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“The Talent,” a glitzy party-set psychological thriller toplining Ester Expósito, one of the biggest breakouts of “Elite” stars, will be brought onto the market at Berlin by Spain’s Film Factory Entertainment.

Handling many of Spain’s biggest non-global streamer movies, Film Factory has acquired worldwide rights to “The Talent”outside Spain. It will present at next month’s European Film Market a first promo of the movie whose talent package is compounded by Fernando León de Aranoa, who co-writes and produces. Helmer of San Sebastian Film Festival Golden Shell winner “Mondays in the Sun,” one of the early big breakthroughs for Javier Bardem, León directed Bardem once more in the Oscar shortlisted “The Good Boss,” which also won six 2021 Goya Awards, Spain’s equivalent of the Oscars, including Best Film and Director, and the European Film Award for Best Comedy.

Produced by Leon’s Reposado PC and The Mediapro Studio,...

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...

Recently, I had the great pleasure of talking with the legendary Ron Perlman, who has two movies open at the moment – Absolution with Liam Neeson and Day of the Fight, co-starring Michael Pitt and Joe Pesci. While teasing his new films, Perlman, a great guy, was thrilled when I brought up the fact that, when I was in high school here in Montreal, our history teacher used to show us Quest for Fire to teach us about early man.

Made in 1981, this movie happened to be Perlman’s first, and in it he plays Amoukar, one of a tribe of cavemen sent to find fire, as they do not have the knowledge needed to create fire themselves. Shot entirely without conventional dialogue, Quest for Fire is an amazing movie that’s ripe for rediscovery, and Perlman was happy to give us a little insight in to the making of the film.

No one has ever accused Sir Ridley Scott of being shy with his feelings, but when Letterboxd asked the director for his four favorite films at the premiere of "Alien: Romulus," he still managed to be a bit surprising by naming one of his own. To be fair, he also named Stanley Kubrick's "2001: A Space Odyssey," George Lucas' "Star Wars: A New Hope," and Jean-Jacques Annaud's "Quest for Fire" alongside his own "Blade Runner," so he had some pretty fantastic picks to offer in addition to showing his 1982 cyberpunk opus a little love. There's definitely a bit of a science fiction thread through his four favorites, and each one is a look at humanity through a slightly tilted lens, but let's talk a bit more about "Blade Runner" and why it deserves just as much if not more love than Scott's more popular sci-fi film, "Alien." 

I'll...

The Lumière Film Festival’s International Classic Film Market (Mifc) marks its 12th edition with a wide-ranging program that examines the latest restorations from NBCUniversal and leading French distributors and tackles some of the heritage cinema sector’s most pressing issues.

Running Oct. 15-18, the Mifc this year explores opportunities for the DVD and Blu-ray market and movie theaters, the growing role of artificial intelligence (AI), the impact of Jean-Jacques Annaud’s 1986 classic “The Name of the Rose” and the heritage sector of Lithuania, this year’s country of honor.

Speaking to Variety, Gérald Duchaussoy, who oversees programming and coordination at the Mifc, said it was particularly important to look at the U.S. market to identify trends in the sector, both among streaming platforms and movie theaters.

Duchaussoy will moderate a discussion with Cassandra Moore, vice president of mastering and archive at NBCUniversal.

“It was very important for us...

French company The Yard VFX, whose credits include The Rings of Power – Season 2, Halo – Season 2, All The Light We Cannot See, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, and John Wick: Chapter 4 – is expanding its operations beyond Paris to open a new studio in London.

The VFX firm said the new facility would serve as a strategic extension of The Yard’s operations, fostering closer collaboration with UK-based production companies, filmmakers, and agencies.

Founded in Paris in 2014, the studio has collaborated with a roster of major film studios, production companies, and streaming platforms worldwide over the past decade.

Recent accolades for its work include Best Visual Effects at the 2023 edition of France’s prestigious Cesar awards for Jean-Jacques Annaud’s Notre Dame on Fire, and it was also recently nominated at the 2024 Emmy Awards for its work on Netflix’s All The Light We Cannot See.

“London is a dynamic...

One of Ridley Scott's favorite movies, Quest For Fire, is a brilliant prehistoric fantasy. Quest For Fire combines originality with emotional and thrilling moments in the starkly ancient setting. The movie's influence is evident in Hollywood, impacting films like Planet of the Apes and Ridley Scott's own work.

