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The Ouran High School Host Club is commonly referred to as one of the best classic rom-com anime of all time. However, the anime has more than just romance to help fuel its wacky premise and different flavors of fanservice. Ouran owes its success not just to its flamboyant characters but also to its approach to several issues like gender stereotyping and the usual tropes attached to female leads in a typical reverse harem.

Although Ouran unapologetically displays many “love to hate” shojo tropes, it’s careful not to overdo it and focuses largely on getting the message across through light-hearted comedy. Despite having a very basic plot, the anime tries to make its constructive approach to reverse harem clichés as entertaining as possible.

Haruhi’s Tomboy Persona Was Unique Close

Related Top 15 Funniest Romance Anime While any anime viewer can find enjoyment in romance anime, shows that balance romance...

Gay hearts in WeHo are about to go padam, padam.

Rolling Stone can exclusively reveal that Kylie Minogue and Janelle Monáe will headline Outloud Festival, the West Hollywood Pride-held music event, set for June 1 and 2.

Featured on the lineup are queer-beloved artists such as rapper Doechii, Ashnikko, Keke Palmer, Noah Cyrus, Channel Tres, Yaeji, Big Freedia, and Sophie Ellis-Bextor (following the resurgence of her track, “Murder on the Dancefloor,” on Saltburn).

“The community is going to recognize attention-grabbing names from top to bottom,” Outloud CEO Jeff Consoletti tells Rolling Stone.

After a few tumultuous years that saw them have a falling out and then reconciling, sisters Nancy and Ann Wilson of Heart are working on new music together.

Seven years after Heart released their last album (2016’s Beautiful Broken), Nancy revealed that the wheels are turning on new music in a conversation with Joe Rock of New York radio station 102.3 Wbab. In the interview, she also talked about some of her other musical projects, including one called “Tomboy,” which sees her covering songs originally written by men.

“I think right now I’ve been working on ‘Tomboy’ the most because I love the title, for one thing; it’s almost like boygenius or something,” she explained (as transcribed by Blabbermouth). “But I’ve got a bunch of new ideas for songs. But I’ve also been writing new music with Ann, too. So it’s a real creative time. I...

It's Pride Month! While it's ideally a month for political action, hearkening back to the Stonewall riots from whence it emerged, it's probably most commonly associated with parades, block parties, and movies (along with countless people reminding you that they're allies). LGBTQ+ cinema has existed for a century, and beginning in the late 2000s, has experienced somewhat of a golden age.

Recently, though, there has been a reactionary, theocratic attack against any LGBTQ+ progress made in recent decades. It's hard to say if queer cinema can have much of an impact against this pendulum-like pushback, but at the very least, it should provide solace to the many people who feel under attack by ideologues.

Fortunately, there are a handful of very exciting films throughout June and beyond which will celebrate LGBTQ+ icons, explore queer experiences, and tell deeply human stories. Read on to learn more about some of the exciting...

Some great directors have at least one hiccup on their filmography, while a select few have remained relatively flawless with their directorial outputs. Several directors have come very close to achieving this exclusive rank and should be named as honorable mentions. The prolific David Fincher, for instance, misses the cut due to his underwhelming Alien 3. The innovative Sofia Coppola has an impressive filmography despite her lackluster 2013 movie The Bling Ring. Even five-time Oscar winner Alejandro González Iñárritu fell short with his recent 2022 flop Bardo: False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths.

There are also a handful of up-and-coming directors who have presented an outstanding string of movies to start their careers. Robert Eggers has already accomplished an early trifecta with The Witch. The Lighthouse, and The Northman. Benny and Josh Safdie have co-written and directed Heaven Knows What, Good Time, and Uncut Gems. Horror auteur Ari Aster's first...

A lot has happened in the world since Texas governor Greg Abbott launched an attack on trans kids and their parents, but trans rights advocates and allies haven’t forgotten. In last week’s alarming letter that is already being challenged by the ACLU, the Republican leader directed state child welfare agencies to investigate and potentially charge parents of trans children as child abusers, specifically any parent who supported their child in seeking medical interventions like hormone blockers or gender affirming surgery.

The letter came just one week before Abbott faces a challenging primary, and is seen largely as a political move to galvanize conservative voters. Even if this directive ends up carrying no legal weight — and, as these “investigations” have already started, that seems to sadly not be the case — the misinformation about trans kids contained in the widely read letter is a disturbing attack on trans kids that will reverberate the world over.

Ten years after Mark Cousins created The Story of Film: An Odyssey, his compelling 15-hour history of cinema, the filmmaker has graced us with a sequel, The Story of Film: A New Generation. At 2hrs and 40 minutes, it is a sweeping topography of 21st century cinema, referencing some 97 films from Britain and America to Senegal and India. An absorbing, informative and even therapeutic experience, I have to concur with our critic Jo-Ann Titmarsh when she says it is,“a true celebration of what cinema is and what it means to us”.

Ever the busy and nomadic filmmaker, Mark was kind enough to speak with me about his new film, his cinema-going habits, the defining films of the 2010s, and the future of the theatrical experience.

Jh: A New Generation covers an impressive breadth of international films. How many films do you watch per month and year? Are you a grazer or a binger?...

Also opening: Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s ‘Drive My Car’.

Sony goes up against Warner Bros this weekend at the UK-Ireland box office, as the studios look to continue a strong period for wide releases.

