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Catherine Breillat‘s psychosexual reckless return to form is here. Her acclaimed latest film, “Last Summer” (Sideshow/Janus), will premiere on the Criterion Channel on November 21 with a live-streaming event, as IndieWire announces exclusively. The “Last Summer” live-stream, happening that evening at 6 p.m. Pt/9 p.m. Et, is in line with Criterion’s new tradition of launching the Sideshow/Janus titles early — the streamer similarly launched Bertrand Bonello’s “The Beast” that way over the summer.

“Last Summer” also joins the Criterion Channel as a retrospective of provocative filmmaker Breillat’s oeuvre streams on the platform, including “Fat Girl” and “Anatomy of Hell” and “Sex Is Comedy.” Starring Léa Drucker in one of the year’s best performances, “Last Summer” earned raves earlier this year and at Cannes and other festivals in 2023. The streaming premiere is good cause to remember “Last Summer” for your year-end lists. Bonus features accompanying...

Earlier last month we reported that actresses Léa Drucker and Noémie Merlant were going to topline Laura Wandel’s highly anticipated sophomore feature, L’Intérêt d’Adam. We now learn via the Cineuropa folks that Anamaria Vartolomei will instead take the role that was originally assigned to Merlant. Vartolomei recently gave a masterful performance in Jessica Palud’s Being Maria (read review) and has Ana Teodora Mihai’s highly anticipated Heysel 85 in the pipeline. Production begins tomorrow until the first week of September and we’ll likely be looking at a possible Cannes premiere – a competition slot is not out of the cards.…...

Two Indian films flexed at the domestic box office — and when they hit they really do hit, buoying exhibitors through good times and bad — with Kinds Of Kindness hitting no. 10 in a major expansion and Thelma not far behind.

Kalki 2898 Ad, a Telugu sci-fi epic from Prathyangira Cinemas, is looking at an estimated $5.4 million on 1,049 screens for the three-day weekend, at no. 5. It’s also approaching a cume of $11 million including Wednesday previews and Thursday opening day, one of the best ever openings of an Indian film in North America.

Written and directed by Nag Ashwin, Kalki is toplined by superstars Prabhas with Deepika Padukone and Amitabh Bachchan. As Deadline has reported, this is India’s most expensive film ever.

Jatt & Juliet 3, the latest instalment of the Punjabi romantic comedy franchise, from White Hill Studios, is at no. 9 with $1.8 million for the weekend at just 143 locations, and a $1.9 million cume,...

From her controversial 1976 directorial debut “A Real Young Girl” to even more confrontational later works like “Romance” (1999) and “Anatomy of Hell” (2004), French auteur Catherine Breillat has long been one of the cinema’s premier chroniclers of desire in all its complexities and contradictions. Her latest film, “Last Summer,” is one of her best, a riveting and nuanced portrayal of an affair between an attorney (Léa Drucker) and her 17-year-old stepson (Samuel Kircher) that’s paced like a languorous Éric Rohmer dramedy but grips the audience like a thriller. It’s a remake of the Danish movie “Queen of Hearts,” and while the script by Breillat and Pascal Bonitzer provides “Last Summer” with meticulously crafted dialogue, characterizations, and situations, it’s only a starting point; the greatness of the film is in the visual execution, which is just as Breillat intended.

“One mistake that people often make is they confuse the script with the film,...

The indie market is feeling pretty good. A big film from India Kalki 2898 Ad may unseat Rrr’s North American opening weekend. June Squibb-starrer Thelma is blowing through midweek shows and stands at $3.75 million heading into week 2 steady at 1,280 theaters. Searchlight Pictures Kinds Of Kindness by Yorgos Lanthimos (Poor Things) starring Emma Stone and Jesse Plemons jumps to 500 screens from five after the best limited opening of the year last weekend.

Annie Baker’s Janet Planet from A24 goes from 2 screens to 300 and a handful of interesting indies open in limited release from Catherine Breillat‘s Last Summer to Jake Paltrow’s June Zero. Things are still quite tough but there’s room for optimism. Not clear if that will last, but it’s nice..

New: Telugu sci-fi epic Kalki 2898 Ad on 900+ screens is rivaling crossover blockbuster Rrr as distributor Prathyangira Cinemas said the film grossed $5.56 million in...

