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Chicago – The year between gets shorter. Welcome to the annual Oscar Predictions on HollywoodChicago.com, for 2025 (the 97th Academy Awards). The film/entertainment contributors of Hc – Patrick McDonald and Spike Walters – are joined by filmmaker treasure Michael Glover Smith (“Relative”) and film critic Jeffrey L. York of “The Establishing Shot.”

Michael Glover Smith is a locally-based Chicago filmmaker. “Relative” is his most recent fourth feature film. His latest short film “Handle With Care,” received awards in four film fests. Mgs is in preproduction for his next feature film. Jeffrey L. York is a film writer/critic and artist whose specialty is the film and celebrity caricature. Click Jeffrey York to see his art. This article is privileged to use some of his illustrations below.

The Predictors! The Oscars are on ABC-tv, March 2nd, 2025

Photo credit: File Photo

Ten films of 2024 – “Anora,” “The Brutalist,” “A Complete Unknown,” “Conclave,” “Dune: Part Two,...

Agora, the industry section of the Thessaloniki Intl. Documentary Festival, has selected 14 projects for its Pitching Forum. All the projects are from Southeastern Europe and the Mediterranean region, although the filmmakers can be from elsewhere.

Agora, which runs March 7-15, has also revealed the projects that will feature in its new initiative Agora Xr Lab.

Among the filmmakers attached to projects in the Pitching Forum is Poland’s Michał Marczak, whose “All These Sleepless Nights” won a prize at Sundance, and whose “Fuck for Forest” played at SXSW.

Also selected is Belgium’s Volkan Üce, whose “All-In” took awards at Antalya Golden Orange Film Festival and Istanbul Film Festival; Hungary’s Alexa Bakony, whose “Colors of Tobi” picked up a prize at Thessaloniki Documentary Film Festival; and Portugal’s Ana Sofia Fonseca, whose “Cesária Évora” won a prize at Krakow and IndieLisboa.

The projects, which include two series, one documentary...

While the duo have finally been confirmed to be coming back, Freddie Prinze Jr. has some surprising insight about Julie and Ray's return in the I Know What You Did Last Summer legacy sequel. After moving away from a Mike Flanagan-helmed remake, development began on a direct sequel to the 1998 sequel with Jennifer Kaytin Robinson directing on a script she co-wrote with Sam Lansky, from a story she developed with Leah McKendrick. The new Last Summer cast is set to be led by Madelyn Cline, with Jennifer Love Hewitt and Prinze Jr. confirmed separately in September and December 2024.

Now, during a recent interview with Scale Talk Podcast with David Miniatures, Prinze Jr. was asked about his upcoming return for the I Know What You Did Last Summer sequel. In addition to reaffirming he will be playing Ray again for the film, Prinze Jr. also confirmed that neither he nor...

Following The Film Stage’s collective top 50 films of 2024, as part of our year-end coverage, our contributors are sharing their personal top 10 lists.

When reflecting on any year in movies, the theatrical experience rings most memorable. From driving across the border to Ohio with friends to watch No Country for Old Men in 2007, to a 35mm screening of Stalker at the Wexner Center for the Arts in 2011, with so rapt an audience I was terrified to swallow for fear it would disrupt their experience—each year holds it own special memories and 2024 was no different. There was a lively afternoon matinee of Between the Temples in which I was the youngest present by about 25 years, and a sold-out Wednesday screening of Showgirls at the Academy Museum with Elizabeth Berkley in person. But judging from reactions on X.com, I’m not alone in my favorite 2024 theatrical screening being witnessing Interstellar in 70mm IMAX.

Illustrations by Stephanie Lane Gage.When making my sound work, I always try to bend the material in front of me to find alternative possibilities of context or (re)context. Here, I was drawn to so many personal favorites, moods, and textures that these 70-odd minutes are more akin to a year-end work of catharsis. The result is as much a personal mix as a 2024 roundup.This was aided by a number of films with great music supervision, particularly four heavy hitters: Love Lies Bleeding (all films 2024), Civil War, Dahomey, and Janet Planet. Artists like Throbbing Gristle, Anna Domino, Silver Apples, Suicide, Dean Blunt, and Laurie Anderson offered a huge prop of character within these films. They could set each film in a specific time and place, or, in the case of Civil War, give a punk, psychedelic energy to a near-future world.Staying through the end credits is important...

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences announced on Monday the 207 feature films eligible for Best Picture consideration, two days before voting for the 2025 Oscar nominations begins.

There are 323 feature films eligible for the Academy Awards, but just 207 met the Best Picture competition eligibility requirements.

As stated by the Academy in a press release, “To be eligible for consideration in the general entry categories, under rules implemented for the 97th Academy Awards year, feature films must open in a commercial motion picture theater in at least one of six U.S. metropolitan areas: Los Angeles County; the City of New York; the Bay Area; Chicago, Illinois; Dallas-Fort Worth, Texas; and Atlanta, Georgia, between Jan. 1, 2024, and Dec. 31, 2024, and complete a minimum qualifying run of seven consecutive days in the same venue. Feature films must have a running time of more than 40 minutes.”

