News

Though it begins with its cinematic feet affixed to the ground, French writer-director Jérémy Clapin’s “Meanwhile on Earth,” his moody hybrid follow-up to the lyrical, Oscar-nominated animated feature “I Lost My Body,” soon launches beyond the stratosphere and into outer space. Adrift, Elsa (Megan Northam), a young caregiver with a talent for drawing, looks to the stars for answers about the whereabouts of her older brother Franck (voiced by Sébastien Pouderoux), a cosmonaut who never returned to this planet from a mission. To her shock, the astral void will respond to her pleas — but not without major consequences.

There’s great pleasure in seeing that Clapin’s first alluring foray into live-action filmmaking doesn’t entirely renounce hand-drawn storytelling. Meditative black-and-white animated sequences, where Elsa and Franck interact aboard a spaceship, are interspersed at key instances in the narrative. Even more intriguing, however, is that the wistful tone he...

Each week we highlight the noteworthy titles that have recently hit streaming platforms in the United States. Check out this week’s selections below and past round-ups here.

2073 (Asif Kapadia)

Asif Kapadia––the biographical documentary wiz behind contemporary classics like Senna and Amy––opens his semi-fictional film 2073 in a flurry of doc footage. Wildfires, floods, and other such natural disasters set the tone while disturbing clips of cops bashing skulls and riot police brutalizing innocent people cement it for the next 85 minutes. Then comes the fiction: it’s been 37 years since “The Event,” and we’re in the future: the year 2073. – Luke H. (full review)

Where to Stream: VOD

Black Box Diaries (Shiori Ito)

In the middle of Black Box Diaries, journalist Shiori Ito’s debut documentary, Ito grins at the camera as she strolls through downtown Tokyo on the day of her book launch. It’s October 18, 2017. The...

Jérémy Clapin’s French-language Meanwhile On Earth is a heady dose of minimalist science fiction. No laser beams, no interstellar wars. It’s in the same camp as Coherence or The Vast of Night, earthbound thrillers that underexpose sci-fi elements. Clapin translates the alienation of grief into an alien encounter rooted in emotional importance over extraterrestrial engagement. Meanwhile On Earth dances between genre disinterest and grounded storytelling, seeking forgiveness through soulful themes that confront psychological unknowns with an ungraspable sense of ambiguity.

Megan Northam stars as Elsa ​​Martens, the sister to missing astronaut Franck Martens (Sébastien Pouderoux in voice only). Elsa hears Franck speaking in her mind, and then another voice intrudes. A disembodied entity requests Elsa provide five individuals to be inhabited by invisible cosmic beings, and in return, they’ll release Franck. Nobody else can hear the voices, leaving Elsa to question whether Franck might return home after nearly three years.

Writer/Director Jérémy Clapin, whose 2019 animated debut, I Lost My Body, earned an Academy Award nomination, makes the jump to live-action with the sci-fi thriller Meanwhile on Earth. Today, we have an exclusive clip that sets up violent psychological horror.

Metrograph Pictures releases Meanwhile on Earth in theaters on November 8, 2024.

In the film, “Elsa, along with her family, is struggling following the disappearance of her brother Franck, an astronaut who vanished during his first mission. While stargazing one night, Elsa is shocked to receive contact from Franck, but her joy is short-lived when she learns of the dark and troubling forces behind Franck’s reappearance, forcing her to confront the lengths she will go for the brother she once feared was gone forever.”

Sébastien Pouderoux, Catherine Salée, and Dimitri Doré also star.

Watch the clip below, which unleashes a violent chainsaw confrontation in the woods. Or does it? Things are...

In writer-director Jérémy Clapin’s downbeat science-fiction film Meanwhile on Earth, the promises of the future are already the naïve and tarnished daydreams of the past, while the present is a matter of inexorable decline. Lit in wintry tones of disillusionment, nearly every shot in Clapin’s follow-up to I Lost My Body evokes a kind of post-Futurist mood. At the same time, there are flashes of nostalgia for what we thought the present could be—if only we had believed in those daydreams hard enough for them to become reality.

The film tells the story of Elsa (Megan Northam), a young woman whose brother, Franck (voiced by Sébastien Pouderoux), has disappeared into the vacuum of outer space on an exploration mission. Her talent as an illustrator motivates Meanwhile on Earth’s several animated daydreams, in which she meets with Franck on a spacecraft that suggests something out of a Mœbius comic.

