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Oscar-nominated Haitian filmmaker Raoul Peck is to be the guest of honour at the 56th edition of documentary festival Visions du Reel, taking place in Nyon, Switzerland from April 4-13.

Peck’s participation in the festival will include a masterclass and a retrospective of his non-fiction work, along with a screening of his latest film Ernest Cole: Lost and Found ahead of its release in Swiss cinemas.

Born in Haiti in 1953, and raised in Congo, New York, France and Germany, Peck’s filmography has long focused on key figures fighting for emancipation and criticising the cultural domination of history’s Eurocentric perspective.

Jude Law recently confirmed to Deadline that he will be taking on the role of young Vladimir Putin in Olivier Assayas’ New Film ‘ The Wizard of Kremlin.’ The movie will be based on Giuliano da Empoli’s popular 2022 book, with a screenplay written by Olivier Assayas and Emmanuel Carrère.

The book tells the story of a fictional meeting between the author and Vadim Baranov, a mysterious man who was once an artist, TV producer, and close advisor to Vladimir Putin. Baranov, now retired, shares his life story, including his time in 1990s Russia, his role in helping Putin rise to power starting in 1999, and his experience with political power.

Directed by French filmmaker Olivier Assayas, the movie will feature Jude Law in a supporting role and focus on Vladimir Putin, now 72, “at the beginning of his governing career.”

“I haven’t really started work on it yet,” Law said. “I mean,...

Jude Law is taking on the role of Russian President Vladimir Putin in the upcoming film, The Wizard of the Kremlin. The film will have Law in a supporting role while The Batman star Paul Dano will play the lead. The Holiday actor shared that he had a lot more preparation to do before actually portraying Putin.

Jude Law in Star Wars: Skeleton Crew | Credits: Lucasfilm

Law was last seen in the action film The Order. He appears in a supporting role alongside Ana de Armas, Sydney Sweeney, and Vanessa Kirby in the survival thriller, Eden, which premiered at TIFF. He also ventured into the world of Star Wars with the lead role in the show, Skeleton Crew.

Jude Law is portraying Vladimir Putin in The Wizard of the Kremlin Jude Law in a still from Captain Marvel | Credits: Marvel Studios

French filmmaker Olivier Assayas found Jude Law the perfect...

Last year, it was reported that Jude Law would be co-starring in director Olivier Assayas’ new movie The Wizard of the Kremlin without specifying his role. Now, the actor has confirmed he will be playing Vladimir Putin in the adaption of Giuliano da Empoli’s novel of the same name.

In a recent interview with Deadline, Law opened up about the intimidating task of playing the Russian dictator. “At the moment it looks like an Everest to climb, so I’m in the foothills looking up thinking, ‘Oh Christ, what have I said?’” he revealed. “That’s often how I feel whilst I say yes. I was going, ‘Oh God, how am I going to do this?’ But anyway, that’s for me to sort out.”

The original Wizard of the Kremlin book was published in 2022 and tells the story of Vadim Baranov, a reality show producer who doubled as...

Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. To keep up with our latest features, sign up for the Weekly Edit newsletter and follow us @mubinotebook on Twitter and Instagram.NEWSThe Little Mermaid.A generative AI start-up has been accused of stealing the voices of actors for its subscription service.IATSE expects to schedule additional days of bargaining with AMPTP in June, but has vowed not to extend its contract past July 31.With Incaa defunded by Argentine president Javier Milei, Ventana Sur is in talks to relocate from Buenos Aires to Uruguay for its sixteenth edition.As the Italian film industry continues to wait on a divided government to make production tax credits available, anticipating modest cuts, a new law in the Czech Parliament would more than double the existing cap on their incentives. Meanwhile, industry insiders in Poland urge a newly elected government to increase their rebate...

At a wake for the murder of Russian journalist and activist Anna Politkovskaya, shot dead in 2006 in the elevator of her apartment block in Moscow, French writer Emmanuel Carrère spotted a familiar silhouette. Though born Eduard Veniaminovich Savenko, by the mid-2000s “Limonov” had lived a dozen lives. A poet, editor, and politician who’d recently finished a two-year stint in prison on terrorism chargers, Limonov was a man who embodied all the contradictions of the 20th century, a greater-than-life iconoclast and extremist whose existence had unraveled as a tumultuous cavalcade of U-turns, aliases, literary aspirations. and political intrigue. He’d been a factory worker in the Ussr; an exile, hobo, butler, and budding novelist in New York; a successful author in Paris; and finally, by the time Carrère came across him, a Bolshevik nostalgist who’d been a vocal supporter of Serbian expansionism during the 1990s Balkan Wars (here...

