News

Arrow Video is going into truly dangerous territory – Nazi-occupied France and the mind of a killer – this January, as they are releasing limited edition 4K Blu-rays of Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds and Tarsem Singh’s The Cell.

Coming out on January 14th from Arrow Video is Inglourious Basterds, which comes complete with a 4K (2160p) Ultra HD Blu-ray presentation in High Dynamic Range and original lossless DTS-hd Ma 5.1 audio. It comes with previously available special features but also a number of new ones. They are:

What Would Sally Do?, a new interview with editor Fred Raskin

Blood Fiction, a new interview with special make-up effects supervisor Greg Nicotero

Doomstruck, a new interview with actor Omar Doom

Making it Right, a new visual essay by film critic Walter Chaw, author of A Walter Hill Film

Film History on Fire, a new visual essay by film scholar Pamela Hutchinson, author of...

Sri Lankan auteur Vimukthi Jayasundara, whose “The Forsaken Land” (2005) won the Camera d’Or at Cannes, has started principal photography on his next film “Turtle’s Gaze on Spying Stars.”

One of the producers on the film is India’s Nila Madhab Panda, with whom Jayasundara collaborated to produce Nidhi Saxena’s “Sad Letters of an Imaginary Woman,” which is world premiering this week at the Busan International Film Festival.

“Turtle’s Gaze on Spying Stars,” is currently shooting in and around the hills of central Sri Lanka. It is set in a future ravaged by a mysterious pandemic caused by the over-dependence of mankind on technology. The protagonist is a refugee from Sri Lanka who returns to the country and is forcibly admitted into a valley resort that has been converted into an isolation facility. Once there, memories from his Sri Lankan past haunt him, but, instead of producing fear,...

Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers’ Long After Dark will get the deluxe treatment this fall with a new reissue that pairs the original 1982 album with an additional disc of unreleased music from the era.

Long After Dark Deluxe Edition, out October 18 via Geffen/UMe, boasts a dozen “newly discovered” tracks, including seven unreleased tracks, some of which were recorded for the album but left off the LP.

“There was some music recorded for Long After Dark that didn’t get on the record, that I thought would’ve made it a better album,...

Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers’ 1982 album, Long After Dark, is receiving a deluxe reissue set for release on October 18th via Geffen/UMe.

The remastered collection features 12 bonus tracks, including seven previously unreleased songs. “There was some music recorded for Long After Dark that didn’t get on the record, that I thought would’ve made it a better album,” the late Petty is quoted as saying in a press release. “I left off… four things that I liked quite a bit. And probably a few more written that never even got in the door.”

Notable inclusions in the expanded collection are Petty’s version of “Never Be You” (which became a No. 1 country hit for Rosanne Cash), the pop-leaning “Don’t Make Me Walk the Line,” and an uptempo version of “Ways to Be Wicked.” The latter became a single for the country rock band Lone Justice.

Other bonus...

Leighton Meester is making a return to TV in a new cop show from The CW, Roku, and Stan (an Australian streaming service)! Here’s what else to know about Good Cop/Bad Cop!

The CW has been in flux in the last few years thanks to some big behind-the-scenes changeovers from Nexster and the cancellation of scores of fun shows. The network is now into acquiring productions from Canada and other nations to boost themselves.

Such a series is Good Cop/Bad Cop. The plot focuses on Lou and Henry, a brother and sister pair of cops with a quirky relationship. They serve on the same police force in a Pacific Northwest town under the tough, demanding police chief, who happens to be their father.

Playing Lou is Leighton Meester, best known for her role as Blair Waldorf on The CW hit Gossip Girl. Henry is played by Luke Cook,...

Exclusive: Justin Lin has rounded out the cast for his next film Last Days with five additions: Toby Wallace (Babyteeth), Ciara Bravo (Cherry), Claire Price (The Capture), Dieudonné Ngabo (Forever) and Marny Kennedy (Between Two Worlds).

As previously announced, Sky Yang, Radhika Apte, Naveen Andrews and Ken Leung will also star.

Based on the Outside Magazine article “The Last Days of John Allen Chau” by journalist Alex Perry, the film tells the story of John Allen Chau, who believes he has been chosen to save the souls of the uncontacted tribe of North Sentinel Island. Designated as a protected site by the Indian government, John sets on a harrowing journey to proselytize the Sentinelese in his desperate search for identity, purpose, and belonging.

Written by Ben Ripley (Source Code), and marking a return to his indie roots for Lin following work on the Fast & Furious franchise, the film has...

Sales to kick off this week in Venice.

France TV Distribution has boarded Sylvain Desclous’ sensual French thriller The Victoria System (Le Système Victoria) and will kick off sales in Venice.

