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Chinese distribution company Hishow has launched We Love Cinema, a new label dedicated to highlighting arthouse films from around the world in mainland China.

The new programme, unveiled at the Hong Kong FilmMart, will focus on distribution, marketing and exhibition for movies across arthouse and genre. We Love Cinema will be developing innovative marketing initiatives, for instance a WeChat mini app boasting exclusive contents and bonuses, as well as early screenings and Q&a with filmmakers. As part of the programme, Hishow will also be setting up a network of arthouse cinemas.

The Beijing-based distributor has been ramping acquisitions of international prestige movies. One of its recent acquisitions include Walter Salles’ Brazilian family drama “I’m Still Here” which just won best international feature film at the Oscars, along with Salles’ 1998 film “Central Station.” Other recent pickups include the Oscar-nominated animated feature “Memoir of a Snail” from Australian stop-motion master Adam Elliot,...

Chinese distributor Hishow Entertainment is launching a marketing, distribution and exhibition program, We Love Cinema, to promote arthouse titles in the mainland China market.

The Beijing-based company has also recently acquired Best International Oscar winner I’m Still Here, directed by Brazilian auteur Walter Salles, along with Salles’ 1998 film Central Station, adding to its expanding roster of prestige titles.

In addition to acquiring specialist titles for mainland China theatrical distribution, the We Love Cinema program involves building a marketing strategy and loyalty program for cinema fans. The company is developing online communities and a WeChat mini app through which members can enjoy exclusive contents and bonuses including early screenings, Q&As with filmmakers, limited edition merchandise and special gifts.

The program also involves establishing a network of arthouse-friendly cinemas, working towards a platform releasing strategy, starting off with release in a select number of cinemas for each title, potentially expanding wider...

“Reflection in a Dead Diamond” is a new France-produced surreal spy thriller, written and directed by Hélène Cattet & Bruno Forzani, starring Fabio Testi, Yannick Renier, Koen De Bouw, Maria de Medeiros, and Thi Mai, with theatrical distribution Tba:

“…’John’ is 70 years old and lives in solitary luxury in a grand hotel on the Côte d’Azur. He becomes intrigued by the woman in the room next door who reminds him of his wild years on the Riviera in the 1960s, back when he was a debonair international spy in a world brimming with peril and promise.

“But when the woman mysteriously disappears, John is beset by flashbacks – or perhaps fantasies – of his glamorous and grotesque past, and the alluring women and dastardly villains who lived and died there.

“John’s reality becomes fragmented as he seeks to unravel the puzzle of his past. Memory, madness and moviemaking become increasingly difficult to separate.

The new trailer for Reflection in a Dead Diamond looks fantastic! Of course, that's what we expected / yearned for / hoped for from Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani, the directing duo behind Amer, Let The Corpses Tan, and Strange Color Of Your Body's Tears, especially after reading Martin Kudlac's review out of the 2025 Berlinale, in which he concluded: "Ultimately, Reflection in a Dead Diamond is less concerned with espionage than with perception. The film functions as both an homage to and a deconstruction of genre, layering its self-reflexive and meta-textual dimensions to examine the fluidity of identity, memory, and sanity." Well, that's fine. I just want me some more Euro-spies, black leather, deadly women, dastardly men, and racing sports cars. Behold the trailer...

[Read the whole post on screenanarchy.com...]...

If you have never heard about the Luxembourg City Film Festival before, it may surprise you to know that the biggest annual film event in the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, which is surrounded by France, Germany and Belgium, is turning 15 this year.

Long considered a hidden gem on the global fest circuit, the event has steadily gained in stature, routinely attracting big industry names to a country with a population of only around 670,000. Just take last year as an example, when the fest set an attendance record with a 10 percent increase to 19,962. For its 2024, LuxFilmFest, it attracted the likes of Viggo Mortensen, Chinese director Wang Bing, Mauritanian director Abderrahmane Sissako, French director Gaspar Noé — who hosted a retrospective and a masterclass — and a jury that included Luxembourg star Vicky Krieps, German actor Sebastian Koch, and U.S. director Ira Sachs.

For this year’s 15th edition, which kicks off on Thursday,...

Sales activity at the Berlin Film Festival and European Film Market revved up on Saturday as Sony Pictures Classics struck a deal for North American rights to Rebecca Zlotowski’s murder mystery “Vie Privée,” starring Jodie Foster.

