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For a film that is not much more than pure, delightful homage to 1930s cinema and the various genres of the time, there is nothing stale about The Crime Is Mine. François Ozon’s frilly farce/pointed courtroom drama is closest in style to his previous film, Peter von Kant — and equally, if not more, eye-popping. But thematically it shares most common ground with 8 Women (which also features Isabelle Huppert), where murder, melodrama and storming female leads also combine. The result is a lavish, briskly witty period romp with an ultra-modern post-MeToo sensibility.

The first of said leads is Nadia Tereszkiewicz as Madeleine Verdier, an ailing actor who we initially see skedaddling from the impressive Art Deco mansion of a powerful theatre producer (Jean-Christophe Bouvet), after he has tried to attack her. Not long later, her assailant is discovered dead, and Madeleine inadvertently becomes a prime suspect. To make...

Ozon and a stellar cast serve up an entertaining, if shallow caper that shades a little too close to #MeToo

François Ozon has directed plenty of complex, demanding and serious dramas: Everything Went Fine, Summer of 85 and By the Grace of God, along with adaptations of Fassbinder. But he also has a sweet tooth for breezy, silly, crowd-pleasing theatrical comedies like this one. Watching it is like being force-fed a large box of chocolates; moreish, though. There is certainly an amazing blue-chip cast of French movie-acting royalty, including Isabelle Huppert, Fabrice Luchini and André Dussollier.

The Crime Is Mine is adapted from a 1934 French stage comedy called Mon Crime by Georges Berr and Louis Verneuil which has already spawned two different madcap Hollywood versions in the 30s and 40s, respectively starring Carole Lombard and Betty Hutton. Nadia Tereszkiewicz plays Madeleine, an impecunious would-be stage star, engaged to wealthy young...

They say that history progresses in cycles, and Europe in the 2020s has much in common, socially and politically, with the 1930s. On the one hand, there have been striking advances in the rights of women and sexual minorities, the arts are thriving and everyone seems dazzled by celebrity culture. On the other, fascist movements are growing in strength and it is widely known that there is a culture of abuse and exploitation in the arts and elsewhere, with efforts to stamp it out making limited progress. Georges Berr and Louis Verneuil’s stage play Mon Crime captured all of this back in 1934. Ninety years later, who better to adapt it for the silver screen than François Ozon, who builds upon the high camp style of his sensational 8 Women to present it as a sugary delight with a delightfully bitter aftertaste.

Nadia Tereszkiewicz is Madeleine, a glamorous young actress.

Matt Dillon, Riley Keough and Isaach de Bankolé are set to star in Claire Denis’ Le Cri Des Gardes, which is being produced by French production outfits Curiosa Films and Vixens, with Senegal’s Astou Production. Arte France Cinema is also backing the project.

Denis is following her Berlin-winning Both Sides Of The Blade and Cannes-winning Stars at Noon with this adaptation of Bernard-Marie Koltes’ play Black Battles With Dogs (Combat de Nègres et Chiens) written by Denis, Suzanne Lindon and Andrew Litvack.

The story spans one night near a vast construction site in sub-Saharan Africa where a master builder...

We can start our week extending thanks to Arte France Cinéma, who’ve given two of France’s greatest directors the cash flow to support immediate endeavors: per Cineuropa, Claire Denis and Arnaud Desplechin can soon begin production on new features. The former’s is Le Cri des Gardes (The Cry of the Guards), which sounds an awful lot like The Fence, a project she detailed in March. Matt Dillon, Riley Keough, and Denis mainstay Isaach de Bankolé will star in the feature, described in these very Denis-like terms:

“As project supervisor Horn is welcoming his young partner Léone into the hut he shares with young and impetuous engineer Cal, a black man called Alboury appears outside the railings surrounding their quarters. Inflexible, hovering like a ghost in the darkness, he is determined to stay there until they return the body of his brother to him, who was killed on the site.

Exclusive: Veteran manager Trent Hubbard will join Linden Entertainment.

Hubbard moves to Linden after four years at Echo Lake Entertainment and previous to that he was in the Motion Picture Talent Department at UTA. He is currently executive producing Adam Rehmeier’s feature film Carolina Caroline starring Samara Weaving; executive producing Alok Vaid-Menon’s comedy special Biology!, who Hubbard represents and just secured a first look deal in Sony TV for them and executive producing Meredith Alloway’s directorial debut Forbidden Fruits with Mason Novick and Diablo Cody which is written by Alloway and Lily Houghton, both of whom Hubbard will continue to represent at Linden. Hubbard is also on the advisory board of the non-profit Rainbow Labs.

Other clients that will follow Hubbard includes Sarah Ramos (The Bear); Shirley Chen (Didi); Sarah Kameela Impey (We Are Lady Parts); Nadia Tereszkiewicz (Forever Young); Michelle Trachtenberg (Gossip Girl); Charly Clive (The...

