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“Emily in Paris” star Camille Razat, Elsa Zylberstein (“Simone: Woman of the Century”) and Lyna Khoudri (“The Three Musketeers”) will lead a WW2-set romance drama directed by “Papicha” helmer Mounia Meddour.

The movie is produced by Vanessa Djian at Daï Daï Films, a Newen Studios company, and co-produced by Genevieve Lemal at Scope in Belgium, and Bidibul in Luxembourg. Eric Jollant is executive producing. Wild Bunch Distribution will handle the theatrical release in France.

The untitled feature, whose exact plot remains under wrap, is loosely based on a play by Jean-Philippe Daguerre and was penned by Joanne Giger (“Le milieu de l’horizon”). It revolves around a love story unfolding against the backdrop of the liberation of Paris in 1944 which marked the end of the Nazi occupation of the French capital.

Djian had previously worked on “Farewell, Mr. Haffmann,” another movie set during WW2, in Nazi-occupied Paris. A male actor...

Ms Novak’s (Mia Wasikowska) students Fred (Luke Barker), Ragna (Florence Baker), Helen (Gwen Currant), Elsa (Ksenia Devriendt), and Ben (Samuel D Anderson) in Jessica Hausner’s bewitching Club Zero

In the second installment with Jessica Hausner on Club Zero (co-written with Geraldine Bajard) and scored by Markus Binder (European Film Award winner), starring Mia Wasikowska (as Conscious Eating instructor Ms Novak), we discussed her longtime collaborators, costume designer Tanja Hausner and cinematographer Martin Gschlacht plus Sidse Babett Knudsen and Peter & The Wolf.

Jessica Hausner on using Peter & The Wolf in Club Zero: “It’s a very common fairytale and we found out that it’s really very well known …” Photo: Anne Katrin Titze

The parents of the students are played by Elsa Zylberstein (Simone Veil in Olivier Dahan’s all-embracing portrait Simone: Woman Of The Century) Mathieu Demy, Camilla Rutherford...

European production and distribution group Newen Studios has appointed Pierre Branco — the former country manager of Warner Bros Discovery for France, Benelux and Africa — as CEO.

Branco will begin his position at Newen Studios starting in April, succeeding Romain Bessi, who has decided to step down after a six-year tenure during which he led the company’s expansion.

Newen Studios is owned by TF1 Group, France’s leading commercial network, and has a footprint in 11 countries. The banner regroups 50 labels and has so far produced more than 4,000 hours of content, as well as distributed 12,000 hours of programs across its catalog.

Under the executive reshuffle, Rodolphe Belmer, TF1’s chairman and CEO, will be appointed chairman of Newen Studios.

Under his role at Newen Studios, Branco will work with the banner’s French and international partners, ranging from traditional broadcasters to media platforms in France and abroad. Over the next six months,...

2023 box office takings are still on track to surpass last year’s figures.

The French box office continued its autumn dip in October with 13.86 million tickets sold, down 3.9% from October 2022.

However, an impressive final week of admissions in the month and a strong line-up of films set for release in November and December mean that France’s total 2023 box office should surpass last year’s takings.

The October box office came in at €99.8m, based on an average ticket price of €7.20. This is 26.1% below the pre-pandemic 2017-2019 average.

The October figure is above September’s traditionally low box office which...

Olivier Dahan: “I didn’t want to make a film about Simone Veil as we know her in France.”

Simone: Woman Of The Century director, writer, editor Olivier Dahan (La Vie En Rose with Marion Cotillard as Edith Piaf and Grace de Monaco with Nicole Kidman as Grace Kelly) is no stranger to depicting influential women. His all-embracing portrait of Simone Veil stars Elsa Zylberstein as Veil from 1968 till 2006, and Rebecca Marder (Arnaud Desplechin’s Tromperie and François Ozon’s Mon Crime) from 1942 through 1967.

Olivier Dahan with Anne-Katrin Titze on young people not knowing Simone Veil, Steven Spielberg’s Schindler’s List, Roman Polanski’s The Pianist, and László Nemes’s Son Of Saul: “I was really trying to connect with those young people and this woman, of course.”

In Bernard-Henri Lévy’s homage to Simone Veil he writes: “The world, French philosopher Gaston Bachelard said a century ago,...

Elsa Zylberstein, the French César-winning actor and producer whose popular movie “Simone: Woman of the Century” recently opened in the U.S., is preparing a biopic movie of fashion icon Christian Dior.

The film is being penned by Julien Teisseire (“The Hookup Plan”) and is being developed by Zylberstein’s banner Sonia Films and Odile McDonald (“Ransom”).