Based on popular French author Eric Reinhardt’s best-selling novel of the same name, Desclous’ third fiction feature is currently in production and stars Damien Bonnard and Jeanne Balibar, who also shared the screen in Ladj Ly’s Oscar-nominated debut feature Les Misérables.

The passion-filled story of power, sex and capitalism follows a man (Bonnard) overseeing the construction of the highest tower ever built in France whose life is...

Didier Pupin, Juliette Binoche, Léa Carne, Héléne Lambert, in Between Two Worlds. Courtesy of Cohen Media Group

Juliette Binoche stars as a prosperous writer who goes undercover to research her next non-fiction book, an expose of the exploitative working conditions of French people near the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder, in director Emmanuel Carrère’s Between Two Worlds. Marianne (Binoche) poses as a divorced job seeker with a thin work history who is only offered part-time, minimum-wage jobs as a cleaner. She joins the ranks of other poor women, and some men, unable to find full-time work who are forced to cobble together a bare living doing several of these hard, unpleasant jobs. Eventually, Marianne finds herself in one of the worst, cleaning the ferry that runs between France and Britain.

Based on the non-fiction book “Le Quai de Ouistreham” (“The Night Cleaner”), Juliette Binoche is excellent as Marianne, as...

Jailer, the Tamil-language action thriller with one of India’s most enduring stars, blasted off to circa $2.56 million on 450 screens, hitting the top ten at the box office this weekend, according to Comscore.

Bollywood (Hindi), Tollywood (Telugu) and Kollywood (Tamil) pics, which open day-and-date in India, occasionally cross over to general audience, especially following the Rrr global phenomenon last year. Even when they don’t, Indian communities Stateside turn out loyally en masse the first weekend, the more hype and better the reviews locally, the bigger the box office here. The first week is usually the bulk of the run, making way for the next group of titles. There are always a handful premiering each week and they have long been a boon to exhibitors. That was notable during the Covid recovery and will be even more so if the Hollywood actors’ and writers’ strikes continue to impact the release calendar.

Releases keep coming but talent is not comfortable promoting films, even indies, even if productions have waivers or don’t need them. Where that’s leading isn’t clear. “Who’s going to take the plunge first? We’ll see. The festivals will be the big test,” said one independent distribution exec.

From a moderate release like Jules, in nearly 800 theaters, to Sundance-premiering The Pod Generation, starring Emilia Clarke and Chiwetel Ejiofor on 100 screens, to French film Between Two Worlds with Juliette Binoche, opening on two screens this weekend, stars were not comfortable stepping out amid strikes. The WGA and AMPTP resume bargaining today for the first time in over three months. SAG-AFTRA remains in a standoff with studios over deteriorating pay and working conditions for its members.

“We got an interim agreement because [Jules] is an independent film. And yet, I think the actors…even within the interim agreement,...

No matter how well a job interview begins for Marianne Winkler (Juliette Binoche), things inevitably hit a wall when she’s asked a dreaded question: Why is there a 23-year gap on your resume?

Her standard answer is an economic horror story that women have feared for centuries. She gave up her career to focus on being a stay-at-home mom, only for her husband to leave her and force her to fend for herself. With no career development since college, she’s effectively entering the workforce as a recent graduate, competing with people half her age despite having significantly more expenses and less time to move up the ranks.

It’s a touching story — except none of it is true. As it turns out, Marianne is a world-renowned author who decided to briefly eschew her life of glamor in preparation for her next book. When she came up with the...

Centralizing the moral quandaries of undercover journalism rather than the gig economy the film is ostensibly about, Emmanuel Carrére’s Between Two Worlds often feels at war with itself. Loosely adapted from Florence Aubenas’s bestselling non-fiction book The Night Cleaner, which tracked Aubenas’s attempts to find work as a cleaner and shed light on the dire plight of minimum-wage workers in France in the early 2010s, Carrére’s adaptation foregrounds an Aubenas stand-in––here named Marianne, played by a deglamorized Juliette Binoche. As Marianne struggles to make a living with a series of odd cleaning jobs, she also tries reconciling her desire to write on behalf of these marginalized workers while, also, lying to them about her own life and economic standing.

So while Between Two Worlds is occasionally moving, and boasts a number of great performances––from Binoche, of course, but also from Hélène Lambert, playing a fellow struggling worker,...

Emmanuel Carrére’s Between Two Worlds is a loose adaptation of Florence Aubenas’s The Night Cleaner, an autobiographical exposé of France’s gig economy. While the book primarily documents the fatiguing, baldly exploitative labor of cleaning up after others, the film places its emphasis more on the interpersonal dramas between the women to whom such labor disproportionately falls. It takes things a step further by exploring the knock-on effects of undercover investigative journalism on those same relationships.