A film about fantasies slipping away, Robin Campillo’s semi-autobiographical Red Island begins with a daydream, of a world of miniature buildings and puppet-faced men facing off against a masked girl. The girl is quickly revealed to be a visualization of Fantômette, the heroine of the popular Georges Chaulet book series that bears her name, and a particular obsession of Campillo’s 10-year-old stand-in, Thomas (Charlie Vauselle).

The film unfolds largely around a military base in Madagascar, from 1970 to 1972. It’s a decade after the island country’s independence from France, but various ties to the former colonial power remain in place, with French soldiers staying on their bases and working with the local troops. Perhaps inevitably, the oddly paradoxical Red Island is at once lackadaisical and urgent, relaxed but with a clear eye for how swiftly everything will end for the characters at its center.

Not that Thomas, peering...

"We don't pay enough attention. Things happen that we don't see." Film Movement has revealed an official US trailer for the French film titled Red Island, an intimate drama about living on Madagascar in the 1970s. This is finally getting a theatrical US release this August, after first opening in French cinemas last May (original trailer here) to mixed reviews more than a year ago. L'île Rouge, aka Red island, is set in the 1970s on the African island of Madagascar - taking place at one of the last French outposts at the end of their time as colonialists. The 10-year-old Thomas begins to find cracks in the surface of his family's blissful existence on the idyllic island. Taking inspiration from his comic book hero Fantomette, Thomas spies on those around him, discovering the hidden & tangled political and sexual lives of colonizers & the colonized. With Nadia Tereszkiewicz, Quim Gutierrez, Charlie Vauselle,...

Following up his Cannes Film Festival sensation in 2017, Bpm (Beats per Minute), Robin Campillo recently returned with his new feature, Red Island. A semi-autobiographical film inspired by the director’s childhood in Madagascar, following a festival tour it’ll now arrive in the U.S. next month. Ahead of its August 16 opening at NYC’s Film at Lincoln Center, we’re pleased to exclusively debut the new trailer.

Here’s the synopsis: “Living on one of the last remaining military bases amidst a hedonistic group of French armed forces in 1970s Madagascar, ten-year-old Thomas begins to find cracks in the surface of his family’s blissful existence on the idyllic island. Taking inspiration from his comic book hero Fantomette, Thomas spies on those around him, discovering the hidden and tangled political and sexual lives of the colonizers and the colonized. As relocation looms, Thomas questions whether the memories he has...

Rosalie is a compelling and empowering new drama from Stéphanie Di Giusto, which stars Nadia Tereszkiewicz in the eponymous lead role, while offering a fine supporting character for star Benoit Magimel. To mark the film’s release we had the pleasure in speaking to the former two women in Paris, as they discuss the film in great depth during a roundtable interview.

They speak about the original inspiration for the film, while Tereszkiewicz talks about both the physical and emotional process of having to wear a beard, while speaking about the empowering, feminist nature of the film – and what she learnt about herself having taken on the role. Meanwhile, the director Di Giusto explains her decision to not have the two leading stars meet each other before the shoot, while Tereszkiewicz tells us how the animosity on set between the actors was a generous act that helped her access her character.

Based on a true story, this film presents hormone-disordered Rosalie, who has hair on her face and body, as a perky outsider in period dress

Here is an intriguing, if not wholly successful, attempt to create a hero for gender-fluid times and give them the full mainstream period-film trimmings. In fact, the first half of this account of 19th-century bride Rosalie (Nadia Tereszkiewicz), who has a hormone disorder that covers her body in hair, almost resembles The Devil Wears Prada or another of those perky comedy-dramas about a young outsider who refuses to be cowed in their aspirations. In Rosalie’s case, by both the brutish mill workers of the community she marries into and by polite society.

Director Stéphanie di Giusto has loosely based her film on the life of 20th-century “bearded lady” Clémentine Delait, transposing the story to 1870s Brittany. Rosalie is married off by her father, with a dowry,...

Stéphanie Di Giusto on Nadia Tereszkiewicz in Rosalie: 'Nadia immediately and fully adopted the beard. It was carnally evident' Photo: Gaumont In her two films to date director Stéphanie Di Giusto has uncovered two extraordinary women. For her debut feature The Dancer (La Danseuse) the subject was Loïe Fuller, a farm girl from the American midwest, who revolutionised theatrical movement and the stage arts at the end of the 19th century. It bowed to acclaim in Un Certain Regard at the Cannes Film Festival in 2016.

Rosalie director Stéphanie Di Giusto Photo: Marie Rouge for UniFrance Now eight years on she offers another female discovery for her second feature Rosalie, about a young woman in 1870 France who is born with a face and body covered in hair. Rather than become a fairground “freak” as a bearded lady she strives to be seen as a woman despite the obvious difference. It...