Zylberstein, who is in Venice to participate in the Impact Jury along with Nadine Labaki (“Costa Brava Lebanon”) and Yalitza Aparicio (“Roma”), among others, told Variety that the film will open in 1947, in Paris, after World War II. Spanning a decade, the film sees Dior forging an empire alongside Raymonde Zehnacker, and falling madly in love with a much younger man, Jacques Benita.

“Christian Dior was a fiercely private man so people know very little about him and he was not a flamboyant character like other fashion designers or popular cultural icons, but he was no less fascinating,...

Zylberstein unveils ambitious new slate of female-driven titles.

Isabel Coixet is in talks to direct Happy People Read And Drink Coffee, an adaptation of Agnes Martin-Lugand’s best-selling novel of the same name for Elsa Zylberstein’s fast-growing production company Sonia Films.

Mediawan Pictures is in advanced talks to co-produce the English and French-language film set between Paris and Ireland and is about a woman grieving her husband and daughter when a new love affair blossoms.

Zylberstein is also set to star in what is the latest project to be added to her female-focused film and TV slate.

The renowned French actress,...

Zylberstein unveils ambitious new slate of female-driven titles.

Isabel Coixet has signed to direct Happy People Read And Drink Coffee, an adaptation of Agnes Martin-Lugand’s best-selling novel of the same name for Elsa Zylberstein’s fast-growing production company Sonia Films.

Mediawan Pictures is in advanced talks to co-produce the English and French-language film set between Paris and Ireland and is about a woman grieving her husband and daughter when a new love affair blossoms.

Zylberstein is also set to star in what is the latest project to be added to her female-focused film and TV slate.

The renowned French actress,...

Re-releases reliably dot the theatrical calendar and this week have a standout. Oldboy, the 2004 Cannes prize-winner, re-released by Neon on its 20th anniversary restored and remastered, grossed $235k on Wednesday and $150k Thursday — for a total cume $385k on 250 screens heading into the weekend.

San Francisco, NYC and LA, led by Alamo Drafthouse Cinemas, are the top-performing cities so far for Park Chan-wook’s classic film — the first screening in U.S. theaters since its original North American release in 2005.

Oldboy follows Oh Dae-Su (Choi Min-sik), who, after being kidnapped and imprisoned for fifteen years, is released but must find his captor in five days. The critically acclaimed film is the second installment of Park’s The Vengeance Trilogy, preceded by Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance (2002) and followed by Lady Vengeance (2005). Oldboy won the Grand Prix at the 2004 Cannes Film Festival. It grossed $15 million worldwide, and saw...

In Bernard-Henri Lévy’s homage to Simone Veil he writes: “The world, French philosopher Gaston Bachelard said a century ago, could be reduced to a series of copyrights. Einstein’s relativity. Descartes’s doubt. Bergson’s laughter. Dante’s hell. Today: Simone Veil’s Europe.” Olivier Dahan’s all-embracing portrait, Simone: Woman of the Century, stars Elsa Zylberstein as Veil from 1968 till 2006, and Rebecca Marder (Arnaud Desplechin’s Tromperie and François Ozon’s Mon Crime) from 1942 through 1967.

Auschwitz survivor, Health Minister of France, magistrate, mother, member of the Constitutional Council, advocate for the rights of women and prison reform, and the first President of the European Parliament, Simone Veil’s importance for the 20th and 21st century cannot be overstated. Director, writer, editor...

Elsa Zylberstein with Anne-Katrin Titze on Simone Veil: “She was really someone fighting for people’s dignity. I didn’t know it was that strong. My models were Meryl Streep, obviously, or Gary Oldman as Churchill (in Joe Wright’s Darkest Hour). So I didn’t want to play her, I wanted to become her.”

Olivier Dahan’s all-embracing portrait, Simone: Woman Of The Century, stars Elsa Zylberstein as Simone Veil from 1968 till 2006, and Rebecca Marder (Arnaud Desplechin’s Tromperie and François Ozon’s Mon Crime) from 1942 through 1967.

Auschwitz survivor, Health Minister of France (she put an end to the criminalization of abortion), magistrate, mother, member of the Constitutional Council, advocate for the rights of women and prison reform, and the first President of the European Parliament, Simone Veil’s importance for the 20th and 21st century cannot be overstated. Dahan (La Vie En Rose with Marion Cotillard as Edith Piaf...

In 2008, French politician Simone Veil became only the sixth woman ever inducted into the Académie Française, an august institution tasked with the regulation of the French language. As a newly minted “immortal” — the unofficial name given to the Académie’s 40 members — she was presented with a sword that bore three engravings: the motto of France, that of Europe (“Unis dans le diversité“) and her Auschwitz prisoner number, which remained tattooed on her arm until her death in 2017. The sword glints briefly in Olivier Dahan’s “Simone: Woman of the Century” and though its symbolism is apt for such a crusading figure, it also reflects the film’s shortcomings: this is a reverential, ceremonial biopic content merely to inscribe Veil’s achievements across the surface of history, ornamenting a remarkable legacy, rather than exploring it.

