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Jacques Audiard’s Oscar contender Emilia Pérez was the big winner at the 50th César Awards, France’s equivalent of the Oscars, taking best film and best director among multiple honors.

Audiard won best director and best adapted screenplay for Emilia Pérez, and the film also took honors for best sound, best cinematography, best visual effects and best original music.

But Emilia Pérez star Karla Sofía Gascón, who walked the red carpet at the Paris gala, returning to the spotlight for the first time since the eruption of the controversy surrounding her offensive resurfaced tweets, lost out in the best actress race to Hafsia Herzi, who won for her role as a female prison guard in Stéphane Demoustier’s drama Borgo.

Gascón, who is Spanish, skipped Spain’s national film awards, the Goyas, earlier this month following the backlash over her past social media posts. Netflix removed the actress, the...

France’s César Awards mark their 50th ceremony at the Olympia Theatre in Paris this evening with swashbuckler The Count of Monte Cristo, star-crossed romance Beating Hearts and Mexico-set, Spanish language musical Oscar hopeful Emilia Pérez leading the nominations.

Other multi-nominated titles include asylum seeker drama Souleymane’s Story, thriller Misericordia and The Marching Band, a feel-good movie set in a declining manufacturing town in northern France.

Voted on by the just under 5,000 members of the Academy of Cinema Arts and Techniques, or César Academy, France’s equivalent of the Oscars or Baftas celebrate French productions released in the country between January 1 to December 31 of a given year.

“We’re particularly happy this year because there’s a rich variety in the nominations. There’s everything from popular mainstream cinema to more difficult, demanding films, which have found success in festivals, which is also a reflection of the DNA and diversity of French cinema,...

Agat Films – Ex Nihilio’s Muriel Meynard was named producer of the year at France’s Academy of Film Arts & Sciences’ Daniel Toscan du Plantier Prize ceremony held on February 17 in Paris.

The prize is awarded to the French film producer who has made the greatest impact over the past year.

Meynard has been with the Agat Films – Ex Nihilio producing collective since 2006. Her recent credits include Louise Courvoisier’sHoly Cow,Cesar-nominated documentaryMadame Hoffmanand Roberto Minervini’s The Other Side.

Upcoming films include Michel Leclerc’sNot All Men But…and Stéphane Demoustier’sThe Great Arch.

Agat Films – Ex Nihilo...

Agat Films – Ex Nihilio’s Muriel Meynard was named producer of the year at the 18th annual edition of France’s Academy of Film Arts & Sciences’ Daniel Toscan du Plantier Prize ceremony held on February 17 in Paris.

The prize is awarded to the French film producer who has made the greatest impact over the past year.

Meynard has been with the Agat Films – Ex Nihilio producing collective since 2006. Her r;ecent credits include Louise Courvoisier’sHoly Cow,2025 Cesar-nominated documentaryMadame Hoffman,and Roberto Minervini’sThe Other Side.

Upcoming films include Michel Leclerc’sNot All Men But…and Stéphane Demoustier’sThe Great Arch.

The Count of Monte Cristo, Matthieu Delaporte and Alexandre de La Patellière’s retelling of the classic French revenge tale, is the front-runner for this year’s César Awards, scoring 14 nominations, including in the best film and best directing categories.

The period drama, starring Pierre Niney, beat out Jacques Audiard’s Oscar frontrunner Emilia Pérez, which got 12 noms, and Beating Hearts, Gilles Lellouche’s contemporary reimagining of Romeo and Juliet featuring François Civil and Adèle Exarchopoulos, which earned 13 nominations.

Matthieu Delaporte and Alexandre de la Patelliere’s lavish adaptation of Alexandre Dumas’ classic was the biggest French box office hit of last year, drawing close to 10 million viewers for a $40 million local take. Globally, the film has grossed more than $75 million.

Sean Baker’s Palme d’Or winner, and Oscar contender, Anora, is up for the Cesar for best foreign film, against Academy Award hopefuls including Coralie Fargeat’s The Substance,...

“The Count of Monte Cristo,” a three-hour epic adventure adapted from Alexandre Dumas’s literary classic, is leading the race at the Cesar Awards, France’s equivalent to the Oscars, with a whooping 14 nominations. “Beating Hearts,” Gilles Lellouche’s sprawling crime romance, follows shortly with 13 nominations.

A favorite in the Oscar race, Jacques Audiard’s “Emilia Perez” is nominated for 12 Cesar Awards, including best film and actress for Karla Sofía Gascón and Zoe Saldana. The French awards show has highlighted international performers before, notably Kristen Stewart, who won a Cesar nod in 2015 for her supporting role in Olivier Assayas’ “Cloud of Sils Maria.”

It’s worth noting that the two Cesar frontrunners — “The Count of Monte Cristo” and “Beating Hearts” — were also France’s second and third highest grossing local films in 2024. Both movies are produced by Mediawan-owned banners, Chapter 2 and Chi-Fou-Mi (the latter produced “Beating Hearts...