Variety‘s Elsa Keslassy had the scoop on SPC’s deal for the film, which also covers key territories in Latin America. “Shot in Paris and Normandy, ‘Vie Privée’ is currently in post-production and will likely world premiere in the festival circuit,” Keslassy writes.

Foster, who speaks fluent French, stars in the film as renowned psychiatrist Lilian Steiner, who mounts a private investigation into the death of one of her patients after she becomes convinced that there has been a murder. Foster last starred in a French-language film 20 years ago in Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s Oscar-nominated “A Very Long Engagement.” Zlotowski ranks as one of France’s top filmmakers. “Vie Privée” marks her first deal with Sony Pictures Classics.

Gabriel Mascaro’s The Blue Trail has taken the lead on Screen’s Berlin jury grid with a strong 3.4 while Ari, Dreams, The Ice Tower and Reflection In A Dead Diamond also land.

The Blue Trailreceived four four stars (excellent) and five three stars (good), already beating the score of last year’s joint winners My Favourite Cake and The Devil’s Bath with 3.1.Denise Weinberg stars in the dystopian fable as a 77-year-old who embarks on a journey through the Amazon.

Click on the image above for the most up-to-date version of the grid.

Close behind was Michel Franco’s...

Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani waste no time establishing the freely associative rhythms of their latest film, Reflection in a Dead Diamond. Its opening pair of images, of a fizzing drink dissolving into ocean waves as they wash over a bikini-clad young woman, herald an orgiastic symphony of sensory overload. Right out of the gate, the filmmakers’ filtering of a James Bond-esque espionage tale through a grindhouse sensibility exists in such a state of emphatic stimulation that each shot feels punctuated with an exclamation point.

Cattet and Forzani, who stitch Reflection in a Dead Diamond together from a seemingly endless array of money shots and stylistic flourishes, never take their foot off the accelerator. It feels like an impossible velocity to maintain, so a big question hanging over the film is when a moment will come when viewers will be able to catch their breaths. The answer comes when the...

One of Christopher Nolan’s most intriguing comments on “Tenet”’s ill-fated 2020 press tour unveiled the mode of inspiration for his time-swerving spy thriller. He wanted to collate the tropes of the sub-genre from his memory and recollections of film viewings past, hoping the mental results would result in a spy movie urtext — an espionage flick composed of the most profound elements of all other espionage flicks. Concluding the thought, he cited Sergio Leone’s “Once Upon a Time in the West” as an example of the same kind of approach, but with classic Hollywood westerns.

If “Tenet” was some kind of definitive arabesque on the spy movie, it would make a fine double bill at a classy cinematheque with “Reflection in a Dead Diamond,” which has just premiered in competition at the Berlinale. Co-directed by the artsy genre specialists Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani, the film shuffles a myriad of spy thriller trademarks,...

Flaunting more leather and latex than a specialty shop off Times Square in the 1970s, Reflection in a Dead Diamond (Reflet dans un diamant mort) is another gory, glammy, eyes-glazing-over feature from French directors Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani.

Indeed, both the ’70s and ’60s are eras from which the avant-garde duo have always mined their material, basking in the excesses of Italian giallo horror flicks, Z-grade Spaghetti westerns and other cult items in their arthouse rehashes, which include Let the Corpses Tan and The Strange Color of Your Body’s Tears. The pair’s latest plays like a forgotten Franco-Italian James Bond ripoff that’s dropped too many tabs of acid, then been slapped with a hard-r rating for its abundance of stabbings, slashings and other kinds of twisted desecrations of the human flesh.

A bold choice for competition at the Berlinale, and clearly more fit for midnight or genre fest programs,...

You’ll almost certainly know Maria de Medeiros as the choppy-bobbed girlfriend, Fabienne, of Bruce Willis in Pulp Fiction (1994). But what you might not know is what she’s been up to since — unless you’re a longtime European art house expert, in which case, maybe you do.

The Portuguese actress, now 59, returns to the Berlin Film Festival this year with Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani’s Italian murder mystery (a genre referred to as giallo), Reflection in a Dead Diamond. The movie follows a retired spy — played by spaghetti Western icon Fabio Testi — residing in a luxurious hotel on the French Riviera. He becomes fascinated by his new neighbor, who rekindles memories of the Riviera’s vibrant days in the 1960s. But when his neighbor vanishes without a trace, Testi’s character is forced to confront his past demons.

