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France has published its most comprehensive study to date detailing the impact of investment obligations introduced in 2021 requiring global streamers to invest at least 20% of their annual local turnover in French film and TV production.

The obligations were introduced in June, 2021 as part of the country’s transposition into law of the European Union’s 2018 Audiovisual and Media Services Directive (Avmsd), updating the bloc’s legislation for the digital age and the rise of global streaming platforms.

The report – compiled by France’s National Cinema Centre (Cmc) and audiovisual authority Arcom – showed that global streamers had invested more than $1.02B (€974.6M) in French film and TV shows from 2021 to end 2023.

Within this, streamers put $73M (€70.1M) into 58 Cnc-approved features over the three-year period and financed 106 audiovisual works for an investment of $952M (€904.4M). Arcom’s figures, which included films not registered with the Cnc, were slightly higher, showing investment and...

Netflix gave a sneak peek at its 2025 line-up of non-English programming yesterday with shows such as The Leopard (Italy), Last Samurai Standing (Japan), The Empress S2 (Germany), El Refugio Atómico (Spain), Senna (Brazil), Alice in Borderland S3 (Japan), and even this year’s One Hundred Years of Solitude (Colombia).

“People like the authenticity of local stories,” Netflix Chief Content Officer Bela Bajaria said.

“When you try to make something that appeals to everyone, you just end up making something that appeals to no one.” It’s why Bajaria encourages her teams to be ambitious and support the vision of creators with the “goal to make shows and films that resonate in their home country first.”

Netflix shouted out the stat that they dub in 36 languages and subtitle shows in 33 languages. Bajaria also said that 80% of Netflix subs watch Korean content.

Bajaria at Netflix’s International Showcase

Alcaraz (Spain)

Docuseries

Alcaraz...

Nach seiner umjubelten Weltpremiere in Cannes startet Studiocanal Gilles Lellouches am 27. März in den deutschen Kinos. Jetzt wurde der deutsche Trailer veröffentlicht.

„Beating Hearts“ (hier unsere Spot-Besprechung), die dritte Regiearbeit des Schauspielers Gilles Lellouche, verzeichnete in Frankreich bereits mehr als 3,5 Mio. Kinobesucher und feiert seine Deutschlandpremiere am 22. November im Rahmen der Französischen Filmwoche in Berlin. Studiocanal hat den Kinostart in Deutschland für den 27. März 2025 geplant.

In dem auf Neville Thompsons Roman „L’amour ouf“ basierenden, im Norden Frankreichs in den 1980er Jahren angesiedelten Film verliebt sich der von Francois Civil und Malik Frikah gespielte rebellische Clotaire, der in einem Problembezirk aufgewachsen ist, in die unerschrockene Jackie. Die Liebe der beiden Teenager wird auf eine harte Probe gestellt, als sich Clotaire einer kriminellen Bande anschließt und wegen eines Verbrechens, das er nicht begangen hat, zu einer langjährigen Gefängnisstrafe verurteilt wird. Die beiden verlieren sich aus den Augen und als sie sich Jahre später zufällig wieder begegnen,...

Filmax has acquired international rights to Spanish comedy From Good To The Hood, starring Quim Gutiérrez and Sara Sálamo.

The film is based on the 2019 French film New Biz In The Hood, starring Gilles Lelouche and directed by Mohamed Hamidi.It tells the story of a successful communications agency located in a luxury area of Madrid forced to move to a downtrodden part of town, where the team must learn to adapt to their new environment and neighbours who don’t do things by the book.

From Good To The Hood is Mar Olid’s feature-length directorial debut after an...

Studiocanal’s romantic dramaBeating Hearts (L’Amour Ouf) topped the French box office in October during a strong month that saw admissions hit 15.53 million (€111.8m based on an average ticket price of €7.20), a 10.8% jump from last year according to figures from the Cnc.

Audiences turned out strongly for Gilles Lellouche’s film which stars Adele Exarchopolous and Francois Civil and premiered in Competition at Cannes in May. The melodrama has sold 2.17 million tickets (approximately €15.6m) after two weeks in cinemas since its October 16 release. Strong word of mouth particularly among younger audiences helped the decades-spanning romantic drama sell more tickets in...

Worldwide box office October 18-20 Rank Film (distributor) 3-day (world) Cume (world) 3-day (int’l) Cume (int’l) Territories 1. Smile 2 (Paramount) $46m $46m $23m $23m 63 2. The Wild Robot (Universal) $33.3m $196m $23.2m $94.3m 77 3. Joker: Folie a Deux (Warner Bros) $16.9m $191.9m $14.7m $135.5m 79 4. Terrifier 3 (various) $12.3m $44.8m $3m $8.6m 10 5. Beetlejuice Beetlejuice (Warner Bros) $8.7m $434.6m $3.7m $150.6m 75 6. The Volunteers: To The War 2 (various)

$8.5m $154.5m $8.5m $154.5m 2 7. L’Amour ouf (Studiocanal) $6.6m $6.6m $6.6m $6.6m 1 8. The Substance (Mubi) $5.2m $42.1m $4.3m $28.7m 36 9. Harry Potter And The Chamber Of Secrets (Warner Bros) $4.7m $4.7m $4.7m $4.7m 1 10. Transformers One (Paramount) $4.6m $119m $2.6m $62.4m 71

Credit: Comscore.