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.

“All I love is cinema,” Catherine Breillat proclaimed at the end of our extensive conversation. The legendary French filmmaker’s passion still burned brightly at the end of a long day of press while in town to present her newest work, Last Summer, at last year’s New York Film Festival. Breillat’s descriptions of her films were as detailed, thoughtful, and unexpected as the frames within them.

While the starting point of Last Summer might be the remaking of the 2019 Danish drama Queen of Hearts, the film bears Breillat’s distinctive stamp. In her hands, the story of an affair between working mother Anne (Léa Drucker) and her 17-year-old stepson, Théo (Samuel Kircher), moves beyond the tawdriness and tension of its concept. The film feels in keeping with Breillat’s central obsession since her debut feature, 1976’s A Very Young Girl: women’s unshackling of their sexual desires from shame,...

It’s been a long decade’s wait since Catherine Breillat’s last feature, the semi-autobiographical Abuse of Weakness with Isabelle Huppert, but Last Summer shows the uncompromising French filmmaker in top form, at once fierce and precise. Returning to a favored subject—the desires and power dynamics in affairs between adolescents and usually much older adults—Breillat brings in another taboo this time: the messy sexual obsession between a lawyer, Anne (Léa Drucker), and her 17-year-old stepson, Théo (newcomer Daniel Kircher). After Théo comes back to stay at the family’s idyllic home outside Paris, the two carry on secretly until the truth becomes inescapable […]

The post “We Have Regressed Into an Obtuse and Rigid Moral Order”: Catherine Breillat on Last Summer first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

It’s been a long decade’s wait since Catherine Breillat’s last feature, the semi-autobiographical Abuse of Weakness with Isabelle Huppert, but Last Summer shows the uncompromising French filmmaker in top form, at once fierce and precise. Returning to a favored subject—the desires and power dynamics in affairs between adolescents and usually much older adults—Breillat brings in another taboo this time: the messy sexual obsession between a lawyer, Anne (Léa Drucker), and her 17-year-old stepson, Théo (newcomer Daniel Kircher). After Théo comes back to stay at the family’s idyllic home outside Paris, the two carry on secretly until the truth becomes inescapable […]

The post “We Have Regressed Into an Obtuse and Rigid Moral Order”: Catherine Breillat on Last Summer first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

Catherine Breillat’s intimate family drama Last Summer had its world premiere at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, reintroducing audiences to the provocative French filmmaker’s insightful examinations of sexuality and morality. Adapting the 2019 Danish film Queen of Hearts, Breillat tells the story of Anne, a respected lawyer and mother who finds herself drawn into a risky affair with her teenage stepson Theo. Where some filmmakers may have sensationalized such a relationship, Breillat instead offers a thoughtful look into what might drive someone like Anne to compromise her principles in such a way.

Through Léa Drucker’s conflicted yet compassionate lead performance and settings that feel lived-in, Breillat brings viewers intimately close to Anne’s world. As cracks emerge between her responsibilities and desires, Breillat avoids simplistic judgment of any character to explore the complex human impulses beneath. Her visuals elegantly express shifting emotional states, whether the shimmering joy...

Cinema is replete with depictions of mothers good and bad, though few are depicted with such radical ambiguity as Léa Drucker’s Anne in Last Summer. This comes with the territory for the film’s legendary director Catherine Breillat, who’s broken ground for decades with her fearless explorations of female sexuality. Yet even knowing the French filmmaker’s background, it still feels radical to watch the story of a mother involved in an affair with her teenage stepson, Théo (Samuel Kircher), presented so freely of judgment.

Breillat bakes in much of that perspective at the script level as she adapts the 2019 Danish film Queen of Hearts with a less moralistic bent. But to realize Anne in a way that goes beyond mere intellectualization requires a partnership with a brilliant actress like Drucker, who has recently come to prominence outside her native France in films such as Xavier Legrand’s...

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...