International film biz pros may be gearing up for the Berlinale and its European Film Market in February, but most of Europe’s top buyers were already back on the circuit last week for the Unifrance Rendez-Vous in Paris showcasing French movies, series and talent.

The market component of the 27th edition, running January 14 to 17, swapped its recent location of the swanky Champs-Elysées Avenue eighth arrondissement for the grittier but storied Left Bank neighborhood of Montparnasse.

More than 80 French film and TV sales companies set up residence in the hangar-like Espace Pullman in the shadow of the Montparnasse Tower, to showcase their new French-language wares to 500 buyers from roughly 40 mainly European territories.

After years of being crammed into separate rooms, it was the first time France’s film and TV sales sectors were together in the same space and there was a different kind of energy.

“There’s a real market feel this year,...

Michel Hazanavicius, the Oscar-winning director of “The Artist” whose animated film “The Most Precious of Cargoes” competed at this year’s Cannes and was subject to some backlash due to its depiction of Auschwitz victims, has penned an op-ed denouncing rising antisemitism in France.

Hazanavicius, who is the Jewish son of Holocaust survivors from Eastern Europe, rhetorically asked in French newspaper Le Monde, “Why do I have the impression that more and more people have an issue with the simple fact of addressing the genocide against Jews?”

“Why do I have the impression that as a member of a minority like any other, which has had its share of tragedies, I’ve become a member of the dominant caste, the figurehead of oppression, imperialism and injustice? As if being Jewish had become something really murky, vaguely suspect, possibly detestable. How could I have become so evil in such a short time?...

The Artist Oscar winner Michel Hazanavicius returned to the Cannes Competition this evening with animated fairy tale feature The Most Precious of Cargoes. The warm applause for the film inside the Grand Théâtre Lumière went on for 10 minutes.

Coming in at a tight 81 minutes, it’s the final Competition film to premiere this year.

Hazanavicius applauded during ‘The Most Precious of Cargoes’ ovation #Cannes2024 pic.twitter.com/3TWoUBF6V9

— Deadline Hollywood (@Deadline) May 24, 2024

The voice cast includes the late Jean-Louis Trintignant, Grégory Gadebois, Dominique Blanc and Denis Podalydès.

Hazanavicius wrote the script for The Most Precious of Cargoes, which is based on the novel by Jean-Claude Grumberg. The story centers on a poor woodcutter and his wife who, once upon a time, lived in a great forest. Cold, hunger, poverty and a war raging all around them meant their lives were very hard.

One day, the woodcutter’s wife rescues...

Michel Hazanavicius, the Oscar-winning director of “The Artist,” makes a first foray into animation with “The Most Precious of Cargoes” which world premieres at the Cannes Film Festival on May 24. Adapted from Jean-Claude Grumberg’s bestselling novel, “The Most Precious of Cargoes” is the first animated feature to vie for a Palme d’Or since Ari Folman’s “Waltz With Bashir” in 2008; and it will be the last movie watched by the competition jury, presided over by Greta Gerwig, before the closing ceremony.

Hazanavicius developed the project for years and wrote the script with Grumberg, as well as created the drawings. Oscar-winning composer Alexandre Desplat created the original score. The drama intertwines the fate of a Jewish family, including newborn twins, deported to Auschwitz, with that of a poor and childless woodcutter couple living deep in a Polish forest. On the train to the death camp, the young father wraps...

Studiocanal has unveiled the first clip of Michel Hazanavicius’s “The Most Precious of Cargoes,” an allegorical hand-drawn animated feature which is competing at the Cannes Film Festival. The first animated film to vie for a Palme d’Or since Ari Folman’s “Waltz With Bashir” in 2008, “The Most Precious of Cargoes” is adapted from Jean-Claude Grumberg’s bestselling novel of the same name.

Set during World War II against the backdrop of the Holocaust,” the film has been developed by Hazanavicius, the Oscar-winning filmmaker behind “The Artist,” for many years.Hazanavicius penned the script with Grumberg and created the drawings, with Oscar-winning composer Alexandre Desplat providing the score.

The drama intertwines the fate of a Jewish family, including newborn twins, deported to Auschwitz, with that of a poor and childless woodcutter couple living deep in a Polish forest. On the train to the death camp, the young father wraps...

Iranian filmmaker Mohammad Rasoulof is finally making his way back to the Cannes Film Festival following the controversy surrounding his Un Certain Regard 2023 jury appointment.

Rasoulof was invited to serve on the jury last year but was unable to attend due to Iran’s travel embargo on him. The “There Is No Evil” filmmaker was banned from leaving Iran after being arrested in July 2022 for posting statements criticizing government-sanctioned violence against protesters. Rasoulof was later temporarily released in February 2023 due to ongoing health concerns. He was later pardoned and sentenced to one year of penal servitude and a two-year ban from leaving Iran on the charge of “propaganda against the regime.”