One of Ridley Scott's favorite movies is a great fantasy film currently available on Amazon Prime. Blade Runner and Alien director Ridley Scott is one of cinemas titans, a formative part of the sci-fi genre in the 21st century. Scott produced the new Alien movie Alien: Romulus, released in August 2024, remaining a key driver in the franchise and participating in the marketing campaign. Scott'swork has influenced countless filmmakers over the years, which is why it is fascinating to learn about which movies inspired him.

Ridley Scott spoke to Letterboxd about his favorite movies, citing one of his own, the seminal sci-fi movie Blade Runner,...

Joseph Fiennes and Natascha McElhone have joined the cast of Amazon Prime Video’s “Young Sherlock” as series regulars.

Fiennes — the uncle of Hero Fiennes Tiffin, who plays Sherlock Holmes — has been cast as Silas Holmes, Sherlock’s father, who is described as a “scientist, explorer and self-made businessman.”

McElhone will play Cordelia Holmes, described as “Sherlock’s devoted mother, artist and matriarch of the Holmes clan.”

Fiennes is best known for playing William Shakespeare in 1998’s “Shakespeare in Love” and Commander Fred Waterford in the first four seasons of Hulu’s “The Handmaid’s Tale.” His other prominent credits include starring in “The Mother” opposite Jennifer Lopez, the Cate Blanchett-led biopic “Elizabeth” and Jean-Jacques Annaud’s “Enemy at the Gates.” Most recently, he led the James Graham play “Dear England.” Fiennes is repped by the Artists Partnership and WME.

McElhone is best known for playing Karen Van Der Beek...

Movies about Stone Age life have been so few that just one past effort could be taken seriously, the rest being funny — intentionally or otherwise. Belatedly offering non-laughable companionship to Jean-Jacques Annaud’s 1981 “Quest for Fire” is “Out of Darkness,” a lean, mean adventure story on the cusp of horror that firsttime feature director Andrew Cumming imbues with tension and handsome visual atmospherics.

Titled “The Origin” when it premiered at BFI London Fest in fall 2022, since retitled (presumably to avoid confusion with Ava DuVernay’s current “Origin”), it’s a strong genre piece lent real novelty by being set approximately 45,000 years ago. Bleecker Street opens the U.K. indie production on more than 500 U.S. screens this Friday, simultaneous with a home-turf release.

We meet our protagonists around a campfire — unlike those of “Quest,” set circa 80,000 B.C., these prehistoric ancestors have figured that much out — as they air hopes...

Melvil Poupaud began his 40-year career, at the age of 10 Photo: Thomas Brunot/UniFrance Following in the illustrious wake of talents including Juliette Binoche, Virginie Efira, Olivier Assayas and Olivier Nakache and Éric Toledano, it is the turn of actor Melvil Poupaud to be honoured during the UniFrance Rendezvous with French Cinema in Paris later this month.

He will be given the French Cinema Award during a glittering ceremony at the French Ministry of Culture at a ceremony on 18 January.

Poupaud’s career has stretched across almost four decades, having begun his acting debut at the age of ten in City Of Pirates, directed by Raoul Ruiz, with whom he went on to make a further five critically acclaimed films.

Melvil Poupaud and Amanda Langlet in Eric Rohmer’s A Summer’s Tale Photo: Les Films du Losange During his career Poupaud has worked with many of France's most respected directors,...

French VFX firm The Yard, whose credits include Indiana Jones 5, Ford v Ferrari, Enola Holmes 2, Wanda Vision, John Wick 4 and Netflix’s All The Light We Cannot See, has appointed Tom Fonvillars as head of its CG department.

Fonvillars will oversee graphic creation for films and series. Fonvillars has previously collaborated with companies including The Mill and Framestore in London and Montreal. His filmography includes Edge of Tomorrow, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, Thor: Ragnarok, Alita: Battle Angel, Lady and the Tramp, Army of The Dead, and more recently, Rebel Moon.

Fonvillars’ appointment comes amid company expansion, including the opening of a second site in Montpellier as part of the French government’s investment program France 2030 La Grande Fabrique de l’Image.

