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The results of the third Eurimages Project Evaluation Session of 2024 have been unveiled and among the batch of filmmakers we find the likes of Tunisian filmmaker Kaouther Ben Hania (Four Daughters) who firmly moved back into fiction with Tu ne feras point d’images (aka You Shall Not Make an Image). From Morocco, we find The Blue Caftan director Maryam Touzani going to Spain for Calle Malaga. Danish-Egyptian filmmaker May el-Toukhy (who gave us Queen of Hearts – it was recently adapted by Catherine Breillat for L’Été dernier) is getting ready for a project titled Woman, Unknown.…...

Feature film projects from The Blue Caftan filmmaker Maryam Touzani and Four Daughters director Kaouther Ben Hania are among 24 titles that have received a combined €6.78m in the latest session of Council of Europe co-production fund Eurimages.

The 24 feature films backed by Eurimages include four documentaries and one animation. 16 are to be directed or co-directed by women, representing over 75% of the total funding awarded.

Morrocan filmmaker Maryam Touzani’s Spanish language Calle Malaga was awarded €500,000. It’s the story of a 74-year old woman who belongs to the Spanish community of Tangier who has to leave her home but unexpectedly...

The world premiere of David Dietl’s Long Story Short will open the 28th Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival (Poff) on November 8.

It is one of 15 new German films as part of a focus programme on Germany at this year’s festival.

Long Story Short is a comedy drama about the parties, tragedies, love and friendship experienced by a close group of friends. German stars Laura Tonke and Ronald Zehrfeld are among the cast. With a script by Elena Senft, it is adapted from May el-Toukhy’s 2015 Danish feature of the same name.

Dietl’s film is produced by Quirin Berg,...

The world premiere of David Dietl’s Long Story Short will open the 28th Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival (Poff) on November 8.

It is one of 15 new German films as part of a focus programme on Germany at this year’s festival.

Long Story Short is a comedy-drama about the parties, tragedies, love and friendship experienced by a close group of friends. German stars Laura Tonke and Ronald Zehrfeld are among the cast. With a script by Elena Senft, it is adapted from May el-Toukhy’s 2015 Danish feature of the same name.

Dietl’s film is produced by Quirin Berg,...

by Cláudio Alves

In 2019, May el-Toukhy's Queen of Hearts was a study about power imbalances and masterful manipulation. As a wealthy lawyer who starts an affair with her teenage stepson, Trine Dyrholm embodied a sickening conundrum - someone who defends the abused in the public eye but is an abuser in private. Chilly and sharp, the actress delivered a terrifying performance, opaque in ways we'd expect her to be transparent, a mystery whose actions precipitate a devastating end. Indeed, the Danish film could be described as a tragedy, and it made for a particularly unsettling entry in the season's Best International Film race.

Five years later, Catherine Breillat's French remake arrives in American theaters, offering a most perverse twist on the same premise. Rather than tragedy, Last Summer presents the affair as something closer to farce…...

New York audiences might be the luckiest cinephiles this summer: French legend Catherine Breillat’s newest gem of a film Last Summer not only opens theatrically this weekend, but they were treated to a retrospective of the director’s work at Film at Lincoln Center. A very rare occasion, unfortunately, for the rest of the world––the reputation of Breillat’s earlier films precede her. Romance and Anatomy of Hell were both associated with the New French Extremity, considered provocative and often inappropriate for their explicit sex scenes and violent ways in which they frame male-female relationships. However, if you look at Breillat’s oeuvre as a whole, you’d find a strong thread of idealism, even hope her characters try to own up to (unsuccessfully).

Last Summer is a close remake of May el-Toukhy’s 2019 film Queen of Hearts, where a successful lawyer begins an affair with her stepson.

One Deadly Summer: Breillat Agitates Another Sexual Taboo

Suddenly, last summer, a successful lawyer who has it all risks throwing her life away with an illicit sexual liaison in Last Summer, the return of eternal provocateur Catherine Breillat for her first film in a decade. A remake of May el-Toukhy’s 2019 film Queen of Hearts, which starred Trine Dyrholm, Breillat further subverts what was already subversive in her own particular penchant for wading around in the grey zones of sexuality. A much more chilly, matter-of-fact take on the taboo subject matter creates its own unique atmosphere of ascetic camp, drawing uncomfortable titters while allowing its protagonist’s behavior to play out with a loathsome believability.…...

Nothing in this sick, sad world is simpler or more complicated than sex, a principle that helps to explain why the ever-provocative Catherine Breillat — whose films so often consecrate female desire by rendering it violently indefinable — was drawn to remake a 2019 Danish movie about a middle-aged lawyer who dedicates her life to defending young rape victims, only to begin a torrid affair with her own 17-year-old stepson.

