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When Donbass arrived in 2018, sandwiched between the start of the 2014 Russian-backed conflict in the titular eastern Ukrainian region and full-scale invasion of the country four years since its release, the world Sergei Loznitsa trained his camera on was a surreal, decaying wasteland. It’s not that the film was necessarily prophetic about the atrocities that would later spread across Ukraine. But it spoke to concerns that now feel especially of-the-moment, the same that have long served as a cornerstone of the Belarus-born, Kiev-raised director’s oeuvre. While Donbass was a work of fiction, its preoccupations with the way truth can be manipulated also haunt the archive-based documentaries for which Loznitsa is arguably best known. From Blockade (2006) to The Kiev Trial (2022), the director hasn’t exhumed Ussr-era footage as a sort of time machine, but a means to reappropriate history from the regime’s official narratives. Which is why to salute...

Jon Gisby, chair ofBritish Screen Forum, is stepping down later this year after nine years in the role.

The process for selecting Gisby’s successor as chair of the invite-only body will begin shortly, with the hope that the next chair will be in place for autumn. It is a paid position.

Gisby is relocating to Canada to grow his advisory and coaching business, Swipefinder, on both sides of the Atlantic.

During Gisby’s time in post, the British Screen Forum has rebranded from the British Screen Advisory Council, broadened its membership to include all screen sector interests, curated policy...

Focus Features has scheduled a wide December 25 US release for the Neil Diamond tribute band drama Song Sung Blue starring Hugh Jackman and Kate Hudson.

The studio developed and holds worldwide rights to the film, based on Greg Kohs’ 2008 documentary of the same name.

Craig Brewer directed the new film about Lightning & Thunder, the married musical duo of Mike Sardina and Claire Sardina, a pair of down-on-their-luck performers who followed their dreams and experienced success and heartbreak.

Brewer, whose credits include Hustle & Flow, also produced alongside Davis Entertainment’s John Davis and John Fox. The cast includes Michael Imperioli,...

Cannes Film Festival has released dual posters for its 78th edition – the first time the festival has ever had two official posters.

The posters use two images from Claude Lelouch’s 1966 feature A Man And A Woman, depicting an embrace between Anouk Aimée’s Anne and Jean-Louis Trintignant’s Jean-Louis from two sides.

“Because it is undoubtedly the 7th Art’s most famous embrace, because you can’t separate a man and a woman who love each other, because you can’t separate that Man from that Woman, the Festival de Cannes has chosen for the first time in its...

Claude Lelouch’s 1966 romantic drama A Man and a Woman starring Anouk Aimée and Jean-Louis Trintignant is the inspiration behind the official posters for this year’s Cannes Film Festival, which revealed them Monday ahead of the fest’s 78th edition.

For the first time in Cannes’ history, the movie, which won the Palme d’Or that year, has spurred two official posters, both showing the film’s iconic embrace scene between Aimée’s Anne and Trintignant’s Jean-Louis on a deserted beach: one with Aimee’s face shown and one with Trintignant’s.

The film centered on Anne and Jean-Louis, a widow and a widower who find each other but who must tread carefully as they are haunted by their tragic past loves. After its Palme d’Or triumph, the pic won the Best Foreign Film and Screenplay Oscars, while Aimee (Best Actress) and Lelouch (Best Director) were nominated.

Michel Hazanavicius on casting Jean-Louis Trintignant in the role of the narrator for The Most Precious Of Cargoes: 'The story stirred his childhood memories, memories from his life, and recording was a very heartfelt part of the process' Photo: Studiocanal

The connection between director Michel Hazanavicius – who won an Oscar for his affectionate Hollywood pastiche The Artist – and his new animation The Most Precious Of Cargoes (La plus précieuse des marchandises) stretches back to his childhood.

The author of the original fairy tale Jean-Claude Grumberg was a family friend and had known Hazanavicius since the filmmaker was a boy. Hazanavicius's own family had survived the Holocaust. “I’ve been dipping in and out of this world since then. When the project came to me it hadn’t even been published yet, but I was able to read the proofs before it went to press. As I’d known Jean-Claude...

Disney’s “Snow White” retained the top spot at the U.K. and Ireland box office for a second week, bringing in £2 million ($2.6 million) and pushing its total to £6.7 million ($8.7 million), according to Comscore.

Leading the newcomers was “L2: Empuraan,” the Malayalam-language action film distributed by Rft Films Ltd. The film, a sequel to 2019’s “Lucifer,” opened with $1.5 million, securing second place and marking one of the strongest regional Indian film debuts in the U.K. in recent years. Starring Mohanlal and from actor-director Prithviraj Sukumaran, the film is the second part in a planned trilogy.

Warner Bros.’ “A Working Man,” starring Jason Statham, debuted at No. 3 with $850,180.

Universal’s “Bridget Jones: Mad About The Boy” slipped to fourth but continued its phenomenal run, adding $726,295 in its seventh weekend. The film has now grossed $58.9 million, making it the highest-grossing U.K. release of the year.

In fifth, Paramount’s dark comedy “Novocaine,...