Dissident Russian director Kirill Serebrennikov has backed the ongoing demonstrations in Georgia at a press conference for his Cannes competition entry, Limonov: The Ballad, saying of the situation, “It’s absolutely awful.”

The streets of Georgia are lined with young protestors urging their country to join the European Union (EU), and against a law that is expected to demonise many civil society groups as ‘foreign agents’. The law is similar to one introduced in Russia, and is seen as a marker of Russia’s influence in the country.

On Tuesday (May 14), politicians passed a controversial law which requires non-governmental organisations...

Thierry Frémaux sure does like mister Kirill Serebrennikov. Since showcasing The Student in 2016’s Un Certain Regard section, the Russian filmmaker (in exile) has been a fixture in the competition section (there was even the rumor he might showcase his two of his 2024 releases) with 2018’s Leto, 2021’s Petrov’s Flu and 2022’s Tchaikovsky’s Wife. In what was a complicated shoot due to the war, Liminov: The Ballad stars Ben Whishaw as Limonov.

Gist: Based on the novel by Emmanuel Carrère, this is about the revolutionary militant, a thug, an underground writer, a butler to a millionaire in Manhattan.…...

That the name Limonov is pronounced “Lee-mwah-nov” is one of two main things that Kirill Serebrennikov’s “Limonov: The Ballad” teaches us about Eduard Limonov, the Russian radical, poet, dissident, emigré, returnee, detainee, bête noire and cause célèbre who in 1993 co-founded the ultra-nationalist National Bolshevik Party. The second is that, as imagined in this adaptation of Emmanuel Carrère’s 2015 fictionalized biography, for all the shifting identities and attitudes he assumed over the course of his controversial life, his persona as an aggravatingly self-aggrandizing solipsist never wavered.

A sharper film could have excavated his contradictions to illuminating effect — the rise of populist, crypto-fascist political movements and their self-ordained maverick leaders being a not-irrelevant phenomenon these days. But Serebrennikov, in love with the posture of the rebel that Limonov adopted without being terribly interested in what, at any given moment, he claimed to be rebelling against, mistakes the trappings for the substance...

Sex is politics and politics is sex in Kirill Serebrennikov’s recklessly beautiful, wildly entertaining English-language debut “Limonov: The Ballad.” This punk rock epic moves at the pace of a train coming off its tracks across Moscow, New York, Paris, and back to Russia again, starring Ben Whishaw in a career-crowning lead performance as the self-styled alternative poet and political dissident Eduard Limonov (who died in 2020). Based on French writer and journalist Emmanuel Carrère’s biographical novel, “Limonov” spans the 1960s to near present-day Siberia to tell with orgiastic excess the life story of the eventual founder of the National Bolshevik Party, which married a far-left youth movement to far-right fascist ideology. But while Limonov’s politics are inextricable from the libertine hedonist he was, Serebrennikov’s film is more a purely pleasurable romantic odyssey than political deep dive, radiating a countercultural energy that smacks of freewheeling ‘70s cinema more...

Reflecting the peculiarities and contradictions of the man who gives the film its title, Limonov: The Ballad is a strange, stilted, inventive, kaleidoscopic, challenging, imaginative and — above all, and perhaps entirely intentionally — irritating biopic of the Russian poet-punk-prisoner-gadfly-neo-Fascist Eduard Limonov (né Eduard Veniaminovich Savenko in 1948). To paraphrase the novelist Julian Barnes’ review of Emmanuel Carrere’s sort-of novel, sort-of biography on which this film is loosely based, Limonov: The Ballad is a work viewers may enjoy having seen more than they would enjoy seeing it.

It’s anybody’s guess how many will make the actual effort to watch this 138-minute ramshackle romp about a man who, before he died in 2020, applauded Russia’s annexation of Crimea and fought on the side of the invaders in Ukraine’s Donbas and Donetsk regions. Limonov’s unsavory sympathies would likely turn off most Western viewers, apart from the fearless fans of dramas about political monsters.

After his epic undertaking of rethinking Irma Vep for a new generation, Olivier Assayas premiered the small-scale Suspended Time at Berlinale earlier this year, but now the French director is back to working on a bigger canvas. He’s unveiled his next project, an adaptation of Giuliano da Empoli’s The Wizard of the Kremlin, with quite a cast.