Sony is releasing Ghostbusters: Afterlife in 670 locations. It is directed by Jason Reitman, son of Ivan Reitman, who directed the first two Ghostbusters films and is a producer here. In the latest entry, when a single mother and her two children arrive in a small town, they discover a connection to the original Ghostbusters and the secret legacy the kids’ grandfather left behind.

The original Ghostbusters film...

French director Celine Sciamma has always had a keen eye for the viewpoint of children, in work including her own film Tomboy and her contributory writing for the likes of animation My Life As A Courgette. She has a sensibility for the fluidity of childhood emotions and an awareness of the flexibility of belief at an age where what adults would describe as “magical” and the lesser magic moments of the everyday are accepted equally willingly.

All of this is back in evidence here in this modern fairy story that will take its protagonist and us on an unexpected journey through time, even though we might not realise it at first. The writer/director gently explores the anxieties experienced by young Nelly (Joséphine Sanz) after the death of her grandmother along with the connections between parent and child. At her gran's house to clear out the furniture, her mum Marion...

Following up her universally acclaimed Portrait of a Lady on Fire, Céline Sciamma was able to get a film off the ground and completed during the pandemic. Petite Maman, starring Joséphine Sanz, Gabrielle Sanz, Stéphane Varupenne, Nina Meurisse, and Margo Abascal, follows a young girl who has just lost her grandmother, then discovers a girl her own age in the woods. Following a Berlinale premiere, the film will arrive in France next month and the first international trailer has landed. Neon will also reteam with the director for a U.S. release, but a date hasn’t been confirmed yet.

Orla Smith said in our Berlinale review, “After the ambitious and wildly popular Portrait of a Lady on Fire shot Céline Sciamma into the arthouse stratosphere, she has returned with her fifth feature, Petite Maman, a warm and contained film whose scale is more akin to Tomboy. The mighty hype...

Writer-director Céline Sciamma’s entrancing historical romance about a young painter and her subject is a perceptive, erotic exploration of power

What a thrillingly versatile film-maker Céline Sciamma has proved to be. Having made an arthouse splash with the Euro-hits Water Lilies and Tomboy, she wrote and directed Girlhood (Bande de filles), a breathtaking portrait of modern “banlieue life” that completed her “accidental trilogy of youth”. Her impressive screenplay credits include Claude Barras’s My Life as a Courgette, a tenderly empathetic, French-Swiss stop-motion masterpiece that earned an Oscar nomination for its vividly resilient depiction of children in care. In each of these very different projects, Sciamma has struck an accessible chord by focusing tightly on specifics, finding the key to universal appeal in the unique, tiny details of each story and character.

For her fourth feature as writer-director, Sciamma ventures to a new world of the late 18th century.

Before “Portrait of a Lady on Fire,” a breathless, wind-swept lesbian romance about a painter and her subject, French director Céline Sciamma was best known for her tales of adolescent fluidity: “Water Lillies,” “Tomboy,” and “Girlhood.” In these films, female protagonists are as likely to be reviled by society as they are to be embraced by it.

Continue reading Noémie Merlant Discusses The Feminist Utopia In ‘Portrait Of A Lady On Fire’ [Interview] at The Playlist.

With a seemingly endless amount of streaming options—not only the titles at our disposal, but services themselves–each week we highlight the noteworthy titles that have recently hit platforms. Check out this week’s selections below and an archive of past round-ups here.

Before we get to our weekly streaming picks, check out our annual feature: Where to Stream the Best Films of 2019.

Cold Case Hammarskjöld (Mads Brügger)

In 1961, Secretary-General of the United Nations Dag Hammarskjöld was killed in a plane crash in Africa under mysterious circumstances. Beginning as an investigation into his still-unsolved death, the trail that Mads Brügger follows in Cold Case Hammarskjöld is one that expands to implicate some of the world’s most powerful governments in unfathomably heinous crimes. Without revealing the specifics of the jaw-dropping revelations in this thoroughly engrossing documentary, if there’s any justice, what is brought to light will cause global...

If the best films of 2019 have anything in common, it’s that they each feel somehow emblematic of the decade that they closed. Following on the heels of “Silence” and “The Wolf of Wall Street,” Martin Scorsese delivered another morally ambiguous period epic about the weight of our sins. Less than three years after looking for “The Lost City of Z,” James Gray shot the moon with “Ad Astra,” his greatest movie about the search for a mythic place to make us whole.

After establishing her extraordinary talents with the likes of “Tomboy” and “Girlhood,” “Portrait of a Lady on Fire” auteur Céline Sciamma rocked Cannes with her most shattering tale of love and loss and self-discovery, and capped off a remarkable decade of gay screen romances in the process. Bong Joon Ho, never capitalism’s biggest cheerleader, weaponized his usual proclivities in a way that saw him become a genre unto himself.

Cannes 2019 marked an important step in the career of Céline Sciamma, who took home a Best Screenplay Award from her impressive premiere in Competition with Portrait of a Lady on Fire. The period drama centered around two young women – one hired to paint a portrait of the other in 18th-century Brittany – is a compelling symphony of intense restraint and explosive release, which places the audience into a vortex of painting, music and sensuality even when depicting two people looking at each other silently in a room. The New Horizons International Film Festival made it the Opening Film of its 2019 selection, and I had the chance to sit down with the Tomboy and Girlhood filmmaker in Wroclaw to discuss her new career-best fourth feature.…...