But Best Picture eligibility is different. Films under consideration...

Following The Film Stage’s collective top 50 films of 2024, as part of our year-end coverage, our contributors are sharing their personal top 10 lists.

2024 was my year of big, blustering cinema. The kind of movie that makes you realize what a movie is fundamentally supposed to be: Loud, epic, enveloping. You know, Big. The majority of films I responded to most this year were craft masterworks, from the sound design genius of films like The Brutalist, Dune: Part Two, and Civil War to the immersive photography and editing of others like Furiosa, Wicked, and The Substance. Even the “smaller” and quieter of this year’s crop, such as Memoir of a Snail and Janet Planet, reverberated in their background details.

How lucky it is to say to yourself not once but multiple times a year at the theater, “Now this is Cinema!”

Without further ado, the best movies I watched in 2024.

Honorable Mentions: Femme,...

Following The Film Stage’s collective top 50 films of 2024, as part of our year-end coverage, our contributors are sharing their personal top 10 lists.

As the decade crosses its halfway point, I can already sense the hastily assembled lists soon appearing, attempting to provide definitive word on the best in cinema over the last five years. I’d rather heed the wisdom of the great J. Rosenbaum and give some distance, but in the spirit of annual year-end extravaganza, I’ll join the crowd in looking back at least the last twelve months of releases. A peculiar year in I saw almost half the films on my list upon their festival premieres in 2023––and furthermore, my top three picks haven’t shifted since January. The eleven preceding months thankfully brought no shortage of illuminating experiences as detailed in my top 15 picks, including a few of the most noteworthy studio offerings failing...

The horror genre keeps riding the wave of legacy sequels and reboots, through which some of the biggest franchises have been brought back to life – so it’s not that surprising that two unlikely horror franchises are returning, too. The film industry has greatly benefited from reboots and legacy sequels in recent years, mostly in the horror genre, even if not all of these have succeeded. Franchises like The Exorcist and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre returned with one movie that didn’t perform well, while others like Friday the 13th continue to face many challenges that stop them from coming back.

Other horror franchises have greatly benefited from this trend, as happened with Halloween and Scream, while others will be getting a new chance, as is the case for The Exorcist. All these franchises are some of the most successful, popular, and profitable ones in the genre, so it was...

In a much-clipped moment from his Criterion Closet video, philosopher and cultural theorist Slavoj Žižek pulls a DVD copy of Louis Malle’s Murmur of the Heart from the shelf and remarks upon it warmly as “one of those nice gentle French movies where you have incest.” Žižek’s enigmatic comment springs to mind watching Endless Summer Syndrome, the feature-directing debut of Iranian director Kaveh Daneshmand––primarily because the film delights in upending every other word in that iconic sentence.

Lawyer Delphine (newcomer Sophie Colon) enjoys a pleasant country life with her husband Antoine (Matheo Capelli) and their two adopted children, Adia (Frédérika Milano) and Aslan. Aslan is preparing to leave to study in New York, and the family are spending a few final picturesque days at home together by the pool. Then the phone rings. A colleague of Antoine’s confides in Delphine that her husband spoke, in an end-of-work-party stupor,...

As Martin Scorsese once said, “Music and cinema fit together naturally. Because there’s a kind of intrinsic musicality to the way moving images work when they’re put together. It’s been said that cinema and music are very close as art forms, and I think that’s true.” The right piece of music––whether an original score or a carefully selected song––can do wonders for a sequence, and today we’re looking at the 25 films that best expressed that notion in 2024.

From seasoned composers to accomplished musicians, as well as a smattering of soundtracks, each perfectly transported us. Check out our rundown of the top 25, which includes streams to each soundtrack in full where available.

25. Plastic (Ide Kensuke/Exne Kedy)

24. Disco Boy (Vitalic)

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23. Red Rooms (Dominique Plante)

22. Dune: Part Two (Hans Zimmer)

21. Nosferatu (Robin Carolan)

20. Horizon: An American Saga – Chapter 1 (John Debney)

19. The Wild Robot (Kris Bowers...

Catherine Breillat‘s psychosexual reckless return to form is here. Her acclaimed latest film, “Last Summer” (Sideshow/Janus), will premiere on the Criterion Channel on November 21 with a live-streaming event, as IndieWire announces exclusively. The “Last Summer” live-stream, happening that evening at 6 p.m. Pt/9 p.m. Et, is in line with Criterion’s new tradition of launching the Sideshow/Janus titles early — the streamer similarly launched Bertrand Bonello’s “The Beast” that way over the summer.

“Last Summer” also joins the Criterion Channel as a retrospective of provocative filmmaker Breillat’s oeuvre streams on the platform, including “Fat Girl” and “Anatomy of Hell” and “Sex Is Comedy.” Starring Léa Drucker in one of the year’s best performances, “Last Summer” earned raves earlier this year and at Cannes and other festivals in 2023. The streaming premiere is good cause to remember “Last Summer” for your year-end lists. Bonus features accompanying...

Catherine Breillat’s Last Summer isn’t the only provocative French drama this year to explore, let’s say, unconventional relationships. Endless Summer Syndrome, the feature debut from Iranian filmmaker Kaveh Daneshmand follows a wife investigating if her husband is having an affair with one of their two adoptive children.