She was pulled from obscurity (or non-retirement since her last feature was 2013’s Abuse of Weakness) when Saïd Ben Saïd optioned the rights to 2019 Danish film Queen of Hearts and then proposed it French filmmaker Catherine Breillat, and as luck would have it Léa Drucker would join a pantheon of memorable morally complex roles for actresses that we find in Breillat cinema. In Last Summer (L’été dernier), Drucker plays Anne, a lawyer who specializes in cases of sexual consent and parental custody while she is the matriarch of two adopted children and she then swims in murky waters in her relationship with teenage son (Théo) of her current husband.…...

Sideshow and Janus Films have snapped up U.S. distribution rights to Chinese master filmmaker Jia Zhangke’s latest feature Caught by the Tides, which premiered to rave reviews at this year’s Cannes Film Festival. The two distributors said they will “release the film exclusively in theaters in the coming months.”

Caught by the Tides is composed almost entirely of improvisational footage Jia shot across China over nearly 25 years with his troupe of longtime collaborators. In an interview at Cannes, the director told The Hollywood Reporter that he began to sculpt a feature from the hundreds of hours of footage he had accumulated during the quiet days of China’s long, three-year pandemic shutdown.

THR‘s lead critic summed up the resulting film’s innovative narrative and formal approaches by writing that it “ebbs and flows like poetry.”

Like virtually all of Jia’s work, stretching back to his...

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.

Among the most anticipated sophomore features we’ll already look forward to for the 2025 campaign received a Cannes blurb update in the Le film français with no fanfare from the major trades to follow. Originally slated for a shoot in the fall, Belgian filmmaker Laura Wandel‘s L’intérêt d’Adam (formerly titled Hors la loi) is set to move into production next month (July 29th) with two heavyweights in Noémie Merlant and Léa Drucker – we can already guess which part they’ll play with the synopsis below. The drama benefitted from the support from the La Résidence of the Festival de Cannes.…...

A little silly to say about a movie that premiered in competition at Cannes and had the much-desired fall-festival run, but there should’ve been a little more excitement about Last Summer, which deserves much celebration for its own merits but stands all the more notable for being among the best films in the decades-long career of Catherine Breillat, who returned to feature filmmaking ten years after Abuse of Weakness. With the work now allowed to present a bit more on its own––and not as, say, the third viewing on a sleep-deprived day fueled by a Quest bar / Celsius lunch––I suspect its merits are about to really sing, ereceded by Film at Lincoln Center’s essential retrospective with the too-good-to-pass-up title “Carnal Knowledge.”

Ahead of a Janus-Sideshow release that kicks off on June 28, we have a trailer playing the brief, broad strokes. It nicely rhymes with Savina Petkova...

Paris production house Agat Films – Ex Nihilo, which has six films in Cannes, is now in various stages of production on six more titles including Robert Guedigian’s drama Stealing Angel, starring Ariane Ascaride and Jean-Paul Darroussin that is in post. Playtime is handling sales.

Agat Films- Ex Nihilo are separate entities operating under the same banner. “We are a house of auteur cinema,” said producer Nicolas Blanc. “We are at the service of auteurs – we like what they think, what they say and how they say it.”

International titles in the works include Thierry Machado’s Inuit -language Yura,...

European production and distribution group StudioCanal has launched a new label, StudioCanal Stories, focused on book-to-screen adaptations. The outfit will be the first of its kind in France and follows StudioCanal’s creation of a dedicated literary adaptation division in 2022.

Unveiling the new label Monday, StudioCanal pointed to the success of book adaptations, citing figures from a study last year by France’s Centre National du Livre (Cnl) that found 42 percent of the top 100 most successful films at the U.S. box office were literary adaptations. The figure for France was 44 percent and, according to the study, the production of literary adaptations for French film and TV has jumped nearly 30 percent over the period from 2015 to 2021.

StudioCanal is bringing two of its latest adaptations: Gilles Lellouche’s Beating Hearts, an adaptation of Neville Thompson’s 2000 novel Jackie Loves Johnser Ok?; and Michel Hazanavicius’ The Most Precious of Cargoes to competition...

The 77th edition of the Cannes Film Festival will kick off with Quentin Dupieux’s “The Second Act,” a star-studded surreal French comedy headlined by Léa Seydoux, Vincent Lindon, Louis Garrel and Raphaël Quenard, Variety has learned.