Paint it Bright: Sciamma Dazzles with Career-Best, Ardent Period Drama

You only need a few seconds to fall in line with Céline Sciamma’s commanding directorial effort, as the main character seizes the frame directing the eye of a group of students and the audience as a whole. The French filmmaker behind Tomboy and Girlhood is back and aiming higher than ever, with an 18th-century story of attraction between two women, a painter and a Countess’ daughter, set on the windy coast of Brittany. Masterful in her handling of historical restraint and simmering desire, Sciamma strips away all distractions and leaves only the essential onscreen, embodied by emphatic performances from Noémie Merlant and Adèle Haenel.…...

Celine Sciamma’s all-female, period drama Portrait of A Lady On Fire won best screenplay.

Paris-based mk2 films has unveiled a fresh round of sales on three of the five Palme d’Or contenders on its Cannes 2019 slate; Portrait Of A Lady On Fire, Sibyl and The Whistlers.

Celine Sciamma’s all-female period drama Portrait of A Lady On Fire won best screenplay and tied in second place on Screen’s Cannes 2019 Jury Grid.

It has sold to more than 20 territories worldwide after being subject to a fierce bidding war for North American rights, won by Neon and Hulu.

In Europe,...

Héloïse bursts into the frame with her shoulders to the camera. She wears a long dress; it billows gently as she walks outside her house in 18th century Brittany and then flaps furiously as the walk turns into a run, her gracious figure thrust toward the cliffs and the ocean rumbling below–until the run stops, and in the time that lasts a hairsbreadth she turns her head back to the camera, smiles. It is the first time the luminous face of Adéle Haenel graces the screen in Céline Sciamma’s devastatingly beautiful Portrait of a Lady on Fire. And in a movie in which turning your head to look back acquires accrues a deeper, tragic meaning, it is a character-defining scene that thrums with the same spell-binding beauty of Denis Lavant’s last dance in Claire Denis’ Beau Travail.

Portrait of a Lady on Fire is a film of incandescent scenes and staggering wonder.

Hey, Bold And The Beautiful fans. We've got some major casting news for you guys in this new article, and it sounds like it could result in a major twist for the Hope stolen baby storyline. It turns out that the producers have decided to bring on the mother of Reese's accomplice Florence! That's right, guys. They're about to make this a family affair. According to the folks over at People.com, the Bold And The Beautiful producers have hired veteran actress Denise Richards to come on and portray Florence's mother Shauna Fulton. The Shauna character is a long term contract role. That means we can expect to see a lot Shauna as well as Florence in the future. Really, it just sounds like they're going to drag this storyline out even more. The official description that's been attached to the new Shauna Fulton character reads like this, "Shauna is a fun-loving,...

mk2 films has scored major sales across its slate, including on Céline Sciamma’s female-driven period drama “Portrait of a Lady on Fire,” an 18th century-set drama that is expected to premiere in Cannes. Other sales standouts on mK2’s slate include “Arab Blues,” “Varda by Agnes” and “The Whistlers.”

“Portrait of a Lady on Fire” marks Sciamma’s fourth feature after the critically acclaimed “Girlhood,” “Tomboy” and “Water Lilies.” mk2 unveiled first footage from the new movie in Berlin at the European Film Market, and sealed deals for the U.K. (Curzon Artificial Eye), Spain (Karma Films), Benelux (Cinéart), and Sweden (Folkets Bio).

Produced by Lilies Films, “Portrait of a Lady on Fire” stars Adèle Haenel (“Bpm”) as Heloise, a reluctant bride-to-be who has just left the convent, and follows her relationship with Marianne (Noémie Merlant), a painter who has been commissioned to do her wedding portrait. Intimacy and...

One of the biggest controversies in the baseball world for the past several years has been about former Chicago Cubs great Sammy Sosa. Fans have taken notice of his dramatically lighter skin since 2009, and some have even gone so far as to say that they think he actually wants to be white. Here's why he says the haters don't get to him! “Look at what I am today,” he said in a new interview with Sports Illustrated, while showing off his glamorous home in the United Arab Emirates. He has the utmost confidence in himself, and doesn't care that people have mean things to say about his skin tone, or anything else for that matter. “This is my life, and I don’t take garbage from nobody. I do whatever I want.” Sammy Sosa in 2018. (Photo Credit: Getty Images) Sammy's son Sammy Jr. revealed that his dad doesn't let the criticism get to him,...

‪Susanna Nicchiarelli‬ on Nico's relationship with Alain Delon: "I don't mention him because I don't mention any of the men she was with except Jim Morrison. I think people's lives are much more complex than what movies usually tell us, especially biopics." Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze

Nico, 1988, a highlight of the Tribeca Film Festival and the Best Film Horizons Award winner at the Venice Film Festival, stars Trine Dyrholm as Christa Päffgen. "This is Berlin, my darling, it's burning," says a mother to her daughter. The child is to become Andy Warhol and Velvet Underground icon Nico.

Susanna Nicchiarelli's extraordinary film, shot by Crystel Fournier is not about those most famous years (which flash onto the screen in snippets of archival footage), nor, with the exception of a few flashbacks, about her war time and postwar German childhood. In Nico, 1988 the focus is on 1986 and the following years when she...

