News

“I’ve been here before, but I’m really happy to be back,” said French actress Isabelle Huppert as she basked in the glow of all the neatly stacked cinema surrounding her.

A frequent visitor to the Criterion Closet, Huppert wasted no time in making her selections, starting with Barbara Loden’s “Wanda,” which tells the story of a female Rust Belt wanderer turned bank robber trying to survive the aimlessness put upon her by the world she inhabits.

“Here is ‘Wanda.’ A good friend of mine,” Huppert said, kissing the character on the cover. “I like this woman. She’s great. Barbara Loden.I like the way she comes to the court with bigoudis.”

For those non-Francophiles, translation: curlers. Huppert followed this choice with a set of films from Italian neo-realist Roberto Rossellini that includes “Stromboli,” “Europe ’51,” and “Journey to Italy.” In reflecting on Rossellini’s relationship to wife and collaborator Ingrid Bergman,...

The holidays are upon us, so whether you’re looking for film-related gifts or simply want to get for yourself some of the finest this year had to offer, we have a gift guide for you. Including must-have books on filmmaking, the best from the Criterion Collection and other home-video lines, subscriptions, magazines, music, and more, dive in below.

4K & Blu-ray Box Sets

There’s no better gift than an epic film collection, and 2024 was an embarrassment of riches thanks to a number of box sets. The king of them all, especially if you’re looking for a gift for a burgeoning cinephile, is Criterion’s massive CC40, collecting 40 landmark films form their 40-year history. It’s not the only stellar set from the company, of course, as I adored the essential Chantal Akerman Masterpieces, 1968–1978, Éric Rohmer’s Tales of the Four Seasons, Gregg Araki’s Teen Apocalypse Trilogy, Three Revolutionary Films by Ousmane Sembène,...

“I thought I would have a strategy,” said Anna Kendrick as she peered around thousands of classic cinematic treasures. “And now that I’m here, I don’t. But that’s okay. Sometimes great things happen when you don’t have a great plan.”

So begins Kendrick’s venture into the beloved Criterion Closet. The Academy-Award nominated actress and now director took a stop by Criterion’s offices in New York while promoting her recently released Netflix film, “Woman of the Hour,” and found herself throwing plans out the window, instead letting her experience be driven by chance. Having a musical background herself, Kendrick started with a classic in the genre, Bob Fosse’s semi-autobiographical “All That Jazz.”

“You always want to say that you saw all these movies, like, at least a decade ago, right? But I just saw this a few years ago,” said Kendrick. “‘All That Jazz.

Back in 2018, while presenting Best Director alongside Ron Howard at the Golden Globe Awards, Natalie Portman created a meme: “And here are the all-male nominees,” Portman said, pointedly underlining the omission of presumed contenders like Greta Gerwig for “Lady Bird” and Patty Jenkins for “Wonder Woman.”

Speaking a month after the ceremony, Portman said she wanted to bring attention to the disparity in the directors’ field without throwing the male nominees under the bus. “It’s not their fault, and they all made great work. You don’t want to not recognize them,” she said to BuzzFeed. “It’s just, why aren’t we recognizing the people who aren’t part of this exclusive club?”

But, Portman added, her goal was to make clear the obvious. “We have to make it weird for people to walk in a room where everyone’s not in the room,” she said. “If you...

The reconstruction of the 1976 trial of voluble and charismatic leftist Pierre Goldman tackles antisemitism and history

French cinema has recently given us some sensationally good courtroom dramas, such as Alice Diop’s Saint Omer and Justine Triet’s Anatomy of a Fall, both of which put ideas as well as individuals on trial; race, gender and class. Now, Cédric Kahn has reconstructed – with some fictional licence – the 1976 trial of revolutionary leftist Pierre Goldman, who had previously been convicted of killing two pharmacists in the course of an armed robbery. After publishing his polemical autobiography Obscure Memories of a Polish Jew Born in France while in prison – which made him a cause célèbre among the fashionable Parisian classes – Goldman secured a retrial on the basis that the investigation was flawed and he had an alibi for the date and time of the killings, though he admitted to earlier robberies.

And it is this chaotic,...

Killers of the Flower Moon‘s epilogue felt like the last word on true crime: a director with several based-on-a-true-story tales to his name emerging from behind the camera to highlight the shortcomings of a genre that reduces victims to collateral damage in stories more compelled by their killers. That it arrived as splashy courtroom dramas made a big comeback––and even partially falling into that category itself––was an accident, but taken alongside the likes of Anatomy of a Fall or Saint Omer, it was clear that a need to tackle the subjectivity of this genre, and our obsession as uninvolved observers, was in the air.