Michel Hazanavicius’s sentimental tale about a baby found in the woods features sweet little cartoon birds and rabbits as well as the real horror of Nazi death camps

Directed by Michel Hazanavicius, this postmodern Holocaust fairytale premiered at Cannes last year, and turns out to be a dreamy animated curiosity which is certainly different to the icy realist rigour of other films which have appeared there on the same theme, such as Jonathan Glazer’s The Zone of Interest or László Nemes’s Son of Saul. It is adapted from a novella by author and screenwriter Jean-Claude Grumberg (who collaborated with Truffaut on The Last Metro), whose own father was murdered in the Nazi death camps.

The late Jean-Louis Trintignant has his final credit as the narrator, introducing us to scenes that could, at first glance, be from the Brothers Grimm. We see a dense central European forest … through...

The 2025 French documentary series on Netflix, From Rock Star to Killer, or De Rockstar a Tueur: Le Cas Cantat, provides an intriguing perspective on a high-profile case that shook French society in 2003. It is centered around the popular French musician and singer Bertrand Cantat, who also happens to be a convicted murderer. While From Rock Star to Killer begins with a faint suggestion of Cantat not having received the punishment he actually deserved, the three-part documentary series successfully establishes by the end how society and laws are still incapable of protecting women and valuing their lives.

What happened in the hotel room in Vilnius?

From Rock Star to Killer begins with the events of 26th July, 2003, when a woman named Marie Trintignant was hospitalized in the city of Vilnius, in Lithuania, with numerous horrible injuries on her body. As doctors immediately had to put her in an induced coma, people...

You probably know the iconic “A Man and a Woman” main theme written by Francis Lai, but when was the last time you actually saw the movie? Claude Lelouch’s 1966 Cannes Palme d’Or (and double) Oscar winner is led by French cinema icons Anouk Aimée (who died last year and strangely was not included in the Oscars’ 2025 In Memoriam segment) and Jean-Louis Trintignant (who died in 2022). The classic romance is now coming back to theaters, in a new restoration, courtesy of Rialto Pictures this April. IndieWire shares the exclusive trailer for the re-release below.

As IndieWire previously wrote in our ranking of all Cannes Palme d’Or winners: “From director Claude Lelouch comes this 1966 classic — a tender, visually stirring film of rejuvenating love between a widow and a widower: a race-car driver (Jean-Louis Trinignant) and a movie script girl (Anouk Aimee) share a candid romance while balancing the demands of career and parenthood.

French actress Juliette Binoche has been named President of the Jury for the 2025 edition of the Cannes Film Festival in May.

The honor, which was announced on Tuesday morning Paris time, will fall exactly 40 years after the Oscar-winning The English Patient star first touched down at the festival with André Téchiné’s Palme d’Or contender Rendez-vous in 1985.

Binoche follows in the footsteps of U.S. director Greta Gerwig whose jury feted Sean Baker’s Anora with the Palme d’Or last year.

“I’m looking forward to sharing these life experiences with the members of the Jury and the public. In 1985, I walked up the steps for the first time with the enthusiasm and uncertainty of a young actress; I never imagined I’d return 40 years later in the honorary role of President of the Jury. I appreciate the privilege, the responsibility and the absolute need for humility,” said Binoche.

The Western genre is known for its duels, fist fights, and shootouts. Most of the time, these moments are presented as high-adrenaline action sequences to keep audiences drawn to their screens, anxiously awaiting the outcome. However, other times, these fights hold a lot more weight in the story being told, removing any semblance of fun that may have been present beforehand.

As seen time and time again, the Western genre can present some truly human stories to viewers. Unlike the spaghetti westerns of yesteryear, the gritty, realistic glimpses this genre offers into the lifestyle often make for difficult watching. Some fights last with viewers long after they finish their movie-going experience -- and a lot of the time, that's due to their troubling nature.

The Great Silence's Final Shootout Ends On A Desperately Dour Note The Great Silence (1968)

Released: November 1968 Directed by: Sergio Corbucci Starring: Jean-Louis Trintignant as "Silence," Klaus Kinski as Loco,...

Quick Links What is The Great Silence About? The Great Silence Has Alternate Endings The Great Silence Was Hated Upon Release

The Western is a genre that has been rehashed, reinvented, and repurposed a countless number of times. From early Hollywood westerns from the likes of John Ford and Howard Hawks to the glorious explosion of European Spaghetti Westerns in the '60s, all the way to modern neo-westerns from cinematic legends like Clint Eastwood, the Coen brothers, and Taylor Sheridan. Fans of the Western genre are more dedicated than any fan base out there. While some movie lovers compare and debate over which era is the best, western fans tend to respect their elders and appreciate what paved the way for their more recent favorites. Every movie lover knows to appreciate the contributions of John Ford, John Wayne, Sergio Leone, and Clint Eastwood, but one Spaghetti Western pioneer has been left by the wayside.

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This December, Prime Video is bringing you a lot of entertainment, from the much-anticipated sequel film to My Fault to an exciting anthology series based on different video games titled Secret Level. However, for the purposes of this article, we are only including the films that are coming to Prime Video this month and have a 90% or higher Rotten Tomatoes score. So, check out the 7 best films that are coming to Prime Video in December 2024 with a 90% or higher Rotten Tomatoes score.