The anticipated movie is produced by Hugo Selignac at Chi-Fou-Mi, a Mediawan company, and is represented in international markets by Kinology. The film will play out of competition on May 14 and will be released on the same day in French theaters.

Laced with absurdist humor, the meta movie follows actors starring in a doomed film production. Dupieux is one of France’s most popular and prolific filmmakers. He delivered two films in 2023: “Daaaaaalí,” which played out-of-competition at Venice, and “Yannick,” a French box office hit that sold around the world.

In confirming the film’s selection at Cannes, the festival described Quentin as a “filmmaker who embraces freedom – in tone, form and...

"Humans have always deceived us." GKids has finally revealed the full US trailer for the awesome animated sci-fi film Mars Express from France. It's now set to open in theaters this May - check your local listings. A must watch on the big screen! I've been raving about this film ever since its world premiere at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival last year - thrilling sci-fi that is kind of an update on Ghost in the Shell. In the future, private detective Aline Ruby and her android partner are hired by a wealthy businessman to track down a notorious hacker. On Mars, they descend deep into the underbelly of the planet's capital city where they uncover a much darker story of brain farms, corruption, and a missing girl who holds a secret about the robots that threaten to change the face of the universe. "Combining 2D & 3D animation, this stylish, smart,...

"Humans have always deceived us." GKids has uploaded a new 30-sec US teaser trailer for the acclaimed, incredible animated sci-fi film Mars Express from France. They're gearing up to give this a full theatrical release this summer. I've been raving about this film ever since its world premiere at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival last year - it's an awesome sci-fi sensation that is kind of a 2023 update on Ghost in the Shell. In the future, private detective Aline Ruby and her android partner are hired by a wealthy businessman to track down a notorious hacker. On Mars, they descend deep into the underbelly of the planet's capital city where they uncover a much darker story of brain farms, corruption, and a missing girl who holds a secret about the robots that threaten to change the face of the universe. "Combining 2D & 3D animation, this stylish, smart, futuristic film noir is an adrenaline-fueled,...

Auction director/screenwriter Pascal Bonitzer at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York exhibition Look Again: European Paintings 1300–1800 Photo: Anne Katrin Titze

On the afternoon of the Rendez-Vous with French Cinema première in New York of Auction, starring Alex Lutz and Louise Chevillotte with Léa Drucker and Olivier Rabourdin of Catherine Breillat’s incomparably daring Last Summer, the director/screenwriter joined me at The Metropolitan Museum of Art to check out Women Dressing Women at the Anna Wintour Costume Institute, before we strolled through the visionary exhibition Look Again: European Paintings 1300–1800.

Inês de Medeiros with Laurence Côte in Jacques Rivette’s La Bande Des Quatre, co-written with Pascal Bonitzer and Christine Laurent

In the second installment with the prolific and acclaimed director, screenwriter, actor, and former film critic for Cahiers du Cinéma, we discuss working again with Laurence Côte (seen as Ginette Kolinka in Olivier Dahan’s all-embracing portrait [film id=41673]Simone: Woman Of.

The César Awards are always the biggest night of the year for French cinema, but the massive award season impact of “Anatomy of a Fall” ensured that this year’s event took on additional importance for Oscar watchers around the globe. When the 49th César Awards took place in Paris on Friday night, all eyes were on Justine Triet and her Palme d’Or-winning film.

Predictably, “Anatomy of a Fall” swept many of the night’s biggest categories. In addition to winning the top prize of Best Film, Triet was honored with Best Director and shared Best Screenplay with her partner Arthur Harari. Stars Sandra Hüller and Swann Arlaud also won Best Actress and Best Supporting Actor, respectively.

The night’s other big winner was Thomas Cailley’s “The Animal Kingdom,” which won awards for Cinematography, Visual Effects, Costume Design, and Sound.

Keep reading for a complete list of winners from the 2024 César Awards.

The 49th Cesar Awards, France’s top film honors, have been handed out in Paris, with Justine Triet‘s Oscar contender Anatomy of a Fall emerging as the big winner.

The French courtroom drama — which is competing at the Oscars in five categories — earned the best film prize, best actress for Sandra Hüller, best director for Triet, best original screenplay shared between Triet and co-writer Arthur Harari, and Swann Arlaud took home the best supporting actor trophy.