Paul Dano, his Irma Vep lead Alicia Vikander, Jude Law, Zach Galifianakis, and Tom Sturridge will star in the film, co-written by Assayas and Emmanuel Carrère. Here’s the synopsis: “The story opens in Russia, in the early 1990’s, in the aftermath of the Ussr’s collapse. In a new world that promises freedom and flirts with chaos, a young artist-turned-tv producer, Vadim Baranov, unexpectedly becomes the spin doctor of a promising member of the Fsb (ex-Kgb), Vladimir Putin. Working at the heart of Russian power, Baranov blurs truth with lies,...

Paul Dano, Alicia Vikander, Jude Law, Zach Galifianakis and Tom Sturridge team up in Olivier Assayas’ political thriller “The Wizard of the Kremlin”, based on Giuliano da Empoli’s bestseller by the same name.

Produced by Olivier Delbosc’s banner Curiosa Films and Gaumont – who last partnered on Cannes prizewinning “The Taste of Things” — “The Wizard of the Kremlin” is one of the hottest packages launching at the Cannes Film Market where Alexis Cassanet, Gaumont’s EVP international sales and distribution, is kicking off pre-sales.

“The Wizard of the Kremlin” is co-written by Assayas and Emmanuel Carrère, whose novel “Limonov” has been adapted for the big screen by Kirill Serebrennikov and will premiere in official selection at Cannes.

The story opens in Russia, in the early 1990’s, in the aftermath of the Ussr’s collapse. In a new world that promises freedom and flirts with chaos, a young artist-turned-tv producer,...

Russian director Kirill Serebrennikov to Cannes this year with his fourth film in Competition and his first in English. Titled Limonov: The Ballad, it tells the incredible story of Eduard Limonov — pronounced “Le-morrr-nov” not “Limunuv” — a Russian renegade poet who traversed the world, reinventing himself whenever times got hard (and they usually did). To star, the director chose British actor Ben Whishaw, himself a chameleonic actor who’s just as at home taking tea with the Queen in his Paddington guise as he is playing Hamlet onstage at the Old Vic. Here, he talks about getting to grips with an enigma and recalls his first-ever Cannes for her movie Bright Star in 2009.

Deadline: How did you get involved with this project?

Ben Whishaw: It was during lockdown, so I think it was maybe sent to me around August or September 2020. Goodness… A long time ago now! It was during...

Russian filmmaker Kirill Serebrennikov returns to Cannes once again this year with Limonov: The Ballad starring Ben Whishaw, for which we can share a first-look image from above.

The film’s synopsis reads: A revolutionary militant, a thug, an underground writer, a butler to a millionaire in Manhattan. But also a switchblade-waving poet, a lover of beautiful women, a warmonger, a political agitator, and a novelist who wrote of his greatness. Eduard Limonov’s life story is a journey through Russia, America, and Europe during the second half of the 20th century.

The film was written by Pawel Pawlikowski, Ben Hopkins, and Serebrennikov, based on the novel ‘Limonov’ by Emmanuel Carrère, published in the US by Macmillan Publishers and in France by Pol.

Producers are Mario Gianani and Lorenzo Gangarossa for Wildside, a Fremantle Company, Dimitri Rassam for Chapter 2, a Mediawan Company, Ilya Stewart for Hype Studios and coproduced by...

Female directors are thin on the ground – plus ça change – but the lineup promises intriguing new films from modern day masters, as well as some unknown hot potatoes

• Donald Trump biopic and new films by Yorgos Lanthimos and Andrea Arnold to premiere at Cannes

The new Cannes selection has been unveiled in one of the most tense and fraught geopolitical situations for years, giving even more of a frisson to the traditional rune-reading activity of scrutinising the festival’s list, and scrutinising cinema itself, for contemporary meaning. There is a very prominent Russian director in competition, Kirill Serebrennikov, with his film Limonov: The Ballad, starring Ben Whishaw as Russian opposition leader and poet Eduard Limonov, based on the novel by the veteran French author and public intellectual Emmanuel Carrère. Of course, the point is that Serebrennikov is a notable anti-government figure.

As far as the Gaza situation goes, there is...

A fresh #MeToo case has broken in France with 10 actresses accusing director Philippe Loiret of inappropriate behavior in an investigative report carried out by radio and news network France Info.

According to the report released on Tuesday, the accusations are related to the casting process for Loiret’s 2011 feature All Our Desires, when the director was at the peak of his fame in the wake of award-winning box office hit Welcome starring Mélanie Laurent.

The accusations comes amid France’s recent embrace of the #MeToo movement sparked in large part by actress Judith Godrèche’s decision to speak up about her under-age relationship with director Benoît Jacquot, and filing of an official police complaint him for “rape with constraint”. He has denied the charges.

