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On December 5, the IndieWire Honors Winter 2024 ceremony will celebrate the creators and stars responsible for crafting some of the year’s best films. Curated and selected by IndieWire’s editorial team, IndieWire Honors is a celebration of the filmmakers, artisans, and performers behind films well worth toastingIn the days leading up to the event, IndieWire is showcasing their work with new interviews and tributes from their peers.

Ahead, “Emilia Perez” director Jacques Audiard tells IndieWire about the many qualities that set our Spotlight Award winner, Selena Gomez, apart from the crowd.

“She Spent So Many Hours in the Spotlight”* or, Selena the Oxymoron.

First, I must confess that before I knew Selena, I did not know her. What I mean by this is that before I really got to know her, i.e. face to face, I was completely unaware of her fame. I had no idea how many “followers” she had.

France’s film industry is undergoing a new MeToo reckoning, dominating news cycles, policy debates and even the goodie bag of the Cesar Awards’ nominees dinner, which included a flyer headlined, “The cultural sector together against sexist and sexual violence.”

The French #MeToo movement also made its way into the Berlinale, where actor Nora Hamzawi said that director Jacques Doillon’s upcoming film “Third Grade” — in which Hamzawi stars — shouldn’t be released due to the sexual misconduct allegations recently filed against the filmmkaker.

France’s major producers guilds have also issued a statement demanding the National Film Board (Cnc) and the Minister of Culture to put specific guidelines in place. Those demands include the appointment of “experts specialized in the prevention and management of sexual violence to set up a safe environment at the start of every shoot;” additional resources for organizations fighting sexual misconduct; and setting up an...

Two years ago, Souheila Yacoub took a call from an unknown number – and on the other end of line was Denis Villeneuve.

“I was so blacked out thinking how unreal it all was that I didn’t really understand everything that happened,” the actor tells Variety. “All I know is he asked me to read for ‘Dune: Part Two’ and shortly thereafter he offered me the part – and I was trying to stay professional, but on the inside I was crying, ‘This is so surreal!’”

One question the Swiss-born, Paris-based gymnast-turned-actor thought best not to ask was how she found her way onto Villeneuve’s radar to begin with.

“I was so nervous that he’d made mistake – that he was actually thinking of someone else – that I never dared to ask,” she laughs. “So I just signed the contract and showed up on set.”

With a pedigree that includes...

As various critics groups and awards bodies dole out their top films of the year, it can be hard to parse which ones are actually worth paying attention to. Following our top 50 films of 2023, one such list has arrived today with Film Comment’s annual end-of-year survey. Revealed at a special live talk last night, Todd Haynes’s May December, Kelly Reichardt’s Showing Up, and Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon grabbed the top three spots, while Eduardo Williams’s The Human Surge 3, Lisandro Alonso’s Eureka, and Víctor Erice’s Close Your Eyes topped the best undistributed films.

“It speaks to the ongoing vitality of cinema as an art form, as well as the discernment of our critics in the year of ‘Barbenheimer,’ that this year’s top films represent some of the most boundary-pushing, complex movies of recent times—three new classics from contemporary masters,...

NYC Weekend Watch is our weekly round-up of repertory offerings.

Museum of Modern Art

A massive Ennio Morricone retrospective continues with Leone, Pasolini, and more.

Anthology Film Archives

Buñuel’s The Milky Way and Philippe Garrel’s The Virgin’s Bed play in the Jesus Christ retrospective.

Roxy Cinema

They Live plays on 35mm; Home Alone and The Faculty also screen.

Film Forum

The new 4K Days of Heaven restoration is now playing (read our interview with Brooke Adams) while Michael Powell’s career-killing masterwork Peeping Tom continues; The Muppet Christmas Carol plays this Sunday.

Japan Society

Some of Japan’s most radical filmmakers are exhibited in “Taisho Roman: Fever Dreams of the Great Rectitude,” running through Saturday.

Museum of the Moving Image

A career-spanning Todd Haynes retrospective continues with Velvet Goldmine and Poison Keaton’s Our Hospitality plays on Saturday.

IFC Center

It’s a Wonderful Life and Alphaville...

French film critic and historian Michel Ciment, the long-time publishing director of film magazine Positif, has died Monday, French media reported. He was 85.

Ciment first started writing for the Lyon-based magazine in 1963, when he contributed a piece about the cinema of Orson Welles.

The magazine was launched in 1952 shortly after Les Cahiers du Cinéma by Bernard Chardère, who also died this year.

In a talk at Paris’s Forum Des Images in 2022, marking Positif’s 70th anniversary, Ciment recounted how he started reading the magazine in the 1950s as a teenager, while hanging around the Le Minotaure bookshop in the Paris quarter of Saint-Germain-des-Près.

“It was an amazing place where you’d bump into other cinephiles like Jean-Claude Romer, who went on to create [the cinema magazine] Midi Minuit Fantastique,” recounted Ciment.

“There were a lot of people from Les Cahiers and Positif… You couldn’t find the cinema revues in kiosks then.