Hüller won in the best actress category over Oscar winner Marion Cotillard, nominated for Little Girl Blue; Lea Drucker, up for Last Summer; Hafsia Herzi, nominated for The Rapture; and Belgian actress Virginie Efira, nominated for her work in Just the Two of Us.

The other big winner on the night was The Animal Kingdom, French director Thomas Cailley’s follow-up to 2014’s Love at First Fight. Cailley picked up the best cinematography...

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...

Justine Triet’s Oscar-nominated Anatomy of a Fall and Thomas Cailley’s fantasy drama The Animal Kingdom are the front runners for this year’s Cesar Awards, France’s equivalent to the Academy Awards. In nominations announced Wednesday, Anatomy picked up 11 Cesar noms and The Animal Kingdom 12. Both were nominated in the best film and best director categories.

Also nominated for best film are Jean-Baptiste Durand’s Junkyard Dog, All Your Faces from director Jeanne Herry and Cédric Kahn’s The Goldman Case.

France’s official Academy Award contender, Anh Hung Tran’s foodie period drama The Taste of Things, which missed out on an Oscar nom on Tuesday, picked up three Ceasar nominations, but none in the main categories.

German actress Sandra Hüller, a best actress nominee at this year’s Oscars for her starring turn in Anatomy of a Fall, is also up for the Cesar for best actress,...

Thomas Cailley’s fantasy drama The Animal Kingdom topped the nominations for France’s César Awards, which were announced in Paris on Wednesday.

The drama picked up 12 nominations with Justine Triet’s Oscar hopeful Anatomy Of A Fall coming in second with 11 nominations, followed by Jeanne Herry’s All Your Faces, which nine, and The Goldman Case, with eight.

Set in a world where human beings start transmuting into animals, The Animal Kingdom world premiered as the opening film of Cannes Un Certain Regard in 2023 and went on to make $8.5M at the box office last fall.

The Animal Kingdom and Anatomy of a Fall are competing in eight categories spanning Best Film, Director, Original Screenplay, Male Revelation, Editing, Sound, Cinematography and Production Design.

The high nomination count for Herry’s ensemble drama All Your Faces was thanks to the fact it dominated the Supporting Actress category with separate nominations for cast members Leila Bekhti,...

Thomas Cailley’s supernatural drama “The Animal Kingdom” and Justine Triet’s Palme d’Or winner “Anatomy of a Fall” are leading the race at the 49th Cesar Awards with 12 and 11 nominations, respectively.

Triet’s movie, which just garnered an impressive five Oscar nominations, and “The Animal Kingdom,” which opened at Cannes’ Un Certain Regard and won a prize, will vie for top Cesar awards including best director and film.

“The Animal Kingdom” is an ambitious film that marks a departure from France’s cinema tradition of social realism. It’s both a creature-filled dystopia and a father-and-son drama, weaving some contemporary concerns over the future of mankind. It’s produced by Pierre Guyard at Nord Ouest Films and co-produced by Artemis.

“Anatomy of a Fall,” meanwhile stars Sandra Hüller — the German actor nominated for Cesar, Oscar and BAFTA awards — as a novelist who is put on trial following the...

Justine Triet’s Anatomy Of A Fall was named best film of the year at France’s Lumiere Awards on Monday evening.

Triet and co-writer Arthur Harari also took home the best screenplay award and lead Sandra Hüller earned the prize for best actress at the 29th edition of the awards, considered to be France’s version of the Golden Globes and voted on by international correspondents from 36 countries.

The courtroom drama about a woman on trial for her husband’s death in the French Alps was nominated in six categories, but Lumiere voters spread their votes across the board...

Justine Triet’s Anatomy Of A Fall continued its prize-winning run on Monday at France’s 29th Lumière Awards clinching Best Film and Best Screenplay, while its German star Sandra Hüller won Best Actress.

The Lumières fete the best films, performances and technical achievements of French cinema across 13 categories.

The French equivalent of the Golden Globes, they are voted on by the Académie des Lumières which is made up of France-based international journalists representing 36 countries.