After Hours (December 1) Rotten Tomatoes Score: 90% Credit – Warner Bros.

After Hours is a dark comedy film directed by Martin Scorsese from a screenplay by Joseph Minion. The 1985 film follows Paul Hackett, an office worker with a set routine, but when one night he breaks that routine to meet a strange woman, he finds himself in several...

Studiocanal France has revealed the main official French trailer for the film titled The Most Precious of Cargoes, an animated tale from WWII about a Jewish baby rescued by a compassionate Polish woodcutter and his wife. This premiered at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival as one of the final films at the end of the fest. In war-torn times, a poor woodcutter and his wife live in a great forest in Poland. One day, the woman finds and rescues a baby girl, bringing irrevocable change to the lives of the couple, and to those whose paths the child will cross. The story follows a Holocaust-surviving Jewish girl whose father throws her from a moving train heading to Auschwitz who is luckily found and raised by these two people. The voices include Jean-Louis Trintignant as the narrator, Grégory Gadebois as the woodcutter, with Denis Podalydès and Dominique Blanc. The stunning animation is really the star of this,...

Five years ago, French writer-director Claude Lelouch returned, for the second time, to the site of his greatest career success with “The Best Years of a Life,” an autumnal sequel to his trend-setting 1966 romance “A Man and a Woman” that felt elegiac in multiple senses — not least since it turned out to be the final onscreen appearance for both its stars, Jean-Louis Trintignant and Anouk Aimée. Anyone who assumed it might be Lelouch’s sign-off, however, was quite mistaken. He’s made three features since, the latest of which, “Finally,” seems fashioned from its title down as a sort of career summation from the 86-year-old filmmaker, but not portentously so. A peculiar, weightless confection that bounces antically between narratives, perspectives, periods and varying grips on reality, it treats even grave mortal matters with near-cartoonish buoyancy.

Premiering out of competition at the Venice Film Festival, accompanying a career-achievement award presentation to Lelouch,...

French director Claude Lelouch first broke out internationally with 1966 romance A Man and a Woman, starring Anouk Aimee and Jean-Louis Trintignant as a widow and widower whose fledgling love story is held back by past personal tragedies.

Nearly 60 years later, the soundtrack by late composer Francis Lai – and in particular its title track, which is often referred to as ‘Chabadabada’ for its catchy refrain – remains as famous, if not more famous, than the Oscar and Cannes Palme d’Or-winning feature

That movie would mark the start of a 52-year, 35-picture collaboration between Lelouch and Lai, which was at the heart of a music-themed masterclass by Lelouch at the Venice Film Festival on Saturday.

The director is at the festival to receive the Cartier Glory To The Filmmaker Award as well as for the premiere of new work Finalement, starring an ensemble cast led by Kad Merad and also featuring Elsa Zylberstain,...

Margaret Menegoz, the head of French production company Les Films du Losange, who produced the movies of Michael Hanke, Wim Wenders and Éric Rohmer, among others, has died. She was 83.

The company issued a statement confirming that Menegoz died in Montpellier on August 7. They cited her “love of films and work, and her loyalty to her filmmakers that have become the hallmarks of Les Films du Losange,” describing Menegoz as “open-minded towards Europe and the international scene, which she particularly cherished.”

Menegoz led Les Films du Losange for close to 50 years, taking over at the company in 1973. She produced more than 60 films, including Haneke’s Amour, The White Ribbon and Cache, Wenders’ 1977 feature The American Friend, Volker Schlöndorff’s Swann in Love (1984), Agnieszka Holland’s Europa Europa (1990), Rohmer’s A Tale of Springtime (1990) and A Tale of Winter (1992), among many others.

Amour received 5 Oscar nominations in 2013, including a nomination for Menegoz for best feature.

Margaret Menegoz, who led iconic French film company Les Films du Losange for close to 50 years, producing the films of Éric Rohmer, Michael Haneke and Wim Wenders among others, has died at the age of 83.

The German and French film producer was born in Hungary in 1941. Her family, which was of German origin, was expelled from the country in the wake of the 1945 Siege of Budapest, and Menegoz grew up in Germany.

Menegoz entered the film industry as an editor and then connected with the French independent filmmaking scene via her documentarian husband Robert Menegoz, who she met at the Berlin Film Festival in the early 1970s.

She took the reins of Les Films du Losange in 1975, having been originally hired as an assistant on co-founder Rohmer’s 1976 German-language film Marquise Of O, co-starring Edith Clever and Bruno Ganz.

Rohmer and Barbet Schroeder had created the company in 1962, but with...

Michel Hazanavicius, the Oscar-winning director of “The Artist” whose animated film “The Most Precious of Cargoes” competed at this year’s Cannes and was subject to some backlash due to its depiction of Auschwitz victims, has penned an op-ed denouncing rising antisemitism in France.

Hazanavicius, who is the Jewish son of Holocaust survivors from Eastern Europe, rhetorically asked in French newspaper Le Monde, “Why do I have the impression that more and more people have an issue with the simple fact of addressing the genocide against Jews?”