Fonvillars said: “It’s a real pleasure for me to join The Yard. Upon my return to France, it was paramount for me to...

With a career that goes back nearly 50 years, director Jean-Jacques Annaud was bound to run into some troublesome actors. But the French filmmaker has been relatively lucky – and it wasn’t Brad Pitt or Jude Law or Two Brothers’ Kumal and Sangha that gave him headaches, it was F. Murray Abraham.

Speaking at the Lumière Film Festival in Lyon, France (via Deadline), Jean-Jacques Annaud said that working with F. Murray Abraham on 1986’s The Name of the Rose – a 4K presentation of which was screened at the festival – was a nightmare compared to what he expected from his co-star. “Everybody warned me that Sean Connery was impossible and an extremely difficult character. He was an absolute dream and I got on with him fantastically…My only bad memory of an actor across my whole career, and I’ve directed, I think, thousands of actors, was F. Murray Abraham, who played the inquisitor…...

Thierry Frémaux is best known internationally as the long-time head of France’s Cannes Film Festival, which is organized out of its offices in Paris’s trendy Marais neighborhood.

The double-hatted cinema expert is perhaps more in his element in his home city of Lyon, where he is the director of the Institut Lumière, situated on the site of the former mansion and factory of cinema pioneers Auguste and Louis Lumière.

Alongside its late co-founders Bernard Chardère and Bertrand Tavernier, Frémaux has been a driving force behind the expansion of the institute and its activities, including the creation of its classic cinema-focused Lumière Film Festival, which has just wrapped its 15th edition.

Highlights this year included German director Wim Wenders receiving its prestigious Lumière Prize, following in the footsteps of the likes of Clint Eastwood, Martin Scorsese, Jane Campion and Francis Ford Coppola. As part of the honor, the Paris,...

Close to 40 years after Wim Wenders won the Cannes Palme d’Or for Paris, Texas, its enigmatic ending continues to spark debate in cinephile circles.

Talking about his career in a Lumière Film Festival masterclass over the weekend, the German director stood by his decision to have Harry Dean Stanton’s reclusive character Travis drive off into night, leaving behind his reunited estranged wife and young son.

“I was very, very convinced that the ending of Paris, Texas was right. For me, it was an heroic act by Travis to leave the mother and son together,” said Wenders.

“He knew he had done so much harm that they were never going to make it as a family, while the son and the mother had a good chance of making a life together if he left.”

Wenders revealed he received pushback around the final scene, including from the U.S. distributor 20th Century Fox,...

Jean-Jacques Annaud has worked with an impressive roster of actors across his 60-year career including big names such as Sean Connery, Tony Leung and Brad Pitt as well as Christian Slater and Jane Marsh, who were emerging talents when he cast them in The Name Of The Rose and L’Amant respectively.

Talking at a masterclass at the Lumière Film Festival in Lyon on Sunday, the French director revealed how he found the casting process one of the most exhausting stages of making a film.

“I never write with an actor in mind because a character often evolves, someone that starts out as 60-years-old, may end up working better as a 35-year-old… I don’t want to ensnare myself. I wait until my ideas are clear,” said Annaud.

The director – whose varied filmography also spans the 1976 Africa-set Oscar winner Black and White In Color, The Bear, Enemy At The Gates, Wolf Totem...

Board makes “difficult decision” ahead of October event.

The ongoing Hollywood strikes have struck again, this time forcing the Franco-American Cultural Fund (Facf) to cancel its Los Angeles event the American French Film Festival.

The Facf, which brings together the DGA, MPA, WGA and France’s authors’ rights organisation Sacem, said its board members made the “difficult decision” this week to cancel, explaining that it was “not possible to continue with business as usual”.

The group said it was “keenly aware of the impact of this decision on the filmmakers, actors, producers, and distributors of the films and series that were due to be featured,...

The American French Film Festival, which had been due to take place in L.A. from October 18 to 22, has been shelved due to the writers and actors strikes.

The Franco-American Cultural Fund (Facf) which oversees the event (formerly known as Colcoa) said it had made the difficult to decision to cancel the 2023 edition after a board meeting.

“The Facf Board of Directors determined this week that it was not possible to continue with business as usual,” the fund said in a statement.

The festival said it would still announce the full 2023 festival slate as originally planned on September 27 to honor the projects that were selected.

