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The recently uncovered social media posts by “Emilia Pérez” star Karla Sofía Gascón in which she attacked, among various things — Islam, George Floyd and a more diverse Oscars — have thrown an unexpected wrench into the awards race.

Within hours of the historic tweets being resurfaced and translated into English, Gascón apologized, saying she was “deeply sorry.” Things spiraled further over the weekend, when the actress did an interview with CNN en Español, booked without Netflix’s involvement, and addressed the situation (once again) in an Instagram post.

But by then, awards soothes had already started rewriting their predictions, and Netflix’s French-made Spanish-language musical about a Mexican drug kingpin who undergoes gender-affirming surgery — previously an awards frontrunner, winning multiple Golden Globes and leading the Oscar nominations with 13 — was being scrubbed from lists.

Almost all the attention since has focused on how this new scandal could impact the Oscars, where Netflix...

Since its release, Jacques Audiard’s Spanish-language crime musical, “Emilia Pérez” has outpaced expectations to become a critical favorite, garnering high praise from top-tier directors and so far making impressive showings at the season’s big award ceremonies in Europe and the U.S. But in Mexico, where the musical will premiere later this month, audiences reacting to clips of the film and industry professionals have been vocal about their disapproval of the film about a ruthless cartel lord who undergoes a dramatic gender transformation.

Many of these critics, and like-minded ones in the U.S., have accused “Emilia Pérez,” which stars Karla Sofía Gascón as the titular antihero, of portraying Mexico through a regressive and stereotyping lens. Blame has been heaped on Audiard for making the film in a language he doesn’t speak — though, it’s far from the “Dheepan” director’s first go at a foreign tongue...

In an awards season where the race still seems to be fairly wide open, one film is gaining more traction than most as the finish line wobbles into view over the horizon.

“Emilia Perez” wasn’t talked about as an Oscar hopeful after it first bowed at the Cannes Film Festival, but eight months on and Jacques Audiard’s musical thriller about a Mexican cartel boss who undergoes gender affirmation surgery to live as a woman looks like it’s in pole position to land some major statuettes.

On Sunday, it won big at the Golden Globes, emerging ahead with four gongs, including best motion picture — musical or comedy, best supporting actress for Zoe Saldaña, best motion picture — non-English language and best original song. Just two days earlier, it was the top film out of the BAFTA longlists, with 15 slots across the various categories.

The emergence of “Emilia Perez” as...

“Emilia Pérez” became an early winner at the Golden Globes this year, as Zoe Saldaña took home the award for Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role in Any Motion Picture, one of the first of the night.

But, as the film began to take home more trophies, many on social media were surprised, with some questioning how many people had actually seen it. So, if you’re among those who haven’t, we went ahead and compiled all the info you need to know.

You can get all the details below.

When did ‘Emilia Pérez’ come out?

“Emilia Pérez” first premiered at the Cannes Film Festival, where it won the Jury Prize. It then hit theaters on Nov. 1, before it went to streaming just a few weeks later on Nov. 13.

Is ‘Emilia Pérez’ streaming?

Yes, it is. You can watch it right now on Netflix. It’s a Netflix original film.

Netflix’s Emilia Pérez could be about to sweep awards season. The main trio of actresses that drive the story are nominated in the early rounds of red carpets and awards ceremonies, namely the Golden Globes — with ten noms — as well as the BAFTAs — where it leads the longlist with Conclave.

After entering the conversation in May 2024, the Spanish musical crime comedy arrived on Netflix last November. For all the details about the work that stars Selena Gomez, Zoe Saldaña and more, read below:

What is Emilia Pérez about?

The story follows Saldaña’s Rita, a lawyer who is overqualified but also overlooked at her large law firm, which aims more just to get criminals out of trouble than to actually serve them justice. Rita gets an unexpected opportunity to exit this situation when Manitas (Karla Sofía Gascón), the leader of a notorious cartel, hires her to help him withdraw...

Jacques Audiard has always been unpredictable. Throughout his 30-plus year career, the Palme d’Or-winning French filmmaker has delivered the gritty prison drama “A Prophet,” chronicled destructive passion in “Rust and Bone,” told a tale of Tamil Sri Lankan refugees in “Dheepan” and explored Westerns with his English-language debut, “The Sisters Brothers.”

His latest effort is “Emilia Pérez,” a Spanish-language, Mexico-set crime musical starring Karla Sofía Gascón as notorious cartel leader Manitas del Monte, who fakes her own death to live authentically as a trans woman. The supporting cast includes Selena Gomez, who plays Manitas’ tormented wife Jessi, and Zoe Saldaña, who portrays Rita, a talented but overworked lawyer recruited by Emilia to help her start a new life.

Audiard, who is neither Mexican nor trans, acknowledges that it was a wild challenge, but “‘Emilia Pérez’ was inevitable,” he tells Variety.

Since winning Cannes’ jury prize and an award for its female ensemble,...