Arriving more than a year after its Karlovy Vary premiere, Canadian thriller Red Rooms feels most like a dark companion piece to Saint Omer in its perspective-shifting analysis of a courtroom observer, although that’s where the similarities end. Director Pascal Plante’s...

France’s National Cinema Centre (Cnc) has announced it is increasing the size of the country’s Oscar selection committee to reinforce its independence.

The move follows controversy over the Cnc-run committee’s recent choices of film to represent France in the Best International Feature Film category.

Last year, there was major upset within the film industry after the committee selected period drama The Taste Of Things over hot favorite, Justine Triet’s Cannes Palme d’Or winner Anatomy of A Fall.

There was talk in the local industry at the time of covert lobbying against the film in response to Triet’s outspoken stance against the government of President Emmanuel Macron on receiving her Cannes prize.

The Taste Of Things failed to make it to the nomination stage, while Anatomy of a Fall enjoyed a buzzy awards season in Europe and the U.S., winning Best Original Screenplay at the 96th Academy Awards.

Da’Vine Joy Randolph and the director and cast of Anatomy of a Fall are also among the 487 new artists and executives to judge the Academy Awards

Killers of the Flower Moon star Lily Gladstone, Past Lives director Celine Song, and actors Jessica Alba, Catherine O’Hara and Fiona Shaw are among the 487 artists and entertainment executives invited to join the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the organisation announced on Tuesday.

Other invitees included Past Lives actors Greta Lee and Teo Yeo, Bottoms filmmaker Emma Seligman, New Zealand actor Rachel House – best known for her collaborations with Taika Waititi – and French director Alice Diop, whose feature debut, the legal drama Saint Omer, became an international festival darling in 2022.

Matt Dillon, Alice Diop and Karla Sofia Gascon will bring their springtime spirit to this month’s Nouvelles Vagues Film Festival, now running from June 18 – 23 in Biarritz. Launched last year with the support of Chanel, the nascent festival invites both established and emerging talents to share an expansive vision of youth, hosting a competition dedicated to young adult stories overseen by a jury all under the age of 35.

“Across all sections, this festival shines the spotlight on younger generations and celebrates young characters on screen,” says programing director Lili Hinstin. “We wanted to look to the future through the prism of the next generation, and to interrogate the questions and contemporary issues important to them.”

To that end, this sophomore edition kicked off with the world premiere of “Night Call,” a Brussels-set thriller, taking place over the course of one heated night, foisting an unsuspecting locksmith into a criminal underworld...

Clare Binns, managing director of Picturehouse Cinemas and Picturehouse Entertainment, is to be presented with Unic’s 2024 achievement award for her dedication to the exhibition of European cinema.

The International Union of Cinemas (Unic) will present the award during the CineEurope awards ceremony on June 20 at the International Barcelona Convention Centre.

Phil Clapp, president of Unic and chief executive of the UK Cinema Association, said: “Clare’s contribution to cinema programming and audience development have been widely recognised, and her leadership continues to shape the industry. The award recognises her incredible passion for the big screen, her outstanding career and...

Alice Diop’s Saint Omer brings the French filmmaker into the realm of fiction for the first time, but preserves her documentary respect for the evidence of the audience’s eyes. A sober, pared-down courtroom drama, Saint Omer initially makes little effort to comment on its action, at times feeling more like presentation than representation. The unadorned quality of the film can be laborious, particularly in the early stretches of the trial that’s at the center of the story, but Diop earns the effort she asks of her audience, methodically allowing a strange, intangible, but nevertheless palpable mix of emotions to emerge from the situation itself.

It’s certainly a choice, and the expression of an ethos, that Diop keeps the viewer locked in to repeating pairs of alternating camera angles for significant portions of the trial. We see the defendant, Laurence Coly (Guslagie Malanda), a Senegalese immigrant and...

When it comes to dismantling discrimination, whether it be by race, gender, or other marginalized identity. does the law follow society, or society follow the law? While the public can often push for changes they want in society to be reflected in law, sometimes the law needs to go first. Though when it comes to certain people, support either from society or the law is minimal to non-existent, and nothing showcases this more than when a crime is committed, wherein societal expectations mean a person is demonized. French documentarial Alice Diop's first narrative feature, Saint Omer, is based on the true story of a woman's murder of her child. But even within that sentence, the whole, complicated truth is missing. Hence Diop's meditative and unflinching...

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

On a recent podcast, filmmaker Steven Soderbergh pivoted the conversation to Alfred Hitchcock’s work, examining why, decades later, the auteur’s grip on audiences remains so tight. “[The reason] we still watch Hitchcock movies, and that they don’t feel as dated as some other films, is that they’re all about guilt,” Soderbergh posited. “Every Hitchcock movie is about guilt — and guilt’s not going anywhere.” If what Soderbergh says is true, then why is guilt so evergreen?