Loosely adapted from a novel by Emmanuel Carrère, All Our Desires revolved around a young female magistrate suffering from cancer who teams up with an older...

Exclusive: French detective Inspector Adamsberg has returned for another case, and France TV Distribution is opening his latest murder file at MIPTV.

Yvan Attal plays the detective, known in Fred Vargas’ novels as Commissaire Jean-Baptiste Adamsberg, in the two-part special Beyond the Grave: A New Adamsberg’s Case. France Télévisions’ sales arm is launching the title in Cannes.

Adapted by Emmanuel Carrère and based on Vargas’ novel Sur la Dalle, the series also stars Louis-Do de Lencquesaing, Sylvie Testud, Virginie Ledoyen, Olivier De Benoist, Micha Lescot and Eric Caravaca. The book was the second best-selling new novel in France last year.

France 2 is the broadcaster, Passion Films the producer and Josée Dayan is the director. Delivery is expected in Q3 of this year.

In the series, Inspector Adamsberg investigates a murder in a village in Brittany. The main suspect is a local figure, a descendant of the famous writer Chateaubriand.

French mini-major Pathé has acquired Les Films des Tournelles, the production company founded by Anne-Dominique Toussaint whose recent credits include Louis Garrel’s Cesar-winning “The Innocent.”

Besides Garrel, Les Films des Tournelles has worked with a flurry of auteurs on some of their most successful films, including Riad Sattouf’s “The French Kissers,” which won the Cesar for best first film in 2010; Nadine Labaki’s “Caramel”; Emanuele Crialese’s “Respiro”; Valeria Golino’s “Miele”; and Mona Achache’s “The Hedgehog.” “The Innocent” won two prizes at last year’s Cesar Awards and screened at Cannes on the 75th anniversary of the festival.

Toussaint has also worked with Philippe Le Guay and Emmanuel Carrère. Toussaint, whose career spans over three decades, has produced 27 films so far, including iconic French movies such as Martine Dugowson’s “Mina Tannenbaum.”

As part of the deal, Pathé is acquiring Films des Tournelles’ full library while...

Chinese filmmaker Jia Zhangke is set to receive an honorary award at the 55th edition of documentary festival Visions du Reel, taking place in Nyon, Switzerland from April 12-21.

Jia will attend the festival in person, marking his first visit to Europe since the outbreak of Covid-19 in 2020, and is set to present a masterclass exploring how his work explores the history of China and its people.

The festival will host a retrospective of Jia’s work, which has included Still Life, which won the Golden Lion at Venice in 2006, and A Touch Of Sin, which won best screenplay at...

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...

"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...

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...

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,...

Producer Ilya Stewart has launched an independent studio based in Europe that will operate on a global scale, working with international talent and focusing on English-language feature films and television series, Variety can exclusively reveal.

Hype Studios is the new venture from Stewart, the formerly Moscow-based producer who in recent years has been a fixture at the Cannes Film Festival, where his collaborations with Russian auteur Kirill Serebrennikov, including “Petrov’s Flu” and “Tchaikovsky’s Wife,” have premiered in competition.

Among the co-productions with American and European partners currently on Hype Studios’ slate is Zach Wigon’s “Sanctuary,” starring Margaret Qualley and Christopher Abbott, which premieres as a Special Presentation next month at the Toronto International Film Festival and was produced with Rumble Films and Mosaic Films, along with Charades. Also on the slate is Pietro Marcello’s French-language “Scarlet,” produced in partnership with CG Cinéma’s Charles Gillibert, which opened this...

Emmanuel Carrère wasn’t an obvious choice to direct journalist Florence Aubenas’s book about going under cover in the French port city of Caen to explore the non-contract world of the cleaning women who work on the ferries between Ouistreham and Portsmouth.

The director had made two previous films: one was documentary Back To Kotelnigh and the other was The Moustache, with Vincent Lindon, based on his own novel. Aubenas, however, wanted Carrère and no one else and Juliette Binoche declared herself ready for the challenge of getting down and dirty.

The result is a fascinating study of how Binoche manages to follow in Aubenas’s footsteps by gaining the confidence of her co-workers who become the non-professional cast.

Renamed Marianne Winkler in the script, her cover is blown early on when her background is revealed by one of the officials at the local employment agency. She has to justify herself - and.

Spanish Filmin Buys Lars Von Trier’s ‘The Kingdom’ Trilogy

Spanish SVoD Filmin has acquired the entire Lars Von Trier catalogue including The Kingdom trilogy. The deal was struck with Scandi distributor TrustNordisk and includes never-before-seen restored versions of season one and two of The Kingdom, along with the soon-to-launch third. Several territories, including Germany and Austria (Koch Films), Japan (Synca Creations) and South Korea (AtNine) have already acquired the full trilogy. “We are pleased to experience this high level of interest in the series among buyers, who are evidently intrigued and excited about the series’ epic story, director and cast,” said TrustNordisk MD Susan Wendt.