There's a wonderful little indie distributor based in NYC called Zeitgeist Films, founded in 1988. If you're a die-hard cinephile, you probably already recognize the name. They've supported amazing filmmakers and little films that deserve to be seen in US art house cinemas. From their website, they explain Zeitgeist as: "Distributed over 200 of the finest independent films from the U.S. and around the world including the early works of Todd Haynes, Christopher Nolan, François Ozon, Laura Poitras, Atom Egoyan and the Quay Brothers. Their catalog has also included films from the world's most outstanding filmmakers: Agnes Varda, Guy Maddin, Olivier Assayas, Jia Zhang-ke, Abbas Kiarostami, Derek Jarman, Nuri Bilge Ceylan, Peter Greenaway, Philippe Garrel, Yvonne Rainer, Jan Svankmajer, Margarethe Von Trotta, Andrei Zyvagintsev and Raoul Peck." To celebrate their 35th anniversary, Metrograph is hosting screenings of some of their finest gems. "We're particularly looking forward to reuniting with some of...

Garrel denies all of the accusations that were published in Mediapart.

French New Wave filmmaker and 2023 Berlin Silver Bear-winning director Philippe Garrel has been accused of sexual assault by several women with whom he has worked in his films.

In an investigation conducted by France’s Mediapart, Anna Mouglalis and Clotilde Hesme are among five actresses who allege the 75 year-old director made unwanted advances or offered roles in exchange for sexual favours, all in a professional context.

Garrel maintains his innocence and no official charges have been filed in French courts

The director told Mediapart he has “never kissed a...

Tomas (Franz Rogowski) seems to have it all: a career as a director, marriage to Martin (Ben Whishaw), and the freedom to pursue his desires as he wishes. In Passages’ first scene, he works on his latest film. But he’s alienated Martin, and their marriage is on its last legs. He pursues his desires in a willful, selfish manner; although he’s queer and rather androgynous, his behavior reflects the worst aspects of masculine pretense. His philandering has led to a new relationship with Agathe (Adèle Exarchopoulos), a teacher, but the fact that he barges in on her while she’s working epitomizes his flaws.

Director Ira Sachs’ second film for the French Sbs Productions company is set in a Paris familiar from Maurice Pialat and Philippe Garrel films, but the director brings an outsider’s perspective. Sachs’ style brings an uncomfortable intimacy to Tomas’ relationships, breaking conventional rules...

One of the most puzzling (non-) happenings in international cinema this year is the lack of U.S. distribution for Philippe Garrel’s stellar new drama The Plough. A family affair starring Louis Garrel, Damien Mongin, Esther Garrel, Lena Garrel, Francine Bergé Aurélien Recoing, Mathilde Weil, and Asma Messaoudene, the film about a company of puppeteers premiered at Berlinale this year and is still looking for a home here. However, it’ll open in France this September, and with it the first trailer has arrived.

Rory O’Connor said in his Berlinale review, “In 1947, ten years before becoming an actor, Philippe Garrel’s father, Maurice, joined a company of puppeteers. That piece of history is like a well of inspiration in The Plough, Garrel’s latest cinematic family affair and a film as effortless as they come. It stars all three of Philippe’s children––Louie, Lena, and Esther––as brother...

The Berlinale has announced that the film festival will make programming changes beginning next year amid budget cuts leading into the 2024 season.

The 74th annual festival is set to run from February 15 to 25 next year, but without signature programming like the episodic section, the German filmmaking spotlight, and more. Berlinale is the largest public film festival in the world and will cut its total number of films to approximately 200, as opposed to the 287 films that screened across all sections in 2023. Each section, except for the main competition, will present fewer films starting in 2024. Potsdamer Platz and the prestigious Berlinale Palast will remain the heart of the festival, serving as the central point for the festival’s city-wide network.

“Like many other areas of society, cultural institutions and festivals are affected by considerable cost increases but unchanged budgets,” the festival executives said in a statement shared with IndieWire. “Keeping this in mind,...

Kohn’s Corner is a weekly column about the challenges and opportunities of sustaining American film culture.

Chances are that if you care about international cinema, you care about the French New Wave. A loose collective of young directors who came to define their country’s cinema as the 1950s gave way to the ’60s, the French New Wave gave cinema permission to be audacious and uncompromising while bolstering its style and personality. It was cool with purpose.

Jacques Rozier, the last living member of the Nouvelle Vague, died this week at 96. Rozier was a blind spot for me, but the French New Wave was my guide to grasping what the movies could be.

As a teenager, Jean-Luc Godard’s “Breathless” got me excited about the possibilities of the movies like nothing that came before. Francois Truffaut’s “The 400 Blows” was a formative encounter with the expansive possibilities of the coming-of-age story.

NYC Weekend Watch is our weekly round-up of repertory offerings.

Film at Lincoln Center

Béla Tarr’s Werckmeister Harmonies begins showing in a long-overdue restoration.