May el-Toukhy’s “Queen of Hearts” spun that stark hypocrisy into a melodrama ridden with shame and secret darkness. Breillat’s “Last Summer” is much lighter in every way, and all the more revealing as a result; it leverages the same premise into a rich exploration of the inadequate judgment such a premise exists to invite.

Seductively empathetic without absolving its heroine or trolling the audience into aligning themselves with her, this adaptation bypasses any sort of moral binary in order to make...

Kim Gordon singing at the Capital One City Parks Foundation SummerStage concert in Central Park Kim Gordon with Ed Bahlman and Anne-Katrin Titze on the puppy-ness of Samuel Kircher in Last Summer: “He is great. Yeah, puppy-ish.” Kim Gordon, who is currently on her Collective worldwide tour, will be performing in London on June 25 at Koko, June 26 at the O2 Institute Birmingham, and June 30 at the Glastonbury Festival. In Berlin she has a sold-out show at the Festsaal Kreuzberg on July 6 with Gudrun Gut opening (through some assistance from music producer and 99 Records founder Ed Bahlman).

In the second instalment with Kim Gordon we touch upon Catherine Breillat’s fairy-tale films Bluebeard, and The Sleeping Beauty, plus the humour in The Last Mistress (Une vieille maîtresse - Jules-Amédée Barbey d'Aurevilly), and Samuel Kircher and Léa Drucker’s dangerous dynamic in Breillat’s Last Summer, based on May el-Toukhy’s.

Queen Of Hearts director May el-Toukhy has set her next feature, post-Second World War drama Woman, Unknown (working title).

The film revolves around Marie, a former housekeeper preparing a lavish dinner party to celebrate her engagement to the patriarch of the house, when the truth of her secret past starts to emerge.

el-Toukhy is writing the script with her Queen Of Hearts co-writer Maren Louise Kaehne. The film will be produced by Mikael Christian Rieks for Nordisk Film Production, with filming expected to begin in the first half of 2025.

Backers on the film include the Danish Film Institute.

“With Woman,...

Aurore (Louise Chevillotte) with André Masson (Alex Lutz) at Scottie’s in Pascal Bonitzer’s mysterious and witty Auction (Le Tableau Volé)

Catherine Breillat’s incomparably daring Last Summer starring Léa Drucker, Samuel Kircher, and Olivier Rabourdin has received four César nominations: Best Director and Adapted Screenplay, Actress (Léa Drucker), Male Revelation (Samuel Kircher in competition with his brother Paul Kircher for Thomas Cailley’s The Animal Kingdom). In the first installment with Pascal Bonitzer, we start out discussing his work on Last Summer which is based on May el-Toukhy’s 2019 film Queen of Hearts and then delve into his latest film, Auction (Le Tableau Volé).

Pascal Bonitzer with Anne-Katrin Titze on Scottie’s in Auction: “It’s an allusion to Vertigo because it’s a great movie. Scottie’s, yes, it’s Sotheby’s, it’s Christie’s, it’s a big auction house.”

Pascal Bonitzer, who put a...

Catherine Breillat on Léa Drucker in Last Summer (L’Été Dernier) and Alfred Hitchcock’s heroine wardrobe: “I said to Léa, think about Vertigo and Kim Novak! But then I think she is more Tippi Hedren.”

Catherine Breillat’s Last Summer stars Léa Drucker and Samuel Kircher with Olivier Rabourdin, Clotilde Courau, Serena Hu, and Angela Chen. The film is based on May el-Toukhy’s 2019 Queen of Hearts, starring Trine Dyrholm, Gustav Lindh, and Magnus Krepper. Last Summer shares a theme with the NYFF Opening Night Gala selection, Todd Haynes’s May December, where a reversal of age also takes central stage.

Catherine Breillat, with Anne-Katrin Titze, reveals the Christophe Honoré, Winter Boy, Paul Kircher and Samuel Kircher connection for Last Summer

Breillat, incomparably daring as ever, tells the story of Anne (Drucker), a successful lawyer, who lives with her businessman husband Pierre (Rabourdin) and their two headstrong, adopted daughters,...

The Crown, which has won 21 Emmy Awards during its run on Netflix and is one of the streamer’s most enduringly popular original series, will soon step down from the throne. The show’s sixth season will be its last telling the story of Queen Elizabeth II and Britain’s royal family in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.

The critically acclaimed series has chronicled some six decades of Elizabeth II’s reign, recasting its central characters every two seasons as the show moves through recent history as characters age. Claire Foy played the young Elizabeth for The Crown’s first two seasons and was followed by Olivia Colman in seasons three and four; both won Emmys for their work. Imelda Staunton took over the role in season five and will finish out the show as it moves into the early 2000s.

As with previous seasons, the story of...

