News

Pyramide International handling sales on film produced by France’s Les Film Pelléas and Versus Productions.

Renowned Russian dancer and actor Sergei Polunin and French actress Laetitia Dosch have joined the cast of Danielle Arbid’s upcoming feature Passion Simple, which began shooting in and around Paris last week.

The film is being shot in 16mm and the shoot will also travel to Moscow and Florence in February.

Dosch co-stars as a French academic who embarks on a passionate affair with a dashing, married Russian diplomat, played by Polunin, knowing that the relationship will not last. The storyline revolves around...

A Golden Youth (Une jeunesse dorée)

Actress and director Eva Ionesco re-teams with Isabelle Huppert for her sophomore film A Golden Youth, which also stars her son Lukas Ionesco, renowned actor Melvil Poupaud, Manal Issa, Alain-Fabian Delon and Galatea Bellugi. Ionesco’s latest is produced by Marie-Jeanne Pascal and Melissa Toscan du Plantier for Macassar Productions (Eva), with Njj Entertainment and Scope Productions (Belgium) as co-producers. Lensed by Dp Agnes Godard (who won a Cesar for Claire Denis’ Beau Travail and is also the favored cinematographer of Ursula Meier), the film will also feature a score from Betrand Burgular.…...

The three French majority productions playing in competition in Venice are entirely different from one another in style and tone, and even more so in terms of their American distribution strategies.

Both Jacques Audiard’s “The Sisters Brothers” and Olivier Assayas’ “Double Lives” will be released under significantly different conditions, while David Oelhoffen’s “Close Enemies” will hit the Lido still looking for a buyer. Taken all together, however, these three cases offer a reasonable snapshot of the current U.S. market for French cinema.

Audiard’s “The Sisters Brothers” stands as the outlier, one of the rare French productions to land U.S. distribution before the cameras ever rolled. L.A.-based production company Annapurna Pictures came on board in May 2017 and announced that it would release the English-language Western through its nascent distribution arm.

Time will no doubt tell, but Annapurna’s interest in the project likely does...

The original French title of “Parisienne” is “Peur de Rien,” which literally translated means “Fear of Nothing.” And in the first few moments of the film, young Lina (Manal Issa) shows both remarkable bravery and deserved terror. She is a college student who has just moved from Beirut to the Parisian suburbs in 1993, and shortly after arriving at her aunt’s home, her uncle (Waleed Zuaiter) attempts to rape her. She fights back fiercely, fleeing into the uncertain night. “Parisienne” captures her fear as she runs through the dark streets, a triumph of both the actress' performance and cinematographer Hélène Louvart's work. Read More: The 30 Most Anticipated Films Of The 2016 Sundance Film Festival What follows could have been another coming-of-age drama about a young woman finding herself, her intellect and her sexuality in the city, except for two important elements that set the film apart: Lina’s status as...

Films set to show at the 40th Toronto International Film Festival (Tiff), updated as announcements are made in the run up to the event.

Tiff will open on September 10 with Jean-Marc Vallée’s Demolition starring Jake Gyllenhaal and Naomi Watts.

Tiff 40

Key: Wp = world premiere; Nap = North American premiere; IP = international premiere; Cp = Canadian premiere.

GALASBeeba Boys (Canada), Deepa Mehta, WPDemolition, Jean-Marc Vallée WPDisorder (Maryland) (France-Belgium), Alice Winocour NAPThe Dressmaker (Aus), Jocelyn Moorhouse, WPEye In The Sky (UK), Gavin Hood WPForsaken (Canada), Jon Cassar, WPFreeheld (Us), Peter Sollett, WPHyena Road (Canada), Paul Gross, WPLolo (France), Julie Delpy, NAPLegend (UK), Brian Helgeland, IPMan Down (Us), Dito Montiel NAPThe Man Who Knew Infinity (UK), Matt Brown, WPThe Martian (Us), Ridley Scott, WPMiss You Already (UK), Catherine Hardwicke WPMississippi Grind (Us), Ryan Fleck, Anna Boden CPMr. Right (Us), Paco Cabezas WPThe Program (UK), Stephen Frears, WPRemember (Canada), Atom Egoyan, NAPSeptembers Of Shiraz (Us), Wayne Blair, WPStonewall ([link...