Roxy Cinema

A new 35mm print of Philippe Garrel’s Nico-scored The Inner Scar screens this weekend, as does a print of Cocteau’s Beauty and the Beast; The Heartbreak Kid and 4K restoration of Dogville play, while “City Dudes” returns on Saturday.

Museum of the Moving Image

A 35mm print of Blow Out leads the pack on “See It Big: Summer Movies,” while Morocco and The Fly play in a queer cinema series.

Anthology Film Archives

An Udo Kier retrospective continues; Dreyer plays in Essential Cinema.

IFC Center

The David Lynch retrospective continues; Party Girl plays in new 4K restorations, while A Clockwork Orange, They Live, and Aliens have late showings; João Pedro Rodrigues’ O Fantasma plays on Saturday.

Film Forum

A retrospective on New York movies is underway,...

For the second time in a month, a mid-level comic book franchise opened to disappointment. “Shazam!: Fury of the Gods” (Warner Bros. Discovery) grossed $30.5 million in domestic sales.

That’s more than 40 percent down from the initial DC Comics film in 2019 (with ticket prices at least 15 percent lower). At $35 million, international territories were no better: China grossed $4.4 million in over 21,000 locations for less than a $210 per-theater average. At a reported production cost of $125 million before significant marketing costs, this will likely lose money.

Wbd vacated the film’s Christmas date, trading the potential for accelerated holiday interest for access to premium screens and playing during spring vacation. Smart strategy, but the payoff still wasn’t there.

DC is not alone in this plight; Marvel’s “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania” (Disney) struggles to reach $500 million worldwide. Don’t expect either character to return as more than part of an ensemble.

That English-language cinema has no parallel for the Garrel family is equal testament to their legacy and our shallow, piddling culture. While Philippe Garrel’s decades-long filmmaking career––which began with political documentation and silent features, but now represents modern cinema’s best studies of romance and longing––just added to its corpus his excellent The Plough, starring progeny Louis Garrel, Esther Garrel, and Lena Garrel, Louis is about to see the U.S. debut of The Innocent, his fourth feature in writing-directing-starring capacities.

If it barely resembles his father’s films––still attuned to human behavior, but packaging observations inside madcap scenarios Garrel proudly calls “completely unbelievable”––that’s all the better: watching The Innocent suggests less an heir to Philippe Garrel than Dino Risi or Pierre Etaix.

Ahead of a release this Friday beginning at NYC’s IFC Center, I talked to Garrel about the difficulty of constructing an intricate comedy-thriller,...

European Film Promotion (Efp), an international network of film promotion institutes from 37 countries, is heading back to Hong Kong’s FilMart for its in-person return.

“It wasn’t clear if the reopening of the market [post-pandemic] will immediately lead to business, but people want to reconnect with local companies,” observes deputy managing director Jo Mühlberger.

This year, 28 sales companies from five European countries will be joining Efp’s Europe! Umbrella (22 onsite and six online). Most of them hail from France, as Unifrance won’t have its own stand, explains Mühlberger.

“Some could say it’s naïve to go there so soon, but these professionals know what they are doing. They really have something to offer, including Berlinale winners. In some Asian territories, awards still sell,” he says.

Among the titles presented this year, eight were awarded at the German fest, including “The Plough” by Philippe Garrel (pictured), sold by Wild Bunch,...

In 1947, ten years before becoming an actor, Philippe Garrel’s father, Maurice, joined a company of puppeteers. That piece of history is like a well of inspiration in The Plough, Garrel’s latest cinematic family affair and a film as effortless as they come. It stars all three of Philippe’s children––Louie, Lena, and Esther––as brother and sisters; the patriarch role is filled by Louie’s godfather, Aurélien Recoing, whose own father worked alongside Maurice all those years ago. The grandmother is played by Francine Bergé––no relation, but maybe the performance of the lot. A briskly charming, bracingly anachronistic, sometimes achingly sensual film, it tracks the company in their late halcyon days as well as the siblings’ strained attempts to keep things going once their father dies.

Curiously, The Plough is Garrel’s first color film since A Burning Hot Summer, a maligned work from 2011 that was,...

Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI, and sign up for our weekly email newsletter by clicking here.NEWSOn the Adamant.The Berlinale wrapped up over the weekend. The Golden Bear was awarded to Nicolas Philibert’s On the Adamant, while other major prizes went to Christian Petzold, Philippe Garrel, Angela Schanelec, and Dp Hélène Louvart. You can browse the full list of winners on Notebook, and keep your eyes peeled for our reports.In other festival news: Ruben Östlund will preside over this year’s Cannes jury, and the full lineup has been unveiled for Film at Lincoln Center and MoMA’s New Directors/New Films.The pioneering Senegalese filmmaker Safi Faye—the first African woman to make a commercially distributed feature film—died last week at the age of 80. Writer and programmer Yasmina Price recently surfaced a thread of archival material,...