Now, Rasoulof is debuting his latest feature “The Seed of the Sacred Fig” in competition at the festival. While the plot remains under wraps, there is no word on whether Rasoulof will attend the festival. Variety first reported the news.

After announcing a whopping number of English-language films in competition, Cannes Film Festival has added some international titles: Michel Hazanavicius’ animated feature “The Most Precious of Cargoes” and Iranian filmmaker Mohammad Rasoulof’s “The Seed of the Sacred Fig,” Variety has learned.

An auteur-driven allegorical feature, “The Most Precious of Cargoes” (first-look still below) is adapted from Jean-Claude Grumberg’s bestselling novel of the same name, set during World War II against the backdrop of the Holocaust. It will be the first animated feature to compete in more than a decade, since Ari Folman’s “Waltz With Bashir” in 2008.

The film is co-produced and represented internationally by Studiocanal, which also has Gilles Lellouche’s “Beating Hearts” in competition. “The Most Precious of Cargoes” is a passion project for Hazanavicius, the Oscar-winning filmmaker behind “The Artist,” who has been developing the project for years. Hazanavicius penned the script with Grumberg and created the drawings,...

Christopher Abbott is returning to his indie roots and reuniting with his 2015 filmmaking collaborator Josh Mond for upcoming feature “It Doesn’t Matter.”

Abbott, who recently appeared in “Poor Things” and is set to lead Universal’s “Wolfman,” stars opposite Jay Will in the dramedy revolving around the redemptive relationship between a lost man from Staten Island and a young filmmaker.

“It Doesn’t Matter” premieres at the Acid programming section, run by France’s Association for the Diffusion of Independent Cinema (Acid) and takes place parallel to the Cannes Film Festival. “It Doesn’t Matter” is writer/director Mond’s first movie since his breakout Sundance 2015 directorial debut “James White,” which also starred Abbott.

In addition to directing, Mond previously produced Sean Durkin’s “Martha Marcy May Marlene” and Antonio Campos’ “Simon Killer.” “It Doesn’t Matter” is his sophomore film.

Mond teased “It Doesn’t Matter” to IndieWire in 2015, saying that while the...

Cannes parallel section Acid, run by France’s Association for the Diffusion of Independent Cinema (Acid), has unveiled its 2024 line-up. (scroll down for full list)

This year’s selection world premieres nine features, three of which are documentaries.

They include It Doesn’t Matter, the second feature by U.S. producer and director Josh Mond, who made waves with his first movie James White at Sundance in 2015, and has since focused mainly on producing.

Christopher Abbott and Jay Will star in the drama revolving around the redemptive relationship between a lost man from Staten Island and a young filmmaker.

Launched in 1992, Acid previously showcased the early features of the likes of Oscar winner Justine Triet and Oscar-nominated director Kaouther Ben Hania as well as award winning filmmakers Radu Jude, Guy Maddin and Robert Guediguian.

Cannes 2023 Palme d’Or winner Triet’s first feature Age of Panic (La Bataille de Solférino...

Both features will form part of Paris-based mk2 films’ line-up at Unifrance’s Rendez-Vous in Paris event this week.

mk2 films, the sales outfit behind Anatomy Of A Fall and How To Have Sex, has acquired Jonathan Millet’s thriller Ghost Trail and Laetitia Dosch’s high-concept comedy Who Let the Dog Bite? ahead of the Rendez-Vous with French Cinema that opens tomorrow in Paris.

Inspired by real-life events, Ghost Trail is about a Syrian man pursuing some of the people who perpetrated horrors in the name of the regime during the civil war. His mission takes him to France...

The film is about two brothers who discover each other later in life and bond over a love of music.

Playtime has scooped international sales to Emmanuel Courcol’s social comedyThe Marching Band starring Benjamin Lavernhe, whose credits include L’Abbé-Pierre: A Century Of Devotion and Jeanne Du Barry.

Produced by Agat Films and now in post, the €6.5m film follows a successful orchestra conductor with discovers he was adopted and has a younger brother. Pierre Lottin co-stars.

The film is produced by Marc Bordure and Robert Guédiguian’s prolific Agat Films of Godard by Godard, Amore Mio and Holly,...

The film is about two brothers who discover each other later in life and bond over a love of music.

Playtime has scooped international sales to Emmanuel Courcol’s social comedyThe Marching Band starring Benjamin Lavernhe, whose credits include L’Abbé-Pierre: A Century Of Devotion and Jeanne Du Barry.

Produced by Agat Films and now in post, the €6.5m film follows a successful orchestra conductor with discovers he was adopted and has a younger brother. Pierre Lottin co-stars.

The film is produced by Marc Bordure and Robert Guédiguian’s prolific Agat Films of Godard by Godard, Amore Mio and Holly,...