Between Two Worlds follows Marianne Winkler (Juliette Binoche), a recently divorced homemaker who arrives in the port city of Caen and finds herself thrust into job market for the first time. An employment agency funnels her into the “industry of the future” as a “maintenance agent”—a euphemism so transparent that it further dehumanizes what it’s meant to humanize. After training, she cobbles together cleaning gigs and, in the process, befriends...

[Editor’s note: The following interview was conducted before the SAG-AFTRA strike began on July 14, 2023.]

The following interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Juliette Binoche has made her career out of playing characters who are independent, searching, unsatisfied, restless. From playing Czech protest photographer Tereza in her breakout movie, the Philip Kaufman erotic classic “The Unbearable Lightness of Being,” to playing a composer’s wife left grieving and with his baggage in Krzysztof Kieślowski’s “Three Colors: Blue,” the Academy Award-winning French actress plays women pulling themselves through confusing situations, political intrigue, and perverse romantic entanglements. Often at once.

Her body of work eschews a pat introduction, but the Quad Cinema in New York has put together a syllabus of sorts with “Beautiful Binoche,” a series of films running from August 4-10 in the lead-up to next week’s release of her new film “Between Two Worlds”, about a famous author who goes undercover as a cleaning lady to investigate the exploitation of...

"It's a commando op. 90 minutes, not a second more." Cohen Media Group has revealed the new official US trailer for an indie film from France titled Between Two Worlds, also known as Ouistreham. This first premiered in 2021 at the Cannes Film Festival and is finally getting a US theatrical release this August over two years later. A longtime passion project for Juliette Binoche, Between Two Worlds is adapted from Florence Aubenas' Le Quai de Ouistreham (The Night Cleaner), and marks Emmanuel Carrère's return to directing for the first time since The Moustache in 2008. Famed author Marianne Winckler goes undercover to investigate the exploitation of the working class in Northern France. She eventually takes on a job as a cleaner on the cross-channel ferry and develops close connections with the other cleaning women, many of whom have extremely limited resources and income opportunities. As she learns more about the plight of these workers,...

Cohen Media Group has unveiled the trailer for “Between Two Worlds,” a drama directed by famed French novelist and filmmaker Emmanuel Carrère, starring Oscar-winning actor Juliette Binoche.

The film, which had its world premiere on opening night of Cannes’ Directors’ Fortnight in 2021, will premiere in New York and Los Angeles on Aug. 11 followed by a national roll-out.

“Between Two Worlds” is adapted from the bestselling non-fiction book “The Night Cleaner” (“Le Quai de Ouistreham”) by investigative journalist Florence Aubenas.

Binoche plays Marianne Winckler, a reporter (based on Aubenas) going undercover to investigate the exploitation of France’s workers without job security at the height of the economic crisis. As she becomes a cleaning lady, she discovers a precarious life and finds herself invisible in society, but also forges genuine bonds with some of her companions in misfortune. These friendships are put to the test when the truth comes out. Binoche...

From the films of Krzysztof Kieślowski to Claire Denis, Oscar winner Juliette Binoche has starred in many of your favorite European arthouse classics, and she’s probably the reason we return to them again and again. This summer, New Yorkers — or any ambitious traveling cinephiles — will have the chance to see many of her all-time greatest performances on 35mm thanks to a new retrospective set for the Quad Cinema in Greenwich Village.

IndieWire exclusively announces “Beautiful Binoche,” which will take place August 4–10 at New York City’s longest-running, four-screen multiplex. In addition to some of the great Binoche titles from the ’80s, ’90s, and 2000s, the Quad Cinema will also present Binoche’s latest film, “Between Two Worlds,” opening from Cohen Media Group on August 11.

The French actress has long made a career playing determined women pulling themselves through confusing situations — from perverse erotic entanglements to political intrigue and isolating grief.

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...

Louis Garrel’s heist comedy The Innocent and the Dominik Moll-directed procedural The Night of the 12th are the films to beat at this year’s César Awards, France’s top film prize.

The Innocent, in which Garrel co-stars, alongside Tár actress Noemie Merlant and Roschdy Zem, picked up 11 César nominations, including for best film and best director.

Moll’s The Night of the 12th, which, like The Innocent, premiered in Cannes last year, scored 10 César noms, including for best film.

Cédric Klapisch’s Rise, about a ballet dancer (Marion Barbeau) who, after an injury, seeks a new future in contemporary dance, picked up 9 César nominations, as did 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 drama Full Time and Alice Diop...