As new Academy president John Bailey opens up about what he plans to do in his new job, we read the tea leaves. He faces an unusually tumultuous time, as the Academy confronts multiple challenges, from the industry’s transition to digital, and pressures from ABC to increase viewership of the Oscar show, to the need to raise more funding to build the troubled $400 million Academy Museum at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

Here are Bailey’s main concerns. So far, he seems more than up to meeting this new assignment.

1. Will the Academy change its diversity outreach?

No. As someone who has long hired men and women of different ethnic, socio- economic, and racial backgrounds, Bailey supports Academy CEO Hudson’s outreach imperative via the A2020 program which is designed to double the Academy’s diverse membership by 2020. He’s proud of such Academy efforts as the Academy Gold internship program,...

As new Academy president John Bailey opens up about what he plans to do in his new job, we read the tea leaves. He faces an unusually tumultuous time, as the Academy confronts multiple challenges, from the industry’s transition to digital, and pressures from ABC to increase viewership of the Oscar show, to the need to raise more funding to build the troubled $400 million Academy Museum at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

Here are Bailey’s main concerns. So far, he seems more than up to meeting this new assignment.

1. Will the Academy change its diversity outreach?

No. As someone who has long hired men and women of different ethnic, socio- economic, and racial backgrounds, Bailey supports Academy CEO Hudson’s outreach imperative via the A2020 program which is designed to double the Academy’s diverse membership by 2020. He’s proud of such Academy efforts as the Academy Gold internship program,...

Female filmmakers are still an unfortunate rarity in Hollywood — USC Annenberg’s Media, Diversity & Social Change Initiative’s latest study about female directors in the industry recently delivered blunt findings like “the director’s chair is white and male” and “age restricts opportunities for female filmmakers” and even “one & done: opportunities for female directors are rare” — but that hasn’t stopped a compelling legion of creators to churn out excellent films for as long as the art form has existed.

The 21st century may be less than seventeen years old, but it’s already played home to a slew of instant classics, from established auteurs to rising indie stars and everything in between. Here are the 25 best.

Read More: The 25 Best Sci-Fi Movies of the 21st Century, From ‘Children of Men’ to ‘Her’

Behold, a bevy of riches…

25. “Tomboy,” directed by Céline Sciamma (2011)

A quietly gorgeous portrait of a plucky...

From “Oliver Twist” to “The Fault In Our Stars,” younger viewers have always had an affinity for melancholy. Call it a penchant for melodrama, unfettered access to emotions without shame, or maybe it’s taking comfort in life’s messier truths before social mores encourage them to project happiness at all times. Children often feel things more intensely than jaded adults; it follows that they would respond to narratives that are comfortable painting with shades of grey.

Which is not to say “My Life As A Zucchini” isn’t colorful. Visually, it uses a whimsical palette and exudes vintage charm. The figures, with their circular eyes and ruddy noses and ears have that certain stop-motion je ne sais quoi. The wide, circular eyes of the film’s mournful protagonist, Zucchini, are rimmed in blue to match his hair, painting his face with a pallor that mirrors the blues inside.

Read...

France’s foreign press corps also fete Divines, My Life As A Zucchini and The Death Of Louis Xiv. French critics honour Elle in separate awards.

Paul Verhoeven’s French-language thriller continued its winning streak at the 22nd edition of the French Lumière awards on Monday evening.

Elle won best film and best director as well as best actress for Isabelle Huppert for her performance as a hard-nosed businesswoman who plays a psychological game of cat-and-mouse with a rapist who breaks into her home.

Monday’s prizes join a growing a list of awards for both the feature and Huppert that includes the Golden Globe for best foreign language film and best actress.

Huppert is also one of the favourites in the best actress category at the Oscars and the title recently picked up 11 nominations at the French César awards.

Some 60 journalists hailing from the international press corps in France voted in the Lumière Awards, which are regarded...

France’s foreign press corps also fete Divines, My Life As A Zucchini and The Death Of Louis Xiv. French critics honour Elle in separate awards.

Paul Verhoeven’s French-language thriller continued its winning streak at the 22nd edition of the French Lumière awards on Monday evening.

Elle won best film and best director as well as best actress for Isabelle Huppert for her performance as a hard-nosed businesswoman who plays a psychological game of cat-and-mouse with a rapist who breaks into her home.

Monday’s prizes join a growing a list of awards for both the feature and Huppert that includes the Golden Globe for best foreign language film and best actress.

Huppert is also one of the favourites in the best actress category at the Oscars and the title recently picked up 11 nominations at the French César awards.

Some 60 journalists hailing from the international press corps in France voted in the Lumière Awards, which are regarded...

It’s exactly what you need this week.

This is fast becoming a disturbing and sad week for news, politics, and life in general. There’s no one right way to combat the insanity, although lighting your computer on fire and tossing it out a window comes close. Before you do resort to that, I offer up this absolutely delightful trailer for My Life as a Zucchini. May it sooth you as it soothed me.

https://medium.com/media/ea013257878d6fa8ee9236a84197801d/href

If you haven’t heard of My Life as a Zucchini yet, this would be the part where I would make some sort of joke about how it isn’t about becoming a vegetable (haha!), but we’re all film fans here. It would be hard to miss this film as it’s been making incredible headlines since its debut at the Director’s Fortnight at Cannes last spring.

Adapted...