Previously announced elements of the program included the U.S. premiere of TV bio-drama Bardot, about the life of Brigitte Bardot, in the presence of co-creator Danièle Thompson.

“The Facf is keenly aware of the impact of this decision on the filmmakers, actors, producers, and...

Lyon, France — Four-time Oscar winner Alfonso Cuarón and “Time Bandits” helmer Terry Gilliam will join a star director-studded lineup at this year’s Lumière Film Festival including Wes Anderson, Alexander Payne and Wim Wenders.

Cuarón is returning to Lyon – where he was a guest of honor in 2018 – to present a selection of films by Swiss filmmaker Alain Tanner.

Gilliam will screen the newly restored version of his 1995 sci-fi thriller “Twelve Monkeys.”

One of Anderson’s latest shorts, “The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar,” part of four Roald Dahl adaptations to be released on Netflix later this month, will screen at Lyon’s plush 2,000-seat Auditorium, where he will give a masterclass.

Like other guests, he will not only be introducing a retrospective of his own films but works by others, as part of an ongoing drive by the festival “to strengthen the link between the past and the present of cinema,...

No animals were harmed in the making of Luc Besson’s new thriller, Dogman, but plenty of people get mauled, bitten, robbed and attacked, and one guy has his junk put into a serious vice grip, by a pack of extremely well-trained canines.

That being said, the director’s first film since his 2019 femme-driven assasin flick, Anna, is actually one of his least violent movies to date when it comes to bullets and bodies depicted on screen. If there’s violence, it’s predominantly of the domestic and psychological kind, in a story that follows a young man whose childhood traumas transform him into a very unusual sort of superhero: a paralyzed vigilante who dresses in drag, performs incredible lip-syncs of classic European ballads, and rules over a small, fierce army of obedient pups, as if the Joker and Ace Ventura were somehow merged into a single character. Also, he lives in New Jersey.

Fans of The Name of The Rose author Umberto Eco turned out in NYC, boosting the documentary on medieval scholar turned novelist and social commentator to over $9.1k on one screen – a nice showing by The Cinema Guild for a foreign language documentary on a solid weekend for some indie and arthouse fare.

Umberto Eco: A Library Of The World explores the life and work of the famed Italian writer and semiotics professor, whose bestselling novel was turned into a 1986 film by Jean-Jacques Annaud, starring Sean Connery and Christian Slater as a medieval monk detective and his apprentice.

Director Davide Ferrario, who worked with Eco a year before the writer’s death on a video project for the 2015 Venice Biennale, gained access to his Milanese library of more than 30,000 contemporary books and 1,500 rare and antique volumes. In the doc, the prolific author and original thinker, who has waxed eloquent on blue jeans and comic books,...

White Friar stars Bafta winning-actress Anamaria Marinca who starred in Palme d’Or-winning 4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days.

WWII-set romantic thriller White Friar will be the first offspring of the inaugural Franco-Irish co-production pact signed in December in Paris and was officialised in Cannes by the film’s producers France’s Valentina Films and Ireland’s Max Films on Friday (May 19).

White Friar stars Bafta winning-actress Anamaria Marinca who starred in Palme d’Or-winning 4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days alongside veteran French actor Jean-Marc Barr, known for Luc Besson’s Big Blue and Cannes Jury Prize-winning film Europa.

The film was written and directed...

A pair of actors who hail from Cannes Film Festival award-winning projects — Anamaria Marinca (Cristian Mungiu’s 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days) and Jean-Marc Barr (Lars Von Trier’s Europa) — are teaming to star in a new film that marks an official collaboration between France and Ireland.

The project is White Friar and will mark the feature directorial debut of actor-turned-filmmaker Ivan Murphy. Described as a romantic thriller, White Friar is inspired by the life of Father Tom Murphy, an Irish Catholic priest who also served as a wing commander in the Royal Air Force during WWII and his relationship with Eva Hofer, a Hungarian Jew living in Vienna. Per the official synopsis, the film “examines morality, sexuality and identity.”

Jean-Marc Barr

Ivan Murphy, who happens to be the grand nephew of Father Tom Murphy, penned the screenplay. He turned up in Cannes on Friday to sign the co-production agreement...