Exclusive: Though hardly a song-and-dance guy, French filmmaker Jacques Audiard has made the most compellingly original musical in years in Emilia Pérez, and it has become one of Netflix’s most celebrated awards-bait films in years. It got 10 Golden Globe noms, a record for the musical/comedy category; five European Film Award wins including Best Film and Best Director; 10 Critics Choice nominations; and numerous other accolades. The three actresses atop the call sheet — Karla Sofía Gascón, Selena Gomez, and Zoe Saldaña — are all up for Globes, and the film is well positioned for the upcoming Oscar nominations.

The versatile Audiard found his audaciously original inspiration while thumbing through Boris Razon’s 2018 novel Écoute, where he got the idea for a cartel boss determined to kill his past and transform into the woman he always wanted to be. Here, he explains how he did it, in a moment where Netflix has...

Exclusive: Jacques Audiard is in the thick of awards season with his much-buzzed film Emilia Pérez, and now he is set for a retrospective from the Santa Barbara International Film Festival next month.

That Cannes Jury Prize-winning film starring Oscar hopeful Karla Sofia Gascón along with Selena Gomez and Zoe Saldaña will screen on January 10 at the Sbiff Riviera Theatre, followed by an in-person chat with Audiard.

The program running through January 17 at the new Sbiff Film Center also will include his films Paris, 13th District (2021), and The Sisters Brothers (2018); Dheepan (2015); Rust and Bone (2012); A Prophet (2009) and The Beat That My Heart Skipped (2005).

“Audiard is a master of cinema — combining genres in order to tell his complex yet compelling stories which always draw attention to important and urgent subjects like immigration and the disenfranchised,” festival executive director Roger Durling said. “As a filmmaker, he is generous, challenging and humane, and...

In a story about transformation, the engineers of change can be many. Take “Emilia Pérez,” the award-winning musical film about a Mexican drug lord, Juan “Manitas” Del Monte, who hires a lawyer to help facilitate not just a disappearance but also gender-affirming surgery that will transform the brutish cartel leader into an elegant socialite, Emilia Pérez.

The transformation from Manitas to Emilia is the dramatic center of the film and the product of a collaboration that included Boris Razon, writer of the 2018 novel “Écoute,” on which the film is loosely based; screenwriter and director Jacques Audiard; actress Karla Sofía Gascón; and the below-the-line talent responsible for the look of both Manitas and Emilia, particularly costume designer Virginie Montel and makeup department head Julia Floch-Carbonel.

Karla Sofía Gascón (Martha Galvan for TheWrap)

“They allowed me to go deeper into the character and make it feel real,” Gascón said of Montel and Floch-Carbonel.

There are many different ways to measure a terrific film awards season.

Last year, “Barbenheimer” put two billion-dollar blockbusters at the center of the awards chatter. “Barbie” settled for an Oscar and a “box office achievement” Golden Globe, while “Oppenheimer” fulfilled its promise as the first (much-needed) awards season megahit and awards juggernaut in many years. Besides sweeping up multiple Oscars, Christopher Nolan’s opus also garnered both Oscar and Golden Globe best picture wins.

Twenty-five years ago, the Oscar race was a Weinstein-era slugfest for best picture, with the Harvey-handled “Shakespeare in Love” keeping Steven Spielberg’s WWII epic “Saving Private Ryan” out of the top Oscar perch, while both films took home Golden Globe best picture trophies. This year has been knocked by some critics and some awards season pundits as perhaps not one for the history books, with a less than stellar lineup of key contenders.

French filmmaker Jacques Audiard’s Emilia Pérez sizzles with energy, acing its tempo by rapidly pushing one scene after the other with a weaving of strategic ellipses. Audiard maintains the film’s accelerated pace with a steady hand, anchoring it as a musical crime melodrama like a bouncy symphony. The scenes are placed like a staccato, contributing to a mosaic that’s playful yet strikingly coherent. The plot of the film is emotionally charged, and the storyline moves with electrifying motions and creatively utilizes the brilliant use of cinematic language through which the filmmaker brings them to life. His approach allows us to focus closely on the characters’ words, their moments of hushed intimacy, and the smallest of gestures or expressions, all delivered in a pulsating style. The mastery shines through in his ability to draw empathy for morally ambiguous characters, making the audience feel invested in their fates. The film’s ambition,...

Editor’s Note: This review was originally published during the 2024 Cannes Film Festival. Netflix opens “Emilia Pérez” in theaters on November 1 before the film streams November 13.

You haven’t lived until you’ve seen a movie musical where the words “mammoplasty, vaginoplasty, rhinoplasty” play out in song. Nor have you lived until you’ve seen that same movie musical in which Selena Gomez says the words “My pussy still hurts when I think of you.” And you’ve never seen a movie musical at all about transness that takes as bold of swings as Jacques Audiard‘s “Emilia Pérez,” which is stylistically unforgettable while missing the crucial element that makes any movie musical work: Actually good, memorable songs.

Audiard is the 72-year-old French director known ever for dipping into other worlds and genres that are far from his own as a cis white guy from Europe. His 2015 Palme d’Or...