Filmmaker Quentin Dupieux has earned a reputation for crafting surreal comedies that turn expectations upside down. His movies embrace absurdity and unexpected twists. With Daaaaaalí!, Dupieux set out to create a “fake biopic” about the legendary Spanish artist Salvador Dali.

The film stars Anaïs Demoustier as journalist Judith, who’s assigned to interview the eccentric Dali. But capturing the famously shape-shifting artist proves challenging. Dali is portrayed by multiple actors throughout, with his age changing randomly.

Dupieux crafts Daaaaaalí! as more of an homage than a straightforward biopic. It celebrates Dali’s surrealist spirit rather than claiming to be the definitive telling of his life. The director draws from Dali’s fascination with dreams and the subconscious through Daaaaaalí!’s experimental storytelling.

This review will analyze how Daaaaaalí!’s narrative structure comments on traditional biopic tropes and self-mythologizing artists. It will also explore Dupieux’s surreal approach and discussion of reality,...

A popular anime empire and a beloved manga both hit screens in North America this weekend, with The Outrun starring Saoirse Ronan, five actors playing surrealist artist Salvador Dali, and a trio of thought provoking docs new on the specialty circuit this weekend.

Also noting Columbia Pictures’ Saturday Night from Jason Reitman, which rocked its opening last week, expands in NY and LA and adds ten new markets for 21 locations total before going wide Oct. 11. The film, based on the true story of what happened behind the scenes in the 90 minutes leading up to the first broadcast of Saturday Night Live in 1975, debuted to $270k at five theaters in NY/LA for a terrific $54k per theater average.

Moderate releases: Sony Pictures Classics’ Saoirse Ronan-starring and Nora Fingscheidt-directed drama The Outrun hits 508 screens. After a decade away in London, 29-year-old Rona (Ronan) returns home to the Orkney Islands. Sober but lonely,...

In a scene near the end of Quentin Dupieux’s Daaaaaalí!, Judith (Anaïs Demoustier), a French journalist assigned to interview Salvador Dalí, is riding the bus, in the doldrums after the latest failure to capture her mercurial subject on film. The facial hair of the man seated across from her reminds her of Dalí’s iconic mustache, and after Judith aks him if it’s an intentional homage, he retreats behind his newspaper. The front-page headline reads, “Barista Lets Off Steam on Paris Bus”—a reference to the insult that Judith’s producer (Romain Duris) calls her—with a photograph of Judith below. Dupieux then cuts to a reverse shot of her that begins as a perfect match of the photo, one of countless flourishes of dream logic in the film that subvert conventional cinematic handling of time and space.

That there are almost as many actors portraying Dalí as...

"Now it's sublime." Music Box Films has unveiled the official US trailer for the acclaimed film Daaaaaali! from wacky filmmaker Quentin Dupieux (who also premiered his latest film The Second Act in Cannes earlier this year). Quite simple, this brilliantly hilarious comedy is a wild and weird take on the iconic artist Salvador Dalí. It premiered a the 2023 Venice Film Festival last year to uproarious laughter - it was one of my favorite films of the festival. Dupieux's film is sort of about a young journalist who attempts to meet with the iconic surrealist artist Salvador Dalí on several occasions for a documentary. But it never seems to work out. To add to the confusion, multiple actors portray Dali during different scenes in the film. Starring Anaïs Demoustier, Romain Duris, Gilles Lellouche, Edouard Baer, Pio Marmaï, Didier Flamand, and Jonathan Cohen.

At this year’s Cannes Film Festival, there are few films that earned as much love during its premiere as “Beating Hearts.” While the film didn’t necessarily score big with critics, it did earn a huge 15-minute ovation after it premiered. That must count for something, right?

As seen in the trailer, “Beating Hearts” tells the story of two childhood loves who come back together later in life.

Continue reading ‘Beating Hearts’ Trailer: Adèle Exarchopoulos Stars In Gilles Lellouche’s Romance at The Playlist.

The 2024 Venice Film Festival kicked off August 28 with the long-awaited Tim Burton-Michael Keaton sequel Beetlejuice Beetlejuice opening the 81th edition, which runs through September 7 on the Lido. Deadline is on the ground to watch all the key films.

The lineup for the world’s oldest fest also includes world premieres of Todd Phillips’ Joaquin Phoenix-Lady Gaga pic Joker: Folie à Deux, Pedro Almodóvar’s The Room Next Door, Luca Guadagnino’s Queer, Pablo Larrain’s Maria Callas biopic Maria starring Angelina Jolie and new works from the likes of Alfonso Cuarón, Walter Salles, Harmony Korine, Thomas Vinterberg, Brady Corbet, Takeshi Kitano, Claude Lelouch, Errol Morris and others.