Update: Louis Garrel’s The Innocent has taken a surprise lead in the nominations for the 48th César Awards, which were announced on Wednesday ahead of the ceremony at Olympia concert hall in Paris on February 24.

The comedy-drama, which debuted in Cannes, was nominated in 11 categories followed by Dominik Moll’s detective drama The Night Of The 12th with 10 nominations.

Albert Serra’s Pacifiction and Cedric Klapisch’s Rise both snared nominations in nine categories, followed by Forever Young and November with seven each.

Garrel directs and co-stars in The Innocent as a man who tries to derail his mother’s relationship with a recently released convict, played by Roschdy Zem, in a campaign that will find him flirting with the wrong side of the law.

The film has received strong reviews and was a hit in France where it drew more than 700,000 spectators, but did not figure among the...

Louis Garrel’s “The Innocent” and Dominik Moll’s thriller “The Night of the 12th” are leading the race at the 48th Cesar Awards, France’s equivalent to the Oscars.

Nominated for 11 Cesar nominations, “The Innocent” is a heist romantic comedy starring Garrel, Roschdy Zem and Noemie Merlant, who previously starred in “Portrait of a Lady on Fire” and most recently in “Tár.” Produced by Anne-Dominique Toussaint at Les Films des Tournelles, the crowdpleaser world premiered out of competition at Cannes for the 75th anniversary of the festival.

“The Night of the 12th,” meanwhile, is in the running for 10 Cesar awards. The brooding topical procedural, which also opened as part of Cannes’ Premiere section, stars Bastien Bouillon and Bouli Lanners as two cops trying to solve a gruesome murder. The movie, produced by Haut et Court (“The Class”), delves into issues of gender and violence.

Other top Cesar contenders include Cedric Klapisch’s dance-filled “Rise,...

A simple listing, duplicated from the dvd/blu/vod UK and Ireland page, of new releases and other stuff currently available, for the benefit of those playing along by RSS or keeping up via the Weekly Digest emails (sign up here).

The most up-to-date version of this listing is always here.

new from Jul 25

Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness Everything Everywhere All at Once The Quiet Girl (An Cailin Ciuin) Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore Jurassic World Dominion (premium VOD)

I’m planning to watch…

Between Two Worlds The Phantom of the Open

(films on regular VOD and/or DVD unless otherwise noted)

Stop endlessly scrolling Netflix, Amazon, and other VOD services! Get the Weekend Watchlist newsletter in your in-box every Friday with the best new films and hidden gems to stream. Only for paid Patreon and Substack subscribers.

recent releases

Ali & Ava (Netflix; also regular VOD...

The action sequel set a record opening for Paramount in the territory.

Rank Film (distributor) Three-day gross (May 27-May 29) Total gross to date Week 1. Top Gun: Maverick (Paramount) £11.2m £15.9m 1 2. Doctor Strange In The Multiverse Of Madness (Disney) £1.37m £37.7m 4 3. Everything Everywhere All At Once (A24) £486,829 £2.93m 3 4. Downton Abbey: A New Era (Universal)

£349,877 £13.3m 5 5. The Bob’s Burgers Movie (Disney) £346,592 £346,592 1

Paramount’s Top Gun: Maverick has landed at the top of the UK-Ireland box office with an £11.2m three-day opening weekend – the highest opening of all-time for star Tom Cruise.

The highly anticipated sequel, released 36 years after 1986 blockbuster Top Gun, also...

Juliette Binoche and Hélène Lambert in Between Two Worlds Photo: UniFrance When Juliette Binoche arrived on the scene near Caen to start work in earnest on Between Two Worlds (Ouistreham) adapted from undercover journalist Florence Aubenas’s best-seller The Night Cleaner she was in a dark place and emotionally drained after coping with the death of her father [Jean-Marie Binoche, a sculptor, director, and actor].

“I was very vulnerable, I accepted I was raw, and I could not hide anything,” she says. “I was in physical and mental tune with what I had to experience in the film. And the women, all non-actors who had to play alongside me, sensed it right away. When my Polish grandmother came to France during the Second World War she had to do odd jobs like housecleaning in order to survive. When my mother was a student she also did some occasional jobs. And...

The face of an upscale U.S. independent cinema which climaxed with “The English Patient” and a go-to actress for many of the world’s greatest directors from Krzysztof Kieślowski to Claire Denis, France’s Juliette Binoche will receive one of this year’s San Sebastian Donostia Awards, the Spanish festival’s prestigious plaudit for career achievement.

The Award will be presented to Binoche before a screening of Denis’ “Both Sides of the Blade,” a Silver Bear winner for best director at February’s Berlin Festival.