"It's never simple to be a woman..." Picturehouse in the UK has revealed their official trailer for the indie film from France titled Rosalie, set for a UK debut in June this summer. This first premiered at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival last year, playing at a few other festivals in Europe, though there's no US release date confirmed yet. Have to be patient if you're curious Set in France in 1870, inspired by a true story. Rosalie is a young woman with a secret... She was born with a face and body covered in hair. A genuine bearded lady. She's kept her secret safe all her life, until Abel, an indebted bar owner, marries her for her dowry. Now, she no longer wishes to hide from him... or anyone else. Starring Nadia Tereszkiewicz as Rosalie and Benoît Magimel as Abel, plus Benjamin Biolay, Guillaume Gouix, and Gustave Kervern. A story of hope and radical self-acceptance,...

Following the bracing sexual and political candor of “Bpm,” writer-director Robin Campillo’s much-laureled film about HIV/AIDS activism in 1990s Paris, “Red Island” initially appears to be a retreat into cozier nostalgia — a child’s-eye view of life on a French military base in 1970s Madagascar, flooded with sunlight, awash with the thrill of youthful exploration. That might seem an obtuse way to portray a time and place rife with fractious post-colonial tensions, only a couple of years before the African territory freed itself from the French Community to become a fully-fledged republic. But “Red Island” is a cannier work than that, slowly deromanticizing its purposely naive view of European family life, before sharply jackknifing into a different perspective, even a different film, altogether.

That switch is both arresting and jarring — a structural pivot that makes for a film easier to admire than it is to embrace. Yet its autobiographical elements are keenly felt,...

Patriarchal and paternalistic structures at both a family and country level are put in the spotlight by Robin Campillo in a story loosely inspired by his own childhood. It’s the early 1970s and though the island of Madagascar became independent a decade before, the French remain a dominant presence. The action unfolds at an air base where youngster Thomas Lopez (Charlie Vauselle) lives with his mum Colette (Nadia Tereszkiewicz), dad Robert (Quim Gutierrez) and his brothers.

We first encounter Thomas as he peeps out from the crate where he is reading his favourite books about masked crime fighting youngster Fantômette - she, in fact, gets her own fantasy sequences in the film, although it is the adults whose features are, tellingly, more fully masked.

“You’re always spying,” his mum tells him later, and it is through Thomas’ eyes that we voyeuristically soak up the details of life on the base,...

Alanté Kavaité’s third film The Islanders, about a woman taking care of a group of elderly people on a remote island off the coast of France, has been acquired by Elle Driver, which will start selling the film at the EFM.

The Islanders is now in post. It stars Nadia Tereszkiewicz with Dali Bensallah, Daphné Pataki and veteran talents Miou-Miou and Patrick Chesnais. Tereszkiewicz won the Cesar breakout award in 2023 for roles in Forever Young and The Red Island. Bensallah’s credits include Athena.

Kavaité’s credits include the coming-of-age story The Summer Of Sangaile, for which she won...

Two roommates, Pauline (Rebecca Marder) and Madeleine (Nadia Tereszkiewicz) are having an unpleasant but, sadly, not at all uncommon female experience. While Pauline is trying to convince their landlord to once again postpone the paying of the rent which they do not have, Madeleine is fleeing the home of a notorious producer who invited her under the pretense of offering her a role in a play and then consequentially attempted to sexually harass her. Upon learning that her boyfriend considers prostituting himself to a wealthy heiress and making Madeleine his mistress, the latter briefly considers suicide, but opts for going to the movies with Pauline instead. The ladies’ luck changes abruptly when the creepy producer’s body is discovered, and Madeleine is singled out as the...

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

Quick, silly and lent weight only by the costume department’s copious wigs and furs, “The Crime Is Mine” finds tireless French auteur François Ozon in the playful period pastiche mode of “Potiche” and “8 Women.” It’s a film less about any frenetic onscreen shenanigans as it is about its own mood board of sartorial and cinematic reference points — Jean Renoir, Billy Wilder, some vintage Chanel — and as such it slips down as fizzily and forgettably as a bottle of off-brand sparkling wine. This story of an aspiring stage star standing trial for a top impresario’s murder (and making the most of her moment in the tabloid flashbulbs) may be based on a nearly 90-year-old play, but for those versed more in Hollywood and Broadway than in French theater, Ozon’s adaptation resembles a kind of diva fanfic: What if Roxie Hart went up against Norma Desmond, except in rollicking 1930s Paris?...

As inevitable as a new day comes another François Ozon film––accomplishing the deft task of feeling equally breezy and clever, but never clearing an overall low ceiling of quality. Maintaining this pattern is The Crime Is Mine (whose awkwardly translated international title makes more sense in light of seeing the film), an Ozon which surprisingly skipped much of the international festival circuit and thus the critical corps’ frustration with his sometimes glib efficiency; it was a commercial-enough proposition to go straight to theaters, with a strong appeal to an older segment of the audience.

