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Reims Polar, a new international festival set in Northern France and dedicated to police thrillers, has awarded Wen Shipei’s “Are You Lonesome Tonight?,” Adikhan Yerzhanov’s “Assault” and Lado Kvataniya’s “The Execution.”

The selection of Reims Polar is curated by Bruno Barde, who is also the artistic director of the Deauville American Film Festival.

“Assault,” a dead-pan thriller set fictional village in rural Kazakhstan and revolving around a school hostage situation, won the festival’s Grand Prize Award. Yerzhanov, a prolific Kazakh director, previously directed “The Gentle Indifference of the World” which played at Cannes’ Un Certain Regard in 2018.

The Reims Polar jury prize went to a pair of feature debuts, “Are You Lonesome Tonight?,” a Chinese film which world premiered out of competition at last year’s Cannes, and Russian filmmaker Lado Kvataniya’s “The Execution,” a thriller inspired by the case of an infamous Soviet-era serial killer.

Antonin Baudry on submarine films, Claude Lanzmann and Wolfgang Petersen's Das Boot: "That was his favourite. It's my favourite too. For some reason it really moved him." Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze

The morning after the Us première of The Wolf's Call (Le Chant Du Loup), shot by Pierre Cottereau, starring François Civil with Omar Sy, Mathieu Kassovitz, Reda Kateb, Jean-Yves Berteloot, Damien Bonnard, and Paula Beer at the French Institute Alliance Française in New York, the director/screenwriter Antonin Baudry, aka Abel Lanzac, joined me for a conversation inside David Geffen Hall at Lincoln Center.

Kent Jones with Antonin Baudry following the French Institute Alliance Française première of The Wolf's Call (Le Chant Du Loup) in New York Photo: Ed Bahlman

When I mentioned to Antonin that I will be introducing Hélène Fillières' Volontaire this Tuesday at Fi:af, he told me that they were actually shooting their French Navy...

Hélène Fillières on Nick Cave's Into My Arms in Raising Colors (Volontaire): "It's probably the most romantic song I've ever heard." Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze Laure (Diane Rouxel) with Commander Rivière (Lambert Wilson)

The last time I saw Lambert Wilson in person, he was performing his tribute to Yves Montand at the French Institute Alliance Française in New York. He was Jacques Cousteau in Jérôme Salle's The Odyssey (L'Odyssée) and now in Hélène Fillières' Raising Colors (Volontaire), co-written with Mathias Gavarry, he is Commander Rivière at the École Navale. The Commander is lovingly called 'the monk' by the chief training officer Albertini, played by Alex Descas. Laure (Diane Rouxel) in her twenties and with a first-rate education, decides to accept a job offer in the administration of the French Navy. Her mother (Josiane Balasko), a famous stage actress, is particularly upset and vocal about this turn of events.

Amanda director Mikhaël Hers: "Vincent Lacoste is naturally very intuitive and Stacy Martin, maybe due to her double nationality, is more cerebral, more rational as an actor."

Before the uniFrance and Film Society of Lincoln Center luncheon for the 24th edition of Rendez-Vous with French Cinema in New York - attended by the President of uniFrance Serge Toubiana and Executive Director of uniFrance Isabelle Giordano, Russell Banks, uniFrance’s American ambassador, Sophie Fillières, Agathe Bonitzer, Hélène Fillières, Emmanuel Mouret, Eva Husson, Pierre Salvadori, and Pio Marmaï - Amanda director/screenwriter Mikhaël Hers joined me for a conversation. We spoke about the roles of Vincent Lacoste, Isaure Multrier, Stacy Martin, Marianne Basler, Ophélia Kolb, and Greta Scacchi, dancing to Elvis Presley, film critic Serge Daney's book L'Amateur De Tennis and Mikhaël's love of tennis.

P‪resident of uniFrance‬, Serge Toubiana and Executive Director of uniFrance, Isabelle Giordano with Mikhaël Hers...

President of uniFrance, Serge Toubiana, and I spoke about Robert Bresson's Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne, Jacques Rivette's La Religieuse, and how Diderot's language from Jacques the Fatalist shines in Emmanuel Mouret's Lady J. Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze

At the Rendez-Vous With French Cinema luncheon on Park Avenue in New York, attended by the Executive Director of uniFrance, Isabelle Giordano; Russell Banks, uniFrance’s American ambassador for the festival; Sophie Fillières and Agathe Bonitzer (La Belle Et La Belle); Emmanuel Mouret (Lady J aka Mademoiselle De Joncquières); Hélène Fillières (Raising Colors); Pierre Salvadori and Pio Marmaï (The Trouble With You); Eva Husson (Girls Of The Sun); Judith Davis (Whatever Happened To My Revolution), and Mikhaël Hers (Amanda), I spoke with the President of uniFrance, Serge Toubiana, who was elected in 2017, replacing Jean-Paul Salomé.

Anne-Katrin Titze: This is your second edition of Rendez-Vous With French Cinema.

The Sweet Hereafter...