I listened to the podcast after watching Jonathan Glazer’s The Zone of Interest, a masterpiece that belongs in the category of Great Art (an imperfect term, but one I stand by). I wondered why Glazer’s film — about a German family attempting to build a normal life in the shadow of Auschwitz during World War II — seemed to rise above the competition in a very strong year for movies. I believe...

Fremantle is poised to acquire the Paris-based Asacha Media Group in the latest ambitious expansion move by German parent company, Rtl Group.

Asacha owns a portfolio of European production companies, mostly TV. Its film interests are concentrated in Toufik Ayadi and Christophe Barral’s French production outfit Srab Films. Ayadi and Barral’s credits include Alice Diop’s Saint Omer and Ladj Ly’s Les Indésirables.

The companies have entered into a conditional purchase agreement, subject to customary closing conditions. The deal is expected to close in the second quarter of 2024.

Asacha co-founders Gaspard de Chavagnac and Marina Williams will...

In the latest major M&a deal to hit Europe, Fremantle has acquired Asacha Media Group, the growing owner of Death in Paradise producer Red Planet, Arrow Media and Italy’s Stand By Me.

Fremantle owner Rtl said the super-indie has spent more than €200M ($216M) on Asacha plus 80% of Singapore’s Beach House Pictures since the start of this year and is now well on track to reach its lofty €3B ($3.2B) revenue target by 2025. Rtl didn’t break down how much Asacha and Beach House cost individually.

Asacha was only founded in 2020 but has since acquired eight labels and rapidly expanded its footprint across Europe.

The deal sees Fremantle acquire the group from Asacha’s founding partners, managers and funds managed by Oaktree Capital Management.

Following the acquisition, which is subject to customary closing conditions, Asacha will continue to be run by Co-Founder and Group CEO Gaspard de Chavagnac...

The failure of France’s The Taste of Things to secure an Oscar nomination for best international film this year has discomfited the French film industry as it marks the fourth year a French film has not made the final five.

Talk is now already turning to whether this could mean further change on the horizon for its selection committee.

Justine Triet’s Anatomy Of A Fall, the film the committee opted not to select, secured five major nominations, for best picture, best director, best actress, best original screenplay and best film editing.

Back in September, after a series of reportedly passionate but cordial debates,...

Girls Will Be Girls, the feature debut from writer-director Shuchi Talati, follows a teenage girl named Mira (Preeti Panigrahi) as she navigates her sexual awakening while attending boarding school in the Himalayan mountains. Her domineering mother (Kani Kusruti), however, wishes to put a stop to Mira’s exploration of her autonomous desires. Editor Amrita David, who also cut Alice Diop’s excellent 2022 film Saint Omer, discusses how her Indian heritage and editing intuition proved to be enormous boons to the film’s final form. See all responses to our annual Sundance editor questionnaire here. Filmmaker: How and why did you wind up […]

The post “In Some Mysterious Way, the Material Itself Begins To Speak to You”: Editor Amrita David on Girls Will Be Girls first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

Girls Will Be Girls, the feature debut from writer-director Shuchi Talati, follows a teenage girl named Mira (Preeti Panigrahi) as she navigates her sexual awakening while attending boarding school in the Himalayan mountains. Her domineering mother (Kani Kusruti), however, wishes to put a stop to Mira’s exploration of her autonomous desires. Editor Amrita David, who also cut Alice Diop’s excellent 2022 film Saint Omer, discusses how her Indian heritage and editing intuition proved to be enormous boons to the film’s final form. See all responses to our annual Sundance editor questionnaire here. Filmmaker: How and why did you wind up […]

The post “In Some Mysterious Way, the Material Itself Begins To Speak to You”: Editor Amrita David on Girls Will Be Girls first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

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...

Bookmark this page for the latest updates in the territory.

Screen is listing the 2023 release dates for films in the UK and Ireland in the calendar below.

For distributors who wish to add/amend a date on the calendar, please get in touch with Screen here. Screen is also running a calendar for festival and market dates throughout 2023 here.

December

December 31

Berliner Philharmoniker Live: New Year’s Eve Concert 2023 (Trafalgar - event cinema)

Previous releases January

January 6

Piggy (Vertigo), The Enforcer (Vertigo), Alcarràs (Mubi), A Man Called Otto (Sony), Rashomon (BFI), Till (Universal)

January 7

Andre Rieu In Dublin 2023 (Piece of...

Exclusive: Duván Duque, the Colombian writer-director behind 2024 Oscar-qualifying short All-Inclusive, has signed with UTA and Silent R Management.