Below is a compilation of our reviews from the fest, which last year awarded its Golden Lion for best film to Yorgos Lanthimos’ Poor Things, starring Emma Stone, who went on the win the Best Actress Oscar. Isabelle Huppert heads the competition jury this year.

If you’ve spent time in towns in the far-flung provinces of any number of European countries — particularly ones in which mills that supplied the economic lifeblood of working-class communities have closed, leaving inhabitants adrift without a raft — chances are you’ll recognize the fictional Northeastern French setting of And Their Children After Them (Leurs enfants aprés eux). These are places stuck in time, usually around the point when their industries were shuttered. That fossilization can be observed at public celebrations where the locals mob the dance floor when the cheesiest of Euro-pop relics are blasted over the speakers, in this case Boney M.’s “Rivers of Babylon.”

Writer-director brothers Ludovic and Zoran Boukherma capture that atmosphere with such specificity and melancholy fondness in their ambitious adaptation of Nicolas Mathieu’s 2018 Prix Goncourt-winning novel that it’s easy to imagine they lived it — or at least something very close to it.

There is the faint sound of a callback to Francois Truffaut in Venice Film Festival competition title And Their Children After Them (Leurs Enfants Après Eux), a sunlit story of three teenagers set in a moribund French steel town in the 1990s. Check, for example, those fundamental French subjects: first love and sexual awakening, nature and the spontaneity of youth, the consuming love of family and corresponding desire to break free. It is an echo that grows fainter by the minute, however, as that lightness of touch is weighed down by a repetitive narrative and the charmlessness of its central characters.

Gormless working-class boy Anthony (Paul Kircher) pursues Steph (Angelina Woreth), a pretty girl from a couple of yards the other side of the tracks, from one summer to the next. They meet first at the picturesque local lake, where Anthony has just stolen a canoe along with his cousin (Louis Memmi). That night,...

Of the many ’90s needle drops in this episodic epic about a smalltown, working class French youth, it is one by Bruce Springsteen that captures its spirit. It takes a special film to earn the right to play ‘Born To Run’ over the end credits, and this does. The fourth feature by twin brothers Ludovic Boukherma and Zoran Boukherma, adapted from a 2018 novel by Nicolas Mathieu, is so close to the essence of The Boss that it might have been reverse-engineered from his DNA.

Set over four summers “And Their Children After Them” drops us into a formative day in the life of 14-year-old Anthony (Paul Kircher). The first shot is of perfect blue sky; the camera pans down to reveal a vista so tranquil as to be almost banal — puffy clouds, forest, lake — until it is sullied by a cigarette butt flicked into the water. In this world, it...

French writer Nicolas Mathieu won the Prix Goncourt — France’s highest-profile literary award — for his 2018 novel “And Their Children After Them,” a working-class Bildungsroman set against a backdrop of severe deindustrialization, for which he stated his disparate influences to include John Steinbeck, Émile Zola, Bruce Springsteen and the 2012 Jeff Nichols film “Mud.” The Springsteen namecheck is easily taken care of in this brash big-screen adaptation, via a thuddingly obvious needle-drop as its bike-riding hero straps his hands across some engines and hits the open road. Mathieu’s more literary allusions, however, haven’t survived the journey to Ludovic and Zoran Boukherma’s overlong, outwardly emotive but strangely unmoving film, which resorts to soap-opera mechanics in its saga of three youths variously affected over a six-year period by one rash act of teen delinquency.

The Boukherma twins showed some inventive, genre-jumbling verve in their first three features — most prominently “Teddy,” a...

Twin brothers Ludovic and Zoran Boukherma left their village in southwest France for Paris just over a decade ago to study film at the Luc Besson-spearheaded L’École de la Cité.

The duo is now settled in the French capital, but they still turn for inspiration to their working-class upbringing in so-called “Peripheral France”, a term coined in the 2010s to describe disadvantaged communities left behind by globalisation.

Their fourth feature And Their Children After Them – which world premieres in competition in Venice this weekend – taps into this world in the 1990s.

Adapted from Nicolas Mathieu’s 2018 novel of the same name, the drama revolves around three youngsters growing up in a former steel town in north-eastern France.

Anthony and Hacine (Sayyid El Alami), are the sons of two ex-steel workers, and Steph (Angelina Woreth), a girl from a comfortable middle-class background.

Over the course of four summers...

Barely a decade out of film school, Gallic twins Ludovic and Zoran Boukherma are primed for an international splash once their fourth feature, “And Their Children After Them,” premieres in competition at this year’s Venice Film Festival.

Adapted from a literary sensation that won the Prix Goncourt, France’s equivalent to the Pulitzer Prize, the film explores teenage heartache and working-class doldrums with a novelistic sweep, playing as a coming-of-age power ballad full of operatic emotions and chart-topping tunes.

“We wanted to turn a story made up of fairly ordinary, small conflicts into something vast and cinematic,” says director Zoran Boukherma, who co-wrote with his brother Ludovic after actor-filmmaker Gilles Lellouche handed each of them a copy of the book over lunch two years ago.

