

Few of us are fortunate enough to have a friendship as intimate and effortless as the one shared by 13-year-old Belgian boys Leo (Eden Dambrine) and Remi (Gustav De Waele) in “Close.” That connection, and the responsibility that comes with it, is at the heart of Lukas Dhont’s sophomore feature, so subtle and sensitive in the first half, so devastatingly false from its tragic twist on. This beautifully evocative film, which hails from an openly queer director, offers as pure a portrait of innocent, innocuous same-sex affection as we’ve ever encountered on film. And then it becomes something incredibly, unwelcomely different.

“Close” marks an auspicious return to the Cannes Film Festival for Dhont, whose 2018 Camera d’Or-winning debut, “Girl,” was simultaneously ahead of and behind the cultural conversation about trans youth. That remarkable first film dramatized the journey...

Italy’s Valerio Ferrara was named the winner of the 25th edition La Cinef for his warm take on a hapless barber who believes in conspiracy theories in “A Conspiracy Man” (“Il Barbiere Complottista”). Laughing stock of his family, nobody takes him seriously. Until he is arrested by the police.

“Personally, I have a special affection for the cinema of this country,” said Canadian actor Monia Chokri, praising the director’s sense of humor. The film hails from Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia.

“Comedy, as a genre, is undervalued at festivals. And yet, from making comedies myself, I know it’s the most difficult one. It’s a cutthroat genre: you either laugh or you don’t. We all laughed spontaneously,” she added.

“You are crazy! All of you! Oh, my God,” exclaimed the filmmaker at the prize ceremony on Thursday evening.

“Comedy is always viewed as something that’s not serious.

No new titles in the top five.

RankFilm (distributor)Three-day gross (Apr 22-24)Total gross to date Week 1. Sonic The Hedgehog 2 (Paramount) £1.64m £20.2m 4 2. Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets Of Dumbledore (Warner Bros) £1.59m £16.5m 3 3. The Lost City (Paramount) £1.4m £5.6m 2 4. Operation Mincemeat (Warner Bros) £758,285 £2.6m 2 5. The Bad Guys (Universal) £737,853 £9.4m 4

Gbp to Usd conversion rate: 1.27

Paramount’s Sonic The Hedgehog 2 has retaken the UK-Ireland box office lead from Warner Bros’ Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore, on a weekend when no new titles managed to break into the top five.

Sonic The Hedgehog 2 added £1.64m on its...

Festival titles ‘Happening’ and ‘Playground’ are also new this week.

It is a fairly quiet week for openers at the UK-Ireland box office, with Lionsgate’s The Unbearable Weight Of Massive Talent the widest release, opening at 563 locations, and the chief contender for making a dent in the top five.

The action comedy sees Nicolas Cage – who is also a producer on the feature – play a fictionalised version of himself, with the actor teaming up with the CIA stop a Cage superfan who may also be the dangerous head of a cartel. Tom Gormican directs, and has co-written the screenplay with Kevin Etten.