The 73rd Berlin International Film Festival came to a close this past weekend, and despite speculation that Sundance import “Past Lives” or Lila Avilés’ “Tótem” would take the Golden Bear, the jury, led this year by Kristen Stewart, awarded it to the French documentary “On the Adamant.” Directed by Nicolas Philibert, the movie follows operations at the Parisian Centre de jour l’Adamant, a floating medical facility on the Seine that offers its patients innovative forms of art therapy.

Jordan Mintzer (The Hollywood Reporter) writes, “While documenting the daily routine of a small clinic that most Parisians walk by without ever noticing, ‘On the Adamant’ ultimately becomes a moving testament to what people are capable of, if they could just find the right place to do it.” Guy Lodge (Variety) compares the film to Philibert’s “To Be and To Have,” which is set inside a single-room schoolhouse in rural France,...

A tiny visual suture at the very beginning of Philippe Garrel’s The Plough inadvertently attests to two different formats being stitched together. The letters of the production company/financing body credits have slightly serrated edges against a dark grey background and clearly come from a digital file, while the subsequent dedication and title card have smooth-lined lettering against a perceptibly darker black, with a few scratches further confirming their celluloid origin. Somebody output those titles to 35mm, then scanned them back in, which speaks to differing deliverables standards for different parts of the chain, as well as to Garrel’s loyalty to the medium (he’s […]

The post Berlinale 2023: The Plough first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

A tiny visual suture at the very beginning of Philippe Garrel’s The Plough inadvertently attests to two different formats being stitched together. The letters of the production company/financing body credits have slightly serrated edges against a dark grey background and clearly come from a digital file, while the subsequent dedication and title card have smooth-lined lettering against a perceptibly darker black, with a few scratches further confirming their celluloid origin. Somebody output those titles to 35mm, then scanned them back in, which speaks to differing deliverables standards for different parts of the chain, as well as to Garrel’s loyalty to the medium (he’s […]

The post Berlinale 2023: The Plough first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

The gender-neutral acting prize was won by Spain’s Sofía Otero for ’20,000 Species of Bees’.

Nicolas Philibert’s documentary On The Adamant, about a floating care centre in Paris, was awarded Golden Bear for best film at the Berlin International Film Festival tonight (February 25).

The film, which is being handled internationally by Les Films du Losange, is the fourth documentary to take top honours at the Berlinale.

German films found particular favour with the jury, presided over by Kristen Stewart, with no less than three of the Bear statuettes going to local productions: the Silver Bear Grand Jury award for Christian Petzold’s Afire,...

The documentary “On the Adamant” has been named the best film of the 2023 Berlin International Film Festival, Berlin organizers announced on Saturday.

The film from director Nicolas Philibert follows life in a daycare center located on the Seine in Paris for adults with mental disorders. It is the first documentary to win the festival’s top prize since “Fire at Sea” in 2016.

German director Christian Petzold won the Silver Bear Grand Jury Prize, essentially the runner-up award, for his drama “Afire,” while Philippe Garrel won the directing award for “The Plough.” The gender-neutral acting prizes went to Sofia Otero for “20,000 Species of Bees” in the leading performance category and Thea Ehre for “Till the End of the Night” in the supporting category.

The jury president was actress Kristen Stewart. The other jurors were actress Goldshifteh Farahani, directors Valeska Grisebach, Radu Jude and Carla Simón and Johnnie To and casting director Francine Maisler.

On The Adamant Photo: Courtesy of Berlinale

Nicolas Philibert’s documentary On The Adamant, about a floating mental healthcare facility on the Seine, has won the Golden Bear for best film at the Berlin International Film Festival.

Gerrman director Christian Petzold took the Silver Bear Grand Jury for his tale of a writer struggling to forge connections on a beach retreat Afire. French director Philippe Garrel won the Silver Bear for best director for The Plough, which tells the tale of a family of puppeteers. The Silver Bear Jury Prize went to Portugal’s Joao Canijo for drama Bad Living.

The award for best leading performance - now a gender neutral prize - was won by Spain’s Sofía Otero for 20,000 Species Of Bees, directed by Estibaliz Urresola Solaguren.

Competition

Golden Bear for Best Film - On The Adamant, dir. Nicolas Philibert Silver Bear Grand Jury Prize – Afire,...

After the misery of the 2022 Berlin Film Festival, held toward the tail-end of the pandemic and with strict social distancing and Covid testing regulations still in place, it was back to normal at this year’s 73rd edition.

Festivalgoers were so pleased to return to a proper, physical event that they were remarkably tolerant toward a competition programme that was very patchy, at least by comparison with those found in rival events like Cannes and Venice.

The Berlinale launched with Rebecca Miller’s quirky new romantic comedy, She Came to Me, starring Peter Dinklage as an opera composer with writer’s block, Anne Hathaway as his neurotic therapist wife, and the scene-stealing Marisa Tomei as a salty, seafaring but very amorous tugboat captain. This was a film with such oddball charm that it was easy to overlook its self-indulgence. Festivals can take themselves far too seriously. She Came to Me...

