News

Pj Harvey has offered a stirring cover of Joy Division’s “Love Will Tear Us Apart” for Season 2 of the Apple TV+ original series Bad Sisters.

Recorded with composer Tim Phillips, the cover is Harvey’s latest for Bad Sisters; in addition collaborating on the series’ score, Harvey and Phillips recorded a rendition of Leonard Cohen’s “Who by Fire” for Season 1, which also served as the show’s opening theme. They also joined forces for a cover of the traditional folk song “Run On” back in 2022 for the show.

Now, they’ve regrouped for the score of Season 2, which premiered on November 13th. The pair’s rendition of “Love Will Tear Us Apart” features Harvey’s enchanting vocals front and center, kaleidoscopic synths, and a vocoder part that begins to echo the chorus in the song’s final third. “Our version of ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart’ is full...

Julie Delpy’s Meet The Barbarians will open the 21st edition of the Seville European Film Festival on November 8. The Spanish festival turns the spotlight on European films during this year’s awards season.

Meet The Barbarians is a satire about the arrival of a group of refugees in a village in Brittany.

The official selection includes 19 titles in competition for its top award: the Golden Giraldillo, named after the statue that crowns Sevilla’s Cathedral, La Giralda.

The prize comes with €40,000 for the Spanish distributor of the winning film or €20,000 for the company that submitted the film to the...

Philippe Lesage’s Who by Fire begins with a vision of what could be called stasis in motion. Following a car on a highway as it winds its way deeper into the woods, the opening shot holds for an unnervingly long time, accompanied by droning ambient music, before moving into the car, where the legs and hands of two people sitting side by side can be glimpsed. Only later will it be made clear that the occupants of the car are screenwriter Albert (Paul Ahmarani), his two kids, Aliocha (Aurelia Arandi-Longpré) and Max (Antoine Marchand-Gagnon), and Max’s friend Jeff (Noah Parker), on their way to the cabin of Albert’s former collaborator, Blake (Arieh Worthalter), that’s only accessible by seaplane.

The portentousness of this early journey is laced with a somewhat spiky sense of humor; in one scene, captured in a single long shot, Albert teasingly drives forward several times,...

Exclusive: Brooklyn-based distributor KimStim has picked up all U.S. rights to Quebecois filmmaker Philippe Lesage’s feature Who by Fire.

The film debuted at the Berlin Film Festival where it won Best Film in the Generation 17 competition. The film will have its U.S. premiere at the upcoming New York Film Festival.

KimStim’s co-president Ian Stimler negotiated the deal with Pamela Leu, Head of Sales at the Belgian-based Be For Films.

The film follows Jeff, a 17-year-old aspiring filmmaker who joins his friend Max’s family at a retreat hosted by former filmmaker Blake Cadieux. The synopsis reads: Tensions escalate as old conflicts between Blake and Max’s father, Albert, resurface while Jeff navigates his feelings for Max’s sister, Aliocha, amidst the unfolding drama.

The film was produced by Unité Centrale and Shellac Sud. Balthazar Lab shot the film and Mathieu Bouchard-Malo was the editor.

Lesage is...

The 2024 New York Film Festival has revealed its main slate lineup including Cannes winners Anora and Seed of the Sacred Fig as well as the U.S. premieres of Mike Leigh’s Hard Truths, David Cronenberg’s The Shrouds and Roberto Minervini’s The Damned, which was also awarded at Cannes.

Indeed, the NYFF main slate features a number of Cannes prize winners in addition to Sean Baker’s Anora, which won Cannes’ Palme d’Or; exiled Iranian director Mohammad Rasoulof’s Seed of the Sacred Fig, which was awarded a special prize; and The Damned, which won best director in the Un Certain Regard section, shared with Rungano Nyoni’s On Becoming a Guinea Fowl, which will also screen at NYFF. Other Cannes faves set to play in New York include Payal Kapadia’s All We Imagine as Light, which won the grand prize at the French festival, and Miguel Gomes’ Grand Tour,...