“Why do I have the impression that as a member of a minority like any other, which has had its share of tragedies, I’ve become a member of the dominant caste, the figurehead of oppression, imperialism and injustice? As if being Jewish had become something really murky, vaguely suspect, possibly detestable. How could I have become so evil in such a short time?...

French director Claude Lelouch will be celebrated with the Cartier Glory To The Filmmaker Award at the upcoming 81st Venice Film Festival, running from August 28 to September 7.

He follows in the footsteps of Wes Anderson who was last year’s recipient of the award, dedicated to a personality who has made a particularly original contribution to the contemporary film industry.

The award ceremony will take place on September 2 ahead of the world premiere in an Out of Competition screening of Lelouch’s new work Finalement, starring an ensemble cast featuring Kad Merad, Elsa Zylberstain, Michel Boujenah, Sandrine Bonnaire, Barbara Pravi and Françoise Gillard.

One of France’s best loved directors, Lelouch first broke out internationally with his 1966 Oscar and Cannes Palme d’Or-winning romance A Man and a Woman, starring Anouk Aimee and Jean-Louis Trintignant as a widow and widower whose fledgling love story is held back by past personal tragedies.

French director Claude Lelouch (A Man and a Woman, Happy New Year, The Beautiful Story) will be honored at this year’s Venice Film Festival with the Cartier Glory to the Filmmaker Award, a prize dedicated to a “personality who has made a particularly original contribution to the contemporary film industry.”

Lelouch will receive the prize Monday, Sept. 2, at Venice’s Sala Grande ahead of the out-of-competition screening of his latest feature, Finalement, a musical fantasy starring Kad Merad (Welcome to the Sticks, The Chorus). Elsa Zylberstain, Michel Boujenah, Sandrine Bonnaire, Barbara Pravi and Françoise Gillard co-star. The film was produced by Les Films 13 in co-production with France 2 Cinéma and Laurent Dassault Rond-Point. Metropolitan Filmexport is handling international sales.

“Claude Lelouch is one of the top directors of French cinema, an excellent interpreter of its ‘quality,’ albeit alien to its main currents,” said Venice artistic director Alberto Barbera.

French director Claude Lelouch will receive the Glory to the Filmmaker award at the 81st Venice Film Festival (August 28-September 7).

The filmmaker, known for his Oscar-winning 1967 drama A Man And A Woman, will be presented with the award on September 2 ahead of the premiere of his Out of Competition title Finalement.

The award is given to an individual who has made an especially original contribution to modern cinema.

Lelouch was last in Venice in 2002 for the multi-collaboration September 11, which won the Unesco award, while his 1996 drama Men, Women: A User’s Manual won the Little Golden Lion. His other notable credits include 1995’s Les Miserables,...

Anouk Aimée in The Best Years Of A Life with Jean-Louis Trintignant, reprising their characters 53 years on from A Man And A Woman. Director Claude Lelouch said: 'It was wonderful for us all to get together again. It was as though something had been left unfinished, and none of us wanted it to end.' Photo: UniFrance Jean-Louis Trintignant as Jean-Louis and Anouk Aimée is Anne in A Man And A Woman One of the most revered icons of French cinema, Anouk Aimée who starred opposite Jean-Louis Trintignant in one of the most successful French films of all time, A Man And A Woman, by Claude Lelouch, has died today at the age of 92. The news was revealed by her daughter Manuella Papatakis.

The poet and screenwriter Jacques Prévert was so entranced with her that he gave her the name Anouk Aimée (she was born Françoise Sorya), and cast her...

Anouk Aimee, the French actress who received a best actress Oscar nomination in 1967 for A Man And A Woman, has died aged 92.

Aimee died at her home in Paris. Her death was confirmed by an Instagram post from her daughter Manuela Papatakis, which read, “With my daughter, Galaad, and my granddaughter, Mila, we have great sadness to announce the departure of my mother Anouk Aimée.”

Born Nicole Francoise Florence Dreyfus in Paris in 1932, she made her film debut aged 14 in the role of Anouk in Henri Calef’s The House Under The Sea. She kept the name for her career,...

Anouk Aimee, the French actress who received a best actress Oscar nomination in 1967 for A Man And A Woman, has died aged 92.

Aimee died at her home in Paris. Her death was confirmed by an Instagram post from her daughter Manuela Papatakis, which read, “With my daughter, Galaad, and my granddaughter, Mila, we have great sadness to announce the departure of my mother Anouk Aimée.”

Born Nicole Francoise Florence Dreyfus in Paris in 1932, she made her film debut aged 14 in the role of Anouk in Henri Calef’s The House Under The Sea. She kept the name for her career,...

Anouk Aimée, the French actress known for her elegance and cool sophistication in films including Claude Lelouch’s “A Man and a Woman” (1966), Fellini classics “La Dolce Vita” (1960) and “8½” (1963) and Jacques Demy’s “Lola” (1961), died on Tuesday. She was 92.

Aimée’s daughter, Manuela Papatakis, confirmed her death in a post on Instagram.

“With my daughter, Galaad, and my granddaughter, Mila, we have great sadness to announce the departure of my mother Anouk Aimée,” she wrote. “I was right by her side when she passed away this morning at her home in Paris.”