Winners have been announced at the 73rd Berlin Film Festival, with On the Adamant by Nicolas Philibert scooping the coveted Golden Bear prize as the best film of the festival’s International Competition. Scroll down for the full list of winners, which were revealed Saturday evening at the Berlinale Palast.

The film chronicles a unique day-care center in the heart of Paris that welcomes adults suffering from mental disorders, offering the kind of care that grounds them in time and space and helps them to recover or keep up their spirits.

Introducing the film, jury head Kristen Stewart said the pic is “masterfully crafted” and acts as “cinematic proof of the vital necessity of human expression.”

Other winners in the International Competition included Philippe Garrel, who picked up the Silver Bear for Best Director for his latest pic Le grand chariot (The Plough). Garrel dedicated the award to the late filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard.

On the Adamant, a documentary by French director Nicolas Philibert that gives an intimate look at the patients and caregivers in a mental health center located on the Seine River in the heart of Paris, has won the 2023 Berlin International Film Festival’s Golden Bear for best film.

For his 11th feature, the 72-year-old Philibert spent months aboard a barge anchored on the Seine in Paris, chronicling a mental health care facility that caters specifically to its patients’ creative needs. His documentary explores issues of creativity and art, of sanity and madness, but does so without applying labels or clear-cut distinctions.

“I don’t like partitions or labels,” Philibert said. “In this film on psychiatry, we were always [careful] to not always distinguish very clearly between patients and carers. I tried to reverse the image we always have of mad people [which I see] as discriminating and stigmatizing. I wanted us to be able,...

As the 2023 Berlin International Film Festival drew to a close, the first of the three major international film festivals began giving out its awards. This year’s Berlin jury was headed by Kristen Stewart, and the selections promised to reflect the actress’ famously good taste in movies. But a strong lineup featuring a variety of innovative films from the world’s top directors ensured that their job was never going to be easy. From a timely documentary about the war in Ukraine to a variety of dramas about men trapped in small spaces (see: “Inside” and “Manhole”), the eclectic collection of films had something for everyone.

At last year’s festival, Carla Simon’s Spanish Drama “Alcarras” won the coveted Golden Bear. Several of the biggest names in global cinema also walked away with big prizes, as Claire Denis won the Silver Bear for Best Director for “Both Sides of the Blade...

Veteran French docmaker Nicolas Philibert was the surprise winner of the Golden Bear at this year’s Berlin Film Festival, taking the prize for his film “On the Adamant,” a poignant observational study of a Paris mental health care facility.

He received the award from jury president Kristen Stewart, after the star offered an extended and plainly heartfelt ode to the film’s humanity and simplicity: “People have gone in circles for thousands of years trying to pin down what can be deemed art, who’s allowed to do it and what determines its value,” she said, citing the boundary-pushing nature of the festival, and namechecking such opposing philosophers on the matter as Aristotle, Barthes, Sontag and Beavis & Butthead, before concluding, “For all of us, you just know it when you see it.”

It was an apt way to introduce a film that stood out in this year’s Competition...

French cinema is populated by intimate dramas that take a random slice of life and explore it to exhaustion, revealing the beauty and pain hidden in everyday lives. And when it comes to the French New Wave, directors such as Philippe Garrel are also concerned about breaking filmmaking conventions, which might lead to absolute classics such as Regular Lovers or polarizing pictures such as The Salt of Tears. Garrel’s latest movie, The Plough (Le Grand Chariot), is bound to be another divisive entry in the filmmaker's filmography, as the director builds a story that’s too slow and auto-referential to connect with a significant part of the audience.

Given the reportedly frequent use of puppets as aids to the therapeutic process, one might expect a family of third-generation puppeteers to be among the most well-adjusted people in the world. Or among the least, given the other connotation of puppetry, as a conduit for demonic, psychotic or otherwise malign energies. Sadly, neither is the case with the clan in Philippe Garrel’s “The Plough,” a featherweight folderol even by the director’s uneven recent standards, which seems mainly conceived as a cozy way for the veteran director to spend a little time reminding his real-life family how much they will miss him when he’s gone. It’s all about relationships but for anyone not surnamed Garrel, trying to find anything much to relate to in “The Plough” is a lonely furrow indeed.

Le Grand Chariot is the puppet theater run by Simon (Aurélien Recoing) alongside his aspiring actor...

‘Music’, ‘The Plough’, ‘20,000 Species Of Bees’ and ‘Bad Living’ have also been scored.

Christian Petzold’s Afire has landed second on Screen’s 2023 Berlin jury grid with a strong 3.4 average.

The German drama received a mix of four-star and three-star ratings from the critics and is just behind Celine Song’s Past Lives which remains leader of the pack on 3.6.

Petzold’s fifth entry at Berlinale’s competition follows a group of friends holidaying by the Baltic Sea.

Next in line for the new titles is Estibaliz Urresola Solaguren’s 20,000 Species Of Bees which received a 2.6 average from critics.