New York Film Festival (NYFF) has announced a varied Main Slate featuring anticipated Venice world premiere The Brutalist from Brady Corbet as well as a raft of Cannes and Berlin winners including Sean Baker’s Cannes Palme d’Or winner Anora.

The line-up of 33 films announced on Tuesday morning includes Payal Kapadia’s Cannes grand prize winner All We Imagine As Light, Miguel Gomes’s best director winner Grand Tour, and Mohammad Rasoulof’s The Seed Of The Sacred Fig, recipient of the special prize.

Mati Diop’s Berlin Golden Bear winner Dahomey takes its place in the selection, as...

Thirty-three films will make up the Main Slate of the 62nd New York Film Festival, including the latest from David Cronenberg, Sean Baker, Payal Kapadia, Mike Leigh, Mati Diop, Hong Sang-soo and Julia Loktev. The festival will take place Sept. 27 — Oct. 14, 2024.

“The festival’s ambition is to reflect the state of cinema in a given year, which often means also reflecting the state of the world,” the festival’s artistic director Dennis Lim said in a statement. “The most notable thing about the films in the Main Slate — and in the other sections that we will announce in the coming weeks— is the degree to which they emphasize cinema’s relationship to reality. They are reminders that, in the hands of its most vital practitioners, film has the capacity to reckon with, intervene in, and reimagine the world.”

The movies in this year’s Main Slate come from 24 different countries.

New York Film Festival has revealed the Main Slate titles for its 62nd edition, which runs September 27 through October 14. The selection includes feature films from 24 countries, with 18 directors making their NYFF Main Slate debut, and two world, five North American, and 16 U.S. premieres. As previously announced, the festival will open with RaMell Ross’ “Nickel Boys” and close with Steve McQueen’s “Blitz” and will feature Pedro Almodóvar’s “The Room Next Door” as its Centerpiece.

The Main Slate includes celebrated films from festivals worldwide including Cannes prize winners: Payal Kapadia’s “All We Imagine as Light” (Grand Prize), Sean Baker’s “Anora” (Palme d’Or), Roberto Minervini’s “The Damned”, Miguel Gomes’s “Grand Tour” (Best Director), Rungano Nyoni’s “On Becoming a Guinea Fowl”, and Mohammad Rasoulof’s “The Seed of the Sacred Fig” (Special Prize). At this year’s Berlinale, Mati Diop’s “Dahomey” received the Golden...

As a general movie rule, when a group of happy weekenders head to a woodland cottage for a bit of rest and relaxation, the great outdoors has some grisly surprises in store for them. In “Who By Fire,” however, the horrors all come from inside the house — or more specifically from the people themselves, many of whose worst impulses and insecurities are unleashed by their tranquil surroundings. Dramatizing a curious case of cabin fever with keen human observation and patient wrangling of intangible dread, the third narrative feature from Quebecois director Philippe Lesage underlines his ability to carve a semblance of a horror movie from everyday domestic drama — confirming him as a filmmaker of considerable grace and daring.

It’s been six years since Lesage’s last film, “Genesis” — a long wait for his admirers, a select club still largely confined to the festival circuit, notwithstanding the polish and rigor of the director’s work.

Into the Woods: Lesage Explores Wounded Masculinities

In Vincent Sherman’s 1943 Bette Davis-led melodrama Old Acquaintance, the complex relationship between a pair of female frenemies becomes increasingly complicated throughout their lifetime. Resignedly, they rely on a metaphorical phrase to explain their relationship – “There’s always what’s left of the icing.” The same wistful sentiment cannot be said for the troubled relationship between two men in Philippe Lesage’s latest agonizing, unpredictable melodrama Who by Fire, which focuses on a pair of artists whose notable professional relationship dissolved years ago, now reuniting at a log cabin along with a handful of related guests.…...

It’s been almost a decade now that French-Canadian director Philippe Lesage’s intense, intricate dramas have been premiering in top festivals and receiving rave reviews from critics. And yet he unfortunately remains more or less unknown to general arthouse audiences.