“That idea stemmed from our discussion with Gilles and with [original author] Nicolas Mathieu, who recognized that a very small event could lead to an entire family’s downfall.

Films Boutique has acquired French and international rights to “Pigskin” (“Peau de cochon”), a 2004 film directed by Philippe Katerine, a French musician, actor and filmmaker who took part in the Olympics’ opening ceremony. Films Boutique will relaunch the film in the fall festivals for its 20th birthday.

Katerine stars in the film opposite French singer Dominique A, film critic Thierry Jousse and Helena Noguerra. Katerine won the Cesar for best actor in a supporting role in Gilles Lellouche’s box office hit “Le Grand Bain” in 2019. He’s also been celebrated as a musician and was crowned Artist of the Year at the Victoires de la Musique, French equivalent to the Grammy awards in 2020. He previously performed “Moustache” on Jimmy Fallon’s Tonight Show.

More recently, Katerine played the Greek God Dionysus in the controversial scene which was interpreted by some as a satirical take on Leonardo da Vinci’s religious painting “The Last Supper.

France goes to the polls on Sunday for the second round of a snap parliamentary election in which far right National Rally (Rn) party looks set to come out on top.

With less than 48 hours until the booths open, polls are forecasting Rn is on course to win between 200 to 230 seats in France’s 577-seat National Assembly lower house.

This will not give it an absolute majority but could result in the party’s 28-year-old president Jordan Bardella becoming prime minister with the backing of its leader Marine Le Pen.

Emmanuel Macron, who called the election in response to hefty far right gains in European Parliament elections in mid-June has vowed to stay in place as president until the end of his term in May 2027, although it is not clear what power he will wield if the new government is led by Rn.

The prospect of Rn taking political control...

Europe is in a flux. Two sets of elections taking place within days of each other could see two of the continent’s most powerful countries — both with influential entertainment industries — head in opposite directions.

In the U.K., the Labour Party is expected to claim a landslide victory following Thursday’s election, shifting the country towards the center and, potentially, a period of political calm after years of turbulent Conservative rule that has leant further to the right. In France, however, following a wind of populism across Europe, the far-right could come into power for the first time since the pro-Nazi Vichy Regime during World War II. And it’s a move that many fear could threaten cultural policies, progressive agendas and economic standings across key countries.

Boasting one of the world’s biggest economies, France also has a vibrant film and TV industry and ranks as Europe’s...

French filmmakers Cedric Klapisch, Bertrand Bonello and Gilles Lellouche, and actors Laurent Lafitte, Romane Bohringer and Isabelle Carré, are among the more than 1,000 film and culture professionals and organisations who have signed an open letter warning of the dangers of a potential far-right government and its implications for the industry.

The open letter, published in Le Monde newspaper, and spearheaded by producers union the Arp, comes two weeks after French president Emmanuel Macron’s surprise decision for a snap election to elect a new National Assembly that will see voters head to the polls for a two-round process on June...

Die Fahne des europäischen Films bei der europäischen Leitmesse hochzuhalten: Diese Mission erfüllte Studiocanal mit einer breiten Slate – und dem einzigen Schauspielerbesuch des zweiten CineEurope-Tages.

Auf „Paddington in Peru“ (hier ein Szenenbild aus dem Erstling) lag bei der Studiocanal-Präsentation in Barcelona der klare Schwerpunkt. (Credit: Studiocanal)

„Wicked Little Letters“, „Back to Black“ oder „Ella und der schwarze Jaguar“. So lauten die Titel einiger der Erfolge, die Studiocanal europaweit in den vergangenen Monaten feiern konnte. Die erfolgreichste britische Komödie seit der Pandemie, ein Nummer-1-Start in acht Ländern (und ein Langläufer) – und ein Film, der nicht zuletzt in Deutschland alle Erwartungen zu übertreffen musste. Tatsächlich hob Studiocanal-ceo Anna Marsh die Leistung des deutschen Teams in diesem Fall in besonderem Maße hervor. Denn dass der Film hierzulande das Boxoffice aus Frankreich übertreffen konnte, sei „ziemlich spektakulär“.

Für die Zukunft folge man jedenfalls weiterhin dem Fixstern: Europäische Geschichten zu erzählen, die das Potenzial für weltweite Märkte hätten.

The Seed Of The Sacred Fig from Iranian filmmaker Mohammad Rasoulof has swooped to a late victory on Screen’s 2024 Cannes jury grid with an average score of 3.4.

See the final jury grid below.

The Seed Of The Sacred Fig and Michel Hazanavicius’ The Most Precious Of Cargoes were the final two titles to land on the grid, with the latter scoring 1.2, the lowest score this year.

Rasoulof attended last night’s (May 24) Cannes premiere after fleeing his country following an eight-year prison sentence from Iranian authorities. The family drama follows a judge in Tehran’s Revolutionary Court grappling...