The film world premiered at last year’s Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival and is being released by Altered Innocence, with day-and-date release in select theaters and on digital in North America on December 13. Ahead of the release, we’re pleased to exclusive debut the new U.S. trailer and poster.

Here’s the synopsis: “The film follows Delphine (Colon), a high-powered lawyer who gets an anonymous call from her husband’s colleague about an alleged affair between him with one of their adopted children. She decides to quietly observe her family for a shred of evidence; anything to subside her fear and erase doubt.

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.

Across the River and Into the Trees (Paula Ortiz)

Hemingway’s work across novels and short stories has been adapted for film countless times over, yet Across the River and Into the Trees has never properly been rendered onscreen. Until now. Written by Peter Flannery and directed by Paula Ortiz, here is a handsome film that is decidedly modest in its endeavor. The best thing going for it is Liev Schreiber as Colonel Richard Cantwell, the lead of the picture. Schreiber is one of those actors who has somehow always been underrated, despite being capable of playing nearly any kind of part. A kind boyfriend thrust into an impossible familial situation (The Daytrippers)? Check. Tough-but-fractured fixer living on the edge (Ray Donovan)? Check.

A novelist meets a financier two decades her junior at a writers’ retreat in Morocco, in this welcome addition to a flurry of age-gap romances released this summer

Be it a quirk of timing or the invisible hand of trend cycles, Hollywood seems ready to reconsider the idea of the “older woman”. A wave of age-gap romances have brought the traditionally objectified mommy-age lover into the mainstream this year, including Anne Hathaway’s tryst with a boybander in The Idea of You; Carol Kane’s free-spirited grandmother involved with a decades-younger widower in Between the Temples; and Nicole Kidman’s transgressive dalliances in both A Family Affair (with Zac Efron’s movie star) and the forthcoming Babygirl (with Harris Dickinson’s intern). And that’s not to mention the weirder, psychosexual French version – a 50ish lawyer seducing her gangly teenage stepson – in Catherine Breillat’s Last Summer.

Now Lonely Planet,...

Sideshow and Janus Films have acquired all U.S. rights to The Shrouds, written and directed by David Cronenberg and are planning a spring 2025 theatrical release.

The film world premiered at the Cannes Film Festival where it screened In Competition. It played the Toronto International Film Festival as part of the Gala program and is set for its U.S. premiere in the Main Slate at the New York Film Festival next month.

The deal was negotiated by Sideshow and Janus Films with Sbs International. Producers are Saïd Ben Saïd, Martin Katz and Anthony Vaccarello for Saint Laurent. It’s an Sbs, Prospero Pictures & Saint Laurent Productions Film with the participation of Telefilm Canada, Eurimages, Ontario Creates in association with Sphere Films, Crave & CBC Films with the support of Canal +, Ocs & the Centre National du Cinema et de L’image Animée.

“Building on a...

A24s successful Rotten Tomatoes streak ended with The Front Room, which, at the same time, continues a disastrous 26-year streak for its lead actress. Thanks to its variety of movies, A24 has become one of the leading studios in the horror genre, bringing movies like Hereditary, The Witch, Talk to Me, and more. Thanks to these and more hits, A24 is now synonymous with high quality in horror movies, but its great Rotten Tomatoes streak has now ended with its most recent horror movie, The Front Room.

Directed by Max and Sam Eggers and based on the 2016 short story of the same name by Susan Hill, The Front Room follows Belinda (Brandy), a pregnant anthropology professor grieving from the loss of her firstborn son. When her husbands father dies, she and Norman (Andrew Burnap) are forced to take his mother, Solange (Kathryn Hunter), in. Solange soon begins to act aggressively against Belinda,...

Brandy is in talks to reprise the role of Karla in the upcoming I Know What You Did Last Summer sequel. Karla's role in the new film is unknown as her whereabouts post-1997's I Still Know What You Did Last Summer remain a mystery. Karla's return would make sense considering her connection to Julie and Ray from the original sequel.

I Know What You Did Last Summer may have another legacy actor coming aboard. The I Know What You Did Last Summer legacy sequel is set to star Camila Mendes, Madelyn Cline, Sarah Pidgeon, Tyriq Withers and Jonah Hauer-King, with original cast members Jennifer Love Hewitt and Freddie Prinze Jr. in talks to appear as their original characters Julie and Ray. In July, Brandy expressed interest in reprising the role of Julie's roommate Karla, who survived the movie's 1997 sequel I Still Know What You Did Last Summer, though at...

I Know What You Did Last Summer is on the hunt for a new cast, and it looks like the reboot has found it. More on that below.

Following in Paramount Pictures and Scream’s footsteps, Sony Pictures are looking to reboot another popular horror franchise from the 90s. We say reboot, but it’s really more of a sequel, as original stars Jennifer Love Hewitt and Freddie Prinze Jr. are in talks to return as Julie and James.

Madelyn Cline, Camila Mendes, Sarah Pidgeon, Tyriq Withers and Jonah Hauer-King are all in talks to appear in the film, as reported by The Hollywood Reporter. Jennifer Kaytin Robinson is directing from a script she wrote with Sam Lansky, after Leah McKendrick delivered an initial script.