Which is not to say his latest film is overly lightweight; in its own way, this is a film of ideas––concerned with nascent 20th-century women’s liberation, and also musing on cinema and performance––however much production design and sparkling lighting dress it up to look like a pink-frosted cake in the window of a French patisserie.

Salaar: Part 1 – Ceasefire saw $2.5 million in Thursday previews as the Telugu action thriller opens in about 800 locations in North America. Bollywood superstar Shah Ruhk Kan toplines drama Dunki, his third film of the year after Pathaan and Jawan, both in the top ten of India’s highest-grossing films.

Presented by Moksha Movies/Pathyangira Cinemas, Salaar directed by Prashanth Neel, stars Prabhas and Prithviraj Sukumaran in the story of a gang leader who makes a promise to a dying friend.

Indian films are a mainstay at the specialty box office, some weekends more than others. This is a big one. Key indie openings include Searchlight Pictures’ much-nominated All Of Us Strangers by Andrew Haigh; Michel Franco’s Memory from Ketchup Entertainment; Freud’s Last Session from Sony Pictures Classics’ and Music Box Pictures’ The Crime Is Mine, all in limited release.

On Salaar: Prabhas (Baahubali) is one of the biggest stars of Telugu cinema.

Theatricality is the name of the game in The Crime Is Mine — for both the characters and the actors playing them. Even when the subject is murder, penury or thwarted ambition, everyone seems to be having a blast in François Ozon’s latest. Based on a 1934 play and set in the mid-’30s, the comedy opens with the image of a red velvet stage curtain, abounds in exquisite art deco flourishes, and is propelled by a screwball zaniness that arrives as a welcome antidote to awards season’s Serious Cinema Syndrome.

Sending up celebrity, the legal system and a medley of movie tropes, Ozon has spun serious ingredients into a zesty soufflé, albeit one that doesn’t avoid a sense of deflation. Led by two relative newcomers, with colorful support from a who’s who of French movie stars — key among them Isabelle Huppert, Fabrice Luchini, Dany Boon and André Dussollier...

François Ozon’s fizzy comedy The Crime Is Mine, a loose adaptation of Georges Berr and Louis Verneuil’s 1934 play Mon crime, begins with murder, poverty, and a suicide threat. But the film delivers this material with such a bubbly optimism that it wouldn’t be a surprise if the cast broke into a choreographed number from Gold Diggers of 1933.

Set in 1935 Paris, the film follows two best friends fending off criminal charges, eviction, and professional failure. Struggling actress Madeleine (Nadia Tereszkiewicz) flees the casting couch of producer Montferrand (Jean-Christophe Bouvet) only to discover that he was later murdered and that she’s the prime suspect. Her roommate, Pauline (Rebecca Marder), a struggling lawyer, offers to defend her. Given the media’s hyperventilating coverage of other accused female killers, Madeleine figures that a splashy trial could help her and Pauline’s careers. Madeleine then falsely confesses to shooting Montferrand and takes Pauline as her lawyer,...

16 nominees in each category will compete in the first round of voting.

France’s Cesar Academy has revealed the breakout stars selected for its annual Revelations list of local up-and-coming talent who will vie in the most promising actor and actress categories at the 2024 awards set for February 23 in Paris.

16 nominees in each category will compete in the first round of voting among Academy members, that will then be whittled down to five in each category.

The Revelations committee is comprised of 18 casting directors active in French film production and is then validated by the board of the Academy.

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Exclusive: Brittany Kahan Ward and Graciella Sanchez are leaving Echo Lake Entertainment after a decade as partners to join Tfc Management where they also will be partners.

The high-profile arrival of Ward and Sanchez — who launched and built Echo Lake’s talent management division, with Sanchez also serving as the Co-President — marks an expansion into on-camera talent representation for Tfc, founded in 2020 by UTA and WME partners Ben Jacobson and David Stone with initial focus on literary clients, including creators, showrunners, novelists, producers, and filmmakers.

Ward and Sanchez’s formidable roster of clients include Dakota Fanning, Elle Fanning, Liz Hannah, Jd Pardo, Shira Haas, Ivana Milicevic, Marguerite Moreau, Phoebe Tonkin, Greg Smith, Alisha Wainwright, Momona Tamada, Golden Brooks, Colton Ryan, Marlo Kelly, Jordan Gavaris, Nadia Tereszkiewicz, Jamila Gray, Maria Dragus, Lina El-Arabi, Tarryn Wyngaard and Floria Sigismondi. The majority of them are expected to follow them to Tfc.

During their stint at Echo Lake,...

Music Box Films has dropped the trailer for “The Crime Is Mine,” François Ozon’s screwball comedy set in 1930s Paris starring Nadia Tereszkiewicz, Rebecca Marder and Isabelle Huppert.