An actor with a prolific career reaching back to her first breakout in Philip Kaufman’s “The Unbearable Lightness of Being” – one of her many movies which have been literary adaptations – Binoche will also feature on the poster of this year’s 70th San Sebastian Film Festival, snapped by French photographer Brigitte Lacombe.

Binoche’s presence gives a first French touch to San Sebastián,...

Zdf Enterprises, to be rebranded Zdf Studios in April, has snagged worldwide distribution rights to the topical post-wwii dramatic series “Between Two Worlds” (“Ein Hauch Von Amerika”).

Skein is set in a fictional German town in the ’50s where a robust U.S. military presence is impacting the lives of its people, in particular the two young friends Marie and Erika, whose relationships with their family, community and each other are put to the test by the presence of a U.S. army base.

Commented Sebastian Krekeler, director Zdfe.drama, Zdf Enterprises: “The clash of different cultures and the defence of a free society is more topical than ever. Racism and anti-Semitism, emancipation and civil rights, tradition versus new beginnings – many of the conflicts that were fought back then are far from over today.”

“‘Between Two Worlds’ is entertaining and at the same time provokes thought about issues that still concern us today,...

Organizers of the upcoming Berlinale continue to plan for a physical festival under strict safety measures, but with the EFM already moved online due to rising Covid-19 cases, this year looks set to be another gloomy gathering, not only for Germany’s dispirited film sector, but also for Berlin businesses bracing for more lost revenue.

Local cinema operators and distributors have welcomed the move, but the condensed event and ongoing Omicron scare is likely to keep attendance on the low side.

“This is such an important signal for the entire culture and film industry,” says Christian Bräuer, chairman of independent cinema association Ag Kino – Gilde and managing director of Berlin’s Yorck-Kino group. “Of course, as social venues, we are aware of our responsibility. Especially in the pandemic, however, the special value of cultural life and experience is evident.”

While city life has markedly improved since last year, when it...

"Make the invisible visible." Madman Films in Australia has released their official trailer for Between Two Worlds, a French drama from writer / filmmaker Emmanuel Carrère. This premiered last year at the 2021 Cannes Film Festival in the Directors' Fortnight section, and is opening sometime later this year. It is based on French journalist Florence Aubenas's bestselling non-fiction work Le Quai de Ouistreham, investigating rising precarity in French society through her experiences in the northern port city of Caen. The original French title is Ouistreham in reference to this location. Juliette Binoche stars as Winckler, who goes to live in northern France to research for her new book on the subject of job insecurity by working in various low end cleaning jobs. The cast includes a group of authentic unknown actors, including Hélène Lambert, Louise Pociecka, Steve Papagiannis, & Aude Ruyter. The film looks a bit like a Ken Loach drama but made in France,...

Zdf Enterprises has closed deals with Asian buyers for new Scandinavian and Russian series, among them “Agatha Christie’s Hjerson,” “Sherlock: The Russian Chronicles” and “Top Dog.”

Japan’s Axn Mystery picked up exclusive pay-tv rights for “Agatha Christie’s Hjerson,” a playful, modern-day whodunnit based on the fictional detective Sven Hjerson, created by Christie’s fictional writer Ariadne Oliver. The series centers on Hjerson and trash TV producer Klara Sandberg, who wants to reset her career with a true crime show featuring the once renowned criminal profiler. Together, they start to solve a string of murder mysteries.

The eight-part series is produced by Br•F, TV4/C More, Zdf, Agatha Christie Ltd. and Nadcon Film.

“Top Dog” went to Japanese pay-tv leader Wowow, which bought exclusive pay-tv rights for show. The series, which played to an upbeat reception at Canneseries, focuses on the clash between Stockholm business attorney Emily Jansson and...

Oscar-winning French actor Juliette Binoche has given her sprawling career a second wind with striking performances in Claire Denis’ comedy drama “Let The Sunshine In” and sci-fi “High Life” (opposite Robert Pattinson). Best known by American audiences for her romantic roles in Anthony Minghella’s “The English Patient” and Lasse Hallström’s “Chocolat,” Binoche has worked with some of the most revered filmmakers worldwide, including Abbas Kiarostami (“Copie Conforme”), Leos Carax (“Les amants du Pont-Neuf”), Michael Haneke (“Caché”) and Olivier Assayas (“Clouds of Sils Maria”).

In her latest film, “Between Two Worlds,” Binoche stars as a well-known author from Paris who goes undercover in Northern France for her new book on low-paid workers facing injustices. Hired as a cleaner, she experiences the brutal and precarious work conditions while bonding with other women. The movie, whose cast was primarily made up of non-professionals and locals, was adapted from Florence Aubenas’ bestseller “Le Quai de Ouistreham.

