News

Films Boutique has acquired French and international rights to “Pigskin” (“Peau de cochon”), a 2004 film directed by Philippe Katerine, a French musician, actor and filmmaker who took part in the Olympics’ opening ceremony. Films Boutique will relaunch the film in the fall festivals for its 20th birthday.

Katerine stars in the film opposite French singer Dominique A, film critic Thierry Jousse and Helena Noguerra. Katerine won the Cesar for best actor in a supporting role in Gilles Lellouche’s box office hit “Le Grand Bain” in 2019. He’s also been celebrated as a musician and was crowned Artist of the Year at the Victoires de la Musique, French equivalent to the Grammy awards in 2020. He previously performed “Moustache” on Jimmy Fallon’s Tonight Show.

More recently, Katerine played the Greek God Dionysus in the controversial scene which was interpreted by some as a satirical take on Leonardo da Vinci’s religious painting “The Last Supper.

After premiering in the Directors’ Fortnight sidebar at the 2014 Cannes Film Festival, Belgian auteur Fabrice du Welz’s excellent fourth feature Alleluia went on to play in the esteemed Vanguard lineup in the Toronto International Film Festival before nabbing Best Actor and Actress awards at Fantastic Fest for superb performances from Laurent Lucas and Lola Duenas. Although this didn’t translate into notable box office profit for Us distributor Music Box Films (released in mid-July for a limited theatrical run, the title didn’t crack ten grand in its paltry five week run), du Welz’s beautiful cult-classic in the making will eventually secure a greater following. A recent Blu-ray re-release of Criterion Collection’s presentation of the 1969 Leonard Kastle film, The Honeymoon Killers, based on the same romantic killing spree, should funnel some attention to it, as well as du Welz’s break into English language in 2016 with his next title.

The line-up for this year's Film4 FrightFest in London has just been announced – and boy, is it a doozy! Sporting a record-breaking 38 UK/European premieres and 11 world premieres, this August is going to be an exciting time in the genre calendar.

Check it all out right here, including lots of new images!

This year Film4 FrightFest will be moving from its previous home at Leicester Square's Empire Cinema to the nearby Vue Cinema (also on Leicester Square), prompting an ingenious reshuffle of the screening arrangements.

All main screen films will be presented at different times across three different screens, with two extra screens reserved for single-slot screenings of the various films hitting this year's Discovery Screens.

Here's the full list of goodies:

Main Screens (5, 6, 7)

Thursday Aug 21

Opening Night Film - The Guest (UK Premiere)

Director: Adam Wingard. Cast: Dan Stevens, Maika Monroe, Brendan Meyer, Sheila Kelley, Leland Orser. USA 2014. 99 mins.

Film4 FrightFest 2014, returning for its 15th year, unveils its biggest line-up ever. From Thurs 21 August to Monday 25 August, the UK’s leading event for genre fans will be at the Vue West End, Leicester Square, to present sixty-four films plus twenty shorts across five screens. There are sixteen countries representing five continents with a record-breaking thirty-eight UK or European premieres and eleven world premieres.

Are you ready for a monstrous and memorable mayhem of killer claws, cannibalism, cult classics, murderous musicals, chiller thrillers, graphic novel action and sick celluloid masterpieces? Then prepare yourself for the biggest, strongest and most eclectic must-see programme in Film4 FrightFest’s history.

From the opening night turbo-driven thrill-ride The Guest to the UK premiere of the closing night mesmeric sci-fi fantasy The Signal, FrightFest has netted the latest works from genre big-hitters such as Eli Roth (The Green Inferno), Alan Moore and Mitch Jenkins (Show...

We recently told you about Vinyan and Calvaire director Fabrice du Welz's next film, Alleluia, which brings a ripped-from-the-headlines tale to horrifying life. Today comes word that a distribution home for the film has been found so read on for the scoop!

Per Variety, Chicago-based arthouse distributor Music Box has acquired all North American rights to the Belgian genre filmmaker’s gritty horror movie. The film was also acquired by Carlotta Films, a company specializing in classics, for French distribution.

Head over to the official Alleluia website to learn more.

Written by Fabrice du Welz and Vincent Tavier, the film stars Laurent Lucas, Lola Dueñas, Héléna Noguerra, David Murgia, Stéphane Bissot, Renaud Rutten, and Philippe Résimont.

Synopsis

Manipulated by a loving and jealous husband, Gloria has run away with her daughter and started a new life far away from men and from the rest of the world. Impelled by her friend,...

It was just about four years ago that we first told you about Alleluia, the latest film from the man behind the French horror flicks Calvaire and Vinyan. At long last, some stills have finally surfaced, leading us to believe that it won't be long before this one enters our lives. Check 'em out!