Last Summer.Catherine Breillat holds eye contact with such intensity that it’s difficult not to feel a little intimidated in her presence. It’s an apt trait for a filmmaker of equally, and brilliantly, intimidating films. Unafraid, even eager, to cause discomfort, Breillat has dedicated her career to the cinematic excavation of taboo subjects and liberating female desire onscreen.With her first film in ten years, Last Summer, Breillat presents a reworking of May el-Toukhy’s 2019 film Queen of Hearts in which a lawyer, predominantly working on sexual assault cases, has an affair with her 17-year-old stepson. The project is challenging in the ways you might expect from the filmmaker, but somehow tamer, too; the sex is not explicit in the manner of Romance (1999) or Anatomy of Hell (2004), nor are the shocks quite as violent as they are in her widely celebrated Fat Girl (2001). Her approach here feels more...

Season 5 of “The Crown” sets sail over some very troubled waters and makes no moves to avoid the rocks. Even folks whose knowledge of Princess Di begins and ends with the Beanie Baby know that her divorce from Charles is followed closely by her death in a car crash. But there’s a difference between dramatizing the royal family’s doldrums and succumbing to them.

A darkness hangs over the fifth season of “The Crown” visually, as Martin Childs’ production design leans into yellow and brown rooms, and the series’ team of cinematographers cast shadows that wouldn’t be out of place in the candle-lit “Victoria”, whether scenes take place in Windsor Palace or the middle of the Gulf of Naples. Even the ever-vibrant Princess Margaret’s (Leslie Manville) mostly sweet, slightly bitter rapprochement with Peter Townsend (Timothy Dalton) kicks off in a dusky, wood-paneled ballroom that feels slightly caught in amber,...

Sideshow and Janus Films have acquired all North American rights for Catherine Breillat’s explosive drama “Last Summer” which competed at the Cannes Film Festival.

Produced by Said Ben Said at Sbs, the film stars Léa Drucker as Anne, a brilliant lawyer who lives in perfect harmony with her husband Pierre and their six and eight‐year‐old daughters in the suburbs of Paris. One day, Theo, 17, Pierre’s son from a previous marriage, moves in with them. Anne is troubled by Theo and gradually engages in a passionate relationship with him, putting her career and family life in danger.

Drucker stars opposite Samuel Kircher and Olivier Rabourdin. Breillat wrote the film with the collaboration of Pascal Bonitzer. It’s an adaptation of May el-Toukhy’s “Queen of Hearts” which won the Audience Award at Sundance in 2019. Sideshow and Janus Films are planning a theatrical release following fall festivals.

“Catherine...

Sideshow and Janus Films have snatched up another of this year’s Cannes Festival favorites, picking up rights in North America for Catherine Breillat’s Last Summer.

The feature, which premiered in the Cannes competition lineup, is a French adaptation of May el-Toukhy’s Danish drama Queen of Hearts, which won the Sundance Grand Jury Prize in 2019. In the French version, Léa Drucker stars as Anne, a brilliant lawyer with a seemingly perfect husband and family film who puts everything at risk when she starts up a passionate love affair with her teenage stepson. Samuel Kircher and Olivier Rabourdin co-star. Last Summer was produced by Saïd Ben Saïd for Sbs production. The film is Breillat’s first feature in a decade, since Abuse of Weakness in 2013.

“Catherine Breillat is one of the boldest and most thought-provoking directors on the subject of desire,” said Sideshow and Janus Films in a statement.

Season 5 of “The Crown” has cemented its strategy for the 2023 Emmys, Gold Derby has learned exclusively. (See the complete list of submissions below.) Netflix’s regal series is one of the TV academy’s all-time favorites, winning 21 total Emmys (including Best Drama Series in 2021) from 63 nominations across its first four years. Because the show revamps its cast every two seasons, there is entirely new crop of acting contenders for this year’s awards cycle, with Imelda Staunton as Queen Elizabeth II and Dominic West as Prince Charles submitted as leads.

In total, 15 cast members have been put forward by the network this year, including six supporting performances: Elizabeth Debicki as Princess Diana, Lesley Manville as Princess Margaret, Olivia Williams as Camilla Parker Bowles, Jonathan Pryce as Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, Salim Daw as Mohamed Al-Fayed and Jonny Lee Miller as John Major. Debicki and Pryce were recently recognized at...

Saturday marks the final day of the Cannes Film Festival, with the usual closing ceremonies and awards presentations along with the out-of-competition premiere of Pixar’s “Elemental.” Let us all hope that Disney release earns better festival notices than Lucafilm’s “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny.”

“Perfect Days” makes a perfect debut.

Perfect Days. Did Wim Wenders just make his best film since Until The End Of The World? Holy crap.