Studio

Studio Babelsberg, the historic German studio that recently hosted “The Matrix Resurrections” production, has been acquired by Tpg Real Estate Partners.

The company, which is part of global alternative asset firm Tpg, first revealed plans to acquire a stake in the studio in September via Trep’s acquisition of Babelsberg’s main shareholder, Filmbetriebe Berlin Brandenburg GmbH (Fbb), which was controlled by Carl L. Woebcken and Christoph Fisser. As part of that deal, Fbb launched a public tender offer to acquire a majority of the shares in Studio Babelsberg, which went through in October.

All closing conditions of the transaction have now been fulfilled, the companies have said, with Woebcken and Fisser continuing to hold a minority stake in the studio.

Studio Babelsberg now sits within Trep’s global studio platform, Cinespace Studios, which is the second largest sound stage operator in North America and, with Babelsberg in the fold,...

Emmanuel Mouret’s “Love Affair(s),” Samir Guesmi’s “Ibrahim” and Elie Wajeman’s “Night Doctor” won top prizes at Colcoa, the French film and TV festival.

The festival, which marked its 25th edition, wrapped at the DGA on Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles on Nov. 7. It was attended by 14,000 people.

The festival, programmed by Francois Truffart, is organized by the Franco-American Cultural Fund, a collaboration between the Directors Guild of America (DGA), the Motion Picture Association (MPA), The Writers Guild of America West (Wgaw) and France’s Society of Authors, Composers and Publishers of Music (Sacem).

Colcoa shifted its spring dates to the fall in 2019 as the DGA was being renovated and is now ideally positioned at the start of the awards season in the U.S. The awards ceremony took place at the Sacem headquarters near Paris in the presence of many honorees, notably Guesmi and “Love Affair(s)” producer Frédéric Niedermayer,...

“Black Box,” Studiocanal’s flight-themed French thriller with Pierre Niney (“Yves Saint Laurent”) has been acquired by Distrib Films for U.S. distribution.

Directed by Yann Gozlan, the movie had its North American premiere on Nov. 5 at Colcoa, the French film and series festival in Los Angeles. The movie, which also stars Marine Vacth (“Young And Beautiful”) reteams Niney with Gozlan following “A Perfect Man.”

Niney stars as a skilled black box analyst investigating the deadly crash of a brand new aircraft. As he uncovers disturbing details, he has to deal with the fact that his wife (Vacth) happens to work for the authorities. The film was produced by Paris-based outfit 2425 and Wy Productions. Studiocanal co-produced, distributed in France and is handling international sales. The deal with Distrib Films doesn’t include SVOD rights in the U.S.

Gozlan penned the script with Nicolas Bouvet-Levrard and Simon Moutairou, in collaboration with Jérémie Guez.

Despite being the world capital of the film and TV industry, Los Angeles has never been a particularly hospitable place to stage a film festival. Which makes it all the more surprising that one of the city’s longest-running, most successful fests happens to be one dedicated entirely to French cinema.

First known as City of Lights, City of Angels, the Colcoa French Film Festival will celebrate its 25th anniversary this year, returning to its longtime home at the DGA Theater Complex for a week’s worth of primo Franco fare. Opening with the Juliette Binoche-starrer “Between Two Worlds,” the festival will screen 55 films and series and 19 shorts from Nov. 1-7 — and after taking a gap-year in 2020 due to the pandemic, this year’s fest will be back in-person.

Reliably attracting 20,000 attendees a year in the pre-covid era, Colcoa’s ability to survive a quarter century has a lot...

Emmanuel Carrère’s Ouistreham (Between Two Worlds) has been set as the opening film of the 25th Colcoa French Film and Series Festival. The anniversary edition of the City of Lights, City of Angels fest kicks off on November 1 with the Juliette Binoche-starrer that opened Directors’ Fortnight in Cannes last July before winning the Audience Award at San Sebastian. Cohen Media Group releases in the U.S. in 2022.

Colcoa is running as a live week-long event taking place at the DGA Theater Complex from November 1-7. This year’s edition is dedicated to late filmmaker Bertrand Tavernier and will pay homage to him in the Classics section. The full program will include 55 films and series, as well as 19 shorts. Thirty of the films will compete for the Colcoa Cinema Awards and the Colcoa High School Screenings program will also return, welcoming 3,000 high school students from across Southern California.

Two...

Other winners included Earwig, Jessica Chastain, Tea Lindeburg and Terence Davies.

A debut feature by Romanian director Alina Grigore, Blue Moon has won the Golden Shell award for best film at the 69th edition of the San Sebastian International Film Festival (Ssiff).