Playtime will launch sales on Emmanuel Courcol’s new social comedy The Marching Band, about two brothers separated by fate and reunited by music, at the upcoming Unifrance Rendez-vous in Paris next week.

The €6.5M production, which is currently in post-production, is actor-director-screenwriter Courcol’s third theatrical feature after Ceasefire and The Big Hit.

Benjamin Lavernhe, seen recently in Maïwenn’s Jeanne du Barry, stars as successful orchestra conductor Thibaut Désormeaux, who is hoping his sister is a compatible bone marrow donor to treat a rapidly progressing leukaemia.

His DNA results reveal instead that he is adopted. On confronting his mother, he discovers he has a younger brother, played by Pierre Lottin, who was raised in more modest conditions and is now a factory worker.

This brother shares his musical talent and is a member of the local marching band. Thibault decides to nurture this gift and help his brother...

No reasonably intelligent person imagines an artist’s statement about the horrors in Gaza would, in fact, end those horrors, but there are always limits to what one can take and hopes for what one could do. It might even be said that, as observers of the world and human behavior, filmmakers are especially inclined to recoil. When I interviewed Pedro Costa last month he spoke, unprompted, of a situation that’s only grown worse: “It’s very clear that we cannot stand images anymore. I can’t. I can’t. The images of the world for me [Exhales] I can’t. I turn my eyes, and I’m sure you do the same. It’s unbearable.” When I spoke with Anthony Dod Mantle a couple of weeks later it, again, emerged––vis-a-vis The Zone of Interest, whose own cinematographer alluded to it the next day. It’s difficult being a person in the world,...

Festival’s future seemed to hang in the balance after council funding was halved in May

France’s Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival has confirmed that, despite severe budget cuts, it will take place in February but with a reduced programme.

The organisers of the world’s biggest short film festival have reduced the number of shorts selected in two of its competition programme and have increased ticket prices.

The festival’s future seemed to hang in the balance in May after the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes regional council voted to cut its funding by half from €210,000 to €100,000 for the 2023 financial year.

The...

Festival’s future seemed to hang in the balance after council funding was halved in May

France’s Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival has confirmed that, despite severe budget cuts, it will take place in February but with a reduced programme.

The organisers of the world’s biggest short film festival have reduced the number of shorts selected in two of its competition programme and have increased ticket prices.

The festival’s future seemed to hang in the balance in May after the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes regional council voted to cut its funding by half from €210,000 to €100,000 for the 2023 financial year.

The...

More than 300 leading figures from the French film and TV world have gotten behind a petition decrying controversial pension reforms spearheaded by the government of President Emmanuel Macron.

French stars Juliette Binoche, Audrey Fleurot, Camille Cottin, Swann Arlaud, Jeanne Balibar, Bérenice Béjo, Laure Calamy, Camille Cottin, Pierre Deladonchamps and Noémie Merlant; directors Michel Hazanavicius, Alice Diop, Kim Chapiron, Maimouna Doucouré, Robert Guédiguian and Alain Guiraudie, as well as producer Saïd Ben Saïd were among the signatories.

“It is high time to make our voices heard, because cinema, theater, culture, even if they sometimes offer dreams and a means of escape, above all speak of our world,” read an open letter to Macron accompanying the petition.

The petition was launched under the banner of the Cinema Entertainment Collective on the Liberation newspaper website on Thursday afternoon, as a national strike brought public services to a standstill and saw outbreaks of violence...

Update: French actors Juliette Binoche, Marion Cotillard, Melanie Laurent, Isabelle Huppert and Charlotte Gainsbourg are among those who have cut off locks of their hair in support of the Iranian protests against the death of Mahsa Amini.

In a video posted to Instagram, the actors are among a number of French industry members who are seen trimming locks of their hair. In Binoche’s case, the “Both Sides of the Blade” actor defiantly lobs off entire inches of her dark hair, while declaring “For freedom!”

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A post shared by Soutien Femmes Iran (@soutienfemmesiran)

The video campaign, which uses the hashtag #HairForFreedom, was organized by Richard Sedillot, with Julie Couturier and Christiane Feral Schuhl.

“It is impossible not to denounce again and again this terrible repression,” reads a statement posted with the video. “There are already dozens of dead men and women, including children. The arrests only swell,...

Oscar-winning director Michel Hazanavicius (“The Artist”) has unveiled his first-ever animation film project at the Annecy Intl. Animation Film Festival.

Entitled “The Most Precious of Cargos,” it is an adaptation of the eponymous best-selling book by acclaimed French playwright and children’s books author Jean-Claude Grumberg, who is co-writing the film with Hazanavicius.

Told in the form of a classic fairy tale in 2D animation, it is set during World War II, and tells the story of a poor woodcutter and his wife who live deep in the Polish forest. To the woman’s despair, the couple have no children.