— Bilge Ebiri (@BilgeEbiri) May 26, 2023

Wim Wenders’ “Perfect Days” was the hero of the day, earning strong notices and the now-standard standing ovation. TheWrap’s Nicholas Barber called it “an endearing, admiring portrait of a decent man.” The near-consensus was that Wenders had made his best narrative film in a very long time. The film has already been acquired by Neon, which has been on a shopping spree with “this film”Perfect Days, “Robot Dreams” and “Anatomy of a Fall.

Anne (Léa Drucker) is an esteemed lawyer: as uncompromising as she is in her line of work, she is free to enjoy her private life. In her ’40s she has it all, the job and the family she never thought would come. So begins Catherine Breillat’s newest film, Last Summer, which may be a remake of May el-Toukhy’s 2019 adulterous drama Queen of Hearts, but yields to the French filmmaker’s every wish. Even though we never get any backstory to Anne’s character, it’s hinted that her youth was not a pleasant one, as an early abortion took away the possibility to have children of her own. But now, in the summer of her life, she is a mother of two adopted girls and stepmother to an unruly teenager named Théo (Samuel Kircher), from her husband Pierre’s (Olivier Rabourdin) previous marriage. Amidst the idyllic rituals of daily life in the countryside,...

Almost a full decade away from the camera since, Catherine Breillat returns to the competition with L’Été dernier (Last Summer). This is her second time here after 2007’s Une vieille maîtresse. Best known for Romance (1999), Fat Girl (2001), and Anatomy of Hell (2004), her 2013 Abuse of Weakness was a TIFF premiere.

A remake of May el-Toukhy’s Queen of Hearts – this sees Anne (Léa Drucker) a respected lawyer who lives in Paris with her husband Pierre and their two young daughters. Théo, Pierre’s 17-year-old son (Samuel Kircher) from a previous marriage, moves in, and Anne eventually begins an affair with him.…...

Breillat’s remake of Queen of Hearts rather pointlessly draws the sting from a mother’s affair with her teenage stepson

Catherine Breillat has made a hot – or rather tepid – mess of this remake of the very recent Danish erotic thriller Queen of Hearts, and it’s not immediately clear why exactly she felt she needed to direct her own moderate version. The changes amount to smudging the original’s icy Scandi sheen, decreasing its erotic excitement, making the performances more laboured and thus leaving the story’s essential preposterousness dangerously exposed.

The first film, from writer-director May el-Toukhy, featured Trine Dyrholm as an elegant career lawyer specialising in representing rape victims who has a passionate affair with her teen stepson; that is, her husband’s moody son by his first marriage. Now the action is transplanted from chilly Denmark to sunny, summery France and Léa Drucker plays legal high-flyer Anne,...

Here’s something to ponder through the lulls of “Last Summer:” Can a film without much spark really be said to fizzle? Such thoughts danced across many a mind at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, where Catherine Breillat’s scandal-courting transgression drama mostly inspired yawns.

More inert than inept, “Last Summer” arrived in Cannes with fraught expectations: This is Breillat’s first film in a decade and a faithful remake of May el-Toukhy’s acclaimed “Queen of Hearts” — and within the Venn diagram of cinephiles who impatiently awaited Breillat’s follow-up to 2013’s “Abuse of Weakness,” and journalists who reviewed and celebrated that 2019 Danish drama you could probably fit the entire Palais.

Like a cover song that follows the same notes but changes the emphasis, “Last Summer” tracks a high-powered juvenile rights attorney who begins a taboo fling with her underage stepson. The lawyer here is Anne, a...

Catherine Breillat’s erotic drama is a remake of May el-Toukhy’s Queen Of Hearts.

Paris-based Pyramide International has closed deals in key territories for Catherine Breillat’s erotic thriller Last Summer ahead of the film’s world premiere in Competition at Cannes later this month.

Pyramide has sold the film to September Films in Benelux, Potential Films in Australia and New Zealand, Nk Contents in South Korea, Xenix Film in Switzerland, Hooray Films in Taiwan, Estinfilm in the Baltics and Nashe Kino in Russia.

Last Summer stars Léa Drucker as a lawyer who develops a relationship with her 17-year-old...

Exclusive: Motion Picture Agent Olive Uniacke has exited the agency.

She was hired in September 2018 having previously been a producer at 42Mp and then a studio executive at Lionsgate.

At the agency, she signed such writer/director clients as Andrew Patterson, whose movie The Vast of Night world premiered at Slamdance 2019 and was later acquired out of TIFF by Amazon. She also signed May el-Toukhy, whose movie Queen of Hearts made its world premiere at 2019 Sundance.

When the pandemic hit, Uniacke shifted gears, focusing on musicians, actors and entrepreneurs whose businesses she could build while the world was shut down.

Uniacke was an integral part of the WME teams involved in building the production labels of such clients as Tessa Thompson (Viva Maude), Oscar Isaac (Mad Gene), and Riz Ahmed (Left Handed Films), as well as filmmakers like Bassam Tariq (Mogul Mowgli), Sam Hunter, as well as Patrick Sommerville and David Eisenberg’s Tractor Beam.