One of the major problems with many (most) American movies is that characters are always supposed to know what they want. That’s what they teach you in film school — in fact, that’s pretty much all they teach you in film school. Establish a hero with a clear objective. He has to solve the murder, he has to get the girl, he has to win the big game (sadly, not in the same film). Define a “want” in the first act, complicate it in the second, and make good on it in the third. Of the infinite fantasies that can be found in the dark of the cinema, perhaps the greatest and most perverse of them all is that everyone walks around this world with such a clear sense of purpose.

Would that it were so simple. Who the hell ever really knows what it is that they want,...

“Todd Haynes‘ filmography is often overwhelming in its intellectual acumen and emotional devastation,” we noted upon the release of his latest film this past fall. “This is true of Carol, which is at once a return to the deconstruction of femininity, social mores, and mild anarchy of privilege, as well as an honest and heartbreaking story about falling in love and the trepidation therein.” Over 100 film experts, ranging from critics to writers to programmers, agree on the emotional power of the drama, as they’ve voted it the best Lgbt film of all-time.

Conducted by BFI ahead of the 30th BFI Flare: London Lgbt Film Festival, they note this is the “first major critical survey of Lgbt films.” Speaking about leading the poll, Haynes said, “I’m so proud to have Carol voted as the top Lgbt film of all time in this poll launched for the Fest’s 30th edition.

Picking the best movies that come out in any given year is no easy feat. With over 800 movies released theatrically, there’s plenty to digest. As we reach the halfway point of the year, we decided to publish a list of our favourite movies thus far, in hopes that our readers can catch up on some of the films they might have missed out on. Below, you shall find the list of the top 30 films of 2015 to date, a list that ranges from independent horror films to documentary to foreign films and so much more. Here’s is part two of our three part list.

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20. The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared

Eccentrically layered yet simple in plot, the Swedish adaptation of Jonas Jonasson’s novel does a fine job in balancing satire with tenderness. Telling the story of Allan Karlsson (Robert Gustafsson), a 100-year-old explosive enthusiast...

Title: Bande de Filles (Girlhood) Director: Céline Sciamma Starring: Karidja Touré, Assa Sylla, Lindsay Karamoh, Marietou Touré, Idrissa Diabate, Simina Soumare, Cyril Mendy, Djibril Gueye. ‘Girlhood’ is not Richard Linklater’s female equivalent to ‘Boyhood’, but surely is just as powerful in telling a teenage girl’s coming of age story. Writer-director Céline Sciamma, just as she did in her previous movies, ‘Water Lilies’ and ‘Tomboy,’ newly focuses on the struggles and conflicts of young women in today’s pressure-filled society. She decides to pay homage to Jean-Luc Godard’s classic ‘Bande a Part’ (Band of Outsiders), naming her latest work ‘Bande de Filles,’ (Band of Girls) as both stories explore the strivings of [ Read More ]

The post Bande de Filles (Girlhood) Movie Review appeared first on Shockya.com.

Girlhood break-out stars Karidja Touré and Assa Sylla She has explored girls in childhood (Tomboy), adolesence (Water Lilies) and finally on the verge of adulthood in Girlhood, receiving its Scottish premiere at Glasgow Film Festival. Now French director Céline Schiamma thinks it is time to move on although she has yet to find out in which direction...

Somewhere in the far reaches of the gilded bedroom turned interview space in the Grand Hotel in Paris, Céline Sciamma hangs out of the window high above the swirling traffic, mobile clamped in one hand and a dangling cigarette in the other.

Although Girlhood (the latest of three films after Water Lilies and Tomboy, an “accidental trilogy”), was premiered in the Cannes Director’s Fortnight last year, she finds herself still talking about it as its international career kicks in at such festivals as London and last month in Sundance. Mobile and cigarette...

It takes only a look to unsettle, even undo, a teenage girl. A look can be so many things at once: an ogling, a scrutiny, a provocation, a form of surveillance and control. In “Girlhood,” the roving eyes of older boys transform a throng of rowdy female athletes into a flock of disconcertingly meek mademoiselles, their heads sunk as low as they’ll go without dislocating any vertebrae. Those same girls can’t bear the aggressive stares of other girls, either. The hostile female gaze transfigures them into raving lunatics, suddenly seized by the urgent need to slam their knuckles into an enemy’s sneering,...

Proust’s little “bande de filles” was nothing like this. Nor is Ousmane Sembene’s classic film “Black Girl” like this, except for the silence displayed by the protagonists of the two films as they deal with life’s offerings. Nor does this have the depth of “La Vie d’Adele, Chapitre 1” although it ends in a way that invites the viewer to want to see what the next chapter offers.

What I saw was the story of a poor black girl in one of the banlieus (the ‘hood) of Paris trying to find a way out of her dead end life. But I never saw the working her mind or the depth of her character. I saw she had an intuition about life, was fearless, kind, and determined. Does intelligence count? We must wait for the next chapter to find out how she succeeds if she indeed does. I don’t know if the director has the answer to this. And I wonder if the way out is through a person or through her own innate resources which I never did see. And this is where I take exception to the film. She failed school, never seemed to care, played American (??) football but seemed to have no attachment to the game or the players

Who is the director-writer Céline Sciamma? She’s a very talented white girl who went to La Femis, the French film school some regard as elitist. Her previous two films, deal with female sexual ambiguity (“Tomboy”, “Water Lilies”) and are very authentic, moving and valuable films worth watching more than once.