One day, while foraging for food, she sees a bundle fall out of what she believes to be a cargo train crossing the forest. Inside is a baby girl who was thrown from the train by her Jewish father – whose wife no longer has enough milk to feed both his...

Legendary French stage and screen actor Michel Bouquet has died. He was 96. The César Award winner passed away today at a Paris hospital, his spokesperson confirmed to Afp. A tribute on the official website of the Elysée Palace did not cite a cause of death.

Hollywood & Media Deaths In 2022: Photo Gallery

Born in 1925, Bouquet began his film career in 1947 and went on to appear in more than 100 movies. In the 1960s and ’70s, he collaborated with New Wave directors François Truffaut and Claude Chabrol in such films as Truffaut’s The Bride Wore Black and Mississippi Mermaid and Chabrol’s The Unfaithful Wife and Just Before Nightfall, among others.

Later in his career, Bouquet won a European Film Award for Jaco Van Dormael’s Toto Le Héros (1991) and took two Best Actor Césars for Anne Fontaine’s How I Killed My Father (2001) and Robert Guédiguian’s The Last Mitterand...

As many as 85 films and a record 55 market premieres will screen at the Rendez-Vous in Paris, a week-long event organized by French promotion org Unifrance.

The event will open on Monday with the world premiere of “Simone: A Journey of the Century,” a biopic of Simone Veil, an Auschwitz survivor who became health minister of France and championed the 1975 law that legalized abortion in France. Directed by Olivier Dahan (“La Vie en rose”), the movie is headlined by Elsa Zylberstein, who completely transformed for the role. Other Angle has sold it to Samuel Goldwyn for North America, along with a string of international deals.

The lineup of market premieres includes Cédric Klapisch’s music-filled movie “Rise”; Patrice Leconte’s detective film “Maigret” with Gérard Depardieu; Fred Cayavé’s World War II-set drama “Farewell Mr. Haffmann” with Daniel Auteuil; Louis-Julien Petit’s social comedy “The Kitchen Brigade”; Jérôme Bonnell’s romantic...

One of several animated biopics about to segue from the festival circuit to the big screen, “Josep” is a slim but engaging tribute to the legacy of Spanish artist Josep Bartolí (1910-95), a Catalonian republican whose Goya-esque drawings of his time in French concentration camps inspired the film’s Gallic helmer and art director Aurel (birth name Aurélien Froment), himself an acclaimed press illustrator and cartoonist. The film serves as a sharp reminder of the ignominious fate of some of the 500,000 Spanish refugees fleeing Franco’s anti-fascist forces in early 1939, and it also highlights the power of drawing to bear witness.

Like the forthcoming Danish animated documentary “Flee,” “Josep” was a selection of the 2020 Cannes Film Festival forced to cancel because of the coronavirus. It went on to win France’s César for best animated film and the European Film Award for best animated feature, as well as a slew of other festival prizes.

Milcho Manchevski, Pablo Berger.

Co-productions from French director Michel Hazanavicius and Belgian filmmaking duo Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne are among 24 selected for funding in the latest Eurimages round.

Hazanavicius, whose 2011 title The Artist which won five Oscars including best picture and director, receives €470,000 towards Franco-Belgian animation The Most Precious Of Cargoes.

Adapted from a 2019 novel by French writer Jean-Claude Grumberg, the animated film is set during the Second World War, when a Jewish father throws one of his twins from the train to Auschwitz in a desperate attempt to save him. The boy is then discovered by a childless Polish couple.

About 100 celebrated French filmmakers warn against a new media chronology that would be too favourable to streaming platforms. Jacques Audiard, Arnaud Desplechin, Claire Denis, Olivier Assayas, Michel Hazanavicius, Laurent Cantet, Stéphane Brizé, Olivier Nakache and Éric Toledano, Robert Guédiguian, Emmanuel Mouret, Michel Ocelot, Agnès Jaoui, Pierre Salvadori, Cédric Klapisch, Catherine Corsini, Philippe Faucon, Rachid Bouchareb, Emmanuel Finkiel, Claire Simon, Philippe Lioret, Philippe Le Guay, Martin Provost, Nicolas Philibert, Bruno Podalydès, etc. In an open letter published today in the daily newspaper Le Monde, a very large number of some of the most prestigious French filmmakers add their voices to the debate, just as the 31 March deadline for the interprofessional negotiation regarding the reform of France’s media chronology rears its head. If no agreement is reached, then it is the government that will decide on this reform, which concerns the timing and rhythm of films’ screening windows across various...

The company unveiled its French slate for the first half of 2021 at the online edition of Unifrance Rendez-Vous with French Cinema.

Paris-based mk2 films has launched sales on Robert Guédiguian’s youthful 1960s West Africa-set love story Mali Twist at this year’s Unifrance Rendez-Vous with French Cinema, which is running online from January 13 to 15.