P‪resident of uniFrance‬ Serge Toubiana and Russell Banks, uniFrance’s American ambassador for Rendez-Vous with French Cinema, will introduce François Truffaut’s The 400 Blows Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze

Bertrand Tavernier is no longer able to attend New York's Rendez-Vous With French Cinema for his conversation with Russell Banks. He has been replaced by Paul Schrader.

Sophie Fillières and Agathe Bonitzer (When Margaux Meets Margaux), Emmanuel Mouret (Mademoiselle de Joncquières), Judith Davis (Whatever Happened to My Revolution), Hélène Fillières (Raising Colors), Pierre Salvadori and Pio Marmaï (The Trouble with You) have been confirmed for the New French Comedies discussion.

Catherine Deneuve with Executive Director of uniFrance Isabelle Giordano Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze

Eva Husson (Girls Of The Sun), Laure de Clermont-Tonnerre (The Mustang), Brady Corbet (Vox Lux), and Jean-Stéphane Sauvaire (A Prayer Before Dawn) will participate in Filming Abroad.

“It is a great honour to have Russell Banks as our American ambassador...

Jeannette, L'Enfance De Jeanne D'Arc and Ma Loute director Bruno Dumont will present Coincoin And The Extra-Humans Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze

New York's Rendez-Vous with French Cinema opens with Pierre Salvadori's The Trouble With You (nine César Award nominations), starring Adèle Haenel and Pio Marmaï with Audrey Tautou, Vincent Elbaz, and Damien Bonnard, preceded by Clément Cogitore's Les Indes galantes. Eva Husson, Élodie Bouchez, Mia Hansen-Løve, Sophie Fillières, Hélène Fillières, Judith Davis, Mikhaël Hers, Emmanuel Mouret, Sébastien Marnier, and Bruno Dumont are are expected to attend.

Bertrand Tavernier free talk with Russell Banks Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze

Sandrine Kiberlain and Agathe Bonitzer in When Margaux Meets Margaux (La Belle Et La belle); Vincent Lacoste, Isaure Multrier, and Greta Scacchi in Mikhaël Hers' Amanda; Cécile de France, Edouard Baer, and Laure Calamy in Emmanuel Mouret's Mademoiselle de Joncquières (The Art of Seduction), and The Trouble With You (En Liberté!) - give some...

Gilles Lellouche’s “Sink or Swim,” Mikhaël Hers’s “Amanda,” Louis-Julien Petit’s “Invisibles” and Eva Husson’s “Girls of the Sun” are set to screen at the 24th edition of the Rendez-Vous with French Cinema showcase which is co-organized by The Film Society of Lincoln Center and UniFrance.

After world-premiering out of competition at the Cannes Film Festival, “Sink or Swim” became a box office hit in France and got nominated for 10 Cesar Awards. The film is headlined by a popular French cast, including Mathieu Amalric (“At Eternity’s Gate”), Guillaume Canet (“Rock’n Roll”), Virginie Efira (“Elle”) and Leila Bekhti (“Midnight Sun”).

“Girls of the Sun,” which competed at Cannes, stars Golshifteh Farahani (“Paterson”) as a resistance fighter part of an all-female battalion made up of former captives of extremists who have vowed to reconquer their own land.

Inspired by a true story, “Invisibles” follows the journey of...

The Film Society of Lincoln Center and UniFrance have announced the complete lineup for the 24th edition of Rendez-Vous with French Cinema, the celebrated annual festival that exemplifies the variety and vitality of contemporary French filmmaking, taking place February 28 – March 10 in New York.

The 2019 Opening Night selection is the New York premiere of “The Trouble with You,” the latest comic whirlwind from Pierre Salvadori (“In the Courtyard”), which was recently nominated for nine César Awards including Best Film, Director, Screenplay, and all four acting categories. A standout of the 2018 Cannes Directors’ Fortnight, this hilarious yet tender film stars Adèle Haenel as a woman coping with the recent loss of her husband, and features supporting performances by Audrey Tautou, Vincent Elbaz, and Damien Bonnard.

“This year’s Rendez-Vous brings together established French filmmakers and exciting emerging talents in a lineup that showcases the artistry and innovation at the heart of French cinema,...

“NY84” will have a gala opening and theatrical release this October 14 at the Arena Theater in Hollywood.

A unique venue for a unique film written and directed by Cyril Morin and starring Sam Quartin, Chris Schellenger and Davy J. Marr, “NY84” follows the adventures of three young artists in the downtown New York art scene in the early 1980s. Young and carefree, Kate, Anton, and Keith party, photograph, paint, sing, and play their way through the clubs and lofts of Alphabet City.

The party ends in 1984 when Anton and Keith contract a mysterious illness known as the “gay cancer.” We gain an intimate glimpse into their creative and emotional lives as the three lose their youth and innocence.

Cyril Morin

This is a lyrical poetic paen to those times some of us were lucky enough to have lived through. The sexual revolution and its sexual freedom in effect then for the newly liberated homosexual community, also opened the way for Kate to express herself. And it opened a door for transexuals, women and the whole diversity of humanity to assert itself today.