A showbiz caper with a feminist edge in the vein of Ozon’s “8 Women” and “Potiche,” “The Crime Is Mine” will open in New York on Dec. 25, followed by Los Angeles and a national expansion.

Tereszkiewicz, who won a César award for best newcomer for her performance in “Forever Young,” stars as a struggling actress, Madeleine, who lives with her best friend, Pauline (Marder), an unemployed lawyer, in a cramped flat. Opportunity knocks after a lascivious theatrical producer who made an inappropriate advance toward Madeleine turns up dead. Madeleine admits to the crime and is acquitted on the grounds of self-defense — and in result becomes a star, as well as a feminist icon.

“The Crime Is Mine” was freely adapted...

The San Sebastián Film Festival has revealed the Official Selection for its latest edition, which is due to unfold from September 22 — 30.

The festival, which is celebrating its 71st edition, will screen Romanian filmmaker Cristi Puiu’s latest film Mmxx in competition. The festival describes the pic as a story that captures the “wanderings of a bunch of errant souls stuck at the crossroads of history.”

Belgian filmmaker Joachim Lafosse returns to San Sebastian this year with his tenth full-length film, A Silence, a drama starring Emmanuelle Devos and Daniel Auteuil. In 2015, he won the fest’s Silver Shell for Best Director for The White Knights, and two of his films have screened in the Perlak sidebar: After Love (2016) and The Restless (2021).

American filmmaker Raven Jackson will enter Competition with her debut film, All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt. The festival described the pic as “a lyrical exploration of the life of a woman in Mississippi.

Building on the foundation of her debut, The Dancer, a decorative biopic of Folies Bergere alumnus and fin de siècle bohemian Loie Fuller, French director Stephanie di Giusto returns to the 19th century with Rosalie, another feminism-informed story about a sensuous, unusual woman ahead of her time.

However, the subject here is not a specific historical personage, but a composite of various people from the time who all have the same condition as the eponymous heroine: a tendency to grow hair all over her body, or hirsutism, the condition that creates so-called “bearded ladies.” Both a matter-of-fact speculation on how a husband and a small town would react to someone like this in their midst (spoiler alert: not great, at least at first), and a barely disguised parable about intolerance, Rosalie offers a very watchable, offbeat slice of period drama. The writing gets a bit melodramatic and clunky in the last act,...

Period drama inspired by the true story of a French bearded woman.

Picturehouse Entertainment has acquired UK and Ireland rights to Stephanie Di Giusto’s period drama Rosalie from France’s Gaumont, following its premiere in Un Certain Regard at Cannes.

Set in 1870s France, it stars Nadia Tereszkiewicz as a woman who must constantly shave her face to conceal her hairiness, which extends across her whole body. Her new husband, played by Benoît Magimel, is initially repulsed but when she lets go of her embarrassment, the novelty begins to attract curious customers to their struggling cafe.

‘Rosalie’: Cannes...

The female gaze is not some academic construct. It’s a real thing that shifts our ability to empathize and look at the world with a different perspective, something the new movie “Rosalie” demonstrates ably at the Cannes Film Festival this week.

Screening in the Un Certain Regard section the film, starring French-Polish-Finnish actress Nadia Tereszkiewicz and directed by French filmmaker Stephanie Di Giusto, tells a story set in the late 19th century of a woman – Rosalie – with a strange condition: She grows a beard. A real beard.

And she’s hairy on her body, like a man. What to do when Rosalie comes of age to marry, and desire all the things that women often do – love, sexual connection, motherhood?

“Rosalie” has many of the same rebellious and fierce emotions that lay within last year‘s feminist Cannes hit “Corsage,” starring Vicky Krieps as the late 19th century Empress Sissi.

Music Box Films has picked up the U.S. rights to The Crime Is Mine, the post #MeToo comedy from French director François Ozon and which stars Rebecca Marder, Nadia Tereszkiewicz and Isabelle Huppert.

A theatrical release is planned for later this year for the period film, with a home entertainment release to follow, the distributor said in an announcement timed for the start of the Cannes Film Festival.

Fabrice Luchini, Dany Boon, and André Dussolier round out the ensemble cast for The Crime is Mine, which follows struggling actress Madeleine, played by Tereszkiewicz, and her best friend and roommate Pauline (Rebecca Marder), an unemployed lawyer in 1930s Paris.

Madeleine secures fame after standing trial for the murder of a lascivious movie producer, with Pauline serving as defense counsel and media circus ringmaster. The Crime is Mine is adapted from a 1934 play by Georges Berr and Louis Verneuil.

Music Box...

Music Box Films has bought U.S. rights to “The Crime Is Mine” (“Mon Crime”), a period comedy by French helmer François Ozon.

“The Crime Is Mine” stars Rebecca Marder and Nadia Tereszkiewicz, who just won the Cesar Award for female newcomer, alongside Isabelle Huppert, Fabrice Luchini, Dany Boon and André Dussolier. Music Box Films plans a theatrical release for later this year, followed by a home entertainment rollout.