As we already know, Sony is planning on releasing the film next summer, 18th July to be precise. Filming will probably get underway sooner rather than later.

“Inside Out 2” (Disney) in its third week will gross $57.4 million, with “A Quiet Place: Day One” (Paramount) estimating $53 million. The last time two films grossed over $50 million on the same weekend was last July, when “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer” opened. Before that? 2017.

This is rare because distributors like to space out films with this potential. Even though it’s not a direct competitor, Paramount likely opted to open its prequel two weeks after Pixar. No one expected “Inside Out 2” to be this strong at this point ($469 million domestic after only 17 days).

This is summer the way it’s supposed to be. Three films opened to over $50 million over four weeks, and “Despicable Me 4” (Universal) opening Wednesday should make it four over five weeks. It justifies more optimism for the future than we’ve had for a long time.

That’s reason to be pleased, but not rapturous. Last year,...

by Cláudio Alves

In 2019, May el-Toukhy's Queen of Hearts was a study about power imbalances and masterful manipulation. As a wealthy lawyer who starts an affair with her teenage stepson, Trine Dyrholm embodied a sickening conundrum - someone who defends the abused in the public eye but is an abuser in private. Chilly and sharp, the actress delivered a terrifying performance, opaque in ways we'd expect her to be transparent, a mystery whose actions precipitate a devastating end. Indeed, the Danish film could be described as a tragedy, and it made for a particularly unsettling entry in the season's Best International Film race.

Five years later, Catherine Breillat's French remake arrives in American theaters, offering a most perverse twist on the same premise. Rather than tragedy, Last Summer presents the affair as something closer to farce…...

From her controversial 1976 directorial debut “A Real Young Girl” to even more confrontational later works like “Romance” (1999) and “Anatomy of Hell” (2004), French auteur Catherine Breillat has long been one of the cinema’s premier chroniclers of desire in all its complexities and contradictions. Her latest film, “Last Summer,” is one of her best, a riveting and nuanced portrayal of an affair between an attorney (Léa Drucker) and her 17-year-old stepson (Samuel Kircher) that’s paced like a languorous Éric Rohmer dramedy but grips the audience like a thriller. It’s a remake of the Danish movie “Queen of Hearts,” and while the script by Breillat and Pascal Bonitzer provides “Last Summer” with meticulously crafted dialogue, characterizations, and situations, it’s only a starting point; the greatness of the film is in the visual execution, which is just as Breillat intended.

“One mistake that people often make is they confuse the script with the film,...

Romance is complicated. The meshing together of two or more people isn’t designed to be a smooth process and art has reflected that for generations, most recently in the new rom-com “A Family Affair.” In honor of the film dropping, IndieWire has compiled a list of the best age-gap romance films to enjoy after watching Nicole Kidman and Zac Efron’s jaunt within the genre. From writer Carrie Solomon and “P.S. I Love You” director Richard Lagravenese, “A Family Affair” follows a self-absorbed movie star (Efron) who ends up in a whirlwind Hollywood romance with the relatively older mom (Kidman) of his 24 year-old assistant (Joey King). Efron returns to full heartthrob mode following a dark, dramatic turn in “The Iron Claw” and reunites with his “Paperboy” co-star to charming results.

In addition to his directorial work, Lagravenese is also known for his romantic screenwriting work with “The Bridges of Madison County...

New York audiences might be the luckiest cinephiles this summer: French legend Catherine Breillat’s newest gem of a film Last Summer not only opens theatrically this weekend, but they were treated to a retrospective of the director’s work at Film at Lincoln Center. A very rare occasion, unfortunately, for the rest of the world––the reputation of Breillat’s earlier films precede her. Romance and Anatomy of Hell were both associated with the New French Extremity, considered provocative and often inappropriate for their explicit sex scenes and violent ways in which they frame male-female relationships. However, if you look at Breillat’s oeuvre as a whole, you’d find a strong thread of idealism, even hope her characters try to own up to (unsuccessfully).

Last Summer is a close remake of May el-Toukhy’s 2019 film Queen of Hearts, where a successful lawyer begins an affair with her stepson.

“All I love is cinema,” Catherine Breillat proclaimed at the end of our extensive conversation. The legendary French filmmaker’s passion still burned brightly at the end of a long day of press while in town to present her newest work, Last Summer, at last year’s New York Film Festival. Breillat’s descriptions of her films were as detailed, thoughtful, and unexpected as the frames within them.

While the starting point of Last Summer might be the remaking of the 2019 Danish drama Queen of Hearts, the film bears Breillat’s distinctive stamp. In her hands, the story of an affair between working mother Anne (Léa Drucker) and her 17-year-old stepson, Théo (Samuel Kircher), moves beyond the tawdriness and tension of its concept. The film feels in keeping with Breillat’s central obsession since her debut feature, 1976’s A Very Young Girl: women’s unshackling of their sexual desires from shame,...