Lesage began his career shooting documentaries, including the 2010 hospital chronicle The Heart That Beats, then made his first fictional feature, The Demons, in 2015, following it up in 2018 with Genesis. Both movies were coming-of-age stories — or more like cruel stories of youth, to cite the Nagisa Oshima film — helmed with laser-sharp precision and backed by formidable turns from a young cast. Fine-tuned and freewheeling at the same time, his narratives keep bubbling up until they boil over, in explosive sequences where the characters let it all out or start bellowing pop songs at will.

He’s a gifted and original filmmaker who should be getting more attention — which is why...

You’d expect the pivotal music cue in Philippe Lesage’s Who by Fire to be its namesake by Leonard Cohen, a beautiful and plaintive prayer of a song. But instead it’s The B-52s’ infectious slice of bubblegum “Rock Lobster,” initially seeded through a dialogue reference, then heard fully in an eccentric sequence I won’t further detail. The funny, noteworthy quirk of “Rock Lobster,” though, is its structurally well-earned length of just under seven minutes. Who by Fire, running 161 minutes itself, also seems to be up to something, committing to that runtime as such a contained, semi-domestic drama: a provocation through duration.

A rising Québécois filmmaker making his second coproduction with France, Lesage thus far in his career has tinkered around the edges of familiar genres and subject matter, embedding these into his personal sensibility if never quite reinventing them. The camera styles of his two prior...

Generation, the Berlin Film Festival sidebar for children and youth films, has announced this year’s winners unveiling the picks from both the Generation 14plus (for teen and older viewers) and the youth jury for the Generation Kplus (kids and tweens) sections.

Sasha Nathwani’s coming-of-age drama Last Swim, about an Iranian-British teen confronting a major life decision, took the Crystal Bear for best film in the Generation 14plus section, with Kim Hye-young’s It’s Okay!, about an orphaned young dancer, winning the top prize for Generation Kplus. Both prizes were awarded by youth juries of young filmgoers.

In its statement, the 14plus jury called Last Swim “a story about the beauty of life and of things coming to an end. It is a film that does not shy away from portraying the messy and consuming feelings that can arise when you know your dreams may not be fulfilled. However,...

Ukrainian drama project Screaming Girl has scooped the top prize at the Berlinale Co-Production Market.

The feature won the Eurimages Co-Production Development Award, worth €20,000, which went to Kyiv-based producers Forefilms.

Director Antonio Lukich is known for comedy-drama Luxembourg, Luxembourg, which screened in the Horizons strand of the Venice Film Festival in 2022. His debut was My Thoughts Are Silent, which won a special jury prize at Karlovy Vary in 2019.

Screaming Girl centres on a girl who, after the invasion of Ukraine, finds herself in Ireland and pursues her dream of becoming an actress. However, she begins to experience strange and fantastical events that disrupt her life,...

A Different Man.The Berlinale have begun to announce the first few titles selected for the 74th edition of their festival, set to take place from February 15 through 21, 2024. This page will be updated as further sections are announced.COMPETITIONAnother End (Piero Messina)Architecton (Victor Kossakovsky)Black Tea (Abderrahmane Sissako)La Cocina (Alonso Ruiz Palacios) Dahomey (Mati Diop)A Different Man (Aaron Schimberg)The Empire (Bruno Dumont)Gloria! (Margherita Vicario)Suspended Time (Olivier Assayas)From Hilde, With Love (Andreas Dresen)My Favourite CakeLangue Etrangère (Claire Berger)Small Things Like These (Tim Mielants)Who Do I Belong To (Meryam Joobeur)Pepe (Nelson Carlos De Los Santos Arias)Shambhala (Min Bahadur Bham)Sterben (Matthias Glasner)Small Things Like These (Tim Mielants)A Traveler’s Needs (Hong Sang-soo)Sleep With Your Eyes Open. ENCOUNTERSArcadia (Yorgos Zois)Cidade; Campo (Juliana Rojas)Demba (Mamadou Dia)Direct ActionSleep With Your Eyes Open (Nele Wohlatz)The Fable (Raam Reddy...