Exclusive: ICM has just signed The Northman actor Gustav Lindh.

He stars in the Robert Eggers’ directed New Regency/Focus Features movie as Thorir the Proud opposite Nicole Kidman, Alexander Skarsgard and Anya-Taylor Joy. The pic is expected to open this weekend to 10M-12M.

Lindh is a fast-rising star of Swedish film and television. In 2020, he starred in Josephine Bornebusch’s film, Orca, which was filmed and released during the pandemic. In 2019, Lindh starred in the May el-Toukhy’s Danish feature Queen of Hearts alongside Trine Dyrholm, for which he won Best Supporting Actor at the 2020 Bodil Awards. His first feature, The Circle, was directed by Levan Akin, where he starred opposite Josefin Asplund and Sverrir Gudnason. He also has starring roles in Björn Runge’s Burn My Letters and Gustav Möller’s crime series The Dark Heart.

Lindh is also set to star in the lead role of...

Exclusive: Director-writer duo May el-Toukhy and Maren Louise Käehne, who previously collaborated on 2019 Sundance hit Queen Of Hearts, are re-teaming with scandi major Nordisk Film Production on Dependency, an adaptation of an autobiographical novel by Danish author Tove Ditlevsen.

Producing the project will be Lina Flint, who founded Nordisk’s talent department Spring and has credits including The Guilty, which is being remade by Jake Gyllenhaal and Netflix, and the upcoming comedy Wild Men.

May el-Toukhy will be the series’ conceptual director and Käehne will be the lead writer. Nordisk secured rights to the 1971 book from the publishing house Gyldendal.

The four-part show will portray influential author Tove Ditlevsen’s four marriages with four vastly different men. It promises to be a brutally honest and unsentimental story about her being torn between the roles of artist, mother, wife and addict.

“Tove Ditlevsen’s life constitutes, in all its devil-may-care complexity,...

After a relatively prolific output in the 90s and 00s––including her widely acclaimed 2001 drama Fat Girl––Catherine Breillat hasn’t made a film since 2013’s Abuse of Weakness starring Isabelle Huppert. The French filmmaker is now finally set to return with a new project.

Breillat will direct a remake of May el-Toukhy’s Queen of Hearts, which was selected as Denmark’s Oscar entry in 2019, Les Inrockuptibles reports. The erotic drama followed a lawyer and mother named who gets romantically involved with her teenage stepson, causing strife in her family. Titled Inavouable (which roughly translates to unspeakable or unmentionable), Breillat’s remake will star Valeria Bruni-Tedeschi and Olivier Rabourdin and production is aiming to kick off this summer, so expect a 2022 festival debut.

Zhuo-Ning Su said in our review of the original film, “In Danish writer/director May el-Toukhy’s gripping, thought-provoking erotic drama Queen of Hearts, problematic sex happens at an unlikely place.

REinvent International Sales has closed Germany on Charlotte Sieling’s anticipated epic period drama, “Margrete – Queen of the North,” starring Trine Dyrholm (“The Commune”), licensing the film to Splendid Film.

The film stars Dyrholm, the award-winning actress of Thomas Vinterberg’s “The Commune” and May el-Toukhy’s “Queen of Hearts,” as Margrete I of Denmark, who is considered the most powerful ruler in Scandinavian history, as she gathered Denmark, Norway and Sweden into a peaceful union.

“Margrete· brings a fascinating “royal” and internationally hardly-known story to the screen, in an equally fascinating historical setting,” said

Rainer Flaskamp, head of acquisitions and sales at Splendid Film.

The historical drama has “a deep emotional angle and a lot of female power and involving some of Scandinavia’s best talent,” he added.

Helene Aurø, sales and marketing director at REinvent said that the company was “thrilled that Splendid has come onboard at an...

Denmark’s Maja Jul Larsen has bested strong opposition to take this year’s Nordisk Film & TV Fond Prize for Dr’s “Cry Wolf,” Larsen’s first series as a creator and lead-writer.

The win, announced at a Göteborg Festival TV Drama Vision award ceremony on Tuesday, goes to one of the rising stars on Denmark’s screenwriting scene who in a relatively short career – she graduated from Denmark’s National Film School in 2007 – has run an up an impressive curriculum working on “Borgen,” “Follow the Money” and “The Legacy.”

With limited series “Cry Wolf,” a family drama and procedural, she faced the large task of breathing life and a sense of entertainment into an eight-part series that works at times as an exposé of the rigidity and potential failing of Denmark’s social welfare system.

That’s achieved by focusing on one case: Holly, 14, writes a vivid school essay...

