Notizie

French-Burkinabé director Cédric Ido's science fiction film The Gravity intertwines Japanese mythology and astronomy to explore the effects of a planetary shift on a Parisian suburb. The film follows a group of teenagers called The Ronins who clash with childhood friends affected by drugs and prison. Amidst the conflict, cosmic changes occur that alter everyone's lives forever. The Gravity combines grounded storylines with sci-fi elements, creating a captivating metaphor and a fully realized cinematic world.

French Burkinabé director Cédric Ido's long-gestating science fiction movie The Gravity finally lands in theaters on November 10, following its successful world premiere at TIFF. The surreal film melds Japanese mythology with a loose take on astronomy to depict the ways a planetary shift affects a small Parisian suburb. In addition to directing, Ido co-wrote the script with Melisa Godet and Jeanne Aptekman, giving it a personal touch that has resonated through its run on the festival circuit.

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...

Reported by our friends at Cineuropa, Arte France Cinéma are getting behind a quartet of new projects – a pair that are on our radar and another two that are news to us. Finally … we got an update on Jérémy Comte‘s directorial debut Paradise, which will go into production in the fall of 2023. The French Canadian filmmaker gave us the masterwork Sundance-winning short Fauve back in 2018. Another feature debut in the works, Mareike Engelhardt‘s Rabia (which we reported on when Megan Northam and Lubna Azabal were cast) will also receive support.

Thierry de Peretti‘s À son image, (which translates to “In His Image”) is loosely adapted from Jérôme Ferrari’s novel of the same name, the story (which was co-written by the filmmaker and Jeanne Aptekman) revolves around several moments in the life of Antonia – a photographer who’s the victim of a road traffic accident in Corsica – and her closest friends.

Less than a year after launching, Pathé’s division dedicated to series is already firing up a flurry of premium projects that are equally as ambitious as its film output.

The first slate of Pathé’s TV arm boasts 12 series in different stages of development. These include two shows based on Alexandre Dumas’ literary classic “The Three Musketeers,” as well as adaptations of “Cyrano de Bergerac” and Joel Dicker’s bestseller “The Last Days of Our Fathers.”

The division is spearheaded by Aude Albano, a well-connected industry player who previously worked alongside Claude Chelli at Capa Drama, where she produced “Versailles,” “Osmosis” and “Marie Antoinette.”

“Our slate spans large-scale series that reflect Pathé’s DNA and the endeavor to expand our brand in the series world,” says Albano. She says the company is following similar guidelines to the film arm. “We’re pursuing high-end and event projects, so it can be historical costume series,...

Whenever a film begins with a disclaimer asserting that the story you’re about to see is fictional — and furthermore, that what shall unfold on-screen “should not be considered a reflection of a reality” — it’s hard not to go in assuming the exact opposite. Why protest so much if there’s no factual basis there? In the case of “Undercover,” our skepticism is precisely the filmmakers’ intent: That introductory, legally obligatory text could hardly make its irony any clearer with actual scare quotes. Names have been changed, but anyone familiar with the headlines can tell that Thierry de Peretti’s no-frills, teeth-gritted procedural thriller has been drawn from the real-life case of former French anti-narcotics chief Francois Thierry, charged in 2017 with complicity in large-scale drug smuggling using police resources. It’s a sensational affair that de Peretti treats with sober practicality, emulating the patient investigative techniques of the journalist...

Paris-based independant company Cineteve is on board to produce a flurry of ambitious series, including the political comedy “Parlement,” the border-crime thriller “Nine,” the French revolution western “Cagliostro” and the spy thriller “Gaston.”

All four projects are being spearheaded by Cineteve’s founder Fabienne Servan-Schreiber, and Thomas Saignes who joined the company less than a year ago to develop and produce high-profile international drama.

“Parlement” is a half-hour comedy series about the European Parliament written by Noé Debré, whose credits include Jacques Audiard’s Palme d’Or winning “Dheepan.”

The series centers around an aimless 20-something man who works at the European Parliament in the midst of a post-Brexit chaos and sets off to take his fate in his own hands. Cineteve is partnering up with Studio Hamburg’s CineCentrum and All3’s 7Stories to produce the series which is now in advanced development. A French commissioning partner will soon be announced.

Last week, French filmmaker David Oelhoffen’s latest project, Close Enemies (Frères Enemis) enjoyed its Us premiere at Fantastic Fest 2018. To take a closer look at the crime thriller about the importance of family and the emotional ties that bind, Daily Dead recently caught up with Oelhoffen for an email Q&A in which he discussed the themes he explored throughout Close Enemies, collaborating with his co-writer Jeanne Aptekman as well as the film’s co-stars Matthias Schoenaerts and Reda Kateb, and bringing his Parisian-set story to international audiences.

Can you talk about the inspirations behind the story and your experiences with the writing process as you were working with Jeanne Aptekman?

hoffen: My initial desire was to film criminal life, not to film fantasies of criminal life. I talked with important drug traffickers, thanks to a friend of mine, who is a lawyer. I tried to understand how concretely their lives were organized.

David Oelhoffen’s last film, which played in competition in Venice in 2014, was called “Far From Men,” but was characterized by a lean, craggy, proto-Western narrative that metaphorically lashed its two stars, Viggo Mortensen and Reda Kateb, close together for the duration. By contrast, his newest feature, which also landed a competition slot in Venice, has the English title “Close Enemies” but keeps its tussling main characters — again each on opposite sides of the law, and this time played by Kateb and Matthias Schoenaerts — far apart for most of the running time.

That’s an irony it would be easy to dismiss if it didn’t also speak to this film’s fatal flaw: While the frictive tension is palpable between Schoenaerts’ bulked-up, doggedly loyal drug runner and Kateb’s soulfully buttoned-down, conflicted cop in their few scenes together, for the most part, their destinies run in frustrating parallel, never...