Jacques Audiard is one of the beloved global filmmakers working today. From Oscar-nominated “A Prophet” to Palme d’Or-winning “Dheepan,” he has earned the kind of reputation that will make cinephiles excited for any of his projects. His latest film, “Emilia Perez” (2024) is a striking addition to his filmography that explores grave real-life issues through a musical. Thanks to its dazzling set pieces and compelling acting performances, it has been making splashes since its Cannes premiere. Considered to be a frontrunner at the upcoming 97th Academy Awards, it is now streaming on Netflix. Find its gut-wrenching ending explained here.

Spoilers Ahead

Emilia Pérez (2024) Plot Summary & Movie Synopsis:

Set in Mexico, “Emilia Pérez” is a musical drama film on Netflix that revolves around three women, who find themselves in an interconnected web of love and crime. Driven by the pursuit of their authentic selves, they take actions that upend their lives.

In the article series Sound and Vision we take a look at music videos from notable directors. This week: several music videos by Jacques Audiard. Jacques Audiard's newest film, Emilia Pérez will be released this week in cinemas and soon on Netflix. A darling at the Cannes Film Festival, and a probable oscar-contender, the film might seem like an odd fit for Audiard, since it's a full blown musical. But while Audiard is mostly known for his gritty humanist dramas, like Dheepan, Un Prophéte (A Prophet), De Rouille et d'Os (Rust and Bone) and De Battre Mon Coeur s'Est Arrêté (The Beat That My Heart Skipped), there has been a droll sense of humor to his films before (The Sisters Brothers), some magical realist touches...

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

The film director on the music he works to, educating himself via podcasts, and why the Paris Olympics was a pleasant surprise

Jacques Audiard was born in Paris in 1952, the son of the prolific screenwriter and director Michel Audiard. He began writing films in the mid-1970s and made his directorial debut in 1994 with See How They Fall. He won Baftas for The Beat That My Heart Skipped (2005) and A Prophet (2010) and the Cannes Palme d’Or with Dheepan in 2015. Audiard’s latest film, Emilia Pérez, a trans-empowerment musical set among Mexican drug cartels, won the Jury prize at Cannes and was described by Variety as “dazzling and instantly divisive”. It’s in cinemas now and will stream globally on Netflix from 13 November. Audiard lives in Paris.

November 2024, Criterion Channel is set to deliver an exceptional lineup of films that will excite cinephiles and casual viewers alike. The month promises a rich exploration of genres, featuring a strong selection of Coen Brothers classics such as Blood Simple (1984) and The Big Lebowski (1998), along with their more recent works like A Serious Man (2009) and Inside Llewyn Davis (2013). Noir and crime enthusiasts will revel in an array of titles, including The Maltese Falcon (1941), Gilda (1946), and The Big Heat (1953), showcasing the genre’s iconic narratives and stylistic depth. International cinema also shines through with compelling French dramas like Fat Girl (2001) and Dheepan (2015), highlighting diverse storytelling from around the globe.

The lineup doesn’t shy away from classic drama, featuring timeless films like On the Waterfront (1954) and Seven Samurai (1954), which continue to resonate with contemporary audiences. Additionally, viewers can look forward to a variety of documentary and experimental films, including Wild Wheels...

“Emilia Pérez” is almost here.

There were few films out of this year’s Cannes Film Festival that generated as much buzz (and sparked as much discussion) as Jacques Audiard’s musical drama. The film ultimately won the Jury Prize, with its female ensemble collectively awarded the Best Actress prize. And now, as the film approaches its Netflix premiere on Nov. 13, you can watch the brand-new trailer below.

The film, which is France’s entry for the Best International Feature Film Oscar, is described officially as “an audacious fever dream that defies genres and expectations” (you definitely get that from the trailer). In the movie a “fearsome cartel leader Emilia (K Gascón) enlists Rita (Saldaña), an unappreciated lawyer stuck in a dead-end job, to help fake her death so that Emilia can finally live authentically as her true self.” In addition to the aforementioned performers, the movie also stars Adriana Paz and Edgar Ramírez.

France has picked Jacques Audiard’s queer crime musical Emilia Pérez as its contender for the 2025 Oscar race in the best international feature category.

Zoe Saldaña, Selena Gomez and Adriana Paz star alongside Spanish trans actress Karla Sofia Gascón in the genre-jumping feature about a Mexican drug lord (Gascón) who enlists the help of a lawyer (Saldaña) to undergo gender-affirming surgery.

Emilia Pérez premiered in Cannes, where it won the Jury Prize as well as a joint best actress honor for the ensemble cast.

Audiard is already an Oscar nominee for A Prophet in 2009. His filmography includes such features as Rust and Bone (2012), The Sisters Brothers (2018) and Dheepan (2015).

Traditionally, France has been a regular in the best international feature race and has won the category 12 times. But the last time the nation that invented cinema took home the trophy was in 1992 with Régis Wargnier’s Indochine. France has been shut...