Nordic production and distribution powerhouse Sf Studios and sales agency REinvent International Sales have revealed a sneak peek of Charlotte Sieling’s epic period drama “Margrete – Queen of the North,” starring Trine Dyrholm, a Berlin Silver Bear winner for best actress with Thomas Vinterberg’s “The Commune.”

Dyrholm, whose credits also include Susanne Bier’s Oscar winner “In a Better World” and May el-Toukhy’s “Queen of Hearts,” toplines as Margrete the First, who is considered the most powerful ruler in Scandinavian history, as she gathered Denmark, Norway and Sweden into a peace-oriented union.

With a big budget by Scandinavian standards, “Margrete – Queen of the North” marks the first biopic movie about Margrete the First, a woman ahead of her time who sacrificed herself completely for her vision and for her countries. “Margrete -Queen of the North” is one of the titles set to be presented in the work in...

Dr Sales, the distribution division of Denmark’s public broadcaster Dr, has closed a raft of deals on “Cry Wolf,” a searing social drama created by Maja Jul Larsen (“Borgen”) and co-directed by Pernille Fischer Christensen (“Becoming Astrid”).

The eight-episode limited series tells the intense and emotional story of a teenage girl who has written a vivid school essay detailing her stepfather’s physical assaults. The parents deny the accusations and take their own daughter to court, creating some ambiguity as to whether this abuse occurred as described. The show is set against the backdrop of Denmark’s rigid child protection process.

Since premiering on Oct. 11 on Dr’s primetime slot, “Cry Wolf” has drawn a consistent average of over a million viewers.

Dr Sales, which is taking part in the virtual Content London market, has sold the show to France (Salto), Telefonica (Spain), Sbs (Australia), Belgium (Betv), Telepool (Germany...

The Efp’s European Shooting Stars has announced the three judges that will head up them 24th Edition of the programme.

The jury consists of Kosovan director Antoneta Kastrati, whose highly acclaimed and awarded feature film debut Zana celebrated its World Premiere at the Toronto Film Festival 2019 and was also presented at the Sydney Film Festival as part of the Efp programme Europe! Voices Of Women In Film, and has recently been announced as Kosovo’s entry for Oscars 2020.

American casting director Cassandra Han, whose Italian credits include Ford v. Ferrari by James Mangold, A Hidden Life by Terrence Malick and the ongoing Netflix series Barbarians, by Barbara Eder and Steve Saint Leger.

Also in news – Glasgow Film Festival Announces Hybrid Festival for 2021

The former Producer On The Move from Denmark, René Ezra, who recently produced the critically acclaimed series The Investigation by Tobias Lindholm and Queen of Hearts by May el-Toukhy,...

Trine Dyrholm is outstanding as a liberal-minded lawyer who has a predatory affair with her stepson in May el-Toukhy’s excellent Danish drama

There’s a core of steel to this very enthralling and glossy movie from Danish-Egyptian director and co-writer May el-Toukhy. It’s exactly the kind of drama that might prove binge-worthily addictive if it was a three- or four-part series on a streaming platform. As a standalone feature film, it had me on the edge of my seat.

Trine Dyrholm gives a terrific performance in the sophisticated and sexually candid style that she does so well. Dyrholm is Anne, an accomplished lawyer who is currently acting for the victim in a rape case; she is impeccably liberal and enlightened in the matter of sexual politics. Anne is married to a doctor, Peter (Magnus Krepper), and they have two charming twin girls, but their picture-perfect life has something emotionally stagnant in it.

Venice Days pic “Beware of Children” and Sundance alumnus “Charter” are among the five Nordic films nominated for the coveted Nordic Council Film Prize.

“Beware of Children” was directed by Norwegian scribe/helmer Dag Johan Haugerud and produced by Yngve Sæther. The drama is set in the aftermath of a tragic event in a suburb of Oslo, where the teenage daughter of a prominent Labour Party member seriously injured her classmate, the son of a high profile right-wing politician, during a school break.

“Charter,” meanwhile, world premiered at this year’s Sundance festival and marks Swedish director/screenwriter Amanda Kernell’s second feature following “Sami Blood.” “Charter” is a character study of a flawed mother who impulsively embarks on a perilous attempt to reconnect with her children after leaving them with their father to start a new life in Stockholm. “Charter” was produced by Lars G. Lindström and Eva Åkergren.

Titles are from Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden.

This year’s five nominees for the Nordic Council Film Prize 2020 have been unveiled as the New Nordic Films market kicks off in Haugesund.

The lucrative prize, now in its 18th year, comes with an award of $55,300, which is shared equally between the screenwriter, director and producer,

Films are chosen by national committees in the five Nordic countries, with this criteria: “The nominated films must have deep roots in Nordic culture, be of high artistic quality, distinguish themselves by their artistic originality, and combine and elevate the many elements of film...

Series of 36 films kicks off today with Danish Film/Women Directors.