‘Eo’ director will help decide the winner of the festival’s Golden Goblet Awards.

Polish filmmaker Jerzy Skolimowski has been named jury president for the 25th Shanghai International Film Festival.

The veteran director, whose drama Eo won the jury prize at last year’s Cannes and went on to secure an Oscar nomination, will preside over the jury that decides the winner of the festival’s Golden Goblet Awards.

Skolimowski’s credits include includes Berlin Golden Bear winner The Departure (1967), Cannes Grand Prix winner The Shout (1978), Cannes best screenplay winner Moonlighting (1982), and Essential Killing (2010) which was awarded the special jury...

French president Emmanuel Macron is set to kick off a three-day trip to Beijing this week, a high-stakes diplomatic mission that will be a delicate balancing act between urging Chinese leader Xi Jinping to alter his stance on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and maintaining France’s trade priorities. The French delegation accompanying Macron will include dozens of people spread across two jetliners touching down in Beijing on Wednesday — and the French film industry will be among the constituencies represented in the group.

Veteran filmmaker Jean-Jacques Annaud will travel with Macron and attend various official functions, including the China-France state dinner hosted by Xi Jinping in Beijing’s Great Hall of the People on Thursday evening. During the trip, Annaud will also be promoting his most recent film, the 2022 disaster epic Notre-Dame on Fire, which is getting a nationwide China release on Friday. It will be the first French film...

Makoto Shinkai’s Japanese anime sensation Suzume held strong at the top of China’s box office over the weekend, earning $22.1 million while easily defeating Paramount’s Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves and Sony’s 65, which both flopped.

Suzume has earned $80.6 million in China, better than any other international film released in the country this year, including U.S. superhero tentpoles like Ant-Man 3 ($39 million), according to box office tracker Artisan Gateway. The film is forecast to bring in over $90 million, which will make it the most commercially successful Japanese anime in China of all time.

Suzume also has earned just shy of $30 million in South Korea and $105 million in Japan. It opens in North America and most of Europe on April 14, providing the latest bellwether for anime’s growing theatrical potential in the West.

Dungeons & Dragons and 65‘s disappointing results continue a streak of poor...

The American French Film Festival, formerly known as Colcoa, has set the dates of its 2023 edition to Oct. 18-22.

Organized by the Franco-American Cultural Fund, the festival will host its 27th edition at the Directors Guild of America Theater on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood.

“Created by the Franco-American Cultural Fund, this event is the largest French film festival in North America and the largest festival dedicated to French Films and TV programs in the world,” said Cécile Rap-Veber, CEO of Sacem who presides over the Franco-American Cultural Fund.

Rap-Veber said “the American French Film Festival is a wonderful symbol to embody the Franco-American friendship and a crucial moment and spotlight to promote French cinema and all its talented creators.”

A Hollywood launchpad for French movies, the festival was launched in 1996 and has hosted premieres of movies by critically acclaimed filmmakers such as Jean-Jacques Annaud, Emmanuel Mouret, Maïmouna Doucouré, Céline Devaux,...

Cocaine Bear, hitting theaters Feb. 24 from Universal, doesn’t mark Hollywood’s first fascination with bears, although it might be the only project about the animal’s rampage after ingesting a massive amount of the titular drug.

Taking a more naturalistic approach was 1988’s The Bear, which told the story of an adult bear befriending an orphaned cub as they flee human hunters. Director Jean-Jacques Annaud, who won the foreign-language Oscar for 1976’s Black and White in Color, adapted James Oliver Curwood’s 1916 novel The Grizzly King for the film. Annaud considered 50 bears as the adult grizzly, eventually casting a 1,500-pound Kodiak named Bart the Bear, later seen in White Fang (1991), Legends of the Fall (1994) and The Edge (1997). Cinematographer Philippe Rousselot recalls the challenges of using real animals — the two bears could rarely be filmed together.

“The big one would have killed the small one,” he tells THR. “Bart was wonderfully well trained,...

Exclusive: Robert Walak and Alisa Tager will be leaving their posts as Presidents of Film & Television at AC Studios, the independent film and TV production studio that sits inside Anonymous Content, when their contracts are up in a couple of months.

Walak and Tager are expected to continue producing projects for AC Studios through an arrangement whose terms are still being worked out.