Rtl Closes Croatia Sale

Rtl Group has closed the sale of Rtl Croatia to Central European Media Enterprises. The major transaction, which was first announced more than three months ago, had to make its way through the Croatian Competition Authority and has just been approved,...

Following the tragic passing of Gaspard Ulliel, one of the projects he was attached to has found a new actor. 1917 star George MacKay will now lead Bertrand Bonello’s The Beast alongside Léa Seydoux, Variety reports. Set to begin in August, the decades-spanning dystopian romance thriller is set in both Paris and California and will film in French and English. “Set in the near future where emotions have become a threat,” the synopsis reads, “Seydoux stars as Gabrielle, a woman who has finally decided to purify her DNA in a machine that will immerse her in her past lives and rid her of any strong feelings. But when she meets Louis (Mackay) and although he seems dangerous she feels a powerful connection to him as if she’d known him forever.”

After news broke earlier this year that Bong Joon-ho’s next film would be an adaptation of Edward Ashton...

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,...

Ben Whishaw is to lead Limonov, The Ballad of Eddie, a feature from Kirill Serebrennikov, the Russian filmmaker whose Tchaikovsky’s Wife will play at Cannes.

The film penned by Serebrennikov, Ben Hopkins and Cold War‘s Paweł Pawlikowski is inspired by Emmanuel Carrère’s best-selling novel and tells the story of Eduard Limonov’s life and journey through Russia, the U.S. and Europe during the second half of the 20th century.

Limonov was many things, a revolutionary militant, a thug, an underground writer, a butler to a millionaire in Manhattan, but also a switchblade-waving poet, a lover of beautiful women, a warmonger, a political agitator and a novelist who wrote of his own greatness.

Serebrennikov’s Tchaikovsky’s Wife (Zhena Chaikovskogo) is in competition at Cannes, the fourth from the Russian director following Petrov’s Flu last year, 2018’s Leto and 2016’s Uchenik.

The film is produced by Wildside...

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,...

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.

Exclusive: Former IFC Films Distribution Boss Justin Dipietro is heading to Cohen Media Group as their new Head of Marketing and Distribution.

Dipietro arrives to Cohen Media Group from Netflix where he served as their Director of Sales and Distribution. Dipietro managed theatrical sales for half of the U.S., including the Los Angeles market, and helped develop theatrical release plans and strategies for award-nominated titles, including two 2020 Best Picture Oscar nominees, Mank and The Trial of the Chicago 7.

As the Cohen Media Group gears up for an active 4th quarter and 2022 release schedule, Dipietro will oversee the motion picture releases of critically acclaimed films such as Emmanuel Carrère’s Between Two Worlds starring Juliette Binoche; Memories of My Father directed by Academy Award winning Fernando Trueba; Uberto Pasolini’s Nowhere Special starring James Norton and Daniel Lamont; and the Greek Oscar submission, Apples, among many more.

Dipietro said, “Cohen...

Colcoa Classics to stage Bertrand Tavernier tribute.

The North American Premiere of Emmanuel Carrère’s Cannes Directors’ Fortnight opener Between Two Worlds starring Juliette Binoche will open the in-person 25th Colcoa French film and series festival on November 1.

The event runs until November 7 and will screen 55 films and series at the DGA Theatre in Hollywood with a Colcoa Classics tribute to Bertrand Tavernier.

The closing films are Xavier Giannoli’s recent Venice Film Festival Lost Illusions and Arthur Harari’s 2021 Cannes Un Certain Regard opener Onoda, 10,000 Nights In The Jungle.

The feature line-up includes Leyla Bouzid’s A Tale Of Love And Desire...

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...

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 impish, mischievous air of Juliette Binoche is one of the qualities which mark her as one of the most vivid and interesting actresses working today. The star has mastered the art of deploying a sort of disarming silliness whenever things get too serious, with flashes of humor that only make whatever character she is playing seem that much more alive and real. This talent was recently put to most satisfying use in Claire Denis’ “Let The Sunshine In,” where she allowed audiences to both feel for her desperate character and laugh at her sometimes slightly delusional ideas.

Continue reading ‘Between Two Worlds’: Juliette Binoche’s Beautiful Performance Anchors Emmanuel Carrère’s Working-Class Drama [Cannes Review] at The Playlist.

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...

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.