World premiering at TIFF last year before going on to play over 70 festivals around the world, where it picked up 20+ awards, Duque’s latest watches as a young boy’s fragile family is shaken when his desperate father faces the possibility of money laundering as a way out of their financial struggles, putting the kid’s precious bond with his stepmother at risk. By shifting the focus from a spectacular tales of drug lords to the emotional journey of a boy with little control over his fate, the drama offers a fresh angle on Colombian society, transcending the typical tropes through which it’s represented.

All-Inclusive was produced by Oscar-nominated French producers Christophe Barral and Toufik Ayadi of Srab Films, as well as Colombian producer Franco Lolli...

Cesar Award-winning French actress Guslagie Malanda is currently in the national capital Delhi to attend the European Union Film Festival. Guslagie, whose film ‘Saint Omer’ marked the opening of the film fest, shared that Bollywood superstar Shah Rukh Khan’s ‘Devdas’ is her most favourite Hindi film of all times.

The actress is immersing herself in the city’s vibrant culture and has also fallen for Delhi’s culinary delights.

During her 5-day stay in Delhi, Malanda will be absorbing the local culture of the city.

When asked about Bollywood, Guslagie Malanda shared her love for the timeless classic, ‘Devdas’. The French actress revealed that she’s watched the movie multiple times and admires every actor’s performance. The Sanjay Leela Bhansali directorial holds a special place in her heart as one of her favourite Bollywood films.

The Shah Rukh Khan-starrer film is based on the 1917 novel of the same name by Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay,...

Cesar Award-winning French actress Guslagie Malanda is currently in the national capital Delhi to attend the European Union Film Festival. Guslagie, whose film ‘Saint Omer’ marked the opening of the film fest, shared that Bollywood superstar Shah Rukh Khan’s ‘Devdas’ is her most favourite Hindi film of all times.

The actress is immersing herself in the city’s vibrant culture and has also fallen for Delhi’s culinary delights.

During her 5-day stay in Delhi, Malanda will be absorbing the local culture of the city.

When asked about Bollywood, Guslagie Malanda shared her love for the timeless classic, ‘Devdas’. The French actress revealed that she’s watched the movie multiple times and admires every actor’s performance. The Sanjay Leela Bhansali directorial holds a special place in her heart as one of her favourite Bollywood films.

The Shah Rukh Khan-starrer film is based on the 1917 novel of the same name by Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay,...

The Taste of Things, a foodie period romance from French-Vietnamese filmmaker Tran Anh Hùng will be France’s official contender for the 2024 Oscars in the best international feature category. The film, starring Juliette Binoche and Benoit Magimel, premiered in Cannes under the title The Pot-au-Feu, where it won the best director prize. IFC Films and Sapan Studios have U.S. rights and will release the film stateside.

Set in 1885, the film follows the in-the-kitchen and in-the-bedroom romance between top chef Dodin Bouffant (Magimel) and his personal cook and lover, Eugénie (Binoche). They have been together for decades and he is desperate to marry her but she has steadfastly refused, afraid doing so will mean losing her independence. The Taste of Things was a critical and audience favorite in Cannes, with The Hollywood Reporter calling it one of “the most appetizing, art house food porn flicks to come along in a while.

France has submitted The Taste of Things as its candidate for the Best International Feature Film at the 96th Academy Awards, in a major upset after Justine Triet’s Cannes Palme d’Or winner and hot favorite Anatomy of a Fall was shut out.

The period drama The Taste of Things revolves around a culinary love affair between a dutiful cook and her gourmet employee, played by Juliette Binoche and Benoît Magimel, respectively.

Vietnam-born French director Tran Anh Hung broke out internationally with debut film The Scent of Green Papaya. The drama was Vietnam’s entry to the then Foreign Language category at the 1994 Oscars and was nominated.

The Taste of Things world premiered in Competition at Cannes, where it was titled The Pot-Au-Feu. Anh Hung won Best Director at the fest. Sapan Studios and IFC Films hold U.S. rights.

Triet’s Anatomy of a Fall had been widely...

France has officially selected “The Taste of Things” as its Oscars submission for Best International Feature at the 2024 Academy Awards in what may be a surprise for some following the race.

“The Taste of Things” (IFC Films stateside) debuted at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival, where filmmaker Trần Anh Hùng won the Best Director prize. But the French selection committee could’ve gone with the actual 2023 Cannes Palme d’Or winner, Justine Triet’s “Anatomy of Fall,” which has a better chance crossing over into other Oscars categories. That includes for lead actress contender Sandra Hüller, who also stars in the U.K.’s International submission, “The Zone of Interest.”