When I see films like “Sister” by Ursula Meier, or even “ Two Days, One Night” by the Dardenne Brothers whom I love, even while I enjoy the films – as I did this one (except for certain moments when I wanted to laugh, e.g., when she wears the blond wig and red dress to deliver drugs at a white party) -- I am aware that I am watching depictions of working class people in dramas directed by bourgeois filmmakers. And when I hear the vulgar loud-mouth dishing of girl-gangs I am not fooled into thinking it is clever repartee when I know it is foul and crude. And today, with the issues of immigrants and second and third generations of non-integrated minorities, this is a sensitive area. Having seen the “nouvelle vibe” films of Rachid Djajdani whose film “Hold Back” won the Fipresci Prize in Directors Fortnight in 2012 or “Brooklyn” by Pascal Tessaud, I am even more sensitized to authenticity.

I don’t think this shows the French black reality in the suburbs. It looks more like a white view of the U.S. urban black ‘hood. When I grew up blacks barely existed in our thoughts or imagination. I was white and Jewish living in a non-Jewish, white (bigoted) working class neighborhood. There I absorbed the prevailing view of the Mexicans who lived on the other side of the tracks. They were all considered “pachucos”. And I longed to join the girl gangs who had fights like the little bande de filles in this movie; they carried switch blade knives, razors in their big hair and pulled the earrings out of the pierced ears. The two fights in this movie were just like I imagined the fights and were like those male-imagined “catfights” in the Aip prison movies or of the bar-girls in western movies of that era. Something in this movie has the same scent of inauthenticity. I realize I am projecting my own girlhood longing to join the bande de filles onto Céline, and perhaps it’s pure projection, but it feels as if she is attracted to them for reasons other than storytelling. The story is ok but the telling is faulty.

That said, I am very glad Strand is releasing “Girlhood”, and I hope it creates some Wom, just as I hoped “Dear White People” would. It did well, grossing more than $4 million. I hope this film does as well, though being French, the most I can hope is that it reaches the $1 million box office level. When I saw “Dear White People” last year in Sundance, I kept quiet because my thought was, that if that is what black students at the universities are preoccupied with today, then I pity the future of America. And I did not believe for a minute that such overriding preoccupations were real. However, it did quite well and I hope this one does too, although I believe that I am watching stereoptypes. What are these people’s serious thoughts; where are their depths of feelings?

When I grew up and met real Mexicans, I saw none of the stereotypical behavior I was told to beware of. Even when I met gang members, there was no romantic element at all, only a degradation of humanity caused by the unrelenting prejudice of society’s impersonalization.

I loved the French review of this film by Régis Dubois, who has a blog very well-respected by black community in France.

For those interested in going into such films in greater depth, see the films of Carrénard,Maldhé, Zadi,Zouhani, May,Djajdani or Tessaud. Check out what is playing at the Festival Cinébanlieue or Les Pépites du Cinéma. These show the truth about what is happening in the minds of “these people”.

Girlhood (Bande de Filles) is being sold by Films Distribution

Strand Releasing will release it in the U.S.

Other territories sold are:

Brazil--Imovision

Denmark--Reel Pictures Aps, Peripher

France-Oct 22, 2014-Pyramide Distribution

Norway--As Fidalgo Film Distribution

Slovenia--Demiurg

Sweden--Folkets Bio

U.S.--Strand Releasing

Writer/director Céline Sciamma’s look at a group of black high school students living in the tough banlieues of Paris is grounded by newcomer Karidja Touré. "Girlhood," is scheduled to open in New York on January 30, 2015 with a national roll out to follow.

Fed up with her abusive family situation, lack of school prospects and the “boys’ law” in the neighborhood, shy Marieme (Karidja Touré) starts a new life after falling in with a group of three free-spirited girls. She changes her name, her style, drops out of school and starts stealing to be accepted into the gang. When her home situation becomes unbearable, Marieme seeks solace in an older man who promises her money and protection. Realizing this sort of lifestyle will never result in the freedom and independence she truly desires, she finally decides to take matters into her own hands.

French director/writer Céline Sciamma’s debut feature, “Water Lilies”, catapulted her as one of France’s most fresh and notable women directors, garnering her a César nomination for Best First Feature as well as the prestigious Prix Louis Deluc for Best First Feature awarded by the French Film Critics. Her second film, “Tomboy”, won the Teddy Jury Award at the 2011 Berlin International Film Festival. This is Ms. Sciamma’s third feature film.

This film has great credentials, having debuted in Cannes 2014 Directors Fortnight, gone on to Toronto - Tiff 2014 Contemporary World Cinema and

Stockholm Iff 2014 - Competition (Best Film, Best Cinematography) and Sundance World Dramatic Competition 2015.

Critics loved it too.

“Celine Sciamma’s ‘Girlhood’ is one of the best coming of age movies in years.” — Eric Kohn, Indiewire...

While We’re Young (Noah Baumbach)

The full line-up has been announced for this year’s Glasgow Film Festival, which runs from Wednesday 18th February to Sunday 1st March, and it features over 150 UK, Scottish or European premieres, as well as multiple rep screenings and special events.

The festival opens with the European premiere of While We’re Young, Noah Baumbach’s comedy follow-up to Frances Ha, starring Ben Stiller, Naomi Watts, Adam Driver, Amanda Seyfried and Charles Grodin. The closing night gala on 1st March will be the UK premiere of Swedish director Ruben Östlund’s already much-vaunted darkly comic relationship drama Force Majeure.