This all very well could be a fever dream, or a slightly buzzed hallucination. Such are the thoughts that pass as the white wine is uncorked — let’s be real, it’s a twist-off — and “A Family Affair” opens with real-life Zac Efron red carpet footage of the actor at TIFF. But this isn’t TMZ, this is a scripted Netflix rom-com. And we love it.

Directed by “Beautiful Creatures” helmer Richard Lagravenese from a script by Carrie Solomon, “A Family Affair” reunites Efron with his “The Paper Boy” co-star Nicole Kidman, and adds in beloved everywoman Joey King to make a different kind of unconventional love triangle. Both Efron and King’s characters just want Kidman to be a supportive mother type: One as her actual mom, and the other as a Milf.

King plays Zara, the 24-year-old daughter of Kidman’s famous novelist character Brooke. While Zara wants to be a Hollywood agent,...

It’s been a long decade’s wait since Catherine Breillat’s last feature, the semi-autobiographical Abuse of Weakness with Isabelle Huppert, but Last Summer shows the uncompromising French filmmaker in top form, at once fierce and precise. Returning to a favored subject—the desires and power dynamics in affairs between adolescents and usually much older adults—Breillat brings in another taboo this time: the messy sexual obsession between a lawyer, Anne (Léa Drucker), and her 17-year-old stepson, Théo (newcomer Daniel Kircher). After Théo comes back to stay at the family’s idyllic home outside Paris, the two carry on secretly until the truth becomes inescapable […]

The post “We Have Regressed Into an Obtuse and Rigid Moral Order”: Catherine Breillat on Last Summer first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

It’s been a long decade’s wait since Catherine Breillat’s last feature, the semi-autobiographical Abuse of Weakness with Isabelle Huppert, but Last Summer shows the uncompromising French filmmaker in top form, at once fierce and precise. Returning to a favored subject—the desires and power dynamics in affairs between adolescents and usually much older adults—Breillat brings in another taboo this time: the messy sexual obsession between a lawyer, Anne (Léa Drucker), and her 17-year-old stepson, Théo (newcomer Daniel Kircher). After Théo comes back to stay at the family’s idyllic home outside Paris, the two carry on secretly until the truth becomes inescapable […]

The post “We Have Regressed Into an Obtuse and Rigid Moral Order”: Catherine Breillat on Last Summer first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

Cinema is replete with depictions of mothers good and bad, though few are depicted with such radical ambiguity as Léa Drucker’s Anne in Last Summer. This comes with the territory for the film’s legendary director Catherine Breillat, who’s broken ground for decades with her fearless explorations of female sexuality. Yet even knowing the French filmmaker’s background, it still feels radical to watch the story of a mother involved in an affair with her teenage stepson, Théo (Samuel Kircher), presented so freely of judgment.

Breillat bakes in much of that perspective at the script level as she adapts the 2019 Danish film Queen of Hearts with a less moralistic bent. But to realize Anne in a way that goes beyond mere intellectualization requires a partnership with a brilliant actress like Drucker, who has recently come to prominence outside her native France in films such as Xavier Legrand’s...

Nothing in this sick, sad world is simpler or more complicated than sex, a principle that helps to explain why the ever-provocative Catherine Breillat — whose films so often consecrate female desire by rendering it violently indefinable — was drawn to remake a 2019 Danish movie about a middle-aged lawyer who dedicates her life to defending young rape victims, only to begin a torrid affair with her own 17-year-old stepson.

May el-Toukhy’s “Queen of Hearts” spun that stark hypocrisy into a melodrama ridden with shame and secret darkness. Breillat’s “Last Summer” is much lighter in every way, and all the more revealing as a result; it leverages the same premise into a rich exploration of the inadequate judgment such a premise exists to invite.

Seductively empathetic without absolving its heroine or trolling the audience into aligning themselves with her, this adaptation bypasses any sort of moral binary in order to make...

She was pulled from obscurity (or non-retirement since her last feature was 2013’s Abuse of Weakness) when Saïd Ben Saïd optioned the rights to 2019 Danish film Queen of Hearts and then proposed it French filmmaker Catherine Breillat, and as luck would have it Léa Drucker would join a pantheon of memorable morally complex roles for actresses that we find in Breillat cinema. In Last Summer (L’été dernier), Drucker plays Anne, a lawyer who specializes in cases of sexual consent and parental custody while she is the matriarch of two adopted children and she then swims in murky waters in her relationship with teenage son (Théo) of her current husband.…...

Kim Gordon singing at the Capital One City Parks Foundation SummerStage concert in Central Park Kim Gordon with Ed Bahlman and Anne-Katrin Titze on the puppy-ness of Samuel Kircher in Last Summer: “He is great. Yeah, puppy-ish.” Kim Gordon, who is currently on her Collective worldwide tour, will be performing in London on June 25 at Koko, June 26 at the O2 Institute Birmingham, and June 30 at the Glastonbury Festival. In Berlin she has a sold-out show at the Festsaal Kreuzberg on July 6 with Gudrun Gut opening (through some assistance from music producer and 99 Records founder Ed Bahlman).