Fairly described in one encyclopedia as an “an aloof but alluring presence on the screen,” Aimée was frequently described as ““regal,” “intelligent” and “enigmatic,” giving the actress, according to journalist Sandy Flitterman-Lewis, “an aura of disturbing and mysterious beauty that has earned her the status of one of the hundred sexiest stars in film history (in a...

Within a career that lasted over 50 years, French singer-songwriter, actress, author, fashion icon, and astrologist Françoise Hardy — who passed away Tuesday, June 11 after a long battle with cancer — produced 32 studio albums, performed in over 10 films and television specials, wrote six books, and influenced countless artists ranging from Carla Bruni to Charli Xcx. Her screen career includes roles in films like Jean-Luc Godard’s “Masculin Féminin” and John Frankenheimer’s “Grand Prix.”

She was a renegade. A heartbreaker. Born at the height of World War II in Paris, her upbringing coincided with a great sociopolitical re-evaluation in France that fed her own anxieties and obsessions. Seeking artistic refuge outside of her home country, she found inspiration in American music that, by her teen years, was starting to reach her shores.

“This passion for singing became real madness when I discovered an English station called Radio Luxembourg,” Hardy said in a 2012 interview with Télérama.

If an animated film turns up in the Competition at Cannes, chances are it’s not going to be another Bambi — although, if it were made today, the traumatic shooting of Bambi’s mother would certainly tickle the selection committee. No, Cannes prefers its animation to be skewed towards adults, like René Lalou’s surreal sci-fi Fantastic Planet (1973), Robert Taylor’s raunchy sequel The Nine Lives of Fritz the Cat (1974) or Ari Folman’s wartime docudrama Waltz with Bashir (2008). And with The Most Precious of Cargoes, actor turned director and now graphic artist Michel Hazanavicius has turned to the most controversial topic it is possible to approach with pen and ink: the Holocaust.

Five long years in the making, Hazanavicius’s adaptation of the 2019 novel by Jean-Claude Grumberg arrives in Cannes two years after the death of its narrator, Jean-Louis Trintignant, and, unfortunately, a year after the debut of Jonathan Glazer...

The only animated film in the competition, Michel Hazanavicius has been a favorite of the festival landing several competition berths beginning with 2011’s The Artist. The Most Precious of Cargoes became his fourth feature to compete just after showcasing Coupez! as the opening film of the 2022 selection. This took a bit less time than most animated films we track — and stars Dominique Blanc, Denis Podalydès, Grégory Gadebois and Jean-Louis Trintignant as the voice cast.

Gist: An adaptation of Grumberg’s 2019 novel of the same name, the story centers on a Holocaust-surviving Jewish girl whose father throws her from a moving train heading to Auschwitz and ultimately found by a woodcutter and his family.…...

Michel Hazanavicius said that when it came to making his Holocaust feature The Most Precious of Cargoes “the question didn’t even arise” when making it animated. “I would never want to make a live film on this.”

The Artist Oscar winner adapted from the Jean-Claude Grumberg novel. The story follows a poor woodcutter and his wife who, once upon a time, lived in a great forest. Cold, hunger, poverty and a war raging all around them meant their lives were very hard. One day, the woodcutter’s wife rescues a baby girl thrown from one of the many trains that constantly pass through the forest.

Some critics have taken umbrage with the Cannes Competition title and its approach to its portrayal of horrifying scenes. The Screen Daily review wrote, “The worst decision comes in a late sequence showing still, stylized black and white images of the faces of the...

The Artist Oscar winner Michel Hazanavicius returned to the Cannes Competition this evening with animated fairy tale feature The Most Precious of Cargoes. The warm applause for the film inside the Grand Théâtre Lumière went on for 10 minutes.

Coming in at a tight 81 minutes, it’s the final Competition film to premiere this year.

Hazanavicius applauded during ‘The Most Precious of Cargoes’ ovation #Cannes2024 pic.twitter.com/3TWoUBF6V9

— Deadline Hollywood (@Deadline) May 24, 2024

The voice cast includes the late Jean-Louis Trintignant, Grégory Gadebois, Dominique Blanc and Denis Podalydès.

Hazanavicius wrote the script for The Most Precious of Cargoes, which is based on the novel by Jean-Claude Grumberg. The story centers on a poor woodcutter and his wife who, once upon a time, lived in a great forest. Cold, hunger, poverty and a war raging all around them meant their lives were very hard.

One day, the woodcutter’s wife rescues...

Of all the films premiering at Cannes this year, “The Most Precious of Cargoes” is both an anomaly (the first animated feature to compete for the Palme d’Or since “Persepolis” in 2007) and the most likely to become a classic. Blending the heavy lines of early-20th-century woodcuts with the gentle pastels of watercolor painting, “The Artist” director Michel Hazanavicius finds a poignant way to address not only the horrors of the Holocaust, but the kindness that combated it, crafting an indelible parable destined to be watched and shared by generations to come.