The victory adds another woman director as winner of a festival’s main prize following the Palme d’Or win at Cannes for Julia Ducournau’s Titane and the Venice Golden Lion triumph for Audrey Diwan’s Happening.

Other awards in Ssiff’s main competition included a special jury prize for Earwig, by Lucile Hadzilhalilovic; the Silver Shell...

Female directors and actors reigned supreme at tonight’s San Sebastian Film Festival awards ceremony, with the Romanian actor-turned-director Alina Grigore taking the Golden Shell for Best Film for her intimate debut feature “Blue Moon.” The film, a raw realist study of a young woman attempting to free herself from an abusive rural household, was an unexpected winner, besting a number of higher-profile auteur films in the festival’s main competition. Yet a full spectrum was covered: At the opposite end of the celebrity scale, Jessica Chastain was one of two Best Leading Performance winners for “The Eyes of Tammy Faye.”

This was the second year in a row that a first-time female filmmaker took the festival’s top prize. Last year, Georgian writer-director Dea Kulumbegashvili swept the board for her debut “Beginning,” which won the Golden Shell in addition to Best Director, Actress and Screenplay. Kulumbegashvili returned to the...

Although the pandemic has pole-axed many independent distributors, some like Alexandre Mallet-Guy at Paris-based Memento Distribution have managed to weather the storm.

The company has had prestige auteur films playing in the festival circuit this year; at Cannes with multiple films in competition, including Jacques Audiard’s “Paris, District 13th,” Oscar-winning Iranian director Asghar Farhadi’s “A Hero” and Norwegian director Joachim Trier’s “The Worst Person in the World;” in Deauville with Christophe Honoré’s “Guermantes;” and at San Sebastian with Laurent Cantet’s “Arthur Rambo,” Zhang Ji’s “Fire on the Plain” and Emmanuel Carriere’s “Between Two Worlds” with Juliette Binoche which world premiered on opening night at Cannes’ Directors Fortnight.

Along with his distribution activities, Mallet-Guy is also involved in production through Memento Production. The banner produces or co-produces select director-driven projects. “A Hero,” for instance, was produced by Mallet-Guy and Farhadi’s companies.

The movie...

Curzon previously acquired UK and Ireland rights.

In the first on-site US deal for a film in the Cannes festival, Cohen Media Group has acquired Directors’ Fortnight opening film Between Two Worlds starring Juliette Binoche.

Emmanuel Carrère’s drama follows a writer who goes undercover as a contract cleaner in order to write an exposé on precarious working conditions in France.

The writer experiences first-hand the financial instability and social invisibility of the ‘gig economy’, but also finds solidarity among a group of working-class women and questions the ethics of her deception.

Between Two Worlds is based loosely on Florence Aubenas...

The nonfiction book that inspired the Juliette Binoche movie “Between Two Worlds” resulted from nearly six months of undercover reporting by Florence Aubenas. The respected French journalist wanted to understand how roughly one-eighth of the country’s work force — those who rely on non-contract jobs — got by during the recent economic crisis. To observe the situation firsthand, Aubenas moved to the coast, presented herself at employment centers, and tried to get hired, taking practically any gig that was offered — which wasn’t much, and hardly enough to survive on. In the end, she wound up cleaning the ferry out of Ouistreham, describing the experience and those she observed in her book “The Night Cleaner.”

Now, were someone to make a movie of that book, they would almost certainly start by removing Aubenas from the picture. As in American journalist Barbara Ehrenreich’s similar, celebrated eye-opener “Nickel and Dimed,” the writer...

Quick, name the movie: A middle-aged actress hits the road, carrying on her shoulders an understated docurealist drama about present-day financial precarity, while surrounded by non-professional actors playing versions of themselves.

If you answered “Nomadland,” well, that was the intent. If you answered “Between Two Worlds,” congratulations twice over, because you must have just left the film’s premiere, where it opened the Director’s Fortnight sidebar at the Cannes Film Festival.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but the Cannes pic — which stars Juliette Binoche and nary another actor you’ve ever heard of — does in many ways make for an interesting companion piece to Chloé Zhao’s recent Oscar winner. Though both films share superficial similarities, “Between Two World” comes at the subject from a wholly different angle, teasing at questions of class and economics that weren’t as present in “Nomadland.”

Mind you, it...

Emmanuel Carrère’s drama – based on Florence Aubenas’s bestseller Le Quai de Ouistreham – fails to probe fully the injustices faced by low-paid workers

Novelist and film-maker Emmanuel Carrère has contrived this earnestly intentioned but naive and supercilious drama about poverty and the gig economy, starring a tearful Juliette Binoche. It is adapted from the French non-fiction bestseller Le Quai de Ouistreham from 2010 by investigative journalist Florence Aubenas, published in the UK under the title The Night Cleaner.