The company has unveiled a first look image (see above) of the feature set against the backdrop of the febrile atmosphere of post-Colonial Mali, where youngsters danced to rock and roll music in the capital of Bamako against a backdrop of dreams of political renewal.

Juliette Schrameck, the former managing director of MK2 Films (“Portrait of a Lady on Fire”), will be joining the well-established French production company Agat Films starting Sept. 1.

Schrameck, who stepped down from MK2 Films in April after a 10-year tenure, will be partner and producer at Agat Films.

While at MK2 Films, Schrameck co-produced many prestige projects from renowned auteurs, notably Pawel Pawlikowski ‘s Oscar-nominated “Cold War,” as well as films by Jia Zhang Ke and Joachim Trier. During Schrameck’s run, the company also had five films in competition at Cannes two years in a row in 2018 and 2019, including Celine Sciamma’s “Portrait of a Lady on Fire” and Mati Diop’s “Atlantics.”

At Agat Films, Schrameck will be aiming to tap into her deep knowledge of world cinema, relationships with auteurs and knowledge of the international market to give Agat Films a more global footprint. She will be...

Arab Blues Photo: Courtesy of London Film Festival/Carole Bethuel The French Film Festival has announced it will screen a streamlined programme for its 28th edition across dates in November and December.

The programme, which is still a work in progress, will feature films including culture-clash comedy Arab Blues and Papicha - which sees teens fighting fundamentalism - alongside classics like Costa-Gavras' murder mystery The Sleeping Car Murders. Other familiar names joining the line-up include Robert Guédiguian, whose heartfelt family drama Gloria Mundi will also screen.

Festival director Richard Mowe said: "We felt it important that the 28th edition of the French Film Festival UK should continue to keep faith with our colleagues in cinemas and our loyal and enthusiastic audiences stretching from Shetland to Plymouth. The festival will follow the guidelines for distancing and self-protection."

The programme so far - with further titles due to be announced later this...

The Eurimages Fund is supporting 28 features.

European support body Eurimages has selected 28 features for a total of €6.1m ($6.9m) funding, including new works by Robert Guédiguian and Jim Sheridan.

French filmmaker Guédiguian – who has directed 21 features since 1981 including his most recent, Venice 2019 selection Gloria Mundi – receives €470,000 for France-Canada co-production Bamako Twist.

Ireland’s Sheridan, who has been nominated for six Oscars across his career since his breakthrough debut feature My Left Foot, receives €280,000 for Ireland-uk-France documentary In Absentia, co-directed with Colm Quinn. The documentary looks into the murder of French producer Sophie Toscan Du Plantier in Ireland, in December 1996.

Other...

New projects by Tarik Saleh, Robert Guédiguian, Vaclav Kadrnka, Paco Plaza and Carla Simón, among the selection. At its 158th meeting held online due to the current health crisis, the Board of Management of the Council of Europe's Eurimages Fund agreed to support 19 fiction films, 2 animation films and 7 documentary projects for a total amount of €6,138,000. The share of eligible projects with female directors examined at this Eurimages Board of Management meeting was 34%; 37.5% of the projects supported were directed by women and € 2,078,000 was awarded to these projects, representing 34% of the total amount awarded. The projects selected: Sabattier Effect - Eleonora Veninova (North Macedonia/Serbia)Lucy goes Gangsta - Till Endemann (Germany/Netherlands)Sleep - Jan-Willem Van Ewijk (The Netherlands/Belgium)Pink Moon (ex Methusalem) - Floor van der Meulen (The Netherlands/Italy/Slovenia)Kerr - Tayfun Pirselimoglu (Turkey/Greece/France)Storm - Erika Calmeyer (Norway/Sweden)Three - Juanjo Giménez...

Filming will begin on 24 February in Africa on the 22nd feature from the Marseilles-born filmmaker. Produced by Agat Films & Cie and sold by mk2 Films. Although he very rarely works with performers outside of a the small circle of actors he has cast since the very beginning of his long career, Robert Guédiguian will try something completely different in Twist à Bamako, his 22nd feature (which will begin filming on 24 February). Featuring a totally different cast, the film will also be set in the 1960s and take place in Africa. The cast will be led by Alicia Da Luz Gomes, Stéphane Bak (well received in The Mercy of the Jungle and noticed in Farewell to the Night and Elle) and Burkina Faso actor Isaka Sawadogo (seen in White People and The Paradise Suite) who will be supported by Saabo Balde, Ahmed Dramé (nominated for the Most Promising...

The Cnc is also throwing its weight behind films put forward by Ursula Meier, Robert Guédiguian, Philippe Faucon, Tony Gatlif, Mona Achache and the duo composed of Alain Gagnol and Jean-Loup Felicioli. Seven projects were selected during the 5th and final session of the Cnc’s second advance on receipts 2019 committee. Standing out amongst these is Le temps d’aimer which will be Katell Quillévéré’s fourth feature film following on from 2010’s Love Like Poison (screened in Cannes’ Directors’ Fortnight 2010 and the winner of the Prix Jean Vigo), Suzanne and Heal The Living (unveiled in Venice’s Orizzonti line-up in 2016 before participating in Toronto’s Platform competition). Written by the filmmaker alongside Gilles Taurand, the story kicks off in 1947. Madeleine, a waitress in a hotel restaurant and the mother of a small...