France’s revamped Oscar committee has selected Jacques Audiard’s exhilarating redemption thriller “Emilia Perez” for the international feature film race. The movie won two major awards at the Cannes Film Festival and earned rave reviews.

“Emilia Perez” stars Karla Sofía Gascón as a fearsome drug lord who embraces her true self as a woman. The Spanish-language film earned one of Cannes’s longest standing ovations and went on to win the Jury Prize (in a jury presided over by Greta Gerwig), on top of a best actress prize for the ensemble cast, including Gascón, Zoe Saldaña, Selena Gomez and Adriana Paz. The movie was bought by Netflix for the U.S. and the U.K. following its Cannes premiere.

Audiard is a revered French auteur who won a Palme d’Or with “Dheepan,” and was previously nominated for a foreign-language Oscar with “A Prophet” starring Tahar Rahim.

Although “Emilia Perez...

In his previous collaboration with Romain Duris, “Our Struggles” director Guillaume Senez cast the Parisian star as a workaholic forced to spend a lot more time with his kids when their mother abruptly left home one day. Six years on, the pair have reunited to tell the opposite story of a father doing everything in his power to reunite with his daughter who’s been snatched away in another country.

If that conjures up memories of Liam Neeson growling into a phone, have no fear. The handiwork of “fellow French director, “Taken” director Pierre Morel is nowhere to be found. Instead, Senez takes a far more naturalistic approach to the streets of Tokyo, where a man named Jay (Duris) works as a driver for a private car service while searching for the daughter his ex wife stopped him from seeing nine years prior. As a French immigrant, Romain’s protagonist...

Karla Sofía Gascón, Zoe Saldaña and Selena Gomez star in Jacques Audiard’s “fever dream” musical. Take a look at the Emilia Pérez trailer.

Jacques Audiard’s Emilia Pérez shook up Cannes in May when it picked up the Jury Prize and the Best Actress award was shared by the film’s female leads. Netflix wasted no time in acquiring the distribution rights to the musical extravaganza and the streamer is hoping that the film will keep up its awards momentum well into next year’s season.

The first teaser trailer is now live and gives us a taste of what to expect. Take a look at the Emilia Pérez trailer below.

Audiard is no stranger to Cannes fame and glory, having won the Palme D’Or for his hard-hitting drama Dheepan. Audiard’s films Rust And Bone, A Prophet and Paris, 13th District also competed for the festival’s highest honour.

After missing out on sending “Anatomy of a Fall” as its official entry, the stakes are high for France’s revamped Oscar committee to avoid missing out on another opportunity to give the country its first Oscar win for best international feature in over three decades. But don’t expect the French to make the obvious choice.

On paper, Jacques Audiard’s exhilarating redemption thriller “Emilia Perez,” which won two major awards at the Cannes Film Festival along and earned rave reviews, is a shoo-in. Audiard is a revered French auteur who won a Palme d’Or with “Dheepan,” was previously nominated for a foreign-language Oscar with “A Prophet” and is well known internationally. “Emilia Perez,” which stars Karla Sofía Gascón as a fearsome drug lord who embraces his true self as a woman, struck a chord at Cannes where it earned one of this year’s longest standing ovations.

Lawrence Valin’s feature directorial debut “Little Jaffna” is set to make its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival. The first clip has been unveiled from the film.

The film, which Valin also co-wrote and stars in, explores the Tamil diaspora experience in France through the prism of gang culture in the area of central Paris known informally as Little Jaffna, named after the capital city of the Northern Province of Sri Lanka. It is set against the backdrop of the Sri Lankan civil war, which ravaged the island nation from 1983 to 2009.

Valin, a French-Tamil filmmaker, developed the project after his experiences acting in and directing short films. His journey to “Little Jaffna” was influenced by his involvement with Jacques Audiard’s Cannes Palme d’Or-winning film “Dheepan” (2015), which also dealt with the Sri Lankan Tamil experience in France.

“I got the audition to pass the casting for ‘Dheepan’ for the main role,...

Karla Sofía Gascón, who delivered a breakthrough performance as a ruthless narco gangster transitioning in Jacques Audiard’s crime musical “Emilia Pérez,” has revealed how she fought to get the part.

“At the beginning, (Audiard) did not consider me for the role (of Juan “Manitas” Del Monte), he only wanted me to play the female role after the transition,” the Spanish actress said during a masterclass at the Biarritz’ Nouvelles Vagues Festival, speaking in a packed theater. “It took me a long time to convince him that I could do both, and thanks to… I don’t know what, thanks to this universe, I ended up convincing him.”

Gascón’s performance in the film would earn her the best acting prize at the Cannes Film Festival.

From the start, she felt that it was “absolutely obvious” that she had to play both roles. “I do not see which actor would...