Alamo Drafthouse Cinema is partnering with Danish Film Institute on a year-long celebration of Danish cinema to run as a bimonthly curated series of films on recently launched Alamo On Demand VOD.

The series comprises six bundles of six films and kicks off today (June 25) with a Danish Film/Women Directors selection, with the support of the ministry of culture and the Danish ministry of foreign affairs.

Danish Films/Women Directors features six films: Frederikke Aspöck’ prison comedy Out Of Tune; Pernille Fischer Christensen’s friendship drama A Soap...

Cinematographer Jasper Spanning’s debut feature, Den skyldige / The Guilty, won several awards during its international run. Directed and co-written by Gustav Möller, the movie followed one character, primarily on a single set, as he deals with a mounting crisis. Spanning spoke about it in a Filmmaker interview with Chris Doyle. He followed it with the May el-Toukhy’s controversial drama Queen of Hearts, about a charged relationship between a wife and her stepson. It was a World Cinema audience award-winner at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival, with Director of Programming Kim Yutani called it the most provocative film she had […]...

Cinematographer Jasper Spanning’s debut feature, Den skyldige / The Guilty, won several awards during its international run. Directed and co-written by Gustav Möller, the movie followed one character, primarily on a single set, as he deals with a mounting crisis. Spanning spoke about it in a Filmmaker interview with Chris Doyle. He followed it with the May el-Toukhy’s controversial drama Queen of Hearts, about a charged relationship between a wife and her stepson. It was a World Cinema audience award-winner at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival, with Director of Programming Kim Yutani called it the most provocative film she had […]...

Contrasting human paradoxes and complexities against the cold rationality of Scandinavian civic institutions, the Danish series “Cry Wolf” presents a searing social drama built from an initially ambiguous premise.

Presented as part of Series Mania’s Buyer’s Showcase after having been selected for the festival’s international competition, the Dr Drama-produced series tracks the cascading aftershocks once a 14-year-old girl writes an essay detailing her stepfather’s physical assaults.

While the veracity of those claims – at least for the first few episodes – remains unclear, the accusations set off a sequence of events that builds with grim inevitability. Beleaguered social worker Lars (Bjarne Henriksen) soon gets involved, placing young adolescent Holly (Flora Ofelia Hofman Lindahl) and her younger brother into foster care, all while the girl’s parents (Christine Albeck Børge and Peter Plaugborg) strenuously deny the charges, eventually taking their own daughter to court.

“I was fascinated by social services,...

Drama Adult Material and Basque conflict saga Patria among series set to market premiere online.

French TV festival and industry event Series Mania has kicked off its industry-focused online platform the Digital Forum, showcasing 40 completed series and 10 short format works as well as 30 pre-recorded pitches for shows in development.

The digital initiative replaces the physical event that was due to take place in the northern French city of Lille from March 20 to 28 but was cancelled due to the coronavirus pandemic. France is now under a lockdown which is expected to run into April.

Channel 4’s drama Adult Material and...

Drama Adult Material and Basque conflict saga Patria among series set to market premiere online.

French TV festival and industry event Series Mania has kicked off its industry-focused online platform the Digital Forum, showcasing 40 completed series and 10 short format works as well as 30 pre-recorded pitches for shows in development.

The digital initiative replaces the physical event that was due to take place in the northern French city of Lille from March 20 to 28 but was cancelled due to the coronavirus pandemic. France is now under a lockdown which is expected to run into April.

Channel 4’s drama Adult Material and...

Other winners include The Painted Bird, Queen of Hearts, Father, Two of Us, Mater, Ivana the Terrible and Vienna Hallways, the new film by Serbian director Mladen Djordjević. The 48th Belgrade International Film Festival Fest (28 February-8 March) has wrapped with Karim Aïnouz's Cannes Un Certain Regard prizewinner The Invisible Life of Eurídice Gusmão (Brazil/Germany) picking up the Belgrade Victor Award for Best Film in the main competition. Václav Marhoul won the Best Director Award for The Painted Bird (Czech Republic/Slovakia/Ukraine), and Rita Kalnejais received Best Screenplay for Australian director Shannon Murphy's Babyteeth, both of which world-premiered at Venice. The acting prizes went to Trine Dyrholm for her role in May el-Toukhy's Queen of Hearts (Denmark/Sweden) and to Goran Bogdan for his performance in Srdan Golubović's Father (Serbia/France/Germany/Croatia). Both films previously won Audience Awards after their world premieres at Sundance and the Berlinale,...

May el-Toukhy became the first woman to win best director.

May el-Toukhy’s age-gap relationship drama Queen Of Hearts dominated the winners at the 36th Robert awards in Denmark, taking home nine prizes from 17 categories in which it was eligible.

el-Toukhy became the first woman to receive the best director prize since the category was introduced in 2001.

Scroll down for the full list of winners.