Smart crowdpleaser “The Taste of Things,” titled “The Pot-au-Feu” back at Cannes, stars Juliette Binoche and Benoît Magimel as two chefs who are lovers across 20 years in the 19th century. The film is an adaptation of Marcel Rouffe’s 1924 novel “The Passionate Epicure,...

In a surprising twist of events, France’s Oscar committee has chosen the culinary romance “The Taste of Things” over “Anatomy of a Fall,” Justine Triet’s Palme d’Or winning film, to represent the country in the international feature film race.

“The Taste of Things” (previously titled “The Pot-au-Feu”) won best director at Cannes for French-Vietnamese filmmaker Trần Anh Hùng. Starring Juliette Binoche and Benoit Magimel, the period movie was bought by IFC Films and Sapan Studios.

“Anatomy of a Fall,” meanwhile, was acquired by Neon, the Oscar-maker behind “Parasite,” at Cannes. The movie has been thriving at the French box office with approximately 8 million euros grossed from nearly 1 million admissions. It’s one of the biggest B.O. scores for a Palme d’Or winning film in France in years.

Neon will release “Anatomy of a Fall” in the U.S. on Oct. 13 and is still committed to...

The selection committee will now meet with the films’ producers, sales companies and US distributors.

Justine Triet’s Palme d’Or-winning Anatomy Of A Fall and The Taste Of Things by Cannes’ best director winner Tran Anh Hung have been shortlisted to be France’s entry to the international Oscar category, along with Clement Cogitore’s Sons Of Ramses, Thomas Cailley’s The Animal Kingdom and Denis Imbert’s On The Wandering Paths (Sur Les Chemins Noirs).

The five films were selected by a seven-member committee comprised of the US producer of Coda, Patrick Wachsberger, composer Alexandre Desplat, producer Charles Gillibert...

“Anatomy of a Fall,” Justine Triet’s Palme d’Or winning film, is one of the five movies shortlisted by France’s Oscars committee to represent the country in the international feature film race.

The movie, which was acquired by Neon at Cannes, was pre-selected alongside “The Taste of Things” (previously titled “The Pot-au-Feu”), a culinary romance starring Juliette Binoche which won best director at Cannes for French-Vietnamese filmmaker Trần Anh Hùng; Clement Cogitore’s “Sons of Ramses;” Thomas Cailley’s supernatural coming-of-age drama “The Animal Kingdom”; and Denis Imbert’s “On The Wandering Paths.” “The Animal Kingdom” was bought by Magnolia’s Magnet, while “The Taste of Things” was picked up by IFC Films and Sapan Studios. The selected movie will be unveiled on Sept. 21.

France hasn’t won an Oscar for best international film since Régis Wargnier’s “Indochine” in 1993 (it was then called best foreign-language film). Last year’s French entry,...

It does rather feel as if the universe — or at least the French film industry — is trying to tell us something when 2023 has turned up not one but two loose Gallic adaptations of Henry James’s “The Beast in the Jungle.” That 1903 novella was about a man, John Marcher, who fails to fully live his life because he’s seized by premonitions of catastrophe that never visibly come to pass. It feels glumly relevant in an age of climate change, artificial intelligence and other obvious but indefinite signals of human demise; perhaps we should count this highly specific cinematic mini-trend as another.

Spare a thought for director Patric Chiha’s “The Beast in the Jungle,” a Berlinale premiere earlier this year, with an already modest profile about to be dwarfed by Bertrand Bonello’s starrier, bigger-swinging “The Beast” — a gender-switched James riff in which said catastrophe is very much happening,...

The second year of the new-look committee.

Director Olivier Assayas, producer Patrick Wachsberger and composer Alexandre Desplat are among the seven-strong committee appointed by France’s Centre National du Cinema (Cnc) to select the country’s international feature Oscar entry.

Joining the trio on the committee are director Mounia Meddour; producer Charles Gillibert of CG Cinema; Sabine Chemaly, EVP of international distribution at TF1 Studio; and Tanja Meissner, former head of sales at Memento.

The committee is appointed by Rima Abdul Malak, French minister of culture, on the proposal of Cnc president Dominic Boutonnat.

The seven professionals will meet twice...

Former Lionsgate film co-chief Patrick Wachsberger has been named as one of the members of the selection committee that will decide the French entry for the Best International Film Oscar category this year.

He will be joined by international sales veterans Sabine Chemaly and Tanja Meissner, producer Charles Gillibert, directors Mounia Meddour and Olivier Assayas and composer Alexandre Desplat.

France has overhauled the composition of its Oscar entry selection committee twice in recent years to include more film industry professionals in a bid to improve its chances in the Best International Picture race.