In other key prizes, Thomas Cailley won Best Director for Cannes 2023 Un Certain Regard opener The Animal Kingdom, while Arieh Worthalter won Best Actor for his performance in Cédric Khan’s Cannes Directors’ Fortnight opener The Goldman Case.

Triet’s Cannes Palme d’Or winner Anatomy of a Fall, which was nominated in six Lumière categories, is on an award-winning streak.

The movie swept the board at the European Film Awards in Berlin last December...

Kim Gordon, founding member of Sonic Youth and Body/Head on Catherine Breillat and the music with Anne-Katrin Titze and 99 Records founder Ed Bahlman: “It was a real honour of my life to be in one of her films.”

In the first instalment with Kim Gordon on Catherine Breillat, we discuss the songs in Last Summer (L'Été Dernier) - Body/Head’s Tripping (Bill Nace and Kim Gordon), Sonic Youth’s Dirty Boots, and Léo Ferré’s Vingt Ans, and we are joined by music producer and 99 Records founder Ed Bahlman. Kim’s initial encounters with Breillat films are A Real Young Girl (Une Vraie Jeune Fille) and then 36 Fillette. We also touch on Kim’s latest work with French choreographer Dimitri Chamblas, Ed’s copy of the mastered cassette of their second album Bad Moon Rising Sonic Youth dropped off at 99, and a word on Brooks Headley’s Superiority Burger.

Orange Studio has boarded true-crime-tinged psychological thriller “An Ordinary Case” and will launch sales at this week’s Unifrance Rendez-Vous in Paris. Top-lined, co-written and directed by French cinema stalwart Daniel Auteuil, this pulled-from-the-headlines drama also boasts “Borgen” and “Westworld” star Sidse Babett Knudsen alongside acclaimed actor Grégory Gadebois (“An Officer and a Spy”).

Auteuil adapted the feature from the work of Jean-Yves Moyart – a jurist-turned-blogger-turned-bestselling author who wrote of his experiences in the French legal system – and will star as Jean Monier, a disillusioned lawyer defending a man accused of murdering his wife. While all signs point to the accused’s guilt, Monier remains steadfast in his presumption of innocence. What begins as an ordinary case turns out to be anything but.

Following in the footsteps of Alice Diop’s Venice and César winner “Saint Omer,” of Cédric Kahn’s Cannes-acclaimed “The Goldman Case,” and of Justine Triet’s...

This week’s Unifrance Rendez-Vous in Paris will kick off with the Tuesday night world premiere of Pascal Bonitzer’s “Auction” – a ripped-from-the-headlines ensemble drama set in the crosshairs of high art and high finance.

Produced by Sbs Productions and sold by Pyramide International, the art-world saga follows – among others – a hotshot auctioneer, his less-than-reliable assistant, and the working class bloke who sets the narrative in motion upon realizing that his erstwhile innocuous wall art bears the signature of Egon Schiele.

Writer-director Pascal Bonitzer originally thought to explore this world of high-verve auctioneers as a series, but keyed into the story’s singular, cinematic potential thanks to the real-life discovery of Schiele masterworks thought lost during World War II.

“I was fascinated by this collision of two worlds,” Bonitzer tells Variety. “On the one hand, these auctioneers need to play a game – they must seduce potential sellers, wresting artifacts from...

France’s awards season has officially kicked off with Justine Triet’s “Anatomy of a Fall” landing six nominations at the Lumières Awards, including best film and director.

The courtroom drama, which won the Palme d’Or at Cannes, is the season’s frontrunner. The Lumières are voted on by Paris-based correspondents working for foreign outlets across 36 countries.

Sandra Huller, who stars in the film as a German novelist put on trial after her French husband dies mysteriously, is nominated for best actress, while Milo Machado Graner, who plays her astute, low-vision son, is nominated for best male newcomer.

“Anatomy of Fall” has been on a roll, garnering a raft of international prizes at the European Film Awards, Gothams, as well as Los Angeles and the New York Film Critics Circle Awards, along with four Golden Globe nominations for best film, screenplay, actress and foreign film. The movie that was...

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,...

Justine Triet’s Anatomy Of A Fall is the frontrunner for France’s Lumiere awards, the country’s answer to the Golden Globes, with 6 nominations, including for best film and best director.