In the second instalment with Kim Gordon we touch upon Catherine Breillat’s fairy-tale films Bluebeard, and The Sleeping Beauty, plus the humour in The Last Mistress (Une vieille maîtresse - Jules-Amédée Barbey d'Aurevilly), and Samuel Kircher and Léa Drucker’s dangerous dynamic in Breillat’s Last Summer, based on May el-Toukhy’s.

After premiering in competition at the Cannes Film Festival last year, Catherine Breillat‘s first film in a decade, “Last Summer,” finally hits US theaters. Granted, it only screens at Angelika Film Center and Film At Lincoln Center in NYC, but after the stir the film caused on the Croisette, New Yorkers should seek it out next month.

Read More: ‘Last Summer’ Review: Catherine Breillat’s Devastating Drama Exposes Bourgeois Amorality [Cannes]

Breillat’s made her career on films focusing on taboo subjects, and “Last Summer” is no different.

Continue reading ‘Last Summer’ Trailer: Catherine Breillat’s Erotic Drama Hits NYC Theaters On June 28 at The Playlist.

A little silly to say about a movie that premiered in competition at Cannes and had the much-desired fall-festival run, but there should’ve been a little more excitement about Last Summer, which deserves much celebration for its own merits but stands all the more notable for being among the best films in the decades-long career of Catherine Breillat, who returned to feature filmmaking ten years after Abuse of Weakness. With the work now allowed to present a bit more on its own––and not as, say, the third viewing on a sleep-deprived day fueled by a Quest bar / Celsius lunch––I suspect its merits are about to really sing, ereceded by Film at Lincoln Center’s essential retrospective with the too-good-to-pass-up title “Carnal Knowledge.”

Ahead of a Janus-Sideshow release that kicks off on June 28, we have a trailer playing the brief, broad strokes. It nicely rhymes with Savina Petkova...

The Cannes 2024 market saw a thrilling revival with nine movies — including four movies in the main competition — selling to specialized distributors in domestic deals. However, this wasn’t exactly a return to business as normal: The buyers weren’t stalwarts like A24, or Focus, or IFC. Instead Mubi, Metrograph Pictures, and Sideshow (in partnership with Janus Films) established themselves as major buyers.

Mubi bought three titles in the main competition: “The Girl With the Needle,” “The Substance,” and added North American rights on Andrea Arnold’s “Bird.” (It came to the festival with UK rights.) “The Substance” starring Demi Moore and Margaret Qualley represents a major swing for the upstart, with one source placing the deal in the low-eight figures.

Sideshow picked up Indian drama “All We Imagine As Light” in the main competition, the animated “Flow” from Un Certain Regard, and “Misericordia” and Leos Carax’s “It’s Not Me,...

If Criterion24/7 hasn’t completely colonized your attention every time you open the Channel––this is to say: if you’re stronger than me––their May lineup may be of interest. First and foremost I’m happy to see a Michael Roemer triple-feature: his superlative Nothing But a Man, arriving in a Criterion Edition, and the recently rediscovered The Plot Against Harry and Vengeance is Mine, three distinct features that suggest a long-lost voice of American movies. Meanwhile, Nobuhiko Obayashi’s Antiwar Trilogy four by Sara Driver, and a wide collection from Ayoka Chenzira fill out the auteurist sets.

Series-wise, a highlight of 1999 goes beyond the well-established canon with films like Trick and Bye Bye Africa, while of course including Sofia Coppola, Michael Mann, Scorsese, and Claire Denis. Films starring Shirley Maclaine, a study of 1960s paranoia, and Columbia’s “golden era” (read: 1950-1961) are curated; meanwhile, The Breaking Ice,...

Cannes’ Marché du Film has partnered with the Cnc, France’s national film body, to launch Cannes Remakes, a new programme that will curate a selection of European feature film IP with strong potential for international adaptations.

Cannes Remakes will showcase film IPs that have been successful in their original territories and aims to facilitate connections between international buyers and producers.

The inaugural half-day event is set to take place on May 20 on the Cnc beach on the Croisette. It will include a pitching session, presenting titles sourced from France, Spain and Italy with the most potential for feature adaptation...

Sony Pictures Classics announced on Tuesday that it will release its indie drama Daddio, starring Dakota Johnson and Sean Penn, in theaters nationwide on June 28.

Marking the feature directorial debut of Christy Hall, who also penned the script, Daddio world premiered at last year’s Telluride Film Festival before going on to screen in Toronto. The film is described as character-study, encapsulated in one single cab ride, that explores the complexities inherent to the secrets we keep, particularly the ones locked away on our phones. It’s about truth and illusion, how we so effortlessly substitute one for the other out of survival — about the hurtful memories of childhood, past trauma manifesting in profound ways, and the dance between the pain and poetry that is the human experience.

Johnson and Ro Donnelly produced via their TeaTime Pictures, along with Hercules Film Fund, First Love Films, Raindrop Valley, Projected Picture Works,...

Auction director/screenwriter Pascal Bonitzer at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York exhibition Look Again: European Paintings 1300–1800 Photo: Anne Katrin Titze

On the afternoon of the Rendez-Vous with French Cinema première in New York of Auction, starring Alex Lutz and Louise Chevillotte with Léa Drucker and Olivier Rabourdin of Catherine Breillat’s incomparably daring Last Summer, the director/screenwriter joined me at The Metropolitan Museum of Art to check out Women Dressing Women at the Anna Wintour Costume Institute, before we strolled through the visionary exhibition Look Again: European Paintings 1300–1800.