The polar opposite of “The Zone of Interest,” his hand-drawn adaptation of the slender but impactful novel by Jean-Claude Grumberg engages audiences at the gut, rather than in some abstract intellectual way. It focuses on neither the culprits nor the victims, but average folk who tried to remain neutral — as if such a thing were possible — until...

Jacques Audiard tips his hat in Cannes Photo: Richard Mowe Jacques Audiard: 'The fall of democracy is something that is unbearable for me' Photo: Richard Mowe After dabbling in English with The Sisters Brothers starring Joaquin Phoenix, Jake Gyllenhaal and John C Reilly, French director Jacques Audiard adopted a Spanish accent for Emilia Perez in the Cannes Film Festival’s Official Competition.

If his last film Paris,13th District was an austere black and white foray looking at the love lives of millennials now he changes tack completely to deliver a a garishly colourful musical comedy about drug cartels mixed with crime fiction.

It was shot in a studio near Paris rather than on location in Mexico, which he had originally planned. Filming indoors he has said allowed him “to produce more form and gave me more freedom for the parts that are sung and choreographed”.

Audiard, 72, has found himself back...

Austrian filmmaker Jessica Hausner is to serve as jury president for the international competition at this year’s Locarno Film Festival, which takes place August 7-17.

Locarno was the first international festival at which Hausner’s work made an impression, taking home the main prize in the Pardi di Domani section for her short Flora in 1997.

Hausner’s first feature films Lovely Rita (2001) and Hotel (2004) both premiered in Un Certain Regard at Cannes, while Lourdes (2009) debuted in competition at the Venice Film Festival and took home the Fipresci prize. Her subsequent films include Un Certain Regard premiere Amour Fou (2014), and...

Studiocanal has unveiled the first clip of Michel Hazanavicius’s “The Most Precious of Cargoes,” an allegorical hand-drawn animated feature which is competing at the Cannes Film Festival. The first animated film to vie for a Palme d’Or since Ari Folman’s “Waltz With Bashir” in 2008, “The Most Precious of Cargoes” is adapted from Jean-Claude Grumberg’s bestselling novel of the same name.

Set during World War II against the backdrop of the Holocaust,” the film has been developed by Hazanavicius, the Oscar-winning filmmaker behind “The Artist,” for many years.Hazanavicius penned the script with Grumberg and created the drawings, with Oscar-winning composer Alexandre Desplat providing the score.

The drama intertwines the fate of a Jewish family, including newborn twins, deported to Auschwitz, with that of a poor and childless woodcutter couple living deep in a Polish forest. On the train to the death camp, the young father wraps...

The Most Precious of Cargoes, the first animated feature from Oscar-winning French director Michel Hazanavicius (The Artist), will open this year’s Annecy International Animation Film Festival.

The feature is a 2D animated adaptation of the best-selling book by French author Jean-Claude Grumberg. Set during World War II, it tells the story of a French Jewish family deported to Auschwitz. On the train to the death camp, in a desperate gesture, the father throws one of his baby twins out into the snow, where he’s discovered by a childless Polish couple living deep in the forest.

Hazanavicius presented the film as a work-in-progress at Annecy two years ago. French actor Jean-Louis Trintignant narrates the film with voice acting from Dominique Blanc, Denis Podalydès, and Grégory Gadebois. Oscar-winning composer Alexandre Desplat (The Shape of Water) composed the score. Animation is from 3.0 Studio – formerly Prima Linea — the group behind the...

Iranian filmmaker Mohammad Rasoulof is finally making his way back to the Cannes Film Festival following the controversy surrounding his Un Certain Regard 2023 jury appointment.

Rasoulof was invited to serve on the jury last year but was unable to attend due to Iran’s travel embargo on him. The “There Is No Evil” filmmaker was banned from leaving Iran after being arrested in July 2022 for posting statements criticizing government-sanctioned violence against protesters. Rasoulof was later temporarily released in February 2023 due to ongoing health concerns. He was later pardoned and sentenced to one year of penal servitude and a two-year ban from leaving Iran on the charge of “propaganda against the regime.”

Now, Rasoulof is debuting his latest feature “The Seed of the Sacred Fig” in competition at the festival. While the plot remains under wraps, there is no word on whether Rasoulof will attend the festival. Variety first reported the news.

After announcing a whopping number of English-language films in competition, Cannes Film Festival has added some international titles: Michel Hazanavicius’ animated feature “The Most Precious of Cargoes” and Iranian filmmaker Mohammad Rasoulof’s “The Seed of the Sacred Fig,” Variety has learned.

An auteur-driven allegorical feature, “The Most Precious of Cargoes” (first-look still below) is adapted from Jean-Claude Grumberg’s bestselling novel of the same name, set during World War II against the backdrop of the Holocaust. It will be the first animated feature to compete in more than a decade, since Ari Folman’s “Waltz With Bashir” in 2008.

The film is co-produced and represented internationally by Studiocanal, which also has Gilles Lellouche’s “Beating Hearts” in competition. “The Most Precious of Cargoes” is a passion project for Hazanavicius, the Oscar-winning filmmaker behind “The Artist,” who has been developing the project for years. Hazanavicius penned the script with Grumberg and created the drawings,...