In it, Aubenas describes her experiences “going undercover” and working in the brutal world of cleaning in Caen in northern France, where desperate applicants have to burnish their CVs with fatuous assurances about how passionate they are about cleaning, in return for dehumanising work with pitiful pay, grisly conditions and no job security. The grimmest part of the work is scrubbing lavatories and cleaning cabins on the ferry between Ouistreham and Portsmouth.

Juliette Binoche gets her hands dirty in the French drama Between Two Worlds (Ouistreham), the Cannes Directors’ Fortnight opener from Emmanuel Carrère. Adapted from Florence Aubenas’ bestseller Le Quai De Ouistreham, it centers on Marianne Winckler, an author who goes undercover as a cleaner in order to write a book about her experiences.

Posing as a cash-strapped divorcée who needs work in the city of Caen, she’s sent from the job center to cleaning school, where she learns just enough to be hired at the port of Outistreham. And so this well-heeled journalist rolls up her sleeves and scrubs toilets on ferries, forming a tight bond with her co-workers while secretly taking notes on them. The stage is set for a tense reveal, but the main focus of Between Two Worlds is on friendship, character and sociopolitical comment.

Striking an inquisitive and relatable note, Binoche is ideal in the lead role.

Curzon has acquired the U.K. and Ireland rights to “Between Two Worlds,” which is the opening film of the Directors’ Fortnight sidebar in Cannes. The film, directed by Emmanuel Carrère, stars Juliette Binoche. France TV Distribution, which is handling world sales on the film, has allowed Variety to debut the film’s first trailer.

The film, which is loosely adapted by Carrère and Hélène Devynck from the book “The Night Cleaner” by undercover journalist Florence Aubenas, centers on Marianne Winckler, a well-known author, who goes to live in Northern France to research for her new book on the subject of job insecurity. Without revealing her true identity, she gets hired as a cleaner, working with a group of other women. In this new role, she experiences financial instability and social invisibility first-hand. But she also discovers mutual assistance and solidarity, strong bonds shared by these behind-the-scenes working women.

Variety...

France Televisions Distribution has scored a raft of sales on Juliette Binoche starrer “Between Two Worlds” ahead of its world premiere on opening night of Cannes’ Directors’ Fortnight.

“Between Two Worlds” (Ouistreham), adapted from Florence Aubenas’ bestseller “Le Quai de Ouistreham,” stars Binoche as Marianne Winckler, a well-known author who decides to write a book on job insecurity and sets off to experience it firsthand. As she becomes a cleaning lady, she discovers a precarious life and finds herself invisible in society, but also forges genuine bonds with some of her companions in misfortune. These friendships are put to the test when the truth comes out.

The movie has already lured a flurry of distributors in key markets, including Karma Films (Spain), Teodora Film (Italy), Bestfilm.eu (Baltics), Nachshon Films & Red Cape (Israel), Providence Filmes (Latin America), Av-jet International Media Co. (Taïwan), Madman (Australia/New Zealand), Cineart (Benelux) and Frenetic Films...

After canceling its last edition due to the pandemic, Directors’ Fortnight, a section running alongside the Cannes Film Festival, will be back with a stylish and eclectic international lineup, including Joanna Hogg’s highly anticipated “The Souvenir Part II,” Clio Barnard’s “Ali & Ava,” Jonas Carpignano’s “A Chiara,” Saul Williams and Anisia Uzeyman’s Rwanda-set sci-fi film “Neptune Frost,” and Alice Rohrwacher, Pietro Marcello and Francesco Munzi’s “Futura.”

The highlight of this edition will likely be the world premiere of “The Souvenir Part II,” which will mark the first presence of Hogg, an acclaimed British writer-director, at Cannes. The romance-drama is headlined by Tilda Swinton — who will also be in Cannes for “The French Dispatch” and “Memoria” competing in the festival’s Official Selection — as well as Richard Ayoade, Charlie Heaton and Harris Dickinson. Executive produced by Martin Scorsese, the film revolves around a student who begins to...

France TV Distribution will launch sales on the film this Cannes.

Screen can reveal a first look image of Juliette Binoche in Emmanuel Carrère’s French-language drama Between Two Worlds (aka The Night Cleaner).

France TV Distribution will launch sales on the film this Cannes. It is produced by Olivier Delbosc at Curiosa Films and David Gauquié and Julien Deris at Ciné France Studios.

Binoche stars as a well-known author who decides to write a book on job insecurity by experiencing it first-hand. She gets work as a cleaning lady and discovers a life where each euro matters, finding herself invisible in society.