Head over to the official Alleluia website to learn more.

Written by Fabrice du Welz and Vincent Tavier, the film stars Laurent Lucas, Lola Dueñas, Héléna Noguerra, David Murgia, Stéphane Bissot, Renaud Rutten, and Philippe Résimont.

Synopsis

Manipulated by a loving and jealous husband, Gloria has run away with her daughter and started a new life far away from men and from the rest of the world. Impelled by her friend, Madeleine, she agrees to meet Michel through a dating site. The first time they see each other, there is a spark. Michel, the small-time crook...

In her loose adaptation of Rachel Cusk's novel Arlington Park, which is set in the London suburbs, Czajka offers the daily lives of three other women from the neighborhood to contrast with Juliette. The most significant difference is that Thomas does not make enough income to permit Juliette the luxury of being a more stereotypical housewife like Betty (Julie Ferrier), Marianne (Natacha Régnier) and Inès (Helena Noguerra). So while Juliette stresses about finding a suitable job, preferably at a publishing house, Betty, Marianne and Inès enjoy breakfast croissants and a trip to an upscale shopping mall (one with passcode-protected bathrooms and a classical pianist in the atrium). Regardless of their apparent lack of responsibilities, Betty, Marianne and Inès still find ways to manufacture stress for their lives, which is debatably similar to how Juliette brings the stress of the dinner party on herself.

Alleluia

Director: Fabrice Du Welz

Writers: Fabrice Du Welz

Producer: Clément Miserez, Vincent Tavier, Matthieu Warter

U.S. Distributor: Rights Available

Cast: Laurent Lucas, Lola Duenas, Helena Noguerra

While he hasn’t released anything since 2008’s sorely underrated Vinyan, Belgian director Fabrice Du Welz has been busy. His first film since then, the Joey Starr led action thriller Colt 45, wrapped some time ago, and while we thought we’d see this released somewhere in 2013, it looks like 2014 should usher it into theaters. But even more exciting is that Welz is in post-production with Alleluia, which is meant to be the second chapter in his Ardennes trilogy, an opus kicked off by his delectably bizarre debut, 2004’s The Ordeal. This latest sees him reteam with everyone’s favorite star of weirdo French films, Laurent Lucas (who starred in The Ordeal), co-written and produced by Vincent Tavier, the man who wrote...

Three's Company may be long gone, but its legacy of incorrectly interpreted conversations and mistaken identities and motivations lives on in dreary rom-coms like Hôtel Normandy. Charles Nemes's film is a decidedly sitcom-y affair in which widowed French banker Alice (Héléna Noguerra) is sent on a resort holiday by her friends, who have blackmailed an in-debt client to have a fling with her. Complications ensue when that contracted Romeo farms out his duties to his buffoonish brother, Yvan (Ary Abittan), and Alice winds up instead falling head over heels for wealthy suitor Jacques (Eric Elmosnino)—all while accepting from him, and then giving away, a valuable painting that Jacques's ex-wife, Hélène (Annelise Hesme), suspects Alice a...

Check out the new trailer for Charles Nemes' Hotel Normandy, starring Héléna Noguerra and Eric Elmosnino. Opens September 27, 2013 via Rialto Premieres and is scripted by Jean-Paul Bathany and Stéphane Ben Lahcene. "When two people who no longer believe in love find each other, nothing can get in the way of their blossoming romance – except for a playful farce of miscues, meddling and mistaken identity. During one fated weekend at the eponymous seaside resort, lovers, friends and rivals all find their personal destinies. Starring Héléna Noguerra as Alice, a banker whose husband’s recent death has kept her out of the dating pool, and Eric Elmosnino (winner of the César Award for Best Actor for his role in Gainsbourg: A Heroic Life) as Jacques, an art dealer with...