Her Sundance 2019 title also picked up best film, best actress for Trine Dyrholm, best supporting actor for Magnus Krepper, and best original screenplay for el-Toukhy and Maren Louise Käehne.

The film’s four further prizes were in best cinematography,...

The annual Palm Springs International Film Festival in California is always an opportunity to catch up on many of the contenders for the Best International Feature — née Best Foreign-Language — Film Academy Award. Now in its 31st edition, the festival this year has 51 of them, from favorite-to-beat “Parasite” from South Korea and Senegal’s “Atlantics,” to other films quietly making strides in the race: Czech Republic’s “The Painted Bird,” Sweden’s “And Then We Danced,” Russia’s “Beanpole,” Romania’s “The Whistlers,” North Macedonia’s documentary contender “Honeyland,” Norway’s “Out Stealing Horses,” and many more.

The festival will screen 188 films from 81 countries, including 51 premieres, from January 2-13, 2020. The Awards Buzz section includes a special jury of international film critics, who will review these films to present the Fipresci Award for Best Foreign Language Film of the Year, as well as Best Actor, Best Actress, and Best Screenplay in this category.

One hundred eighty-eight films films from 81 countries including 51 premieres highlight the lineup for the 31st annual Palm Springs International Film Festival, which kicks off January 2 with a star-studded gala that has become a must-stop during awards season for Oscar hopefuls. The festival, which runs through January 13, also is known for showcasing a large number of submissions in the Motion Picture Academy’s International Film (formerly Foreign Language) competition and will feature 51 of those entries.

The opening-night film on January 3 is the Italian farce An Almost Ordinary Summer, while the closer is director Peter Cattaneo’s heartwarming dramedy Military Wives in which Kristin Scott Thomas, Sharon Horgan and Jason Flemyng lead a superb ensemble cast. The film had its world premiere at September’s Toronto International Film Festival and became an instant crowd-pleaser. Bleecker Street releases it in 2020.

Among the previously announced honorees at the January 2 gala are Antonio Banderas, Renee Zellweger,...

Director May el-Toukhy tackles a subject that has not yet been explored and is frightening in the possibilities it reveals to us as women assume positions of power and authority. The troublesome specter of exploitive female sexuality is also elaborated upon in the Dutch Oscar submission, ‘Instinct’.

Two highly developed Western European nations, Denmark and The Netherlands, take female sexuality to extremes here in ways we only saw before as men’s terrain with such films as Last Tango in Paris or In the Realm of the Senses.

My initial reaction to both films was a sort of shame, as if somewhere deep inside of me, I understood the impulse that impelled both these women to venture into forbidden zones of action, but wished it had not depicted it so graphically. It would take a psychiatrist to explain the impulse in human nature that makes us enter dangerous sexual territories.

With wins for Mexico, Chile and Iran in the past three years — and South Korea dominating conversation in the international film Oscar race this year — the Academy has been taking some time off from its usual Europhilia in the category. This year, however, a number of standout contenders look to ensure the Continent a significant presence in the short list at least.

France, Italy and Spain top the all-time record chart for most nominations in the category: from that trio of neighboring countries, Spain looks likeliest to score again. The Spanish selection committee has fallen in and out of love with the country’s most recognized auteur, Pedro Almodovar, over the years — notoriously failing to submit “Talk to Her” in 2002 — but once the glowing Cannes raves for his semi-autobiographical “Pain and Glory” started rolling in, it seemed clear they’d be unable to resist the sentimental reunion of Almodovar and Antonio Banderas.

Danish actress Trine Dyrholm — the star of Oscar contender Queen of Hearts — has joined the second-season cast of Danish crime series Face to Face. Dyrholm, whose credits include In a Better World, Love Is All You Need and The Commune, is one of Denmark's most acclaimed and fearless actresses. Her starring role in May el-Toukhy's Queen of Hearts — as a successful career woman who puts everything at risk when she seduces her teenage stepson — has drawn critical acclaim and a best actress nomination for this year's European Film Awards. Queen of Hearts is Denmark's official entry for ...

The story of a woman who has an affair with her teenage stepson in May el-Toukhy’s film “Queen of Hearts” may not sound like the most positive of female narratives in the lens of the #MeToo movement.

But el-Toukhy and star Trine Dyrholm explain that you’re supposed to feel uncomfortable — even shameful — while watching this otherwise strong, confident and powerful female character show that her morally corrupt behavior still makes her human. And telling stories about any women on screen — even bad characters — is still crucial.

“We stand on the shoulders of the female filmmakers and feminists before us. A new sort of feminism is thriving,” el-Toukhy told TheWrap’s Sharon Waxman Thursday following a screening of the film at the Landmark Theatres in Los Angeles. “Equality is not only enhancing the good in a woman in a film. It’s also daring to depict the bad. What...