Tied Trailer, Poster, Images. Hélène Fillières‘ Tied / Une Histoire D’Amour (2013) movie trailer, movie poster, movie photographs star Benoît Poelvoorde, Laetitia Casta, Richard Bohringer, Reda Kateb, and Philippe Nahon. Tied‘s plot synopsis: “The Banker meets the Young Woman one spring evening. He is a man of enormous power and wealth. That night [...]

Continue reading: Tied (2013) Movie Trailer: Laetitia Casta stars in Bondage Film...

Sneak Peek French model, actress Laetitia Casta (currently seen as Richard Gere's mistress 'Julie Côte' in the thriller "Arbitrage") posing for photographer Paul Schmidt in "Glamour" France’s February 2013 issue.

Casta's wardrobe, a mix of dresses and separates were chosen by stylist Lotta Volkova, with hair by David Delicoure and makeup by Lili Choi.

Casta's next films are writer/director Yvan Attal's Belgian comedy feature "Do Not Disturb" and writer/director Hélène Fillières' 2013 sex thriller "Tied".

Click the images to enlarge...

Michael Haneke, Emmanuelle Riva and Jean-Louis Trintignant

on the set of Amour

It's been a couple of weeks since the French magazine Premiere posted "Cannes 2012: Le buzzomètre," a list of over 30 films, each of which were assigned a numerical probability of its making the lineup at Cannes this year. Speculation has only grown hotter, of course, with an official announcement slated for April 19; Critics' Week and the Directors' Fortnight will follow on April 23 and 24, respectively. "Paris is rife with rumors about who will make it," reports Fabien Lemercier at Cineuropa. "Several films by 'big fish' have not been seen yet, and many who have already shown their film are eagerly awaiting news."

A few days ago, a French blog pulled an April Fools' Day prank that thoroughly ticked off Cannes artistic director Thierry Frémaux. The blog claimed to have seen the full lineup, "briefly published on the official Cannes Film Festival...

Above: Elisabeth Perceval and Nicolas Klotz. Photograph by Michael Ackerman.

“I am Ophelia. She who the river could not hold.” These words, taken from Heinrich Müller’s play Hamletmachine, are spoken by a girl playing an actress at the start of the beautiful new film Low Life, screening Sunday and Wednesday as part of Lincoln Center’s series Rendez-Vous with French Cinema. She is one of a group of young people who gather together in the streets and in their rooms at night, quoting and making plays, films, novels, and songs in an effort to choose their own identities, and to resist identities imposed on them by the State. The binaries of native/immigrant, legal/illegal, and natural/unnatural come into relief in particular through the love story of Carmen (Camille Rutherford), born in Lyon, and Hussain (Arash Naiman), an Afghan poet threatened with deportation. When together they’re quiet...

The most exciting news of the weekend pertains to something that, with any luck, will be in about 300 theaters at once. Here, we’re talking about the next film from Cristian Mungiu (4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days) — now titled Beyond the Hills — which Deadline tells us has found an American home with IFC’s sister company Sundance Selects.

Our first wind of the project was caught just under three weeks ago, when it was merely known as the tale of “a young woman’s descent into madness, her subsequent exorcism and the police investigation it sparks.” The lovely news of an acquisition, however, brings a lengthy plot synopsis, one which is packed into Sundance Selects’ press release. You can read that below:

“Alina has just been reunited with Voichita in an isolated convent in Romania after spending several years in Germany. The two young women have supported and loved each other...

"The tragic destiny of the sculptor Camille Claudel will be the focus of Bruno Dumont's seventh feature, which will start shooting next February in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence," reports Fabien Lemercier at Cineuropa, where he notes that "the project has just been selected by Arte France Cinéma which will support it through co-production and pre-acquisitions. For the first time in his career, the director of Outside Satan (unveiled on the Croisette in May) and two-time winner of the Grand Prize at Cannes (in 1999 with Humanity and in 2006 for Flanders) has cast a star: Juliette Binoche (set to be seen next year in Malgorzata Szumowska's Elles, David Cronenberg's Cosmopolis, Sylvie Testud's The Life of Another and Marion Lainé's A Monkey on My Shoulder)."

Lemercier reminds us that when Isabelle Adjani played Claudel for Bruno Nuytten in 1988, she scored a Silver Bear in Berlin, a César and an Oscar nomination. And...

Canal Plus, a French premium cable network, announced that production is underway for the third season of Mafiosa. Moreover, the shooting of the show will end in June 2, 2010.

The network announced that French viewers should expect to see, for the first time, a TV series that is shot in Corsica. After all, the show is about the world of mafia in this region of France.

Jean-Michel Paoli (Thierry Neuvic) woke up from a coma while everybody thought that he was missing. With that said, how will he and his sister Sandra (Hélène Fillières), with whom he jointly leads a mafia clan, coexist together? Besides, a group of young hoodlums will try to take advantage of the chasm between the two Paolis even if it means provoking them.

Finally, the third season of this show will star: Hélène Fillières, Thierry Neuvic, Éric Fraticelli, Frédéric Graziani, Phareelle Onoyan, Joey Starr, Jean-Pierre Kalfon,...