The country last won the international film category with Régis Wargnier’s Indochine in 1993. Ladj Ly’s 2019 Cannes Jury Prize winner Les Misérables was the last French film to make it through to the final nomination stage for the 2020 awards, while Alice Diop’s Saint Omer made it onto the long list for the 2023 edition.

This year...

Beta Cinema has boarded international sales on “Not a Word,” which will have its world premiere at the Toronto Film Festival in the competitive Platform section. The cast is led by Maren Eggert, who won the best acting award at the Berlin Film Festival for “I’m Your Man.”

The film is written and directed by Hanna Slak, whose credits include the Slovenian Oscar entry “The Miner,” and was lensed by Claire Mathon, the cinematographer of “Portrait of a Lady on Fire,” “Saint-Omer,” “Stranger by the Lake” and “Spencer.”

Eggert plays ambitious musician and conductor Nina. When her teenage son, Lars, has a strange accident at school, she decides to take a break from city life and together they head to their vacation home on an island on the rugged Atlantic coast. Bound in silence, their already brittle relationship is pushed to the edge.

Jona Levin Nicolai co-stars as the provocative teenage son while Maryam Zaree,...

Over the past couple of weeks we’ve been reporting on a new Joachim Lafosse project. With an October production start date just around the corner, and now thanks to the socials, we learned that the first thesp to board Les petits voleurs will be Guslagie Malanda. The actress who began her career with 2014’s Mon Amie Victoria by Jean-Paul Civeyrac, and who waited for her big break with the outstanding performance in 2022’s Saint Omer is now on top of casting director lists.

Lafosse will premiere A Silence (Un silence) at the upcoming Donostia-San Sebastián, while Malanda should be returning to Venice (and possibly hitting Toronto) with Bertrand Bonello’s The Beast — the film’s selection should be confirmed tomorrow and or on Tuesday.…...

Jane Campion, Laura Poitras, Martin McDonagh and Mia Hansen-Løve have joined the main jury of the upcoming Venice Film Festival.

The prominent directors, most of whom are Venice regulars – Poitras last year scored the Golden Lion with documentary “All the Beauty and the Bloodshed” – will be joined by fellow jury members including Palestinian actor Saleh Bakri (“Wajib”); Chinese star Shu Qi (“The Assassin”); Italian director Gabriele Mainetti, who was at Venice last year with “Freaks Out”; and Argentinian auteur Santiago Mitre, whose “Argentina, 1985” also launched from the Lido last year.

They will join Damien Chazelle who, as previously announced, will serve as president of the Venice competition jury.

Venice revealed its jury just hours after talks broke down without a deal between actors union SAG-AFTRA and the Alliance for Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP). A strike is expected to be called on Thursday morning, Pacific time, which could have...

This year’s festival runs from August 30 to September 9.

The Venice Film Festival has confirmed that it will announce the official selection for its 80th edition at 10am BST (11am Cest) on Tuesday, July 25.

Venice artistic director Alberto Barbera and Biennale president Roberto Cicutto will preside over the official selection press conference.

This year’s edition of the festival runs from August 30 through to September 9.

Damien Chazelle is presiding over the main competition jury of the world’s oldest film festival for the first time after opening Venice twice, most recently in 2018 with First Man and in 2016 with La La Land.

As we approach 2023’s halfway point it’s time to take a temperature of the finest cinema thus far: we’ve rounded up our favorites from the first six months of this year, many of which have flown under the radar. Kindly note that this is based solely on U.S. theatrical and digital releases from 2023.

We should also note a number of stellar films that premiered on the festival circuit last year also had an awards-qualifying run, thus making them 2022 films by our standards––including One Fine Morning, Saint Omer, and Return to Seoul. Check out our picks below, as organized alphabetically, followed by honorable mentions.

Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret. (Kelly Fremon Craig)

Like Judy Blume’s treasured young adult classic, Kelly Fremon Craig’s Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret begins in 1970 with 11-year-old Margaret Simon (Abby Ryder Fortson) getting the worst news any...

Selected for the Directors’ Fortnight in 2022, Charlotte Le Bon‘s assured directorial debut was among the highlights of the section and since its launch on the Croisette, Falcon Lake has played well on the festival circuit (with Deauville and TIFF), and among the collection of prizes it landed the prestigious Louis Delluc Prize for Best First Film (beating out Alice Diop’s Saint Omer which oddly won for Best Feature ex aequo with Pacifiction).

Working as both as a moody parable and troubling portrait on youth, while we do indeed find some ghostly elements injected here, Falcon Lake is more about hard to describe violence that is associated to first loves and not being personally equipped to deal with rejection.…...

Neon has acquired Justine Triet’s Hitchcockian courtroom drama “Anatomy of a Fall.”