Time to meet Emilia Perez. Pathe has revealed the first official trailer for the acclaimed film Emilia Pérez, a musical about a Mexican cartel leader transitioning to a woman. This is the latest film by award-winning French filmmaker Jacques Audiard, and it premiered at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival last month where it won the Jury Prize & Best Actress prizes. The talented lawyer Rita receives an unexpected offer... She has to help a feared cartel boss retire from his business and disappear forever by becoming the woman he's always dreamed of being. The film is set mostly in Mexico, following the story of Rita and Manitas – and what happens after he switches to a she. Starring Zoe Saldaña, Karla Sofía Gascón, Selena Gomez, Adriana Paz, Edgar Ramírez, Mark Ivanir. I'm a big fan of this one! I raved about it in my review from Cannes - you've never seen anything like it before.

Cannes — Nine years after being named one of Variety’s Directors to Watch, Sean Baker won the Palme d’Or for “Anora,” a rowdy whirlwind romance between an exotic dancer (Mikey Madison) and the obscenely rich son of a Russian oligarch (played by Mark Eydelshteyn). Baker is the first American filmmaker to cinch the festival’s top prize since Terrence Malick earned the Palme for “The Tree of Life” in 2011.

“Anora” is Baker’s third film to debut at Cannes, following “The Florida Project” and “Red Rocket.” He accepted the award from two-time Palme d’Or winner Francis Ford Coppola, whose “Megalopolis” went home empty-handed. Coppola also presented an honorary Palme d’Or to his friend and fellow legend George Lucas, whom he called his “own kid brother.”

Baker dedicated the award to “all sex workers, past, present and future,” underscoring the importance of “making films intended for theatrical exhibition.

There’s a lot to look forward to in what has been branded a Mexican comedy-thriller musical from the Palme d’Or winner that brought us Dheepan, A Prophet, Rust and Bone, and, more recently, the underseen Western delight that marked his move toward Hollywood, The Sisters Brothers. Or so it seemed.

Writer-director Jacques Audiard is one of the few filmmakers who has been able to, more than once, tell stories from outside their world and capture narrative, character, and culture with a unique foreign perspective that adds meaningful insight without bringing into question the filmmakers’ respect or depiction of the subjects.

Thus it appeared that this cartel-centric, Mexico-set, largely Latina film––about an unsuspecting lawyer being forced to help a violent cartel boss transition into a woman in order to leave her past behind and finally feel like herself––is actually right up the septuagenarian Frenchman’s alley. Unfortunately,...

As the 77th Cannes Film Festival (May 14-25) arrives at its halfway point, here is THR executive editor of awards Scott Feinberg’s assessment of the awards prospects — at the Cannes closing ceremony and later in the fall — of the films that have screened at the fest so far.

The Two That Popped

One cannot know what the specific preferences and priorities of the Greta Gerwig-led main competition jury are, but one can categorically state that two competition films — both of which are so original and out-there that they have to be seen to be believed — have been particularly well received. Both garnered nine-minute standing ovations and rave reviews, including particular praise for their leading lady.

The first is The Substance, a body-horror flick from French filmmaker Coralie Fargeat that might be described as Sunset Blvd. meets Freaks, and an instant classic. Demi Moore, in a gutsy career-best turn...

His has a longstanding tradition with the Cannes Film Festival this former Palme d’Or winner for Dheepan (2015) moved into a completely different language, backdrop setting and new genre with the musical for a project that was born during the pandemic. Jacques Audiard has been a visitor with Regarde Les Hommes Tomber in the Critics’ Week, 1996’s Un héros très discret (Best Screenplay winner), 2009’s A Prophet (Grand Prix winner), 2012’s Rust & Bone and 2021’s Paris, 13th District. Starring Selena Gomez, Zoe Saldaña, Édgar Ramírez, Adriana Paz and Karla Sofía Gascón as the titular Emilia Pérez.

Gist: Overqualified and undervalued, Rita (Saldana) is a lawyer at a large firm that is more interested in getting criminals off the hook than bringing them to justice.…...

Going into this year’s Cannes Film Festival, expectations soared around a certain go-for-broke, no-guts-no-glory, swing from a Palme d’Or winning auteur, and on Saturday — two days after Francis Ford Coppola’s “Megalopolis” fizzled — festivalgoers got all they wanted and more in Jacques Audiard’s gonzo telenovela musical “Emilia Perez.” Turns out we had been looking at the wrong Palme d’Or winner all along.

If for nothing else, the French director’s previous Grand Prize and Palme d’Or wins for tough-guy films “A Prophet” and “Dheepan” feel especially pertinent given the startling (and delightful) swerve he offers with “Emilia Perez,” an Almodóvar-aping melodrama about a cartel kingpin’s transition to the more benevolent woman she was always hiding from the world.

That the Spanish-language film is also a full-blown musical, chock-full of deliriously choreographed numbers and ear-catching ditties about vaginoplasties and tracheal shaves would also reflect Audiard’s high perch.

Spoiler Alert: The following review contains some spoilers.

Like a rose blooming amid a minefield, it’s a miracle that Jacques Audiard’s “Emilia Pérez” exists: a south-of-the-border pop opera about a most unlikely metamorphosis and the personal redemption it awakens in a stone-cold criminal.