There are no details yet about the duo’s replacement though I hear UCP veteran Garrett Kemble, who joined Anonymous Content as EVP of Development for AC Studios last summer, reuniting with former UCP President Dawn Olmstead who is now CEO of Anonymous Content, is poised for a bigger role in light of Walak and Tager’s pending exit.

“Alisa and Robert are brilliant producers,” said Anonymous Content Cco David Levine. “It has been a pleasure working with the two of them these past few years to...

The Serpent and The Mauritanian star Tahar Rahim will preside over the 48th edition of France’s Cesar Awards, taking place at Paris’s historic l’Olympia concert venue on February 24.

France’s Cesar Academy noted that Rahim has a long history with the Césars, having won best actor and most promising actor in 2010 for his breakthrough performance in Jacques Audiard’s The Prophet.

“Since then, Tahar Rahim has continued his career with finesse, opting for rich, diverse and complex characters, and new experiences,” said the César Academy in a statement announcing his appointment as ceremony president.

Highlighting Rahim’s ability to move between French and international productions, the body cited past credits spanning Lou Ye’s Love and Bruises, Jean-Jacques Annaud’s Black Gold, Asghar Farhadi’s The Past, Rebecca Zlotowski’s Grand Central as well as Kevin Macdonald’s The Mauritanian and BBC-Netflix hit The Serpent,...

Jean-Jacques Annaud directs Sean Connery in The Name of the Rose (Der Name Der Rose), the film version of the novel by Umberto Eco

The Name of the Rose is a great adaptation of the most important work by Umberto Eco. A mystery story set in an era of supersitions (Fourteenth century) with the Inquisition in the middle.

Orson Welles said that one should adapt lesser literary works. This time, the director and the entire team do a great job by focusing on the detective story part of the literary work.

Story line

Brother William of Baskerville (Sean Connery) and his disciple Adso de Melk (Christian Slater) arrive at an abbey where one of the monks died recently, where the abbot hopes that Brother William will be able to solve the crimes.

Our erudite friend is a man far removed from superstition and he tries to find a logical explanation for everything,...

Click here to read the full article.

Uganda has submitted its first-ever film for the Oscars, putting forward Morris Mugisha’s Tembele as its contender for the 2023 Academy Awards in the best international feature category.

The drama follows Tembele (Patriq Nkakalukanyi), a garbage man in Kampala suffering from mental illness who begins to lose his grip on reality after the death of his infant son. Ronah Soledad Ninsiima and Cosmas Serubogo co-star.

“In Africa, men are told to hide their feelings, and never to show weakness because they will be thought feeble,” Mugisha said in a statement accompanying the submission announcement. “Tembele suggests otherwise: that it is Ok for a man to cry and vulnerability is no crime especially if you’re hurting. This is a film of hope, love and brotherhood.”

Tembele premiered in Uganda this summer and swept the Uganda Film Festival Awards, winning best film, best actor and best supporting actor honors.

Click here to read the full article.

The American French Film Festival (Tafff) is using cinema to bridge the gap between French and American culture.

Presented by the Franco-American Cultural Fund (Facf), the 26th annual festival returns this year for a second time after a pandemic hiatus in 2020. This year, the festival is committed to not only highlighting the similarities between the two cultures, but also zeroing in on the differences to shine a light on how each culture can better understand the other.

“When you organize conversations in a bicultural setting, it’s always full of surprises, and that’s the point of conversations,” festival deputy director Anouchka van Riel tells The Hollywood Reporter. “And for me, it’s not so much about commonalities, as it is about differences. The tropes, the codes, the stereotypes are very different from one culture to another. It’s a very strange feeling...

Event formerly known as Colcoa runs October 10-16.

The North American premiere of Jean-Jacques Annaud’s Notre-Dame On Fire (Notre-Dame Brûle), a dramatised account of the April 2019 fire that damaged the Gothic Parisian landmark, will open American French Film Festival (formerly Colcoa) in Los Angeles on October 16.

The week-long event will close with the North American premiere of Dominik Moll’s thriller The Night Of The 12th (La Nuit du 12) and the annual filmmaker focus will be dedicated to Moll. The world theatrical premiere of Olivier Assayas’s series Irma Vep will also screen on closing day.

The line-up...

Click here to read the full article.