French sales companies to merge staff, infrastructure and slates.

Jour2Fête, the Paris-based sales and distribution company co-headed by Sarah Chazelle and Etienne Ollagnier, is set to acquire compatriot sales company Doc & Film International, as its CEO Daniela Elstner heads to French cinema agency Unifrance in the role of managing director.

Under the deal, which is in the final stages of completion, Jour2Fête will merge the existing staff, infrastructure, slates and catalogues of both companies into one entity over the coming months.

For the time being, the separate banners of Jour2Fête and Doc & Film will remain in place,...

Most selections are North American, Us premieres.

Polish and Dutch Oscar submissions Corpus Christi and Instinct are among the international competition line-ups announced by the 55th Chicago International Film Festival on Monday (16).

Most of the films screening in the festival’s international sections are North American and Us premieres and have already been selected to represent their country in the Academy’s best international feature film race. They include Our Mothers (Belgium), and Spider (Chile).

Several of last year’s festival selections represent their countries this season, among them Aga (Bulgaria), Joy (Austria), Dear Son (Tunisia) and Wolkenbruch’s Wondrous...

A few days ago, on my first dispatch from the Lido, I wrote that Venice was grappling with some sort of identity crisis. Having long been a fortunate platform for awards season hopefuls—and with Cannes and Netflix's disagreement over releasing films in French cinemas, a new favorite turf for the streaming giant—the festival needs to juggle its role as window for large studio productions, and the arguably far more important one it plays as launchpad for smaller-budget, unconventional and daring works from old and new auteurs. By the time you’ll read this, Joker’s Golden Lion will be old news. Minutes after the Joaquin Phoenix vehicle nabbed a most unexpected statuette, festival director Alberto Barbera went on to hail Todd Philipps’ triumph, claiming that the jury’s verdict spoke to the goal the festival has been working toward: “to reconcile a rigorous, research-oriented auteur cinema with...

Joker won over audiences in Venice Photo: Courtesy of Nyff Todd Phillips' Joker, starring Joaquin Phoenix, has won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival.

The film about the Batman villain, which has inspired a slew of debate online since its premiere, will be released in the UK on October.

Roman Polanski's An Officer And A Spy - which had already sparked controversy by being included due to the director's Us fugitive status after his conviction for statutory rape in 1978 - won the Grand Jury Prize.

Polanski's wife Emmanuelle Seigner, who stars in his dramatisation of the Dreyfus affair political scandal - which also won the Fipresci award - collected the award on his behalf.

The Silver Lion went to Roy Andersson for About Endlessness, while writer/director Yonfan won the best screenplay for his Hong Kong animation No. 7 Cherry Lane.

The acting awards in the main...

When Robert Guédiguian returned to this year’s Venice Film Festival to premiere his latest film, “Gloria Mundi,” he brought nearly the exact same cast that joined him at the 2017 Venice festival for his previous outing, “The House by the Sea.” That is because the French director has built a tightknit troupe over the years, working with the same actors time and time again. Variety sat down with the filmmaker in Venice to ask about his stable of collaborators and his thoughts on recent industry trends.

For your past several films you’ve worked almost exclusively with the same cast of actors. That’s a somewhat uncommon model in modern filmmaking, so what do you think it brings to your work?

It’s like working in a theater troupe, and I’m the leader, the spokesperson for group. I have known these actors for a long time, so they tell me stories,...

Roman Polanski wins the Silver Lion grand jury prize for An Officer And A Spy.

Todd Phillips’ Joker, starring Joaquin Phoenix as the DC Comics villain, cemented its Oscar credentials after winning the Golden Lion at this year’s Venice Film Festival.

At tonight’s award ceremony (September 7) the Silver Lion grand jury prize went to Roman Polanski’s An Officer And A Spy. Despite the controversy following the director, the film also picked up the Fipresci prize yesterday.

Swedish veteran Roy Andersson won the best director award for comedy About Endlessness.

The Lucrecia Martel-led jury awarded best screenplay to Hong Kong animation No.

The regular major-festival presence of the films of Robert Guédiguian is a curious, if not wholly unwelcome, anomaly. Amid punchier, more provocative, more aesthetically challenging arthouse titles, his work moves to the calmer rhythms of classical naturalism, in which each new title feels more like a new chapter in a career-spanning novel — or a book of interconnected short stories, perhaps — about life and love and social class in the suburbs of Marseille.