The popular French actor working in just about every film genre has been on the Croisette on a couple of occasions but as a filmmaker got his first taste when Sink or Swim (also known as Le grand bain) — a 2018 selection slotted as an Out of Competition item. Six years later we have L’amour Ouf (Beating Hearts) which was was packaged and advertised at last year’s Cannes and moved into production with a huge ensemble of players in May. Gilles Lellouche directs François Civil, Adèle Exarchopoulos, Malik Frikah, Mallory Wanecque, Alain Chabat, Anthony Bajon, Jean-Pascal Zadi, Benoît Poelvoorde, Vincent Lacoste, Élodie Bouchez, Karim Leklou and Raphaël Quenard star.…...

This is what it would look like if Michael Bay directed a romantic musical. Though this doesn't have nearly enough explosions or mind-boggling drone shots to really live up Bay's movies. Beating Hearts is a big, epic, flashy, cheesy, nearly-three-hour long French love story thriller made by a French filmmaker named Gilles Lellouche. He last directed an absurd comedy called Sink or Swim that played at Cannes 2018, and somehow he was able to secure a Main Competition slot this year at Cannes with his latest titled L'amour ouf in French (or just Beating Hearts in English). For some reason, before its premiere the movie was being referred to as a musical – but it's not really a musical. More of an epic, sweeping romance like Romeo + Juliet with two big dance sequences and tons of famous songs used in it. But there's no singing and it's not a classic musical,...

Translating film titles for international markets can be a commercial necessity, but magic is often lost in the process. It’s hard to think of a more perfect name for Gilles Lelouche’s latest movie than “L’amour ouf,” which punchily captures the bruising nature of the love story at its heart. The clue is in the wordplay: If l’amour fou is an affliction of the mind, l’amour ouf tells us the force we’re dealing with is rather more physical, perhaps even painful.

Squint, though, and “Beating Hearts,” the anglophone title that seems sentimental by comparison, suggests not just life but flagellation. It befits a film that contains its fair share of bloody thrashings over the course of some 20 years in the lives of its star-crossed protagonists, whose love is battered at the peak of their relationship by a miscarriage of justice that goes on to change everything — and nothing — between them.

Gilles Lellouche arrived at the Cannes press conference for his Competition title Beating Hearts (L’amour Ouf) on Friday with one of the biggest cast delegations of the festival as its 77th edition entered its final strait.

As well as being joined on the stage by co-stars François Civil and Adèle Exarchopoulos and newcomers Mallory Wanecque and Malik Frikah, actors Jean-Pascal Zadi, Elodie Bouchez, Raphaël Quenard, Vincent Lacoste, Alain Chabat, Karim Leklou and Antony Bajon took up the front row of the press room.

They arrived on the wave of an enthusiastic response from the audience at Thursday night’s world premiere in the Grand Théâtre Lumière, which gave it a 15-minute standing ovation.

The modern Romeo and Juliet tale, which took Lellouche 17 years to bring to the big screen, is the actor and director’s third feature after hit comedy Sink or Swim.

“I take great, great pleasure from directing.

Good afternoon Insiders, Jesse Whittock back again to take you through the week’s news in the entertainment industry, as the Cannes Film Festival nears its close.

What More Cannes I Say?

Stand up for the standouts: After a quiet opening, the Cannes Film Festival received a shot of life as several buzzy titles finally hit the screen. The excitement on the ground began with The Substance, the much-anticipated blood-splattered horror thriller from French director Coralie Fargeat, which was met with a 13-minute ovation, the longest for a title at this year’s festival until Gilles Lellouche’s Beating Hearts (L’Amour Ouf) took that crown last night. Fargeat’s pic, which stars Demi Moore, Margaret Qualley and Dennis Quaid, is a punk rock fable centered around a new product called The Substance that promises to transform people into the best version of themselves. It’s an offer that comes with a twist.

Payal Kapadia’s All We Imagine As Light joins Sean Baker’s Anora at the top of Screen’s Cannes jury grid while Gilles Lellouche’s Beating Hearts lands bottom of the pack.

Kapadia’s debut fiction scored 3.3 from the critics including six four stars (excellent), equalling that of Anora. The Indian drama, the first from the country to compete at Cannes in over 30 years, received a further four three stars (good) and two two stars (average).

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

All We Imagine As Light centres on two nurses with...

Seemingly from out of nowhere, actor turned director Gilles Lellouche throws a Molotov Flanby into the Competition with only his second feature, a terrific and unexpectedly potent piece of genre filmmaking that could, to avoid spoilers, be described as a kind of mash-up of Badlands and La Haine, as if directed by Walter Hill. Throw in a little Eurocrime, from the likes of Fernando Di Leo and late-period Jean-Pierre Melville, and you’re getting close to what Lellouche has achieved here, a romantic banlieue opera that delivers all the gritty, vicarious thrills of the now-standard post-Goodfellas gangster movie but also burrows into issues of class and gender in refreshingly unpredictable ways.

It arrives as a movie seemingly made by committee, since the film is based on an Irish novel — Jackie Love Johnser Ok? by Neville Thompson — and features contributions by fellow filmmakers Ahmed Hamidi and Audrey Diwan. It quickly...