With a Palme d’Or to his name and the cojones to tackle his third movie in a culture and language that are not his own (after “Dheepan” and “The Sisters Brothers”), the director of “A Prophet” takes audiences into the macho realm of Mexican cartels, where Manitas del Monte — a fearsome drug lord with a silver grill and a voice like gravel — wants out, not because he’s had a crisis of conscience, but because he’s decided to embrace his true self … as a woman.

Pardon me if I’ve mixed up the pronouns there. Audiard’s dazzling and instantly divisive film — which...

Are we headed for a bon marché?

A new class of finished films and packages (unmade movies with big stars and a director attached) will travel to Cannes this week in search of cash and homes with the studios, streamers and global indie players.

The 2024 Cannes market comes equipped with some interesting contradictions. Stateside, the content buying machine is fraught. Major media stock prices are getting hammered day by day, and a new age of austerity has gripped the once free-spending tech giants. At the same time, distributors paralyzed by the 2023 Hollywood labor strikes need content to fill their slates for the end the year and the top of 2025.

“We’d agree that finished film volume isn’t as high due to the strikes, but Cannes is a much better setting for packages to begin with,” one top sales agent told Variety. “These movies can get financed out of the international marketplace,...

We’re just two weeks away from the 77th Cannes Film Festival, and this morning the august French institution revealed who will determine the winners of this year’s awards. A cross-section of international talent will join “Barbie” and “Lady Bird” director Greta Gerwig, who will lead the panel, in an effort to undoubtedly compare apples to oranges and try to make sense of a diverse slate of films from directors like David Cronenberg, Francis Ford Coppola, Sean Baker, Ali Abbasi, and many others.

Lily Gladstone, who won several Best Actress awards last year (but not the Oscar!) for her revolutionary turn in “Killers of the Flower Moon,” is the other American joining Gerwig. The actress, currently seen on FX/Hulu’s “Under the Bridge,” is returning to Cannes one year after Martin Scorsese and Apple Original Films brought “Flower Moon” to the French Riviera festival for its out-of-competition debut.

The lineup for the 77th Cannes Film Festival has officially been unveiled. As of right now, 19 films will be competing for the prestigious top prize, the Palme d’Or. The festival will be running from May 14 through the closing ceremony on May 25 in the small town on the French Riviera. This year’s jury will be led by Greta Gerwig, fresh off of her success writing and directing “Barbie,” which earned her an Oscar nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay. The remaining members of the jury have yet to be announced.

Having an idea of a filmmaker’s history at the festival can sometimes help give us an insight as to who could be in the best position to take home the Palme. For example, two of this year’s entries come from filmmakers who have previously claimed the Palme. Another five are from directors who have won prizes in official...

Acclaimed auteurs Francis Ford Coppola, Yorgos Lanthimos, Paolo Sorrentino and Andrea Arnold are among the filmmakers set to compete for the coveted Palme d’Or at the 77th Cannes Film Festival.

A total of 19 features were revealed today (April 11) that will play in Competition at the festival, set to run May 14-25.

Rarely a festival to veer far from familiar names, the Competition line-up is dominated by directors who have been selected multiple times for Cannes.

They include US filmmaker Coppola with sci-fi epic Megalopolis, which stars Adam Driver and is set in a future version of New York City following a disaster.

A throwback, of sorts, to the kinds of animated kids flicks that existed before the advent of Pixar and CGI, Chicken for Linda! (Linda veut du poulet !) is a lovingly hand-drawn ode to the whims and wills of capricious children: specifically, one very stubborn little French girl who won’t take no for an answer when it comes to her favorite meal.

This new collaboration from directors Chiara Malta (Simple Women) and Sébastien Laudenbach (The Girl Without Hands) is a simple and even silly story on the surface, following an action-packed day in the life of its titular heroine as she tries to get her mom to cook a family poultry recipe for dinner. But as the plot — or is that the sauce? — thickens, the film begins to probe deeper, exploring how kids and adults can be affected by the death of a loved one, and how they can eventually try to move on.

Noé Debré, the co-writer of “Dheepan” and “Stillwater” and creator of the European Parliament sendup series “Parlement,” marks his feature directorial debut with the bittersweet comedy “A Nice Jewish Boy.”

Produced by Moonshaker, sold by Charades and making its world market premiere at this year’s Unifrance Rendez-Vous in Paris, the freewheeling film follows a 27-year-old man-child Bellisha (Michael Zindel) and his ailing mother, Giselle (Agnès Jaoui), who together make up the last remaining Jews living in a working class neighborhood that all of their friends and family have long since fled.

At first that’s just as well for the easy-going Bellisha, but health concerns, prejudice and most of all an acute sense of alienation soon begin to creep in. Below, Variety catches up with Debré at this year’s Rendez-Vous.

How did this feature idea come about?

I saw a short film called “Masel Tov Cocktail,” about a Russian-Jewish teenager living in Germany.

Palme d’Or winner ‘Anatomy Of A Fall’ opens in 160 cinemas.