The U.S. distributor has been “aggressively pursuing” the competition title, which premiered in Cannes on Sunday to rapturous reviews and early Palme d’Or buzz. In the 150-minute film, a frustrated writer dies of suspicious causes, leaving behind clues that implicate his wife (Sandra Hüller) of his murder.

Much of the film is focused on the ensuing trial, and features German star Hüller, known to international audiences for “Toni Erdmann,” delivering a powerhouse performance as a woman fighting to clear her name while protecting the couple’s young son.

In his review, Variety critic Peter Debruge writes: “From the opening scene, set in an unfinished chalet in the French Alps, it often feels as if the movie is eavesdropping on moments too intimate to be shared — except that husband and wife are both novelists, and domestic...

Editor’s note: This review was originally published at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival. Neon releases the film in select theaters on Friday, October 13.

They say trends come in threes. And so, nipping on the heels of Alice Diop’s “Saint Omer” and Cedric Kahn’s Directors’ Fortnight breakout “The Goldman Case,” Justine Triet’s “Anatomy of a Fall” make a compelling case that the courthouse has become the most fertile ground in contemporary French cinema, offering incisive auteurs both motive and opportunity to put social structures on trial. As it calls the institution of marriage to the stand, Triet’s piercing film, which went on to win the Palme d’Or at this year’s Cannes, holds the ambient tensions and illogical loose ends of domestic life against the harsh and rational light of a legal system that searches for order in chaos.

Rounding out her own impressive hat trick,...

French director Justine Triet returns to Competition with a cerebral smash that might finally bring the Best Actress award that its star, Sandra Hüller, was cruelly denied in 2016 when Maren Ade’s festival hit Toni Erdmann lost out in every category. That film wasn’t everyone’s cup of tea, and the formidably forensic Anatomy of a Fall might not be either, but Hüller’s screen magnetism cannot be denied. Between this and her role as “Queen of Auschwitz” in Jonathan Glazer’s equally brilliant Zone of Interest, Hüller has Cannes in the palm of her hand. Whether she will also get a Palme in her hand is up to the jury.

The French like a good courtroom drama and they do them well, as Alice Diop’s Saint Omer proved last year. Triet’s film is very much in that mold, a ferociously intelligent and deceptively playful drama that...

Adrian Wootton, CEO of Film London and the British Film Commission, will preside over the jury of the Malta Film Commission’s inaugural Mediterrane Film Festival celebrating movies from the Mediterranean Basin.

The fest, which will take place in Valletta, Malta’s capital, and other locations on the island between June 25-30, will showcase films from each of the MED9 nations, an alliance of nine Mediterranean and Southern European Union member states. It comprises: Croatia, Cyprus, France, Greece, Italy, Malta, Portugal, Slovenia and Spain.

Besides Wotton the other jury members are “Triangle Of Sadness” actor Zlatko Burić; Cypriot filmmaker Tonia Mishiali; French actor and director Vahina Giocante; Greek producer Amanda Livanou; Italian journalist Boris Sollazzo; Maltese critic Mario Azzopardi; Portuguese journalist and programmer José Vieira Mendes; Slovenian journalist Tina Poglajen; and Spanish programmer Carlos Reviriego.

Alice Diop’s prize-winning Venice 2022 title “Saint Omer” (pictured); Carla Simon’s Berlin Golden Bear...

The inaugural Mediterrane Film Festival will take place June 25-30 in Malta

Adrian Wotton, CEO of Film London and British Film Commission, will head the international jury of Malta Film Commission’s inaugural Mediterrane Film Festival, taking place on the island from June 25 to 30.

Further jury members are Triangle Of Sadness actor Zlatko Burić, Cypriot filmmaker Tonia Mishiali, French actor and director Vahina Giocante, Greek producer Amanda Livanou, Italian journalist Boris Sollazzo, Maltese critic Mario Azzopardi, Portuguese journalist and programmer José Vieira Mendes, Slovenian journalist Tina Poglajen and Spanish programmer Carlos Reviriego.

The nine films in the competition include Alice Diop...

The exhibition specialists are branching out into distribution and festivals.

We Are Parable, the UK-based organisation that celebrates Black cinema from around the world, is making its debut trip to Cannes, having expanded its remit beyond experiential exhibition to include distribution.

“We’ve worked in exhibition for so long, there’s a lot of room and appetite for audiences wanting to have experiences with films. We’re excited to be seeing how we can combine the two, and do something that’s not been done before,” said Teanne Andrews, who founded the company alongside husband Anthony Andrews 10 years ago, having...