Inês de Medeiros with Laurence Côte in Jacques Rivette’s La Bande Des Quatre, co-written with Pascal Bonitzer and Christine Laurent

In the second installment with the prolific and acclaimed director, screenwriter, actor, and former film critic for Cahiers du Cinéma, we discuss working again with Laurence Côte (seen as Ginette Kolinka in Olivier Dahan’s all-embracing portrait [film id=41673]Simone: Woman Of.

The César Awards are always the biggest night of the year for French cinema, but the massive award season impact of “Anatomy of a Fall” ensured that this year’s event took on additional importance for Oscar watchers around the globe. When the 49th César Awards took place in Paris on Friday night, all eyes were on Justine Triet and her Palme d’Or-winning film.

Predictably, “Anatomy of a Fall” swept many of the night’s biggest categories. In addition to winning the top prize of Best Film, Triet was honored with Best Director and shared Best Screenplay with her partner Arthur Harari. Stars Sandra Hüller and Swann Arlaud also won Best Actress and Best Supporting Actor, respectively.

The night’s other big winner was Thomas Cailley’s “The Animal Kingdom,” which won awards for Cinematography, Visual Effects, Costume Design, and Sound.

Keep reading for a complete list of winners from the 2024 César Awards.

The 49th Cesar Awards, France’s top film honors, have been handed out in Paris, with Justine Triet‘s Oscar contender Anatomy of a Fall emerging as the big winner.

The French courtroom drama — which is competing at the Oscars in five categories — earned the best film prize, best actress for Sandra Hüller, best director for Triet, best original screenplay shared between Triet and co-writer Arthur Harari, and Swann Arlaud took home the best supporting actor trophy.

Hüller won in the best actress category over Oscar winner Marion Cotillard, nominated for Little Girl Blue; Lea Drucker, up for Last Summer; Hafsia Herzi, nominated for The Rapture; and Belgian actress Virginie Efira, nominated for her work in Just the Two of Us.

The other big winner on the night was The Animal Kingdom, French director Thomas Cailley’s follow-up to 2014’s Love at First Fight. Cailley picked up the best cinematography...

Aurore (Louise Chevillotte) with André Masson (Alex Lutz) at Scottie’s in Pascal Bonitzer’s mysterious and witty Auction (Le Tableau Volé)

Catherine Breillat’s incomparably daring Last Summer starring Léa Drucker, Samuel Kircher, and Olivier Rabourdin has received four César nominations: Best Director and Adapted Screenplay, Actress (Léa Drucker), Male Revelation (Samuel Kircher in competition with his brother Paul Kircher for Thomas Cailley’s The Animal Kingdom). In the first installment with Pascal Bonitzer, we start out discussing his work on Last Summer which is based on May el-Toukhy’s 2019 film Queen of Hearts and then delve into his latest film, Auction (Le Tableau Volé).

Pascal Bonitzer with Anne-Katrin Titze on Scottie’s in Auction: “It’s an allusion to Vertigo because it’s a great movie. Scottie’s, yes, it’s Sotheby’s, it’s Christie’s, it’s a big auction house.”

Pascal Bonitzer, who put a...

M-Appeal has closed distribution deals in key territories for “Sex,” which had its world premiere in the Berlinale’s Panorama section.

The film, the first part of the “Sex Dreams Love” trilogy by Norway’s Dag Johan Haugerud, has garnered attention for its thought-provoking exploration of sexuality and gender roles.

All rights for the film have been sold to Pyramide Distribution for France, JinJin Pictures for South Korea and Cinobo for Greece.

“Sex” follows two men in heterosexual marriages, who have an unexpected experience that challenges them to reconsider their understanding of sexuality, gender and identity. One has a sexual encounter with another man, without considering it either as an expression of homosexuality or infidelity and discusses it with his wife afterwards. The other finds himself in nocturnal dreams where he is seen as a woman, stirring confusion and leading him to question how much his personality is shaped by the gaze of others.

Thomas Cailley’s sci-fi thriller The Animal Kingdom and Justin Triet’s Oscar-nominated courtroom drama Anatomy Of A Fall rose to the top of the nominations at France’s Cesar awards.

The Animal Kingdom, a supernatural twist on a father-son drama that first premiered at Cannes’ Un Certain Regard, has been nominated for 12 awards including best film and will vie in that category against the five-time Academy-award nominated, Palme d’Or-winning Anatomy Of A Fall with 11 nominations, alongside Cédric Kahn’s The Goldman Case, Jeanne Herry’s All Your Faces and Jean-Baptiste Durand’s Junkyard Dogs.

Cailley, Triet, Kahn and...

Thomas Cailley’s fantasy drama The Animal Kingdom topped the nominations for France’s César Awards, which were announced in Paris on Wednesday.

The drama picked up 12 nominations with Justine Triet’s Oscar hopeful Anatomy Of A Fall coming in second with 11 nominations, followed by Jeanne Herry’s All Your Faces, which nine, and The Goldman Case, with eight.