The American French Film Festival is set to open with a North American premiere for Jean-Jacques Annaud’s Notre-Dame on Fire on Oct. 10.

Annaud, who will attend the festival, is bringing his latest film, which re-creates the events of April 15, 2019, when the Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris caught fire, prompting a heroic rescue of the celebrated church.

The festival, formerly called Colcoa, will end on Oct. 16 with Dominik Moll’s thriller The Night of the 12th screening at DGA Theater Complex in Los Angeles. The American French Film Festival will dedicate its annual Focus on a Filmmaker spotlight to Moll and will also close with Irma Vep, Olivier Assayas’ HBO remake of his 1996 film, which had a world theatrical premiere at the festival.

In all, 75 films and series and 20 short films were unveiled as part of the festival’s 2022 lineup during a press conference on Tuesday.

The American French Film Festival, formerly known as Colcoa, will kick off Oct. 10 with the North American premiere of docudrama “Notre-Dame on Fire,” from “Quest for Fire” director Jean-Jacques Annaud. The weeklong festival at the DGA Theater Complex in Los Angeles closes with Dominik Moll’s thriller “The Night of the 12th,” about a cold case where the only certainty is the night it occurred. Moll will also be the focus of the festival’s annual “Focus on a Filmmaker.”

“Every year, The American French Film Festival presents the very best of French cinema and television, and this year is no exception. I am personally excited about the opening night selection of Jean-Jacques Annaud’s ‘Notre-Dame on Fire’ as I think it perfectly embodies the Franco-American Cultural Fund’s mission,” said Andrea Berloff, writer and board member of the Franco-American Cultural Fund.

The festival will screen 75 films and TV series and 20 shorts,...

"Save the cathedral… without losing a single life." Netflix has revealed an official trailer for a mini-series titled Notre Dame, the second major production based around the Notre Dame fire in 2019. The moment this fire at the iconic cathedral made news around the world, I knew it would be turned into movies. Jean-Jacques Annaud made his own Notre-Dame On Fire film also releasing this year, and Netflix has made their mini-series based around the exact same concept - following the firefighters who went to work putting out the fire that night. Hervé Hadmar's Notre Dame series follows the story of the night of April 15th, 2019 in Notre-Dame Cathedral alongside the many firefighters and the impact the fire had on different characters across France. Starring Roschdy Zem, Caroline Proust, Megan Northam, Simon Abkarian, Alice Isaaz, Marie Zabukovec, Sandor Funtek. This looks like it has some gorgeous visuals, but it also...

Pathé, which operates France’s leading cinema circuit, is planning to enter the Paris stock exchange in 2024, Variety has confirmed. The company’s president, Jérôme Seydoux, revealed the group’s long-gestated listing project in an interview with the French publication Les Echos.

Seydoux said the company suffered a loss of approximately €100 million during the financial years 2020 and 2021, mainly due to the fact that theaters in France were shut down for a total of 300 days during the pandemic. While it ruffled feathers by selling “Coda” to Apple at Sundance in 2021 in a splashy 25 million deal, the company was one of the rare French studios which maintained its release plans for major local productions during the health crisis, for instance Martin Bourboulon’s “Eiffel” with Romain Duris and Emma Mackey, and Jean-Jacques Annaud’s “Notre Dame on Fire.”

Entering the Paris stock exchange should allow Pathé to pursue its ambitious plans to...

Haugesund’s New Nordic Films market runs August 23-26.

Haugesund’s New Nordic Films market has unveiled the works in progress presentations for its 2022 edition, running August 23-26.

The line-up includes new films from the likes of Pathfinder director Nils Gaup’s new drama The Riot (Sulis), sold by REinvent and set against a workers revolt in 1907 Lapland; The Worst Person In The World producer Thomas Robsahm, who presents Aurora Gossé’s Norwegian youth film Dancing Queen, sold by Level K; and Berlinale prize-winning director Selma Vilhunen’s new Finnish production, polyamory drama Four Little Adults.

Scroll down for full...

For its 50th edition unspooling Aug. 20-26, Norway’s top film event, the Norwegian International Film Festival in Haugesund, will be treating its 400-plus international guests and local audiences with a beefed-up onsite program of 72 feature length films and 19 shorts.