Anne Sewitsky‘s Sundance preemed Homesick, Cannes preemed Romanian imports from Radu Muntean‘s One Floor Below and Corneliu Porumboiu‘s The Treasure along with Athina Rachel Tsangari‘s Locarno shown Chevalier are just four of the film titles in the just announced Contemporary World Cinema programme for Tiff. Among the other noteworthy titles in what is mostly a mix of world preems and North American premieres we find Grímur Hákonarson‘s Rams (just picked up by Cohen Media), Alex van Warmerdam well-received Locarno comedy Schneider vs. Bax , the world preem for Sion Sono’s The Whispering Star, and the Oscilloscope Laboratories picked up Ciro Guerra‘s Embrace Of The Serpent. Here are today’s selections that were added to the already announced Canadian items.

25 April (New Zealand), Leanne Pooley Wp

3000 Nights (Palestine-France-Jordan-Lebanon-uae-Qatar), Mai Masri Wp

An (Japan-France-Germany), Naomi Kawase Nap

The Apostate (Spain-France-Uruguay), Federico Veiroj Wp

As I Open...

Potential awards season contenders Truth from James Vanderbilt and Marc Abraham’s I Saw The Light starring Tom Hiddleston as Hank Williams land world premiere slots, while Paco Cabezas’s Mr. Right will close the festival.

London is the subject of the seventh annual City To City programme that features world premieres of Tom Geens’ Couple In A Hole starring Paul Higgins and Kate Dickie and Michael Caton-Jones’ Urban Hymn with Letitia Wright and Shirley Henderson. Elaine Constantine’s Northern Soul gets a North American premiere.

The world premiere of Catherine Hardwicke’s Miss You Already is among five additions to the galas alongside Mr. Right, an action comedy starring Sam Rockwell and Anna Kendrick.

Matthew Cullen’s Martin Amis adaptation London Fields and David Gordon Green’s Our Brand Is Crisis get first public screenings in the Special Presentations roster with I Saw The Light.

Tiff top brass also unveiled the Contemporary World Cinema section, featuring...

Gazing into the crystal ball, Screen rounds up its Cannes predictions.

With the unveiling of Cannes Film Festival’s Official Selection now exactly three weeks away buzz over the titles that Thierry Fremaux and his team will select for the 68th edition is hitting fever pitch.

Official teaser announcements have started to roll this week, led by the confirmation on Wednesday that George Miller’s Mad Max: Fury Road would premiere in an Out of Competition screening on May 14.

Earlier the week, Cannes unveiled its poster featuring Ingrid Bergman to mark the centenary of the late big screen’s birth and it was announced that Stig Bjorkman’s documentary Ingrid Bergman – In Her Own Words would show in Cannes Classics as part of the commemorations.

For the rest of the Official Selection, except perhaps the opening film which is traditionally revealed in advance, Cannes watchers will have to wait for the announcement press conference in Paris on April...

They didn’t make our final Top 100 cut, but here is a list of foreign film titles that are on our radar for 2015. We being with…

200. Remember – Dir. Atom Egoyan

199. Suffragette – Dir. Sarah Gavron

198. Kills on Wheels – Dir. Attila Till

197. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon: The Green Legend – Dir. Yuen Woo-ping

196. The Go-Between – Dir. Pete Travis

195. Peur de Rien Dir. Danielle Arbid

194. Regular Boy – Dir. Michele Civetta

193. Flaskepost – Dir. Nikolaj Arcel

192. The Lady in the Van – Dir. Nicolas Hytner

191. Zoom – Dir. Pedro Morelli

190. Away from the Sea – Dir. Imanol Uribe

189. Tulip Fever – Dir. Justin Chadwick

188. Ulrike’s Brain – Dir. Bruce La Bruce

187. Tsunami – Dir. Jacques Deschamps

186. And Your Sister? – Dir. Marion Vernoux

185. There Was Las Vegas – Dir. Alexandre Castas

184. Prejudice – Dir. Antoine Cuypers

183. Stepne – Dir. Maryna Vroda

182. Irreplaceable – Dir. Olivier Masset-Depasse

181. Histoire de Judas Iscariot – Dir. Rabah Ameur-Zaimeche

180. The First, the Last – Dir. Bouli Lanners

179. Selection Officielle – Dir. Jacques Richard

178. Desierto – Dir.