Streaming in Europe on Netflix, “Bardot" is a 6-episode, France-produced drama TV series, created, directed by Danièle Thompson and Christopher Thompson, starring Julia de Nunez as the iconic film actress:

"...the series follows the career of French cinema actress Brigitte Bardot, from her first casting as a teenager...

"...to the filming of Henri-Georges Clouzot's feature "La Vérité"..."

Cast also includes Victor Belmondo as 'Roger Vadim', Jules Benchetrit as 'Sami Frey'...

...Géraldine Pailhas as 'Anne-Marie Mucel'...

...Hippolyte Girardot as 'Louis Bardot', Yvan Attal as 'Raoul Lévy'......

...... Anne Le Ny as 'Olga Horstig', Louis-Do de Lencquesaing as 'Henri-Georges Clouzot'...

...Laurent Stocker as 'Pierre Lazareff'...

...Oscar Lesage as 'Jacques Charrier', Noham Edje as 'Jean-Louis Trintignant'...

...Fabian Wolfrom as 'Sacha Distel' and Mikaël Mittelstadt as 'Gilbert Bécaud'.

Click the images to enlarge...

Tisa Farrow, the actress who appeared in such 1970s films as James Toback’s Fingers and William Richert’s Winter Kills, has died, her sister Mia Farrow announced. She was 72.

She died unexpectedly on Wednesday, “apparently in her sleep,” Mia Farrow reported on Instagram.

“If there is a Heaven, undoubtedly my beautiful sister Tisa is being welcomed there,” she wrote. “She was the best of us — I have never met a more generous and loving person. She loved life & never complained. Ever.”

Tisa Farrow made her onscreen debut in Homer (1970), portraying the girlfriend of a high school student (Don Scardino) deeply affected by the Vietnam War, and she also starred in the low-budget horror films Zombie (1979), directed by Lucio Fulci, and Anthropophagus (1980).

In her most prominent role, Farrow played a woman who has a kinky romance with a disturbed loner (Harvey Keitel) in writer-director Toback’s Fingers (1978). She then showed...

Absorbing the breakthroughs of the French New Wave and the burgeoning New Hollywood era and applying them to the artier ends of Bernardo Bertolucci’s native Italian cinema, The Conformist presents a façade of overwhelming cinematic beauty only to reveal the rotten soul beneath its surface. Vittorio Storaro’s cinematography captures Rome and Paris with an Antonioniesque eye for architectural detail, swooning camera movements, and even instances of color timing so extreme that certain shots recall the hand-tinted process of early silent film.

The precision of The Conformist’s images, though, only exacerbates the detached, inhuman alienation of the film’s protagonist, Marcello (Jean-Louis Trintignant). He’s the last scion of a diminished aristocratic line whose exhausted wealth and status are symbolized by an expansive but dilapidated and mildewing family villa occupied by a mother (Milly) who copes with a loss of status with copious amounts of opiates (his father...

Jane Birkin graced the front pages of most French newspapers on Monday as France mourned the death of the late British actress and singer who enjoyed icon status in the country that she had called home since the late 1960s.

“Our tears can’t change anything,” proclaimed Le Parisien newspaper, which first broke the news of Birkin’s death at the age of 76 on Sunday.

Libération ran with the simple headline “Without Jane”, while regional newspaper Le Maine Libre referred to the late actress as “The Eternal English Bride of France”.

International obituaries have highlighted Birkin’s notorious performance with partner and late bad boy of French pop music Serge Gainsbourg on the 1968 pop song, ‘Je t’aime… moi non plus’, or the fact she inspired the Hermès Birkin bag.

For the French, she was much more.

In a six-page tribute, Libération mused over the reasons for Birkin’s never-ending...

"Bardot" is the new 6-episode, live-action, France-produced drama TV series, created, directed by Danièle Thompson and Christopher Thompson, starring Julia de Nunez, airing in 2023 on France 2:

"...the series follows the career of French cinema actress Brigitte Bardot, from her first casting as a teenager...

"...to the filming of Henri-Georges Clouzot's feature "La Vérité"..."

Cast also includes Victor Belmondo as 'Roger Vadim', Jules Benchetrit as 'Sami Frey'...

...Géraldine Pailhas as 'Anne-Marie Mucel'...

...Hippolyte Girardot as 'Louis Bardot', Yvan Attal as 'Raoul Lévy'...... 

...... Anne Le Ny as 'Olga Horstig', Louis-Do de Lencquesaing as 'Henri-Georges Clouzot'...

...Laurent Stocker as 'Pierre Lazareff'...

...Oscar Lesage as 'Jacques Charrier', Noham Edje as 'Jean-Louis Trintignant'...

...Fabian Wolfrom as 'Sacha Distel' and Mikaël Mittelstadt as 'Gilbert Bécaud'.

Click the images to enlarge...

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Studiocanal has signed a deal with Metropolitan Filmexport for worldwide rights to the entire film catalog of acclaimed French director Claude Lelouch.