Cannes – A very popular actor in his native France, Gilles Lellouche has dipped his toe into filmmaking co-directing one movie and helming another over the past 20 years. Nothing he’s directed previously would prepare anyone for the impressive visual authority he welds over the camera in “Beating Hearts,” which debuted at this year’s Cannes Film Festival. There’s actually very little in his first collaboration with cinematographer Laurent Tangy, 2018’s “Sink or Swim,” that would hint at this level of cinematic creativity.

Continue reading ‘Beating Hearts’ Review: Gilles Lellouche’s Stylish Thriller Descends Into Clichés [Cannes] at The Playlist.

If you took Magnolia, Goodfellas, Boyz n the Hood and perhaps Claude Lelouch’s A Man and a Woman, plugged them all into the latest version of ChatGPT and asked it to spit out a brand new film, you could wind up with something like Gilles Lellouche’s (no relation to Claude) swooning French crime romance, Beating Hearts (L’Amour ouf).

A hodgepodge of movie clichés and overwrought scenes, directed with zero tact and plenty of pounding needle drops, actor-turned-director Lellouche’s third stab at the helm after his rather likeable ensemble comedy, Sink or Swim, is less a disappointment than a serious assault on the viewer’s intelligence. The fact that it premiered in Cannes’ competition, rather than in a sidebar “Première” slot, speaks to the general level of one of the festival’s weakest main slates in recent memory.

Sink or Swim was a major hit in France that grossed $40 million,...

It has been a big week for beloved musical The Umbrellas of Cherbourg at the Cannes Film Festival, where it won the 1964 Palme d’Or and went on to international acclaim and five Oscar nominations and served as one of the key inspirations for Damien Chazelle’s La La Land.

The film got a special 60th anniversary Cannes Classics screening Thursday of the exquisitely new restoration at the Agnes Varda Theatre, which is named after the late director and is also wife of late Cherbourg writer-director Jacques Demy. This week also has seen the world premieres of two documentaries related to the film here. On Saturday night at the Buñuel Theatre in the Palais came the premiere of Once Upon a Time: Michel Legrand, an extensive two-hour documentary on the late great composer of Cherbourg and so much more.

Then on Wednesday night, also at the Buñuel, was the unveiling...

Thief of Hearts: Lellouche’s Sprawling Romance Has Arrhythmia

A common occurrence for actors moonlighting as directors is not knowing how to hone a focus, crafting a narrative around the performers, often to the detriment of the film itself. Such is the case with Beating Hearts (L’amour Ouf), the third film directed by Gilles Lellouche, an actor who often oscillates between comedy and drama, and has thus far focused on lighter, frivolous fare as a director. The French language title of his latest roughly translates to Phew, Love, which gives a better indication of the irreverent tone aimed for in this violently stylized romantic melodrama, clocking in at nearly three hours, the justification of which never arrives.…...

This evening the Cannes Film Festival welcomed another world premiere of an ambitious French title with Beating Hearts (L’Amour Ouf). Gilles Lellouche’s competition entry from Studiocanal was greeted with a 15-minute standing ovation inside the Grand Théâtre Lumière.

The modern Romeo and Juliet tale co-stars François Civil, who featured as D’Artagnan in last year’s Three Musketeers reboot, and Blue is the Warmest Color’s Adèle Exarchopoulos. The pair play former childhood sweethearts from different sides of the tracks.

Having gone their separate ways when the boy gets caught up in gang violence and lands in jail on trumped-up murder charges, the couple reconnects against the odds years later.

Further cast includes Raphaël Quenard, Benoît Poelvoorde, Elodie Bouchez, Vincent Lacoste, Alain Chabat and Jean-Pascal Zadi.

The film is adapted from Irish writer Neville Thompson’s 1997 novel Jackie Loves Johnser Ok? which unfolded against the backdrop of Dublin’s tough...

Cannes film festival

Gilles Lelouche’s new movie aims for a Springsteenesque blue-collar energy but buckles under the weight of its own naivety

Gilles Lelouche’s new film is a giant operatic crime drama of star-crossed lovers and hurt feelings; it’s very French, but aiming for some blue-collar Springsteen energy. There are some good performances, and a very serviceable armed robbery scene. But Beating Hearts suffers from a lack of subtlety and bloat, with an increasingly insistent cry-bully sensitive-macho ethic, and a colossally inflated final section belatedly reassuring us of the film’s belief in the power and importance of love. In the end it is sentimental and naive, particularly about the legal consequences of beating your husband half to death in a phone box, however abusive he has been. And I had a strange taste in my mouth after a late scene in which the heroine, working on...

Love, as everyone has long agreed, makes you do crazy things. Silly things, too, and vastly indulgent things, and occasionally even beautiful ones. Gilles Lellouche does all of these, in significant quantities, in his supersized gangster melodrama “Beating Hearts,” which takes the slender plot of innumerable B-movies of the past — as time and crime collaborate to derail the pure-hearted romance between two pretty young things — and blows it up to a dizzily grand scale, complete with widescreen camera gymnastics, daydreamy reality breaks and sporadic swirls of Old Hollywood musical choreography. It’s a mad indulgence, but also one fully attuned to the mindset of its two besotted lead characters: When you fall completely in love for the first (and maybe last) time, doesn’t your life become its own Technicolor epic?