Adapted from a 1934 play by Georges Berr and Louis Verneuil, “The Crime Is Mine” follows struggling actress Madeleine (Tereszkiewicz), and her best friend and roommate Pauline (Marder), an unemployed lawyer in 1930s Paris. Madeleine ascends to fame after standing trial for the murder of a movie producer, with Pauline serving as defense counsel and media circus ringmaster. Upon Madeleine’s acquittal, a new life of fame, wealth and tabloid celebrity awaits — until the truth comes out.

The acquisition marks Music Box Films’ fifth collaboration with Ozon,...

Elle Fanning (“The Great”), Christopher Abbott (“Poor Things”) and Nadia Tereszkiewicz (“The Crime is Mine”) are set to headline “The Maid of Orleans,” Sarah Elizabeth Mintz’s daring follow up to “Good Girl Jane.” Loosely inspired by Mintz’s real-life experiences, “The Maid of Orleans” will explore sexual power dynamics on and off set.

Jessica Chastain’s Freckle Films is set to produce alongside Fanning’s Lewellen Pictures. Memento International will introduce the hot project to buyers at the Cannes Film Market. Filming is scheduled to begin early 2024 in France.

Fanning will star as Rebecca Spielman, a young film school graduate who travels to Paris to work as the assistant to the brilliant, yet tortured up-and-coming director Sammy Lindberg (Abbott). As the production of Sammy’s new “Joan of Arc” movie ramps up, Rebecca finds herself struggling to satisfy the growing maze of demands made by her new boss, all the while,...

Paris-based Playtime has unveiled a strong Cannes film market sales slate, which includes competition titles “About Dry Grasses” and “Homecoming.”

“About Dry Grasses” is by Turkish auteur Nuri Bilge Ceylan, who won the Palme d’Or in 2014 for “Winter Sleep.” The film follows Samet, a young art teacher, who is finishing his fourth year of compulsory service in a remote village in Anatolia. After a turn of events he can hardly make sense of, he loses his hopes of escaping the grim life he seems to be stuck in, and hopes that his encounter with fellow teacher Nuray will help him overcome his angst. Deniz Celiloğlu, Merve Dizdar and Musab Ekici are among the cast.

“Homecoming,” by French director Catherine Corsini who won the 2021 Queer Palm for “The Divide,” follows Khédidja, who minds a wealthy Parisian family’s children for a summer in Corsica. She brings along her own two...

Memento Distribution in France has revealed the first official trailer for a film titled Red Island, the latest from acclaimed director Robin Campillo - best known for his AIDS drama 120Bpm before this. That one first premiered at Cannes 2017, but his next one is skipping the festival entirely - which seems a bit strange. L'île Rouge, aka Red island, is set in the 1970s on the African island of Madagascar - taking place at one of the last French outposts at the end of their time as colonialists. The synopsis says it's about "soldiers and their families living through the last illusions of colonialism," with a very specific focus on a 10-year-old boy named Thomas, observing it all through young eyes. This stars Nadia Tereszkiewicz, Quim Gutierrez, Charlie Vauselle, Amely Rakotoarimalala, Hugues Delamarlière, Sophie Guillemin, and David Serero. This is opening in France at the end of May, though there's...

After earning much acclaim and some awards at Cannes Film Festival in 2017 for Bpm (Beats per Minute), Robin Campillo is back this year with a new feature, but curiously one that is not part of the festival’s lineup. Set for a May 31 release in France, the first trailer has now arrived for Red Island, with the film’s runtime also confirmed at 116 minutes.

Here’s the synopsis: “At the beginning of the 70s, in Madagascar, a few armed forces and their families live in one of the last French military bases abroad, a relic of the ending French colonial empire. Influenced by his reading of the intrepid comic book heroine Fantômette, Thomas, a ten-year-old boy, sweeps with a curious glance what surrounds him. Beneath the carefree expatriate life, his eyes are gradually opening to another reality.”

See the trailer below for the film starring Nadia Tereszkiewicz, Quim Gutierrez, Charlie Vauselle,...

No slot (yet) of Bertrand Bonello, Michel Gondry, Bruno Dumont, Robin Campillo, Catherine Corsini and Quentin Dupieux.

The opening film of Cannes 2023 is Maiwenn’s Jeanne du Barry, a period drama that delves into French history, was shot in Versailles and sees its US star Johnny Depp speaking French.

Un Certain Regard will also open with a French title, Thomas Cailley’s Le Règne Animal, while the Competition refreshingly feaures two films by female French filmmakers, Catherine Breillat and Justine Triet, and the new film from Vietnamese-born, France-based Tran Anh Hung,

Breillat’s rise-from-retirement film is Last Summer, while Tran...