Father Knows Best: Garrel’s Family Affair Flounders in Banality

Although co-credited to the late, great Jean-Claude Carrière and starring a whole gaggle of the Garrel clan, Le grand chariot (The Plough) might be Philippe Garrel’s greatest misfire, an imploding star in his own constellation of cinematic offerings (seeing as it’s title references the star pattern known in the US as The Big Dipper). Also scripted by his spouse, Caroline Deruas-Garrel, this three-generational saga about a group of old school puppeteers is a shoddily assembled affair detached from any real semblance of reality.

Painstakingly sluggish and littered with hollow characterizations strung together as chintzily as a popcorn garland on a trash heaped Christmas tree, Garrel ploughs through his own standard motifs regarding starving artists chasing their dreams while incestuously exchanging bedfellows.…...

Writer, director and occasional actor Philippe Garrel shot his first full-length movie, Marie pour mémoire, when he was only 19. That was amid the turmoil of May 1968, and since then he has made a new feature every few years, becoming a regular fixture in festivals and arthouses, especially in his native France.

Working with unknown or established actors, including Catherine Deneuve and Jean-Pierre Léaud, his intimate tales of emotional unrest — often the same story told again and again, during different epochs, in color or black-and-white — have turned him into a dependable auteur but also an acquired taste. If you don’t like French movies about love, sex, family, adultery and anguish, then you probably won’t like Garrel.

His work has always had an autobiographical bent to it, and one of his best films, 1970’s La Cicatrice Intérieure, starred his girlfriend at the time, Nico of The Velvet Underground. But his latest feature,...

Eight films have screened with 11 more to come.

As the Berlinale Competition nears the halfway point, Celine Song’s Past Lives is leading Screen’s Berlin 2023 jury grid with an average score of 3.6.

The romantic drama is way out in front after receiving five four-star ratings from critics – the highest mark meaning “excellent”.

Anton Dolin from Meduza and Katja Nicodemus from Die Zeit marked it lower, at three and two stars respectively.

Song’s debut feature follows two childhood friends from South Korea who reconnect for a few days in New York. It had its world premiere at Sundance last month.

Exclusive: Wild Bunch International (Wbi) has boarded sales on buzzy Portuguese director, artist and producer Gabriel Abrantes’ upcoming English-language feature Amelia’s Children.

The film is among half a dozen new titles being launched by Wbi at the EFM, alongside a raft of previously announced upcoming films, including Cannes hopefuls such as Hirokazu Kore-Eda’s Monster.

The company is also handling Berlinale Competition selections, Philippe Garrel’s The Plough and Makoto Shinkai’s hotly awaited anime Suzume, and the Panorama title Heroic, which world premiered at Sundance.

Abrante’s psychological thriller Amelia’s Children is his solo feature debut and his first feature since his 2018 Cannes Critics’ Week winner Diamantino (co-directed with Daniel Schmidt).

The film reunites him with its star Carloto Cotta. Other key cast members are Brigette Lundy-Paine (Atypical) and Alba Baptiste (Warrior Nun).

Cotta plays a man whose search for his biological family leads him and his...

“Love to Love You, Donna Summer,” a docu biopic of the iconic disco singer, has been added to the lineup of Berlinale Special.

Directed by Oscar-winning documentary filmmaker Roger Ross Williams (“Music by Prudence”) and Brooklyn Sudano, the film weaves rich archive of unpublished extracts, home video, photographs, artwork, writings, personal audio and other recordings spanning Summer’s life.

Also joining the Berlinale Special roster is “100 Years of Disney Animation – a Shorts Celebration,” which sees Clark Spencer, the Oscar-winning Walt Disney Animation Studios president, sharing his favorite shorts. Among them are rare gems from the earliest days of animation, from the introduction of sound to Mickey Mouse.

The 73rd edition of the Berlin Film Festival will also pay tribute to renowned cinematographer Caroline Champetier who will receive the Berlinale Camera Award. The prize was created in 1986 to honor personalities and institutions who have made a special contribution to filmmaking.

“With her extraordinary body of work,...

Good afternoon Insiders, Max Goldbart here. It’s Oscar noms week, and we’d be rude not to bring you the latest headlines and analysis from the Academy and beyond. Read on.

And The Nominations Are In

Everything Everywhere all at the Oscars: Zac Ntim here reporting after an Oscar noms week in which A24’s multiverse epic Everything Everywhere All at Once scored a leading 11 nominations, while there was plenty to digest on the international side. The film’s haul included Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Actress for Michelle Yeoh, who became the first actress of Asian descent nominated in the category. Writer-directors Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert originally created the role for Jackie Chan. The A24 pic has leapt from plucky underdog to awards frontrunner in a matter of weeks, collecting impressive hauls at BAFTA and numerous others. A nomination for Best Supporting Actress Stephanie Hsu, who...

Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI, and sign up for our weekly email newsletter by clicking here.NEWSNewly-minted Oscar nominee Andrea Riseborough in To Leslie.The 95th Academy Awards unveiled their full list of nominees yesterday. Browse the categories and relevant coverage on Notebook to prepare for the ceremony, airing March 12. (Andrea Riseborough made the cut.)On Monday, the Berlinale announced their main competition lineup, including new films by Angela Schanelec, Christian Petzold, Margarethe Von Trotta, and Philippe Garrel. Meanwhile, their Encounters section features new films from Hong Sang-soo, Dustin Guy Defa, Tatiana Huezo, and more. Notebook has the full lineup here.Last Wednesday, January 18, filmmaker, critic, and producer Paul Vecchiali died at the age of 92. Patrick Preziosi summed up a bit of his impact in his Notebook Primer on Vecchiali’s film company, Diagonale, “a solar system of the utopian possibilities of cinematic community.

Berlin Film Festival artistic director Carlo Chatrian and executive director Mariëtte Rissenbeck unveiled the International Competition and Encounters lineups on Monday for the festival’s 73rd edition, running February 16-26.

“It’s quite an eclectic selection,” Chatrian told the press conference in Berlin this morning. “You will see we tried to include as many genres and cinematic forms as possible.”

Related Story Berlin Film Festival Lineup: Sean Penn, Philippe Garrel, Margarethe Von Trotta & Christian Petzold In Competition — Full List Related Story Sean Penn Documentary On Ukraine And Volodymyr Zelenskyy To Debut At Berlin Film Festival Related Story Berlin Film Festival: Watch Competition Lineup Revealed Live

The International Competition features 18 titles, 15 of them world premieres, involving 19 different territories. Encounters, the Berlinale’s equivalent of Un Certain Regard which was launched in 2020, will showcase 16 films.

Chatrian has stuck with his love of mixing established names, including Philippe Garrel (The Plough), Margarethe von Trotta...

The Berlin Film Festival, held every year in February, the cruelest month of the German winter, has never been able to match the Mediterranean flair of Cannes or Venice, or the laid-back indie cool of Sundance. But when it comes to serious movies, few festivals, big or small, can match the Berlinale.

In place of the big blockbuster movies, Berlin has doubled down on political dramas and documentaries that focus on the real troubles of the world. The war in Ukraine — launched by Russia’s invasion a year ago — will be on screens everywhere this Berlinale. Sean Penn and Aaron Kaufmann’s documentary Superpower, shot just before and after Russia’s invasion, and featuring several interviews with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky, will have its world premiere in Berlin’s Special Screening section and there are three more Ukraine documentaries — Roman Liubyi’s Iron Butterflies, Vitaly Mansky and Yevhen Titarenko’s doc Eastern Front,...

2023 truly begins taking shape with next month’s Berlinale, which will run from February 16 to February 26 and feature more than a few of our most-anticipated films this year. Among them are Christian Petzold’s Afire (Roter Himmel), starring new muse Paula Beer; Hong Sangsoo’s In Water, which will appear in the Encounters section; and Philippe Garrel’s The Plough, once known as La lune crevée starring his three children Louis, Esther, and Lena, and (judging from the still) his first color feature since 2011’s A Burning Hot Summer. Meanwhile: Angela Schanelec will return with Music, and––six years after the wonderful Person to Person––it’s nice spotting a new feature from Dustin Guy Defa, The Adults.

Find the lineup below and head back next month for our coverage of the festival headed by Kristen Stewart’s jury.

Competition

20,000 Species of Bees (Estibaliz Urresola Solaguren)

The Shadowless Tower (Zhang...

The Berlin Film Festival on Monday said that Sean Penn will debut the documentary he shot in Ukraine with Volodymyr Zelenskyy at Berlin next month.

Related Story Berlin Film Festival Lineup: Sean Penn, Philippe Garrel, Margarethe Von Trotta & Christian Petzold In Competition — Full List Related Story Berlin Film Festival: Watch Competition Lineup Revealed Live Related Story Berlin Co-Heads On Securing U.S. Star Power, Asia's Return & Iran-Russia Bans: "One Of Our Goals Was To Bring Back The Glamorous Side That Was Missing"

The doc is titled Superpower and documents Ukraine and President Zelenskyy at the start of Russia’s invasion. Penn shares a co-director credit with Aaron Kaufman.

Introducing the doc, Berlin artistic director Carlo Chatrian said: “This is a documentary film done under very difficult circumstances, but it is also a film that tells the role of art and artists in difficult times.”

Chatrian added that the film features...

18 titles selected for competition, including films by Christian Petzold, Emily Atef, Margarethe Von Trotta and Philippe Garrel.

The 18-strong Competition line-up for the 73rd Berlin International Film Festival has been announced by festival heads Carlo Chatrian and Mariette Rissenbeek.

Scroll down for full list

New films from Christian Petzold, Margarethe Von Trotte, Emily Atef and Lila Avilés are among those selected. Some 15 of the 18 titles are world premieres, with international premieres for Celine Song’s Past Lives after debuting to strong reviews at Sundance; Makoto Shinkai’s animation Suzume, released in Japan last November; and Australia’s The Survival Of Kindness by Rolf de Heer,...