Force Majeure (Ruben Östlund)

Additional UK premiere highlights include awards season darling Still Alice, Wim Wenders’ recently Oscar-nominated documentary The Salt of the Earth, Olivier Assayas’ Clouds of Sils Maria, starring Juliette Binoche and Kristen Stewart, and legendary Swedish director Roy Andersson’s A Pigeon...

“Celine Sciamma’s ‘Girlhood’ is one of the best coming of age movies in years.” — Eric Kohn, Indiewire

Writer/director Céline Sciamma’s third feature film, Girlhood, is a raw and tender look at a group of black high school students living in the tough banlieues of Paris, grounded by an incendiary performance from newcomer Karidja Touré.

Also starring Assa Sylla, Lindsay Karamoh, Marietou Touré, watch the earlier trailer Here and the new trailer below.

Fed up with her abusive family situation, lack of school prospects and the “boys’ law” in the neighborhood, Shy Marieme (Karidja Touré) starts a new life after falling in with a group of three free-spirited girls. She changes her name, her style, drops out of school and starts stealing to be accepted into the gang.

When her home situation becomes unbearable, Marieme seeks solace in an older man who promises her money and protection. Realizing...

The most talked-about film of 2014 so far has been Richard Linklater’s opus of adolescence, Boyhood. Unfortunately, the buzz surrounding it could have a negative effect on Girlhood, which despite its titular commonality, is a very different beast of a film. Bold and beautiful, filled with pain and pleasure, and featuring a throbbing soundtrack and propulsive energy, Celine Sciamma’s drama has also been a festival darling.

Unlike Boyhood, which focuses on the coming-of-age of a blonde white boy who is aimless and filled with angst, Girlhood is about a black teenage girl in France, fighting with her own identity and yearning to break free. It is an invigorating slice of life that feels much more specific, urgent and relatable, and it may even be finer than Boyhood.

Sciamma’s drama focuses on Marieme (Karidja Touré), a shy schoolgirl who initially has more boyish interests. (In the film’s rather radical opening scene,...

For those who, like Armond White, thought Linklater's "Boyhood" celebrated the "emblematic figure" of white patriarchy, consider Céline Sciamma's "Girlhood," which is now playing Toronto in the Contemporary World Cinema section. This all-black, female-skewing coming-of-age drama stunned Cannes, where French director Sciamma's previous features "Water Lilies" and "Tomboy" -- which grasped controversial material and eventually wound up small-scale arthouse hits in the Us -- met acclaim. "Girlhood" premiered in the Directors' Fortnight sidebar. I had the pleasure of working with Sciamma on a Cannes Critics' Week jury in 2012. She is a smart, perceptive filmmaker and, above all, a cinephile who cares about telling human stories with a style that she utterly owns. I have not seen "Girlhood" but this looks beautiful. Read Eric Kohn's Indiewire rave here. Pity there is no Us distribution yet.

Exclusive: My Life As A Zucchini is written by Tomboy and Girlhood director Céline Sciamma.

Indie Sales has acquired international rights to feature-length stop motion film My Life As A Zucchini, based on a screen adaptation by filmmaker Céline Sciamma of a popular novel.

The Paris-based company will launch sales on the film at the Toronto International Film Festival (Tiff) alongside another new acquisition, Pierre Jolivet’s new project The Night Watchman, starring Olivier Gourmet.

My Life As A Zucchini is the first feature-length film by Swiss director Claude Barras after a series of well-received animated shorts including Chambre 69 and Land of the Heads.

It is a Swiss-French co-production between Rita Films in Switzerland, Blue Spirit Productions in Paris and Gebeka in Lyon. Gebeka will also distribute in France.

The film is an adaptation of Gilles Paris novel Autobiography of a Zucchini about a young boy adapting to life in a children’s home after his mother...

French director Céline Sciamma's first two features, "Water Lilies" and "Tomboy," followed young women through challenging periods of social confusion and identity crises. Her latest and best work, "Girlhood," follows that same pattern by taking it one step further. While Sciamma's previous movies found characters overcoming their burdens through perseverance, "Girlhood" gives them the chance to really act out. The tense, involving result confirms Sciamma's mastery over the coming-of-age drama, a genre too often reduced to its simplest ingredients. Sciamma's latest stage of development arrives alongside a major discovery. Heading up an all-black cast, Karidja Touré plays subdued teen Marieme, a low key girl who lives in a lower class Paris neighborhood with her warring parents and younger sister. The opportunity arrives for her to come out of her shell when a trio of local teens coax her into their gang, luring her with the promise of cute boys.

Celine Sciamma’s Girlhood (Bande de Filles) [pictured] to open; Matthew Warchus’ Pride to close.Scroll down for full list

Céline Sciamma’s Girlhood (Bande de Filles), revolving around a girl gang in a tough Paris neighbourhood, will open Cannes Directors’ Fortnight, running May 15-25.

The Cannes parallel section’s artistic director Edouard Waintrop unveiled the non-competitive line-up at a press conference at the Forum des Images in Paris today.

Sciamma was last in Cannes with adolescent locker room drama Water Lilies, which premiered in Un Certain Regard in 2007, but is best known internationally for her 2011 Tomboy, which sold to some 35 territories.