Jewish horror certainly isn’t new. ‘The Dybbuk,’ a play by S. Ansky about the Jewish folkloric demon, was first performed in 1920. Since, there have been many stories of the mythological nightmare, from stage to screen and otherwise. The dybbuk is named for the word “to cleave” or “to cling,” referencing the demon’s way of latching onto a living body. It’s a soul of a dead person that takes up a living host, possessing them until it is able to accomplish its goal.

Unlike Christian demons we’re used to seeing in films, dybbuks aren’t cohorts of the devil, but souls of the dead who are unable or unwilling to move on due to unfinished business. Movies like The Unborn (2009), The Possession (2012), and Ezra (2017) used the dybbuk, but each fell into a common trap. We won’t spend time tackling the 2003 created “dybbuk box,” but suffice it...

Dominik Moll’s investigative drama earns awards in Paris for best film, director, adapted screenplay and more.

Dominik Moll’s investigative drama The Night Of The 12th enjoyed a big night at France’s 48th annual César Awards, picking up six awards including best film of the year at a starry ceremony at Paris concert hall l’Olympia on Friday night.

The film, which started the night on 10 nominations, prevailed in a competitive category alongside Louis Garrel’s crime-infused romantic comedy The Innocent, Cédric Klapisch’s dance drama Rise, Albert Serra’s political thriller Pacifiction, and Valeria Bruni-Tedeschi’s coming-of-age tale Forever Young.

Update, writethru: Dominik Moll’s The Night Of The 12th swept the board at the 48th edition of France’s César awards in Paris on Friday evening.

The film, which was nominated in 10 categories, also won best male newcomer for its star Bastien Bouillon, best-supporting actor for Belgian actor Bouli Lanners as well as best sound and adapted screenplay.

The investigative drama world premiered in Cannes’ non-competitive Cannes Première section last May.

Bouillon plays a police detective who becomes obsessed with a case involving a complex female murder victim in a small town close to the city of Grenoble in the foothills of the French Alps.

Louis Garrel’s comedy The Innocent, which led the nominations making it into 11 categories, won best original screenplay for the director and co-writers Tanguy Viel and Naïla Guiguet as well as best supporting actress for Tár star Noemie Merlant.

Brad Pitt & Virginie Efira presented...

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...

The 46th César Awards, France’s top film honors, have been handed out in Paris, with Dominik Moll’s crime thriller The Night of the 12th winning the best picture trophy.

Moll’s The Night of the 12th, which premiered in Cannes last year, scored 10 César noms coming into the awards show, just behind Louis Garrel’s The Innocent, which picked up 11 nominations. Moll also won for best director, and Bouli Lanners earned the best supporting actor trophy for his performance in The Night of the 12th.

Cédric Klapisch’s Rise, about a ballet dancer (Marion Barbeau) who, after an injury, seeks a new future in contemporary dance, was up for 9 Césars, as was Albert Serra’s Pacifiction, a thriller featuring Benoît Magimel as a morally-challenged Haut-Commissaire on an island in French Polynesia.

Valeria Bruni Tedeschi’s dramedy Forever Young, Cedric Jimenez’s terrorism drama November, Eric Gravel’s family...

Playtime has a raft of EFM deals on the 1930s-set courtroom drama.

Paris-based Playtime has sealed deals in key territories for François Ozon’s starry period drama The Crime Is Mine, featuring breakout actresses Nadia Tereszkiewicz and Rebecca Marder alongside Isabelle Huppert, Fabrice Luchini, André Dussolier and Dany Boon.

The 1930s-set courtroom drama about an actress on trial for murdering a producer has sold to Gaga for Japan, New Cinema for Israel, Bir Film for Turkey and Hes in Lebanon and the Gulf.

Gaumont will release the film in France on March 8.

“It’s one of the bigger movies of the first semester in France,...

’Rise’ and ’Pacifiction’ are also strong contenders.

Louis Garrel’s crime-infused romantic comedy The Innocent and Dominik Moll’s investigative drama The Night Of The 12th are the frontrunners for France’s 48th annual Cesar Awards with 11 and 10 nominations respectively.

Scroll down for full list of nominations

Cédric Klapisch’s dance drama Rise and Albert Serra’s political thriller Pacifiction follow with nine nominations each.

The titles are all selected in the best film category alongside Valeria Bruni-Tedeschi’s Forever Young.

Despite a strong showing from French female directors at both the box office and festivals, the best director category is all-male this year.

Vazaha (Les Blancs)

Forget about the numerous title changes, it appears that it took a little bit more time with detours due to the pandemic and dipping into different seasons and locations for Robin Campillo to put together his fourth feature. The Cannes-winning filmmaker for 2017’s Bpm (Beats Per Minute), filming would have taken place in July of ’21 in France with Nadia Tereszkiewicz and Quim Gutiérrez toplining. Titled Vazaha (Les Blancs), the international title is Vazaha, The Strangers – but we expect that to change. This was written along with Gilles Marchand.