The deal, announced at the Cannes Film Market on Saturday, includes more than 40 films, among them such French classics as A Man and a Woman (1966) — winner of the 1966 Palme d’Or, as well as two Oscars, for best international film and best original screenplay — Live for Life (1967), Love Is a Funny Thing (1969), The Crook (1970), Money Money Money (1972), Happy New Year (1973), Bolero (1981), Itinerary of a Spoilt Child (1988) and Les Misérables (1995).

Studiocanal has been handling French TV rights for the Lelouch catalog for the past seven years. The new deal will give the group exclusive worldwide distribution rights to the director’s vast catalog, as well as SVOD, free-on-demand and AVOD rights in France. Metropolitan will continue to distribute Lelouch’s films in theaters, on video and through transactional video-on-demand (Tvod) in France.

"Bardot" is the new 6-episode, live-action, France-produced drama TV series, created, directed by Danièle Thompson and Christopher Thompson, starring Julia de Nunez, airing in 2023 on France 2:

"...the series follows the career of French cinema actress Brigitte Bardot, from her first casting as a teenager...

"...to the filming of Henri-Georges Clouzot's feature "La Vérité"..."

Cast also includes Victor Belmondo as 'Roger Vadim', Jules Benchetrit as 'Sami Frey'...

...Géraldine Pailhas as 'Anne-Marie Mucel'...

...Hippolyte Girardot as 'Louis Bardot', Yvan Attal as 'Raoul Lévy'...... 

...... Anne Le Ny as 'Olga Horstig', Louis-Do de Lencquesaing as 'Henri-Georges Clouzot'...

...Laurent Stocker as 'Pierre Lazareff'...

...Oscar Lesage as 'Jacques Charrier', Noham Edje as 'Jean-Louis Trintignant'...

...Fabian Wolfrom as 'Sacha Distel' and Mikaël Mittelstadt as 'Gilbert Bécaud'.

Click the images to enlarge...

Luigi Comenicini’s The Sunday Woman makes for an intriguing blend of police procedural and comedy of manners. It isn’t really a giallo, despite an investigation into a bizarre murder that fuels further misdeeds. As a satire of Turin’s upper classes, it isn’t nearly as trenchant, let alone grim, as other examples of commedia all’italiana like Dino Risi’s Il Sorpasso or Pietro Germi’s Seduced and Abandoned, though it does share their preoccupation with character types that border on the grotesque. Taken on its own terms, the film is absorbing, frequently amusing, and exceedingly well directed by Comencini, who keeps things moving with admirably brisk efficiency.

When sleazy architect Garrone (Claudio Gora) is found beaten to death with a large stone phallus (shades of Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange), Commissioner Santamaria (Marcello Mastroianni) takes up the case. A handy clue soon puts him on...

Every year the “In Memoriam” tribute at the Oscars leaves off a few fan favorites and 2023 was no exception: Among those who weren’t included in Sunday night’s video montage were Anne Heche, “Saving Private Ryan” star Tom Sizemore and Charlbi Dean, who appeared in this year’s Best Picture nominee “Triangle of Sadness.”

Fans also noted the absence of Cindy Williams: While she was best known for the ’70s TV sitcom “Laverne & Shirley,” she notably appeared in two classic films of the era, George Lucas’ “American Graffiti” and Francis Ford Coppola’s “The Conversation.”

And while the tribute included “Goodfellas” star Ray Liotta, who died unexpectedly on May 26, 2022, his costar Paul Sorvino, who died in July 2022, was left out.

Also Read:

Celebrity Deaths in 2023: Hollywood Stars We’ve Lost This Year (Photos)

Also missing from the tribute: two-time Oscar nominee Melinda Dillon of “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,...

Dominik Moll’s brooding procedural thriller “The Night of the 12th” won big at the 48th Cesar Awards Friday night in Paris.

Out of 10 nominations, “The Night of the 12th” picked up best film, director, male newcomer for Bastien Bouillon, supporting actor for Bouli Lanners, adapted screenplay and sound. Bouillon and Lanners star as two cops trying to solve the gruesome murder of a young woman. The film opened at Cannes in the Premieres section.

Caroline Benjo, who produced “The Night of the 12th” with Carole Scotta and Simon Arnal at Haut et Court, made a searing speech denouncing the violence against women. “When Dominic and Gilles came to us to make this film it was obvious that we (needed to address this issue) and that the perspective of men on this matter was crucial, and that filmmakers had to tell this story,” said Benjo. “A few days ago, Dominic...

Italian film legend Gina Lollobrigida, who achieved international stardom during the 1950s and was dubbed “the most beautiful woman in the world” after the title of one of her movies, died in Rome on Monday, her agent said. She was 95.

The agent, Paola Comin, didn’t provide details. Lollobrigida had surgery in September to repair a thigh bone broken in a fall. She returned home and said she had quickly resumed walking.

A drawn portrait of the diva graced a 1954 cover of Time magazine, which likened her to a “goddess” in an article about Italian movie-making. More than a half-century later, Lollobrigida still turned heads with her brown, curly hair and statuesque figure, and preferred to be called an actress instead of the gender-neutral term actor.

Read More: Evel Knievel’s Son Robbie Dies At Age 60 After Pancreatic Cancer Battle

“Lollo,” as she was lovingly nicknamed by Italians, began making...