The courtroom drama, starring Sandra Hüller as a writer who may have murdered her husband, won the Palme d’Or in Cannes this year and swept the European Film Awards on the weekend, taking 5 trophies, including best film. Anatomy of Fall, a Neon release in the U.S., has been nominated for 4 Golden Globes.

Tran Anh Hung’s foodie period drama The Taste of Things, which was picked over Anatomy of a Fall as France’s country’s official Oscar contender in the best international feature category, received just one Lumiere nom, for best cinematography.

Another French courtroom drama, Cedric Kahn’s The Goldman Case, picked up 5 Lumiere noms, tying with Thomas Cailley’s sci-fi tale The Animal Kingdom.

The Lumieres are voted on by international correspondents from 36 countries.

Justine Triet’s Palme d’Or winning Anatomy Of A Fall leads the nominations for France’s Lumiere awards, nominated in six categories, including best film and best director.

Cedric Kahn’s courtroom drama The Goldman Case and Thomas Cailley’s The Animal Kingdom, have each received five nominations.

All three films have been nominated in the best film category alongside Catherine Breillat’s Last Summer that earned four nominations and Clément Cogitore’s Son of Ramses with three.

The filmmakers of all five of those titles have also been nominated for best director.

Former French President François Hollande has found a new gig. The Socialist Party leader, who served as the leader of France before current President Emmanuel Macron, has joined the voice cast of Silex & the City – The Movie, a feature-film spinoff of a popular, Simpsons-style short-format animated series.

Hollande will lend his famous voice to the new film, which is currently in production, joining more established French talent including Bruno Solo, Julie Gayet, Stéphane Bern, Léa Drucker, Frédéric Beigbeder, Guillaume Gallienne, Léa Salamé and Amélie Nothomb.

Silex & the City follows a Stone Age family, the Dotcoms who embark on a time-travel adventure into the future. Father Blog, voiced by Franck Ekinci, mother Spam (Noémie De Lattre) and their rebellious children Url (Fabien Limousin) and Web (Camille Serceau) are familiar to French audiences. A short-form series based on the comic of the same name by French cartoonist Jul has been a...

Former French President François Hollande is part of the voice cast for “Silex & the City – The Movie,” a big-screen spinoff of the popular short-format animated series set in the Stone Age.

“Silex & the City” is adapted from the comic book series by the same name created by French cartoonist Jul, which has sold over a million copies. The animated series, meanwhile, has been a hit on Franco-German network Arte, airing on primetime.

Written and co-directed by Jul alongside Jean-Paul Guigue, the film will blend 2D animation with live-action sequences. Besides Hollande, the well-known voice cast includes Bruno Solo, Julie Gayet, Stéphane Bern, Léa Drucker, Frédéric Beigbeder, Guillaume Gallienne, Léa Salamé and Amélie Nothomb. Now in production, the film is expected to be completed by spring 2024.

“Silex & the City – The Movie” follows the adventure of the Dotcom family — which consists of hunting professor Blog, geography teacher Spam and their rebellious children...

Alex Lutz stars in Pascal Bontizer’s Auction slated to open the 26th Rendez-Vous with French Cinema in Paris next month Photo: UniFrance If it’s January in the world of le cinéma français it must be the Unifrance Rendez-Vous with French Cinema which will open in Paris on 16 January with Pascal Bonitzer’s new film Auction (Le Tableau Volé) featuring a cast of Alex Lutz (whose Strangers By Night closed Un Certain Regard section of the Cannes Film Festival earlier in the year).

The cast also features Léa Drucker, Louise Chevillotte and Nora Hamzawi. Lutz plays an auctioneer who is alerted to a rare canvas by Egon Schiele, found in Mulhouse, near the Swiss-German borders - but he becomes suspicious about its authenticity and decides to investigate further.

Pascal Bonitzer presents his ninth feature as a director at the Uni-France Rendez-Vous with French Cinema in Paris Photo: UniFrance Bonitzer...