That air of big-swinging, love-drunk bravado will buy Lellouche’s film a lot of goodwill from audiences — particularly those at home in France,...

Miguel Gomes’ Grand Tour impressed critics on Screen International’s Cannes jury grid while Karim Aïnouz’s Motel Destino saw mixed results.

Gomes’ first Cannes Competition feature scored an average of three after The Telegraph, Justin Chang (La Times), Kong Rithdee (Bangkok Post) and Screen’s own critic gave it ’four stars’ (excellent). The black-and-white feature also received five ‘three stars’ (good), two ‘two stars’ (average), and one ’one star’ (poor) from Nt Binh at France’s Positif.

Set in 1917, Grand Tour stars Goncalo Waddington as a British Empire official in Burma who runs away on his wedding day, only...

IndieWire has published its Cannes 2024 Cinematography Survey. We analyzed the data to explore (again and again) that the nine-year-old camera, Arri Alexa Mini, is the most popular camera among Cannes filmmakers. Furthermore, interestingly, in its first appearance on the Cannes Cinematography Chart and jumped straight to second place, is the Arri 35.

The main cameras of Cannes 2024 are the Arri Alexa Mini and the 35. Cannes 2024 cinematography

The 77th annual Cannes Film Festival is taking place from 14 to 25 May 2024. IndieWire has reached out to the filmmakers behind 59 films screened in various categories in the festival. The DPs elaborated on the tools they utilized to tell their stories. Read the entire survey here.

Official poster of the 77th Cannes Film Festival featuring a still image from the movie Rhapsody in August by Akira Kurosawa (1991)

As the tradition calls, we took the data and filtered it to the cameras used, to explore tendency. Based on the info,...

Like the future, the Croisette is so bright, you gotta wear shades. Fortunately, Persol has found a perch in Cannes in time for the festival and summer season with a new collection and pop-up in a prime location. The Italian eyewear brand is setting up shop on the La Terrasse by Albane atop the Jw Marriott, site of many a premiere afterparty and A-list affair over the years.

Persol is sponsoring the space, which will be used for press junkets by day and parties by night. Michelin star chef Mauro Colagreco — owner of Mirazur restaurant in Menton, France — has been recruited to oversee the edible offerings at La Terrasse. Also on the menu: Persol will present a showroom of the spring/summer ’24 collection that includes three options, each designed with soft rectangular frames and adorned with extra-large 80 mm arrows that run along the front and temple, made to amplify the Persol heritage.

Reflecting the breadth of Mediawan CEO Pierre-Antoine Capton’s vast network and friendships, an impressive roster of film industry players flocked to celebrate him as he received Variety‘s International Visionary Award at the Cannes Film Festival on Thursday.

Attendees included CAA’s co-chairman and CEO Bryan Lourd, who said a few words about Capton on stage, as well as AGC Studios’ Stuart Ford, SPC’s Tom Bernard, Netflix’s Larry Tanz and Pauline Dauvin, and Mediawan executives including Elisabeth d’Arvieu and Justine Planchon. The event also gathered star producers within Mediawan’s galaxy, from Hugo Selignac (Chi-Fou-Mi) to Dimitri Rassam (Chapter 2), Matthias Weber (2425 Films) and Federica Sainte-Rose (Blue Morning Pictures), and entertainment attorney Elsa Huisman. There were also leaders from the various streamers, such as Sahar Baghery and Thomas Dubois from Amazon Prime Video in France and Anne-Gabrielle Dauba-Pantanacce from Netflix, among others.

The Variety award coincides...

This year’s Cannes Film Festival should prove particularly festive for Mediawan Pictures managing director Elisabeth d’Arvieu. With five in-house productions premiering in the official selection and another in Critics’ Week, the exec and her team will hit the Croisette with cause for celebration.

As an ardent cinephile, she bolstered an extracurricular passion for movies while getting an Mba from Baruch College in New York. She still takes in a film a day.

The Cannes celebration promises to start early for Mediawan, kicking off with Quentin Dupieux’s festival opener “The Second Act,” then Palme d’Or contending Hearts” from Gilles Lellouche and Kirill Serebrennikov’s “Limonov: The Ballad of Eddie,” the epic “The Count of Monte-Cristo” screening out of competition and Un Certain Regard player “Le Royaume” from

emerging talent Julien Colonna.

When taken as a whole, the strong showing nicely reflects the group’s wider ambitions, from...

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Cannes Film Festival in Cannes, France has begun. One of the biggest film festivals in the world is a metropolis for the latest films and what is coming next in Cinema. While not every film buff has the opportunity to attend, there is still plenty to look out for this Cannes Film Festival season. Here is everything we know before the curtain rises. Things to do: Subscribe to The Hollywood Insider’s YouTube Channel, by clicking here. Limited Time Offer – Free Subscription to The Hollywood Insider Click here to read more on The Hollywood Insider’s vision, values and mission statement here – Media has the responsibility to better our world – The Hollywood Insider fully focuses on substance and meaningful entertainment, against gossip and scandal, by combining entertainment, education, and philanthropy. Judges Cannes features a large jury of different judges from all around the world...