The Berlin Film Festival on Monday unveiled the titles selected for its official competition as well as its sidebar Encounters competitive section.

A total of 18 films have been selected for the international competition with highlights including Christian Petzold’s latest film Roter Himmel (Afire), Margarethe von Trotta directing Phantom Thread star Vicky Krieps in Ingeborg Bachmann — Journey Into the Desert, and Philippe Garrel returns with a new feature titled The Plough.

Scroll down for the full lineup.

This morning the festival also revealed an extra special screening: Actor and filmmaker Sean Penn will debut a documentary titled Superpower, a film shot in Ukraine last year at the outbreak of Russia’s invasion and follows president Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

The Berlin Film Festival takes place February 16-26.

Organizers have already announced more than 100 titles across sidebars spanning Panorama, Forum, and Berlinale Special. The festival had initially done a good job of increasing...

The Berlin International Film Festival unveiled the competition lineup for its 2023 edition on Monday morning, naming the 18 movies that will compete for the coveted Gold and Silver Bears at the 73rd Berlinale.

Berlinale executive director Mariette Rissenbeek and artistic director Carlo Chatrian presented a very international and arthouse-heavy lineup, with a strong focus on politically-charged cinema.

In a late addition, Superpower, Sean Penn and Aaron Kaufman’s documentary on Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky, the Russian invasion of the country and the ongoing war, will have its world premiere in Berlin’s out-of-competition Berlinale Special section. The doc, made for Vice Studios, Aldamisa Entertainment and Fifth Season, is being sold internationally by Fifth Season.

Berlin 2023, taking place a year after Russia’s Feb. 24 invasion, will have a major focus on Ukraine. Even the festival’s official pin will be in the Ukraine colors of blue and yellow.

In competition, German auteur...

Sean Penn, Jesse Eisenberg, Canadian actor-director Matt Johnson, South Korean auteur Hong Sangsoo, and Korean-Canadian director Celine Song are headed to the upcoming Berlin Film Festival.

Berlinale artistic director Carlo Chatrian and executive director Mariëtte Rissenbeck on Monday unveiled the main Competition and Encounters selections for the fest’s 73rd edition, which will feature a rich mix of known names and newcomers, as well as a strong political emphasis.

Penn will be in Berlin with “Superpower,” the doc he co-directed with Aaron Kaufman that depicts the struggle between Volodymyr Zelensky, the actor and comedian who became president of Ukraine, and Russian president Vladimir Putin, as Russia deploys a full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

“Penn was in Kiev shooting a film with Zelensky when the war in Ukraine burst,” Chatrian said at a press conference in Berlin. “Reality made the film change into something less comfortable and more meaningful,” he added. “We...

Le Grande Chariot

Cinema for the Garrels has always been a family affair but Philippe Garrel‘s 28th features feel a tad more special. Starring Louis Garrel, Esther Garrel, Léna Garrel, Aurélien Recoing, Damien Mongin, Francine Bergé, Mathilde Weil, Asma Messaoudene and marionette artists, Le Grande Chariot (formerly known as “La lune crevée”) moved into production early in 2022. Written by the director alongside Jean-Claude Carrière, Arlette Langmann and Caroline Deruas, the story charts the fantastic yet tragic destiny of three puppet artist siblings.

Gist: Three siblings, a father and a grandmother who run a travelling puppet show. When the father dies during a performance, the remaining family members try to keep his legacy alive.…...

A Few Personal Messages, translated into English by Claire Foster, is available from Small Press. Pierre Clémenti runs October 13-31, 2022 at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.Belle de jour (1967). Courtesy of Janus Films.As Pierre Clémenti tells it, Luis Buñuel cast him in Belle de jour (1967) without Clémenti needing to open his mouth. One can understand why; the role, which would be Clémenti’s best known as well as his break-out, needed someone who had as much appeal as they did threat. Belle de Jour is a film built from the fantasies of a housewife, Catherine Devenue’s Séverine, who decides to be a sex worker while her husband is at work. Only appearing an hour into the film, Clémenti’s Marcel, a young criminal, quickly fixates on Séverine. In contrast with the classically handsome but bland Jean Sorel as Séverine’s husband, Marcel could be someone...

Above: French grande for Love in the Afternoon (aka Chloé in the Afternoon) which was the opening night film of the 10th New York Film Festival. Designer tbd.In the catalogue for the 10th New York Film Festival in 1972, festival director Richard Roud looked back on the first decade of the NYFF, musing on the changes in cinema of the previous 10 years: “a greater freedom of subject matter,” “an accompanying new freedom of form,” the obsolescence of “the tightly plotted film,” the rise of personal filmmaking and the inroads of political cinema and documentary techniques into narrative film. He also muses on international movements: the snuffing out of the Czech Renaissance (there were no Czech films in the 1972 festival), the rise of New Hollywood and American independent cinema, and the ebbing of the movement that had in many ways defined the festival to that point, the French New Wave:Some of...