Specialized distributor Rialto Pictures has acquired all U.S. rights to five first-run films from French giant Studiocanal. The five films, all U.S. premieres, will go out under Rialto’s new label “Rialto Premieres.” First release for Rialto Premieres will be director Clément Michel’s hit romantic comedy The Stroller Strategy, starring Raphaël Personnaz and Charlotte Le Bon. Also starring, French heartthrob Personnaz (The Princess of Montpensier, Anna Karenina) as a Parisian who accidentally becomes the guardian of an infant – then pretends to be his real father in order to win back Le Bon, the girlfriend who dumped him a year before. This will be Michel’s directorial debut, and the it is set to open at New York’s Angelika Film Center on June 14. Other first-run Studiocanal films in the new deal with Rialto include Hotel Normandy, starring Eric Elmosnino (Gainsbourg) and Helena Noguerra, and Demi-Soeur, directed by and starring Josiane Balasko. Since its founding, New York-based Rialto’s close partnership with Studiocanal has included major reissues of such jewels of the French company’s classic library as Grand Illusion, The Third Man, and Fellini’s Nights of Cabiria. For the past year, Rialto has been the U.S. theatrical distributor of Studiocanal’s catalogue of over 2,000 titles. Described by the Los Angeles Times as “the gold standard of reissue distributors," New York-based Rialto Pictures was founded in 1997 by Bruce Goldstein. Adrienne Halpern joined him as co-president a year later, with Eric Di Bernardo joining the company as National Sales Director in 2002. Rialto’s vast library of classics includes films by Godard, Fellini, Renoir, Kurosawa, Buñuel, Costa-Gavras, Pontecorvo, Carol Reed, Michael Powell, Jules Dassin, Jean-Pierre Melville, and many others. 2012 marked Rialto’s fifteenth anniversary, a milestone celebrated with a retrospective at the Film Society of Lincoln Center. The company’s re-releases this year include Godard’s rarely-seen Le Petit Soldat; Jean-Pierre Melville’s final film, Un Flic, starring Alain Delon and Catherine Deneuve; Joseph Losey’s The Servant, written by Harold Pinter; and Claude Autant-Lara’s A Pig Across Paris (La Traversée de Paris), starring Jean Gabin. Also beginning in June, Rialto will tour “The Hitchcock 9” -- Alfred Hitchcock’s nine surviving silent films, all newly restored by the British Film Institute -- in collaboration with the BFI and Park Circus Films. The “Hitchcock 9” tour will kick off in New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco.

Specialized film distributor Rialto Pictures has announced the formation of its new banner Rialto Premieres, under which it will debut five first run Studiocanal films in the Us. The first release for the new label will be Clement Michel’s romantic comedy "The Stroller Strategy," starring Raphael Personnaz and Charlotte Le Bon. In the film, Personnaz ("Anna Karenina") plays a Parisian who accidentally becomes the guardian of an infant, and then pretends to be his real father in order to win back Le Bon, the girlfriend who dumped him a year before. The film will open at New York’s Angelika Film Center on June 14. Other films in the deal include "Hotel Normandy," starring Eric Elmosnino ("Gainsbourg") and Helena Noguerra, and "Demi-Soeur," directed by and starring Josiane Balasko. Before now, Rialto has specialized in re-releases, having built an impressive collection of classics since 1997. This year their re releases have included.

At the occasion of the anniversary of its iconic Reverso, Jaeger-LeCoultre hosted a prestigious event at Ecole Nationale des Beaux-Arts in Paris under the theme: Capturing your magic moment.Jérôme Lambert, CEO of Jaeger-LeCoultre welcomed 800 guests. Among the guests, actress Catherine Deneuve, Diane Kruger accompanied by Joshua Jackson, actor Clive Owen, Adrien Brody, Isabelle Huppert, Barbara Bui, Vahina Giocante, Richard Anconina, Eduardo Novillo Astrada and Astrid Munoz, Saif Ali Khan, Mohammed Al Habtoor, Sergi Arola, George Chakra,  Kareena Kapoor, Ricardo Scamarcio and Valeria Golino, Giovanni Soldini, Carice Van Houten, Dennenesch Zoude, John Eales, Raphael Ibanez,  and many other distinguished guests and friends of Jaeger-LeCoultre.The musical program of the evening presented the Nouvelle Vague artists: Mareva Galanter, Julien Doré and Helena Noguerra.The evening was also the opportunity for personalities to tell their own story with Reverso through the dedicated set-up:- Catherine Deneuve and the Reverso capturing the time of...

Heartbreaker (2010) is directed by Pascal Chaumeil and starring Romain Duris, Vanessa Paradis, Julie Ferrier, François Damiens, Héléna Noguerra, Andrew Lincoln, Jacques Frantz and Amandine Dewasmes. Pascal Chaumeil’s debut feature calls for an addendum to the inventory of French superiority over the English. Alongside charm, sophistication, elegance, fashion, food, poetry, art, and bedroom skills, now find: well made, unashamedly commercial romantic-comedies. Heartbreaker exhibits a derivative concept, a predictable arc and a straightforward execution that somehow amounts to a film that, in its better moments, is exotic, glamorous, engaging and funny. If it had been British it would’ve been a mess. But it’s not. It’s French, and it’s got Vanessa Paradis and Romain Duris in it.