Dahan works to the same fragmentary, triumph-and-tragedy template he employed in “La Vie en Rose,” for...

"Why are they after me like that?" "They can't stand what you represent." Goldwyn Films has released an official US trailer for Simone: Woman of the Century, a French biopic about a woman named Simone Veil. She passed away in 2017 at the age of 89, but during her time she was a French magistrate, Holocaust survivor, and politician who served as Health Minister, and President of the European Parliament from 1979 to 1982, the first woman to hold that office. "One of the prominent women in France in the 20th Century." The film explores her life, as a leading politician, human rights campaigner, and feminist -- through a series of non-chronological memories. Similar to the Bob Dylan film I'm Not There; this one is from the director of La Vie en Rose. "An intimate and epic portrait of an extraordinary woman who eminently challenged and transformed her era." The French film stars Elsa Zylberstein as Simone Veil,...

Samuel Goldwyn Films has unveiled the trailer for “Simone: Woman 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, best-known for his Oscar-winning Edith Piaf biopic “La Vie en Rose,” “Simone” boasts powerful performances by Elsa Zylberstein and Rebecca Marder. The key cast is completed by Elodie Bouchez, Sylvie Testud and Olivier Gourmet.

The film was a box office hit in France, where it was released by Warner Bros and ranked as 2022’s third highest-grossing French-language hit with over 2.5 million tickets sold. Samuel Goldwyn Films is planning to release the film in U.S. theaters, opening in New York and Los Angeles on Aug. 18, followed by a wider rollout.

Since starring in “Simone,” Zylberstein has set up two production banners in France and the U.S. and is actively...

After recently playing her in Olivier Dahan’s Simone: Woman of the Century, Elsa Zylberstein will have another go at walking in the shoes and the penning writing skills of Simone de Beauvoir. Variety reports that the never-inactive Anne Fontaine is part of the filmmaker package that will bring the book to film adaptation of “Lettres à Nelson Algren” to life. The project fell on the laps of Christopher Hampton who’ll move from his initial treatment to screenwriting mode this summer. We figure the earliest this could move into production is sometime next year. Zylberstein has an invested interest in the project having landed the book rights.…...

Elsa Zylberstein (“Simone: Woman of the Century”) will star as the French feminist writer Simone de Beauvoir in a feature film that will be penned by Oscar-winning writer Christopher Hampton and directed by Anne Fontaine.

Zylberstein’s Sonia Films will produce the film with Philippe Carcassone’s banner Cine@ and Master Movie, the production vehicle of Marco and Lola Pacchioni.

Rather than a biopic, the movie will revolve around the passionate transatlantic romance between de Beauvoir and Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Nelson Algren.

Zylberstein has scooped the adaptation rights of de Beauvoir’s “Lettres à Nelson Algren” from Gallimard. Through those letters, the film will chart the pair’s affair, which spanned nearly two decades from 1947, in the aftermath of World War II, to 1964. Two-thirds of the movie will take place in Chicago, and the reminder will unfold in Paris.

Zylberstein said Hampton has penned a treatment and is expected to...

Woody Allen might still be persona non grata for many in the U.S., but international distributors will likely be clamoring to see his new film, Coup de Chance, which will be presented to buyers at the upcoming European Film Market.

WestEnd Films, in collaboration with Gravier Productions, will kick off sales for the film in Berlin next week.

Allen’s 50th feature marks the director’s French-language debut and features an ensemble cast of local stars, including Lou De Laâge (The Innocents), Valérie Lemercier (Aline), Melvil Poupaud (Summer of 85) and Niels Schneider (Heartbeats).

In a statement, Allen called the the movie a “story of romance, passion and violence set in contemporary Paris. Shot all over the city and a little bit in the countryside, it evolves around a romance between two young people who are old friends and devolves into marital infidelity and ultimately crime.”

The movie reunites Allen...

France’s box office is moving in an upward trajectory in November with 14.8 million admissions.

France’s box office is continuing to move in an upward trajectory in November with 14.8 million admissions for the month, the highest of the year so far according to figures from the Cnc.

The positive figures follow a decent October, when French theatres bounced back with 14.3 million admissions following the worst September in French box office history, with just 7.4 million tickets sold.

In total, 74 films were released in theatres in November, more than a pre-pandemic 61 in November 2019, an average of 15 films per week. US titles...