Working with the same troupe of excellent actors he has cast in differing permutations through the years, most notably his wife Ariane Ascaride who stars in their twentieth collaboration here, and occupying the same compassionately observed, elegiac register that his mid-to-late middle-age titles have tended to embrace, “Gloria Mundi” is, again, a contemporary, intergenerational, socially conscientious, bittersweet family drama set in the southern French port city. And, at least until an ending marred by some scrappy filmmaking as...

Issue-driven fiction films aren't that easy to make because complex subjects might require so much exposition that it might be hard to find enough room for organic character development. This is the trap into which the latest film from veteran French leftie and filmmaker Robert Guédiguian falls — and it falls into it hard.

Like the other films in the director's socially conscious oeuvre, Gloria Mundi is well intentioned and has its heart in the right place. But this exhaustive — and exhausting — overview of the fragility of work for lowly laborers in ...

Issue-driven fiction films aren't that easy to make because complex subjects might require so much exposition that it might be hard to find enough room for organic character development. This is the trap into which the latest film from veteran French leftie and filmmaker Robert Guédiguian falls — and it falls into it hard.

Like the other films in the director's socially conscious oeuvre, Gloria Mundi is well intentioned and has its heart in the right place. But this exhaustive — and exhausting — overview of the fragility of work for lowly laborers in ...

Paris-based mk2 films, which is in Venice with three films including Robert Guédiguian’s competition entry “Gloria Mundi,” is bowing sales on a raft of prestige documentaries, notably Jia Zhang-ke’s “So Close to My Land” and Jacques Loeuille’s “Birds of America.”

“So Close to My Land” marks the sixth collaboration between mk2 and the Chinese auteur, whose latest film, “Ash Is Purest White,” competed at Cannes in 2018. Jia also competed at Cannes with “Mountains May Depart” in 2015 and “A Touch of Sin,” which won the best screenplay award in 2013.

“So Close to My Land” is the third and final installment in a trilogy focusing on different artistic disciplines in China, after “Dong” (2006), about an acclaimed painter, and “Useless” (2007), about the fashion and clothing industry. Jia’s 2010 film “I Wish I Knew” played at Cannes’ Un Certain Regard, while “Useless” and “Dong” opened at Venice and won prizes.

An...

Shannon Murphy (L) and Ben Mendelsohn on set in ‘Babyteeth.’

Shannon Murphy’s debut feature Babyteeth, a bittersweet comedy starring Ben Mendelsohn, Essie Davis, Eliza Scanlen and Toby Wallace, will have its world premiere in official competition at the Venice International Film Festival.

Adapted by Rita Kalnejais from her Belvoir Theatre play, the film joins an illustrious line-up from such filmmakers as James Gray, Todd Phillips, Steven Soderbergh, Noah Baumbach, Hirokazu Kore-eda, Olivier Assayas and Mario Martone.

David Michôd’s Netflix-commissioned The King, an adaptation of several Shakespeare plays with an ensemble cast including Timothée Chalamet, Joel Edgerton, Robert Pattinson, Mendelsohn and Lily-Rose Depp, will screen out of competition. Michôd and Edgerton co-wrote the screenplay. Liz Watts and Brad Pitt are among the producers.

Isobel Knowles and Van Sowerwine’s Passenger, a 360 degree stop-motion Vr film produced by Film Camp’s Philippa Campey, and Callum Cooper’s Porton Down...

Martin EdenThe programme for the 2019 edition of the Venice Film Festival has been unveiled, and includes new films from Olivier Assayas, Robert Guédiguian, Pietro Marcello, and many more.COMPETITIONThe Truth (Hirokazu Kore-eda): About a stormy reunion between a daughter and her actress mother, Catherine, against the backdrop of Catherine’s latest role in a sci-fi picture as a mother who never grows old.The Perfect Candidate (Haifaa Al-Mansour)About Endlessness (Roy Andersson): The film contains a mix of scenes that takes place in the past and present and we meet several historical people, including Prince Ivan the Terrible and Adolf Hitler.Wasp Network (Olivier Assayas): The story of five Cuban political prisoners who had been imprisoned by the United States since the late 1990s on charges of espionage and murder.Marriage Story (Noah Baumbach): A stage director and his actor wife struggle through a gruelling, coast-to-coast...

Over the past few years, the Venice Film Festival has become a magnet for awards-season hopefuls, having hosted world premieres of three of the past five Best Picture Oscar winners. This year again, there is no shortage of big-ticket titles that we’re likely to be talking about for the next six months. In what’s beginning to look like another recurring theme, fest chief Alberto Barbera has shown he is not one to shy away from controversy.

After becoming the first major fest boss to embrace Netflix back in 2015, he is already facing criticism from European cinema groups for putting three of the streamer’s movies in the lineup that was announced today. The fest also has a pretty lousy track record with female directors. While Barbera did increase the number of women in competition by 100%, that means there are two this year versus one last year. And, sure...