“They’ve gone into their dream.” That’s what the non-corporeal extraterrestrial entity (voiced by Dimitri Doré) says through a highly malleable seed that Elsa Martens (Megan Northam) places in her ear. The words are meant to comfort her when the first of its victims is imperceptibly replaced by one of its companions––that the person she knew the body to be didn’t die. It was instead painlessly sent away to exist in a realm we can assume will bring it joy. Does this fact make it easier to deal with the task she’s been asked to undertake? Nothing about choosing four more people for this alien to use as vessels in exchange for bringing her brother back to Earth is easy, but she’s going to try anyway.

Writer-director Jérémy Clapin’s Meanwhile on Earth presents us with a world where thick-as-thieves siblings Elsa and Franck are no longer together.

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...

Dominik Moll’s The Night of The 12th has won best film at the 28th edition of France’s Lumière Awards in Paris on Monday evening.

The investigative drama, which was nominated in six categories, also won Best Screenplay.

The film, which debuted in the Cannes Film Festival’s non-competitive Cannes Première section, stars Bastien Bouillon as a police detective who becomes obsessed with a case involving a complex female murder victim.

Best director went to Albert Serra for French Polynesia-set drama Pacification. The feature also clinched two other prizes: Best Actor for Benoît Magimal and Best Cinematography for Artur Tort.

Virginie Efira won Best Actress for her performance in Rebecca Zlotowski’s Other People’s Children about the challenge of navigating the stepmother role.

Nadia Tereszkiewicz won Best Female Revelation for her performance in Forever Young and Dimitri Doré, Best Male Revelation for Bruno Reidal.

Alice Diop clinched best documentary category for We,...

Pacifiction star Benoit Magimel wins best actor award for third time.

Dominik Moll’s investigative drama The Night Of The 12th (La Nuit Du 12) was named best film and also won the best screenplay prize at the 28th edition of France’s Lumiere Awards at a ceremony at Paris’ Forum des Images on Monday evening.

The film shared the spotlight with Albert Serra’s tropical thriller Pacifiction which earned Serra the best director award and a best actor prize for the film’s star Benoit Magimel.

It was a record win for Magimel who becomes the third actor in Lumière...

Dominik Moll’s The Night of The 12th, which world premiered in Cannes in May, has topped the nominations for the 28th edition of France’s Lumière Awards.

The awards are voted on by members of the international press corp hailing from 36 countries based in France.

The Night Of The 12th was nominated in six categories including best film, director and screenplay. The film debuted in the Cannes Film Festival’s non competitive Cannes Première section.

The investigative drama is Moll’s seventh feature. It stars Bastien Bouillon, with support from Bouli Lanners, as a police detective who becomes obsessed with a case involving a complex female murder victim.

Other multi-nominated titles include Albert Serra’s French Polynesia-set drama Pacification five nominations.

Four films received four nominations each: Alice Diop’s Saint-Omer; Rebecca Zlotowski’s Other People’s Children; Louis Garrel’s The Innocent and Gaspar Noé’s Vortex.

Diop,...

Selected actors will vie for five coveted spots in each of the most promising actor and actress categories.

France’s Academy of Cinema Arts and Techniques, which runs the prestigious César awards, has unveiled its annual Revelations shortlist of local rising stars. They will vie for five coveted spots in each of the most promising actor and actress categories that will make the official nominees selection ahead of the 48th annual Cesars ceremony in Paris on February 24.

Among this year’s breakout stars are Saint Omer actresses Guslagie Malanda and Kayije Kagame, Cannes’ title Forever Young stars Nadia Tereszkiewicz, Clara Bretheau and Sofiane Bennacer,...

All great actresses of a certain age should get to anchor as many starring vehicles as the indefatigable Isabelle Huppert. Her prolific output and enduring marquee-name status are testament to French cinema’s continued interest in women past the age where Hollywood mostly confines them to secondary mom roles. But that doesn’t mean every project is going to be a gem, and “About Joan,” a muddled, maudlin character study that gives its leading lady plenty of screen time but little to actually do, sits at the least memorable end of her filmography. Starring Huppert as an independent, unmarried woman reflecting on the various men she’s loved and lost over the course of four decades, it’s painless but aimless, sunk by a terminal lack of narrative vigor.

Premiering in Berlin’s non-competitive Berlinale Special section (and surely selected only as an event on which to pin the festival...