The new French comedy Heartbreaker centers on Alex Lippi (Romain Duris), who makes his living by stopping upcoming marriages. He runs his business with his sister and brother-in-law and is hired by family members (usually wealthy father of the brides) and friends of women stuck in relationships with men that they don’t approve of. Alex has his principles; he won’t step in if he believes his target and her man are truly well matched, and he never gets romantically involved with these women that he’s distracting because he makes them believe he’s too unstable to cope with a relationship. You can probably see where this is going; naturally, he falls into an assignment that makes him change his mind and that comes in the form of Juliette (Vanessa Paradis), the daughter of a connected businessman who doesn’t want her to marry her fiance. Alex poses...

Chicago – If there’s one genre Hollywood has managed to screw up beyond all recognition, it’s the romantic comedy. Many of the worst films in recent years have brought the genre to an all-time low, such as “Leap Year,” “Love Happens,” and anything starring Gerard Butler. These dumbed-down products use stereotypes in place of characters, incessant sparring in place of chemistry and gooey sentiment in place of a tangible heart.

Rating: 3.5/5.0

That’s what makes “Heartbreaker” such a delight. Though the film is a hit comedy from France, it absolutely does not (and should not) warrant an American remake. First-time feature director Pascal Chaumeil has crafted a film so slick and enjoyable, not to mention pop-culture savvy, that it could easily win over mainstream audiences in the U.S., regardless of its subtitles. Plus the film provides an ideal showcase for two stars armed with formidable international appeal. It...

Heartbreaker, opening in theaters on September 10th, is a terrifically entertaining new romantic comedy from first time director Pascal Chaumeil. Re-invigorating an often tiresome formula as only the French can, this effortlessly charming romp stars the suave Romain Duris (The Beat That My Heart Skipped) as Alex, a globe-trotting playboy ing&#233nue with a business all his own: He's hired by friends, family or jealous lovers to break up relationships. But when this professional Casanova meets his toughest mark yet in the gorgeous Juliette (Vanessa Paradis, Girl on the Bridge), will his game finally change? We recently had a chance to sit down and speak with the film's stars, Romain Duris and Vanessa Paradis, to talk about French cinema, the new film, their characters and the movie's charming plot. To watch our exclusive interview please click on the video clip below:

Romain Duris and Vanessa Paradis Talk Heartbreaker

Charming, funny and effortlessly cool,...

Heartbreaker, Pascal Chaumeil’s new action-packed romantic comedy with a French twist, pairs two of France’s biggest stars: Romain Duris, who played the charismatic concert pianist in The Beat that My Heart Skipped and Vanessa Paradis, the well-known singer, model, actress and long time leading lady of American actor Johnny Depp. A smash hit in France, Heartbreaker was also featured at this year’s Tribeca Film Festival.

We sat down with Romain Duris, Vanessa Paradis and director Pascal Chaumeil at a roundtable interview for their new film. Pascal talked to us about the American influences that inspired his feature directorial debut and why he feels love and laughter are universal languages. Romain discussed what it was like making the transition from darker roles as a French bad boy to playing a suave, roguish leading man in a romantic comedy. Vanessa described the fun they had working together on their...

iSophie Marceau attending the 24th Annual Cabourg Film Festival in France.Photo copyright by Pixplanete / PR Photos.Julie Ferrier attending the 24th Annual Cabourg Film Festival in France.Photo copyright by Pixplanete / PR Photos.Helena Noguerra attending the 24th Annual Cabourg Film Festival in France.Photo copyright by Pixplanete / PR Photos.Julie Ferrier attending the 24th Annual Cabourg Film Festival in France.Photo copyright by Pixplanete / PR Photos.Julie Ferrier attending the 24th Annual Cabourg Film Festival in France.Photo copyright by Pixplanete / PR Photos.Julie Ferrier attending the 24th Annual Cabourg Film Festival in France.Photo copyright by Pixplanete / PR Photos.os06/13/2010 - Ludivine Sagnier - 24th Annual Cabourg Film Festival - Day 4 - Cabourg - Cabourg, France © Pixplanete / PR Photos06/13/2010 -...

Canal Plus, a French premium cable network, announced that production is underway for the third season of Mafiosa. Moreover, the shooting of the show will end in June 2, 2010.

The network announced that French viewers should expect to see, for the first time, a TV series that is shot in Corsica. After all, the show is about the world of mafia in this region of France.

Jean-Michel Paoli (Thierry Neuvic) woke up from a coma while everybody thought that he was missing. With that said, how will he and his sister Sandra (Hélène Fillières), with whom he jointly leads a mafia clan, coexist together? Besides, a group of young hoodlums will try to take advantage of the chasm between the two Paolis even if it means provoking them.

Finally, the third season of this show will star: Hélène Fillières, Thierry Neuvic, Éric Fraticelli, Frédéric Graziani, Phareelle Onoyan, Joey Starr, Jean-Pierre Kalfon,...