Gist: At the beginning of the 70s, in Madagascar, a few armed forces and their families live in one of the last French military bases abroad, a relic of the ending French colonial empire.…...

The 30 talents are in the running for the most promising actor and actress awards at the 2023 Cesar awards.

Les Révélations 2023, par Audrey Diwan (Sous-titre Anglais) from Académie des César on Vimeo.

France’s Cesar Academy has joined forces with Happening director Audrey Diwan for a short film honouring the 30 ‘Revelations’, the emerging French talents in the running for the most promising actor and actress awards at this year’s Cesar film awards.

Diwan presented the four-minute short film she wrote and directed at a dinner in Paris on January 16 attended by the Revelations, each of whom chose a mentor to accompany them.

Dominik Moll’s The Night of The 12th has won best film at the 28th edition of France’s Lumière Awards in Paris on Monday evening.

The investigative drama, which was nominated in six categories, also won Best Screenplay.

The film, which debuted in the Cannes Film Festival’s non-competitive Cannes Première section, stars Bastien Bouillon as a police detective who becomes obsessed with a case involving a complex female murder victim.

Best director went to Albert Serra for French Polynesia-set drama Pacification. The feature also clinched two other prizes: Best Actor for Benoît Magimal and Best Cinematography for Artur Tort.

Virginie Efira won Best Actress for her performance in Rebecca Zlotowski’s Other People’s Children about the challenge of navigating the stepmother role.

Nadia Tereszkiewicz won Best Female Revelation for her performance in Forever Young and Dimitri Doré, Best Male Revelation for Bruno Reidal.

Alice Diop clinched best documentary category for We,...

Pacifiction star Benoit Magimel wins best actor award for third time.

Dominik Moll’s investigative drama The Night Of The 12th (La Nuit Du 12) was named best film and also won the best screenplay prize at the 28th edition of France’s Lumiere Awards at a ceremony at Paris’ Forum des Images on Monday evening.

The film shared the spotlight with Albert Serra’s tropical thriller Pacifiction which earned Serra the best director award and a best actor prize for the film’s star Benoit Magimel.

It was a record win for Magimel who becomes the third actor in Lumière...

Named one of Unifrance’s 10 Talents to Watch for 2023, rising star Nadia Tereszkiewicz is set to breakout.

After stepping onto the international stage thanks to her work in Monia Chokri and Valeria Bruni-Tedeschi’s 2022 Sundance and Cannes titles “Babysitter” and “Forever Young,” the Franco-Finnish actor will next step into the spotlight, hitting the French award circuit for “Forever Young” while promoting Francois Ozon’s “The Crime Is Mine” – a starry showbiz caper that places Tereszkiewicz front and center.

And given the performer’s upcoming lead roles in Stephanie Di Giusto’s “La Rosalie” and Robin Campillo’s “Vazaha, The Strangers,” a number of repeat festival visits seem more than likely. Variety spoke with the actress as part the Unifrance Rendez-Vous in Paris.

How did you get into filmmaking?

I trained as a dancer, and for a long time I wanted to make that my profession. Later, I studied literature, and...

Studio executives, renowned directors, and a crop of rising young talent huddled below crystal chandeliers in Paris’ Palais Royal on Thursday, turning out to fête “Benedetta” star Virginie Efira as she received the Unifrance French Cinema Award – a prize honoring those who carry the banner for Gallic cinema across the globe – in the presence of Unifrance president Serge Toubiana and the country’s Minister of Culture, Rima Abdul Malak.

Organized as part of the Unifrance Rendez-Vous in Paris, the ceremony drew a fittingly international crowd, with filmmakers Emily Atef, Juho Kuosmanen, Sergei Loznitsa and Albert Serra joining “Athena” star Dali Benssalah, “Forever Young” lead Nadia Tereszkiewicz, “Mother and Son” breakout Annabelle Lengronne and “Everybody Loves Jeanne” director Céline Devaux for an intimate reception held in opulent surroundings.

Abdul Malak kicked off the Efira tribute with a victory lap of sorts, boasting about local theatrical attendance rates – which, with only 29 lost...

La Rosalie

Production on Stéphanie Di Giusto‘s sophomore feature took place in October of last year and it features the likes of Nadia Tereszkiewicz (a true breakout in Les amandiers), Benoît Magimel, Benjamin Biolay, Gustave Kervern, Guillaume Gouix and Juliette Armanet. Di Giusto’s debut film was 2016’s La danseuse – selected for the Un Certain Regard section in Cannes. Written by Stéphanie Di Giusto, Sandrine Le Coustumer and Alexandra Echkenazi, La Rosalie is inspired by Clémentine Delait – known as France’s bearded lady. Trésor Films’ Alain Attal is producing.

Gist: This is set at the end of the 19th century and recounts the destiny of the first bearded woman, at the heart of a love story.…...