UK’s Pride is Closing Film

Matthew Warchus’ Pride, starring an ensemble cast featuring Bill Nighy, Imelda Staunton, Dominic West, Paddy Considine and Andrew Scott, will close the selection. The UK comedy revolves around an unexpected alliance in 1984 between a bunch of striking Welsh miners and gay and lesbian activists.

Other UK selections...

When the Cannes Film Festival's Official Selection was unveiled last week, many were surprised not to see one carry-over from the Sundance fest in the Un Certain Regard section -- in recent years, it's been something of a tradition for a Park City sensation (often the Grand Jury Prize winner) to compete again there, with the likes of "Precious" and "Beasts of the Southern Wild" getting a second surge of festival buzz on the Croisette. This year, Thierry Fremaux's team clearly thought nothing from Sundance 2014 was suitable, but the Directors' Fortnight sidebar has made up for it, including both Damien Chazelle's "Whiplash" and Jim Mickle's "Cold in July" in a name-heavy lineup. Starring Miles Teller as a young jazz drummer, "Whiplash" won both the Grand Jury Prize and Audience Award in the Us Dramatic section at Sundance, while Mickle's uproarious retro genre mash-up -- starring Michael C. Hall...

Why Watch? Not quite yet done with the Cannes Film Festival, here’s a film from one of this year’s award winners. Anahita Ghazvinizadeh won first prize in the Cinefondation short competition for Needle, a narrative film about a young girl living through both the piercing of her ears and her parents’ divorce. The Cinefondation jury was led by Jane Campion, and Ghazvinizadeh was awarded €15,000 (about $19,500). While Needle is not yet online, we can watch one of Ghazvinizadeh’s earlier shorts on her Vimeo page. When the Kid Was a Kid won various awards at Iranian film festivals in 2011 and 2012, and deservedly so. It’s a glimpse into the lives of a bunch of kids living in an apartment building, who entertain themselves by play-acting as their parents throwing a party. The focus is on Taha, a young boy attending the affair dressed as his mother. He raids her bedroom for a dress, a...

Chicago – Coming of age dramas are a dime a dozen in Hollywood, but few are ever brave enough to grapple with the profound transitions that occur during one’s teenage years. Young American moviegoers’ first encounter with foreign cinema is often the result of their search for honest and unflinching portraits of sexual awakening and discovery. In terms of sheer maturity, American movies are still woefully below the curve set by most countries.

Rating: 2.5/5.0

One of the best films of the last decade was Céline Sciamma’s “Tomboy,” a captivating French drama about a 10-year-old girl who dresses in boyish clothing and develops feelings for one of her female friends. The picture offered a hopeful twist on Kimberly Peirce’s “Boys Don’t Cry” by accentuating the healing that occurs when one is true to one’s own identity. Sciamma proved to be as skilled as the Dardenne Brothers in...

As public ticket sales for the BFI London Film Festival open Monday (24 September), the time is ripe for a preview blog. Having attended a number international film festivals this year, I’ve already had the chance to see a handful of the films that will be screening here in London next month. The complete list of films (which you can view conveniently organised A-z by title, country or director) has been online for several days now. The line-up looks more varied and interesting than ever, and of the films I’ve already seen, I can recommend every one of them wholeheartedly. Here are my tips on films you shouldn’t miss:

Neighbouring Sounds

The film centres a neighbourhood in urban Brazil and follows the everyday life of a few of its residents: a middle class family with kids; three generations of a wealthier family; and the lower classes who come to cook,...

The beginning of each month is an exciting time wherein Netflix dumps a large number of new titles onto their streaming service. Comb through those titles as well as others added in the past couple of weeks, and a few great titles bubble to the surface. Let’s take a look at a documentary about urban design, a drama about adolescent sexual identity, an existential Western from the vaults, and a few more movies worth streaming this week. The New and Noteworthy Ubranized (2011) Following his documentaries on typefaces (Helvetica) and industrial design (Objectified), director Gary Hustwit completes his Design Trilogy with Urbanized, a look at urban planning and the design challenges of cities. Featuring interviews with many of the world’ s leading planners and architects, Urbanized pours through an incredible amount of information relating to urban design methodologies and how they have changed through the centuries. The film is neatly presented by dividing its time between different...

To celebrate the DVD re-release of Lucía Puenzo's Argentinian drama Xxy (2007), starring Ines Efron and Ricardo Darín (2009's The Secret in Their Eyes), we have a fantastic coming of age DVD bundle to give away courtesy of Peccadillo Pictures, which includes Xxy, Céline Sciamma's Tomboy (2011) and Julia Solomonoff's The Last Summer of La Boyita (2009). This is an exclusive competition for our Facebook and Twitter fans, so if you haven't already, 'Like' us at facebook.com/CineVueUK or follow us @CineVue before answering the question below.

Read more »...

Wolfe Video released the indie drama Tomboy earlier this week, on DVD June 5, after a successful run on the film festival circuit. We have a contest lined up where the winner can take home this DVD for their own collection. These prizes will go fast, so enter this contest today.

Winners Receive:

Tomboy DVD

Here's How To Win!

Just "Like" (fan) the MovieWeb Facebook page (below) and then leave a comment below telling us why these prizes must be yours!

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Tomboy tells the story of 10-year-old Laure (played by the amazing Zo&#233 H&#233ran) who moves to the suburbs and decides to pass as a boy amongst the pack of neighborhood kids. As "Mikael" she catches the attention of leader of the pack Lisa, who becomes smitten with her. Finding resourceful ways to hide her true self,...