"What did Jun do to the android?" Unifrance has debuted the official French trailer with English subtitles for the acclaimed, incredible animated sci-fi film Mars Express. I've been raving about this film ever since its premiere at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival earlier this year, and insanely awesome sci-fi spectacular that is kind of a 2023 update on Ghost in the Shell. In the future, private detective Aline Ruby and her android partner are hired by a wealthy businessman to track down a notorious hacker. On Mars, they descend deep into the underbelly of the planet's capital city where they uncover a darker story of brain farms, corruption, and a missing girl who holds a secret about the robots that threaten to change the face of the universe. "Combining 2D & 3D animation, this stylish, smart, futuristic film noir is an adrenaline-fuelled, cinematic adventure, packed with humor and exhilarating action sequences." Featuring the voices of Léa Drucker,...

GKids has North American rights to the Cannes and Annecy title.

GKids has scooped North American rights to stylish space-set French animation feature Mars Express from mk2 Films, which has also sold the film to other key territories worldwide.

Jérémie Périn’s debut feature, which premiered in Cannes and played in competition at Annecy, is an action-driven futuristic film noir that blends 2D and 3D animation and poses questions about humanity’s relationship with AI.

GKids will release the film in theatres in its original French language in addition to a new English-dubbed version in 2024 following a November 22 release in France via Gebeka Films.

If cinema often attempts to stoke our erotic fantasies with soft lighting and rehearsed movements that have little to do with sex as many of us experience it, Catherine Breillat’s films serve as a counterpoint. The French filmmaker and novelist is less concerned with eroticism than with the power that sex represents, and her most intimate scenes are often so unpleasurable as to be as unrealistic in their own way as conventionally arousing sequences. Watching movie sex that isn’t meant to be a turn-on can push one to contemplate what else is going on between the people in the frame. And in Last Summer, her remake of the 2019 Danish film Queen of Hearts, Breillat brings her icy, unwaveringly sober sensibilities to one of the most common of American pop cultural sex fantasies: a teenager’s tryst with a Milf.

Perhaps only Breillat would open a film about an...

French industry to descend on La Rochelle to premiere high-end drama series to the world.

Disney+’s French original Irrésistible, Canal+ legal drama Conviction, TF1’s Behind Closed Doors from Coda producers’ Jerico TV and Swedish thriller Evil are among the French and European titles that will premiere at France’s Festival de la Fiction, taking place in La Rochelle from September 12-17.

The event, which celebrates its 25th anniversary in 2023, has long been a popular ‘back-to-school’ festival for the French industry, with a strong focus on French series, Its international appeal is growing and it has become a significant launchpad for European content.

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...

Playing in competition in Annecy after premiering in Cannes, Jérémie Périn’s sci-fi thriller “Mars Express” offers an uncommon spin on modern anxieties — particularly when it comes to AI.

“We so often imagine that if robots became sentient, they’ll kill us,” Périn tells Variety. “Or we see many sci-fi films where robots want to become human. In short, humans are always the point of reference – so mysterious and strange and interesting, such an amazing species. We’re a bit pretentious, and I didn’t want to play on that.”

Written by Périn and Laurent Sarfati, “Mars Express” serves a heady pop-culture cocktail, mixing hard-boiled fiction with science-fantasy comix, riffing on Philip Marlow and Philip K. Dick (with winks to “Watchmen” and “Robocop” and oh so many more) with a mystery yarn that places humans and cyborgs on equal footing.

“The film says robots and human are different, so we have to accept those differences.

Sideshow and Janus Films have acquired all North American rights for Catherine Breillat’s drama Last Summer (L’été dernier) following its well-received premiere in competition in the final days of the Cannes Film Festival (May 16-27).

Breillat’s first feature in a decade, the drama continues the director’s career-long penchant for breaking taboos.

Lea Drucker stars as a successful family lawyer specializing in child protection, living a seemingly perfect life with her husband and their two young daughters in a well-heeled Paris suburb.

She jeopardizes everything when she embarks on a forbidden affair with her dissolute 17-year-old stepson, played by (Samuel Kircher) in a move that will have explosive consequences for all involved.

Saïd Ben Saïd lead produced the film under the banner of his Paris-based company Sbs Production.

The film is adapted from Danish director May El-Thoukhy’s award-winning 2019 drama Queen Of Hearts, by Breillat in collaboration with Pascal Bonitzer.

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.