Nia DaCosta’s The Marvels heads the new films in UK-Ireland cinemas this weekend, looking to boost the fortunes of the long-running superhero franchise.

The Marvels opens in 665 cinemas through Disney. This is slightly fewer than recent Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) titles Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol. 3 (708), Ant-Man And The Wasp: Quantumania (680) and Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (704); the last MCU film to open on fewer screens was Chloe Zhao’s Eternals in 2021 (646).

Running for 15 years and counting, the MCU is still the highest-grossing film franchise both in UK-Ireland and worldwide.

Hengameh Panahi, the celebrated French-Iranian producer who founded Celluloid Dreams and forged long-standing bonds with auteurs around the world, has died. She was 67.

Panahi, who worked with the likes of Jafar Panahi, Jacques Audiard, Hirokazu Kore-eda and Jia Zhangke, died on Nov. 5 after battling a long illness, according to a statement sent by a film publicist who worked with Panahi for many years.

Panahi was born in Iran and lived in Belgium from the age of 12 before moving to France in 1993. That’s where she founded the sales company Celluloid Dreams and played a major role in co-producing, co-financing and selling international rights to a number of politically minded films, such as Panahi’s Berlinale Golden Bear-winning “Taxi Tehran”; Audiard’s “A Prophet” and his Palme d’Or winning “Dheepan”; Ramin Mohseni’s ”From Afar”; Marjane Satrapi’s “Persepolis” and “Chicken With Plums”; and Iranian master Abbas Kiarostami’s “Where...

Groundbreaking French-Iranian sales agent and producer Hengameh Panahi, who represented a myriad of renowned Cannes and Venice prize-winning auteur directors, has died at the age of 67.

Paris-based press attaché Viviana Andriani, who handled press campaigns for a number of Panahi’s films, announced the news in a short communiqué.

She said Panahi had died on November 5 after bravely battling a long illness.

Panahi was a force to be reckoned with on the international film industry circuit, who launched dozens of renowned arthouse directors at the beginning of their careers and accompanied them as they won awards and fame.

Born in Iran, Panahi was sent to Belgium to complete her education as teenager.

She got her first big break in the film industry as head of international at Brussels-based animation studio Graphoui.

In an early sign of her flare for scouting promising talent, Panahi connected with John Lasseter and Tim Burton...

France TV Distribution has scored a raft of deals across its slate of flagship shows, notably Noé Debré’s political satire “Parliament,” whose second season was picked up by Topic in the U.S.

“Parliament,” produced by Paris-based Cinétévé, was created by Debré, whose screenwriting include Jacques Audiard’s Palme d’Or winning “Dheepan.” The series is set at the European parliament in Strasbourg and follows a young assistant working for a newly elected member, juggling his ethics, job and love life. The 10-episode series features a young cast from across Europe, including Xavier Lacaille, Liz Kingsman and Philippe Duquesne. The daring show shot partly on location in both French and English languages.

Sky Italia, meanwhile, has acquired “The King’s Favorite” starring Isabelle Adjani, as well as season 1 and 2 of the detective series “Criminal Games.”

“The King’s Favorite” is a prestige period series starring Adjani as Diane de Poitiers, King Henri II’s favorite.

Jacques Audiard, the Oscar-nominated French director (“A Prophet”), is finally getting ready to shoot his next film, “Emilia Perez,” this spring with a cast led by Karla Sofia Gascón, Selena Gomez and Zoe Saldaña.

After “Paris, 13th District,” an intimate black-and-white film about millennial love, Audiard is aiming to build a larger canvas for “Emilia Perez,” a musical crime comedy which Audiard tells Variety will lense in a studio near Paris instead of Mexico, as originally planned.

Gascón, a rising Argentinian trans actor, will play a feared Mexican cartel leader who undergoes a sex change to get away from the law, becoming the woman he’s always wanted to be.

Audiard says the idea for “Emilia Perez” came to him more than two years ago as “an opera libretto in four acts,” and that’s how he wrote the treatment.

“It was the first time that an idea [for a film] came to...

Each week we highlight the noteworthy titles that have recently hit streaming platforms in the United States. Check out this week’s selections below and past round-ups here.

Fabian: Going to the Dogs (Dominik Graf)

In the first hour of Dominik Graf’s Fabian: Going to the Dogs, we see the title character running around 1920s Berlin, bumping into eccentric characters at bars and nightclubs while the camera moves and cuts at a whirlwind pace. It’s a time of indulgence and recklessness for Fabian and other young people in Germany, and then he finds himself standing face to face with a young woman in the back of a club. The camera cuts to a rapid-fire montage of both characters together and in love, scenes from later in the film we haven’t gotten to yet. Up to this point, Fabian was living in the present; without warning he begins to see a future,...

Perhaps you’ve heard the news: The big-screen sex scene is dead. Finished. Kaput. Or, if it’s not completely shuffling off this mortal coil, you could say that it’s on life support and being prepped for last rites. This death certificate has been issued before, of course, but given that recent think pieces have performed critical autopsies on carnal cinema — and that appreciations for erotic thrillers now double as eulogies — it feels as if the days of steamy movie hook-ups have been put indefinitely on hold. Blame the infantilization of audiences,...