Set in a world where human beings start transmuting into animals, The Animal Kingdom world premiered as the opening film of Cannes Un Certain Regard in 2023 and went on to make $8.5M at the box office last fall.

The Animal Kingdom and Anatomy of a Fall are competing in eight categories spanning Best Film, Director, Original Screenplay, Male Revelation, Editing, Sound, Cinematography and Production Design.

The high nomination count for Herry’s ensemble drama All Your Faces was thanks to the fact it dominated the Supporting Actress category with separate nominations for cast members Leila Bekhti,...

Thomas Cailley’s supernatural drama “The Animal Kingdom” and Justine Triet’s Palme d’Or winner “Anatomy of a Fall” are leading the race at the 49th Cesar Awards with 12 and 11 nominations, respectively.

Triet’s movie, which just garnered an impressive five Oscar nominations, and “The Animal Kingdom,” which opened at Cannes’ Un Certain Regard and won a prize, will vie for top Cesar awards including best director and film.

“The Animal Kingdom” is an ambitious film that marks a departure from France’s cinema tradition of social realism. It’s both a creature-filled dystopia and a father-and-son drama, weaving some contemporary concerns over the future of mankind. It’s produced by Pierre Guyard at Nord Ouest Films and co-produced by Artemis.

“Anatomy of a Fall,” meanwhile stars Sandra Hüller — the German actor nominated for Cesar, Oscar and BAFTA awards — as a novelist who is put on trial following the...

Justine Triet’s Anatomy Of A Fall continued its prize-winning run on Monday at France’s 29th Lumière Awards clinching Best Film and Best Screenplay, while its German star Sandra Hüller won Best Actress.

The Lumières fete the best films, performances and technical achievements of French cinema across 13 categories.

The French equivalent of the Golden Globes, they are voted on by the Académie des Lumières which is made up of France-based international journalists representing 36 countries.

In other key prizes, Thomas Cailley won Best Director for Cannes 2023 Un Certain Regard opener The Animal Kingdom, while Arieh Worthalter won Best Actor for his performance in Cédric Khan’s Cannes Directors’ Fortnight opener The Goldman Case.

Triet’s Cannes Palme d’Or winner Anatomy of a Fall, which was nominated in six Lumière categories, is on an award-winning streak.

The movie swept the board at the European Film Awards in Berlin last December...

In 2020 – for the first time in seven years – the Best Supporting Actress Oscar category saw a lone nomination, meaning that a film was recognized there and nowhere else. This achievement is attributed to Kathy Bates (“Richard Jewell”), who competed for no major precursors except the Golden Globe but still managed to bump Critics Choice, SAG, and Globe nominee Jennifer Lopez (“Hustlers”). Perhaps unsurprisingly given the length of the streak she broke, there has yet to be a lone contender in any of her category’s subsequent lineups.

Since the introduction of the two gendered supporting Oscars in 1937, there have been 57 female lone nominees and 54 male ones, with over half of the entrants on the former roster having been added before 1977. The one who directly preceded Bates was Helen Hunt, whose inclusion in her lineup was much more heavily predicted. Coincidentally, both women had the perceived advantage of being former Best Actress champions,...

Orange Studio has boarded true-crime-tinged psychological thriller “An Ordinary Case” and will launch sales at this week’s Unifrance Rendez-Vous in Paris. Top-lined, co-written and directed by French cinema stalwart Daniel Auteuil, this pulled-from-the-headlines drama also boasts “Borgen” and “Westworld” star Sidse Babett Knudsen alongside acclaimed actor Grégory Gadebois (“An Officer and a Spy”).

Auteuil adapted the feature from the work of Jean-Yves Moyart – a jurist-turned-blogger-turned-bestselling author who wrote of his experiences in the French legal system – and will star as Jean Monier, a disillusioned lawyer defending a man accused of murdering his wife. While all signs point to the accused’s guilt, Monier remains steadfast in his presumption of innocence. What begins as an ordinary case turns out to be anything but.

Following in the footsteps of Alice Diop’s Venice and César winner “Saint Omer,” of Cédric Kahn’s Cannes-acclaimed “The Goldman Case,” and of Justine Triet’s...

This week’s Unifrance Rendez-Vous in Paris will kick off with the Tuesday night world premiere of Pascal Bonitzer’s “Auction” – a ripped-from-the-headlines ensemble drama set in the crosshairs of high art and high finance.

Produced by Sbs Productions and sold by Pyramide International, the art-world saga follows – among others – a hotshot auctioneer, his less-than-reliable assistant, and the working class bloke who sets the narrative in motion upon realizing that his erstwhile innocuous wall art bears the signature of Egon Schiele.

Writer-director Pascal Bonitzer originally thought to explore this world of high-verve auctioneers as a series, but keyed into the story’s singular, cinematic potential thanks to the real-life discovery of Schiele masterworks thought lost during World War II.

“I was fascinated by this collision of two worlds,” Bonitzer tells Variety. “On the one hand, these auctioneers need to play a game – they must seduce potential sellers, wresting artifacts from...