There is invigorating cinema to be found within the trials and travails of the French justice system. Last year proved this with Alice Diop’s brilliant “Saint Omer,” and this year, cinephiles can already add another film to the ranks of fascinating, fact-based French legal dramas: “The Goldman Case,” Cédric Kahn’s invigorating retelling of the 1976 trial involving Pierre Goldman, a Jewish radical charged with killing two women in a pharmacy robbery.

Kahn uses the simplicity of his movie’s structure — the action rarely leaves the courtroom — to underline the complexity of the circumstances and the prickly figure at its center, Goldman himself, played excellently by Belgian actor Arieh Worthalter, who gives his character the fervor that apparently made him a figurehead in his day. But Worthalter ambitiously refuses to allow Goldman to be easily sympathetic, leaning into his sometimes contradictory anger. Similarly, though there are timely themes at play...

Along with Alice Diop’s Saint Omer, which won Venice’s Silver Lion last year, and Justine Triet’s Anatomy of a Fall, premiering in Cannes’ main competition next week, Cédric Kahn’s The Goldman Case marks a recent trend of arthouse courtroom dramas that, beyond a few exceptions (such as Henri-George Clouzot’s seldom seen masterpiece, The Truth), have never been a major facet of French cinema.

This is because French trials, unlike American ones, tend to be less dramatic, with fewer rulings by jury (outside of murder cases) and with the judge playing a larger role in the proceedings, reviewing facts and statements in a dry manner. However, there have been a number of highly headline-grabbing trials in France these past years, including that of former President Nicolas Sarkozy for election fraud charges, and another concerning the November 13 terrorist attacks, which have brought the courtroom back into the public sphere.

Appealing a conviction for two murders he insists he didn’t commit — while candidly, even proudly, admitting to multiple armed robbery charges — French activist turned criminal Pierre Goldman refuses to call any witnesses in his defense. “I’m innocent because I’m innocent,” he says flatly, rejecting the idea that testaments to his character and conduct have anything to do with it, and professing himself “disgusted” by courtroom pomp and theatricality. Except Goldman knows the power of fiery rhetorical speechifying when it suits him: In “The Goldman Case,” Cédric Kahn’s formally restrained but ultimately electrifying dramatization of a trial that gripped and divided France in 1976, that canny inconsistency is but one unexpected fold in a courtroom drama that finds equal intrigue in legal order and human chaos.

Opening this year’s Cannes Directors’ Fortnight program on an intelligent but accessibly mainstream note, Kahn’s film follows Alice Diop’s...

Courtroom dramas in the way of 12 Angry Men have never been staple of French cinema with a few notable exceptions such as the award-laden Saint Omer by Alice Dion and back in time Henri-Georges Clouzot’s The Truth.

Cédric Kahn could start a new trend with a riveting new film that has opened Cannes Film Festival’s Directors’ Fortnight, set almost entirely within the sombre and unremitting setting of a courtroom.

At the heart soul of the proceedings is a French activist turned criminal Pierre Goldman, who infamously declined to call any witnesses to support his defence. He is appealing a conviction for two murders which he states he did not commit. At the same time he has conceded that he was responsible for multiple armed robberies in the suburbs of Paris in the Seventies.

The trial at the time in 1976 was a cliffhanger for the entire French population, with such.

Damien Chazelle will preside over the competition jury of the upcoming Venice Film Festival.

The U.S. director is a Venice regular, having opened the Lido event on two occasions, in 2016 with “La La Land” and in 2018 with “First Man.”

Damien Chazelle, welcoming Venice’s proposal, stated: “For 10 days each year this city of the arts, of Tintoretto and Titian and Veronese, becomes a city of cinema, and I am humbled and delighted to be invited to lead this year’s jury. I can’t wait to discover a new crop of great films at the 80th Venice Film Festival.”

Venice also also announced that French director Alice Diop will head the jury panel of the fest’s Luigi De Laurentiis Award for best debut film, while Italy’s Jonas Carpignano will be president of the jury of the Horizons section for more cutting-edge works.

Diop with “Saint Omer,” which was her first feature,...

With its list of new releases for May 2023, Hulu is relying on an acclaimed original and a whole lotta FX.

The acclaimed original in question in The Great season 3. Premiering on May 12, this historical black comedy with continue the story of Catherine the Great (Elle Fanning) and her pal Peter III (Nicholas Hoult). The other Hulu original series of note this month is The Clearing on May 24. Based on the best-selling crime novel In the Clearing this story will follow a story inspired by the real life events behind Australian cult “The Family.”

For its other TV options in May, Hulu is turning to its cable partner FX. Class of ’09, an FBI thriller starring Kate Mara and Brian Tyree Henry, premieres on May 10. That will be followed by The Secrets of Hillsong, a docuseries investigating the controversial church on May 20.

Hulu’s list of original movies this month is...