Granted, de Medeiros is unable to attend Berlinale in person...

Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani, the filmmaking duo behind The Strange Color of Your Body’s Tears, and Let the Corpses Tan, are back with a unique spin on the Eurospy subgenre with Reflection in a Dead Diamond.

Below we can exclusively unveil Reflection in a Dead Diamond’s European poster by Gilles Vranckx ahead of the film’s premiere this weekend at the Berlin International Film Festival.

Update: Shudder has acquired the film for premiere later this year.

In the film, “John D, a septuagenarian living in a luxury hotel on the Côte d’Azur, is intrigued by his next-door neighbour who reminds him of the wildest years on the Riviera during the 1960s. At that time, he was a spy in a rapidly developing world full of promise. One day, this neighbour mysteriously disappears… bringing John face to face with his demons: are his former adversaries back to wreak havoc on his idyllic world?...

AMC Networks’ Shudder has bought “Reflection in a Dead Diamond,” Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani’s supernatural crime film, ahead of its world premiere at the Berlin Film Festival.

The Shudder acquisition deal covers North America, the U.K. and Ireland, Australia and New Zealand, with plans to release the film exclusively on the streamer in 2025.

“Reflection in a Dead Diamond” takes place following the disappearance of a mysterious woman, as a debonair 70-year-old ex-spy living in a luxury hotel on the Côte d’Azur gets “confronted by the demons and darlings of a lurid past in which moviemaking, memories and madness collide,” reads the synopsis.

The film stars Golden Globe-winning Italian actor Fabio Testi, Yannick Renier, Koen De Bouw, Maria De Medeiros, Céline Camara and introduces newcomer Thi Mai Nguyen.

“Hélène Cattet & Bruno Forzani are simply two of the greatest genre filmmakers in the world. Each film, an event,...

Pathe has started sales on Amelie Bonnin’s debut feature Bye Bye (working title), a bittersweet comedy starring popular French singer and actress Juliette Armanet.

The film is about a woman on the cusp of fulfilling her dream of opening a gourmet restaurant when a family emergency brings her back to her hometown, where old memories and a reunion with her childhood sweetheart upend her plans.

Further cast includes Cesar-winning actor Bastien Bouillon alongside François Rollin, Tewfik Jallab and Dominique Blanc. It is produced by Sylvie Pialat’s Les Films du Worso and Topshot Films; Pathe Films and France 3 cinema co-produce.

Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani — the husband-and-wife filmmaking duo behind Amer, The Strange Color of Your Body’s Tears, and Let the Corpses Tan — are back with Reflection in a Dead Diamond.

Watch the teaser trailer for the tribute to 1960s European spy cinema below.

When the mysterious woman in the room next door disappears, a debonair 70-year-old ex-spy living in a luxury hotel on the Côte d’Azur is confronted by the demons and darlings of a lurid past in which moviemaking, memories and madness collide.

Fabio Testi (What Have You Done to Solange?), Yannick Renier, Koen De Bouw (Loft), Maria de Medeiros (Pulp Fiction), and Thi Mai Nguyen star.

The mystery action thriller will have its world premiere in competition at the 75th Berlin International Film Festival later this month.

Italian sales company True Colours acquired the worldwide rights to the film last year. Keep an eye out for US release details.

Charades has acquired international sales rights to Irish filmmakerBrendan Canty’sChristy, which receives its world premiere opening the Generation 14plus competition at Berlinale 2025.

Altitude and Wildcard will release the film in UK and Irish cinemas respectively later this year.

Christy is based on Canty’s short film of the same name and follows a 17-year-oldafter he’s thrown out of his suburban foster home and moves in with his estranged older half-brother in Cork.

Canty’s previous work as director includes short film For You starring Barry Keoghan and the music video for Hozier’s Take Me To Church.

The cast includesDanny Power,...

Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani’s Reflection In A Dead Diamond has closed sales to a number of key territories ahead of its premiere this month in Berlinale competition and has also exclusively revealed a first look to Screen.

Italian sales agent True Colours has signed deals with Plaion Pictures for German speaking territories and Hishow Entertainment for Mainland China. Further deals with UFO Distribution for France and Cinéart for Belgium and the Netherlands were brokered by the film’s producer Pierre Foulon of Kozak Films.

The film, starring veteran Italian actor Fabio Testi, is an homage to the 1960s...