Many directors are wary of working outside of their native language, but Jacques Audiard is learning to embrace it. In 2018, he made his English-language debut with the Western “The Sisters Brothers,” and while he followed that up with a return to France for the anthology drama “Paris, 13th District,” even as that movie opens in the U.S. he has another international project on the horizon.

“I think it was Truffaut who said that our current films are always working against the previous films we’ve made,” Audiard said in a recent interview with IndieWire. “I’m not sure I agree with that.”

Earlier this year, Audiard went to Mexico to scout for “Emilia Perez,” a Spanish-language musical-comedy written with French singer-songwriter Camille about a drug mule who changes their gender. That may sound like a big gamble for the director of muscular redemption stories like “A Prophet,” “Rust and Bone,...

Jacques Audiard, known for his superb thrillers, became the supreme purveyor of French outlier cinema, chronicling gritty immigrant experiences in an increasingly diverse nation with such films as The Prophet, Dheepan and even to some extent Rust and Bone, comes out with a slight, sexy romance film based on Adrian Tomine's graphic novels called Paris, 13th District. With its diverse cast and unusual setting, Audiard is upending the typical notion of romantic French film taking place in Paris. He also introduces us his new ingénue, Lucie Zhang, a 21 year old French actress of Chinese descent, giving a star making performance as...

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

As a writer and director, Jacques Audiard is known for muscular crime dramas, including “The Beat That My Heart Skipped,” “A Prophet,” “Rust and Bone,” and 2015’s Palme d’Or winner “Dheepan.” His work has largely had an air of seriousness to it that doesn’t leave much room for comedy or frivolity of any sort. His films are dark looks into the souls of characters struggling to exist in a world that isn’t often built for the majority to thrive — magnificent achievements, no doubt, but also tough to crack a smile while watching.

In 2018, Audiard made his English-language debut alongside his frequent co-writer Thomas Bidegain with the western “The Sisters Brothers,” taking a more comedic bent to his fascination with masculinity to explore a quartet of buffoons seeking gold in 1850s Oregon.

Continue reading Jacques Audiard On Sex, Comedy, & Computers In ‘Paris, 13th District’ [Interview] at The Playlist.

Last week seemed like something of a lull; there wasn’t an overwhelming amount of terrific new television. That was a fluke. We’re back in full force. This we’ve got a genre-bending new series starring Josh Brolin (it only looks like a western), a documentary about the potential dangers of the beauty industry, and we say goodbye to “Killing Eve” while welcoming back “The Kardashians.” There is a season turn, turn, turn!

On with the television!

“Outer Range”

Friday, April 15, Prime Video

Prime Video

Sure, “Outer Range” looks like a straight up Xerox of Paramount’s rough-and-tumble hit “Yellowstone” (you can practically imagine the board meeting where the edict was forged). But “Outer Range” is considerably weirder and more mysterious. In fact, it might be your new Wtf-worthy obsession, along the lines of “Lost” or (more recently) “Severance.” Josh Brolin stars as Royal Abbott, a gruff rancher trying...

Never one to be boxed into a corner, Jacques Audiard is following up his Palme d’Or-winning Dheepan and his English-language debut, the western The Sisters Brothers, with Paris, 13th District, a black-and-white tale of young love between four individuals. Scripted by Audiard, Léa Mysius, and Céline Sciamma, based on Adrian Tomine’s short stories, the Cannes premiere will now arrive in theaters next month and the new trailer has debuted via IFC Films.

Luke Hicks said in his review, “Audiard’s career-spanning desire to jump from story to story has landed him some new, noteworthy co-writers. The wandering narrative was penned by Léa Mysius, Portrait of a Lady on Fire writer-director Céline Sciamma, and Audiard himself. It’s an interwoven adaptation of three black-and-white Adrian Tomine short stories––“Amber Sweet,” “Summer Blonde,” and “Hawaiian Getaway”––from his graphic novel collection Killing and Dying (pulled from his popular New Yorker cartoon series,...

"Why are you so unsure of yourself?" IFC Films has revealed a new official US trailer for the French film known as Paris, 13th District in English, originally titled Les Olympiades, which is the French name for the "13 District" neighborhood this takes place in. This is the latest film from award-winning French filmmaker Jacques Audiard and it premiered at the 2021 Cannes Film Festival last year. The film is a black and white story of young love in modern Paris - following three different stories of people living in the 13th district of Paris. Technically this is an adaptation of the graphic novel" Killing and Dying" by Adrian Tomine, a modern tale of love and friendship, co-written with Léa Mysius and Céline Sciamma. The film stars Lucie Zhang, Makita Samba, Noémie Merlant, Jehnny Beth, Camille Léon-Fucien, Oceane Cairaty, and Anaïde Rozam. I wasn't a huge fan of this film, though ...