Audrey Diwan is attached to direct “The Marriage Portrait,” based on the novel by award-winning Northern Irish writer Maggie O’Farrell, best known for “Hamnet.”

Variety hears that the project will see the fast-rising French auteur team with two of Europe’s leading arthouse producers in Ireland’s Element Pictures (which has three films in Cannes’ official selection this year) and Italy’s Wildside (which has competition title “Limonov: The Ballad”). Film4 helped develop the feature.

Set in 1500s Renaissance Florence, “The Marriage Portrait” — which was published in 2022 — follows the fictional tale of young duchess Lucrezia de’ Medici, a sheltered 16-year-old who has spent her life locked inside the city’s grandest palazzo. But when her husband takes her on an unexpected visit to a country villa, it occurs to her that he has a sinister purpose — he intends to kill her.

Diwan, who has just completed the post-production of her...

Music Box Films has acquired U.S. distribution rights to “Daaaaaalí!,” the latest film by Quentin Dupieux whose upcoming movie “The Second Act” will world premiere on opening night at this year’s Cannes Film Festival.

A comedic and unpredictable tribute to Salvador Dalí, “Daaaaaalí!” premiered out of competition at the Venice Film Festival, followed by screenings at the BFI London Film Festival and Rotterdam.

In “Daaaaaalí!,” a French journalist repeatedly meets Dalí to begin an interview for a documentary film project that never starts shooting. Anaïs Demoustier stars as a journalist attempting to pin down the eccentric and elusive Salvador Dalí, who is played by five different actors, Edouard Baer, Jonathan Cohen, Gilles Lellouche, Pio Marmaï, and Didier Flamand.

Music Box Films will release “Daaaaaalí!” theatrically later this year with a home entertainment release to follow.

“We were thoroughly charmed by the playful, antic spirit of Quentin Dupieux’s film,...

Update 8 Am Pt: Studiocanal has now unveiled Sara Reese Geffroy as SVP of its nascent Studiocanal Stories label and TV series development.

She will run the French major’s new literary adaptations division, which was unveiled earlier today, while also supervising the development of Studiocanal TV series. She has held the VP Development TV series role for the past three years.

Geffroy will start on May 1 and report into new Studiocanal TV boss M-k Kennedy and Ron Halpern, EVP Global Production and Talent Management.

Studiocanal CEO Anna Marsh said Geffroy’s “knowledge of the sales and production roles, as well as her trusted relationships with the production companies which form part of the Studiocanal ecosystem, are major assets to achieve our ambitions in the franchise and adaptations market.”

Previous: Studiocanal is pushing further into TV and film adaptations of literary IP.

The Canal+-owned company has launched Studiocanal Stories, two...

Mediawan CEO Pierre-Antoine Capton is set to receive Variety’s International Visionary Award at the Cannes Film Festival where the company will have multiple films playing across the Official Selection.

The award will pay tribute to Capton’s trailblazing track record at the helm of Mediawan, the company he founded with investment banker Mathieu Pigasse and telecom billionaire Xavier Niel in late 2015. Mediawan is now a global production powerhouse encompassing more than 85 labels around the world, having just announced its acquisition of Leonine, a leading German distribution-production company.

The combined group comprises Brad Pitt’s Plan B (“Bob Marley: One Love”) in the U.S., France’s On Entertainment (“Miraculous”), Hugo Selignac’s Chi-Fou-Mi (“Beating Hearts”), Dimitri Rassam’s Chapter 2, Italy’s Palomar (“The Count of Monte Cristo”), as well as Drama Republic and Misfits Entertainment (“Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story”) in the U.K and Wiedemann & Berg Film (“The Lives Of Others...

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 full Cannes Film Festival competition jury has been revealed.

Joining president Greta Gerwig to award this year’s Palme d’Or will be “Killers of the Flower Moon” Oscar nominee Lily Gladstone; “The Three Musketeers” star Eva Green; “Lupin” lead Omar Sy; Ebru Ceylan, who co-wrote the 2014 Palme d’Or winner “Winter Sleep”; director Nadine Labaki, whose “Capernaum” won the Cannes jury prize in 2018; director Juan Antonio Bayona, whose latest film “Society of the Snow” was Oscar-nominated for best international feature; Italian actor Pierfrancesco Favino, who will next appear in Pablo Larraìn’s “Maria” alongside Angelina Jolie; and director Kore-eda Hirokazu, director of the 2018 Palme d’Or winner “Shoplifters.”

The competition lineup for the upcoming festival includes “All We Imagine as Light” by Payal Kapadia; Sean Baker’s “Anora”; Donald Trump biopic “The Apprentice” from Ali Abbasi; Andrea Arnold’s “Bird,” starring Barry Keoghan and Franz Rogowski; “Caught by the Tides...