“We’ve had more films to choose from than ever before, “says festival honcho Tonje Hardersen about her non-competitive program, put together in close collaboration with local distributors and exhibitors. “We can still see the post-covid effects on distribution as many titles were delayed. We have therefore slightly older films – from 2020 up to 2022 – which is unusual. But this makes for an exceptional program, hopefully for all tastes,” she adds.

World premieres take in the blockbuster Norwegian opener ‘War Sailor’ by Gunnar Vikene starring Kristoffer Joner (‘The Revenant’), Pål Sverre Hagen (‘Kon-Tiki’), and Ine Marie Wilmann (‘Homesick’), about Norwegian war sailors’ heroic efforts during WWII. Prolific outfit Mer Film (‘The Innocents’) is producing,...

Further titles include Pathe’s ‘Notre Dame On Fire’, Vertigo’s ‘She Will’.

Sony thriller Where The Crawdads Sing receives the biggest-ever release for any film directed by a woman at the UK-Ireland box office this weekend, opening in 691 locations.

Directed by Olivia Newman, the film’s total tops the 673-site release for 2019’s Frozen 2, which was directed by Jennifer Lee, alongside Chris Buck; as well as the 650-site release of Cate Shortland’s Black Widow from last year – the previous widest release by a film solely directed by a woman.

Adapted by Lucy Alibar from Delia Owens’ 2018 novel of the same name,...

Veteran director Jean-Jacques Annaud rips a swashbuckling escapade from news footage of the catastrophic fire at the Paris cathedral

Veteran French director Jean-Jacques Annaud serves up some high-octane film-making with this old-fashioned disaster movie, composed in a docu-realist style, about the catastrophic fire that engulfed Paris’s Notre Dame cathedral in 2019. With dramatic reconstructions, digital effects and the splicing in of amateur video, social media material and genuine news footage – President Macron himself appears at one stage to be talking to an actor playing the fire chief – Annaud rips a pretty swashbuckling adventure from the headlines. A terrifying blaze, flying buttresses about to collapse and molten lead pouring from the roof on to the believers below; and Annaud cheekily intersperses the thrills with a querulous old lady who keeps calling the fire brigade because her kitten has got out on to the roof: France has, as they say, picked the wrong day to quit smoking.

Disney’s “Thor: Love And Thunder” topped the U.K. and Ireland box office for the second consecutive weekend with £4.06 million (4.8 million), according to numbers released by Comscore. The latest film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe now has a total of £20.8 million.

Universal’s “Minions: The Rise Of Gru” had another strong showing with £2.66 million in second place and has a total of £23.1 million after three weekends. In third position, Warner Bros.’ “Elvis” collected £1 million for a total of £16.1 million after four weekends.

Placing fourth was Paramount’s “Top Gun: Maverick.” Already the highest grossing film of the year in the territory, the Tom Cruise vehicle took a further £810,638 in its eighth weekend for a mighty total of £72.2 million.

Rounding off the top five was Universal’s “Jurassic World: Dominion,” which collected £383,502 in its sixth weekend for a total of £32.4 million.

Studiocanal’s “The Railway Children Return,” a new adventure following the 1970 classic,...

Name of the Rose director Jean-Jacques Annaud has turned the Paris fire into a thrilling drama. He talks about the desperate race to rescue the crown of thorns – as molten lead fell like satanic rain

On the south-west corner of the facade of Notre Dame cathedral is a horned chimera, peering out at the Left Bank of Paris with an awestruck gawp. The director Jean-Jacques Annaud, 78, was a boy when he picked out the beast for his second ever photograph; he took it with a camera given to him by his mother (the subject of his first photograph). They lived on the outskirts of Paris, and she would bring him to the cathedral every Thursday. “She used to go there to light a candle for a friend who was ill,” he explains. “My parents weren’t believers, but she had that Christian tradition of doing that kind of thing.”

So...

The German festival is running from June 23 to July 2.

Marie Kreutzer’s Corsage will launch Filmfest München in an opening gala at the German city’s Isar Philharmonic concert hall today

The Filmfest is screening 120 films from 52 countries, including 35 world premieres. Italian actress Alba Rohrwacher will be presented with this year’s CineMerit Award, while there will be a homage to German filmmaker Doris Dörrie with the premiere of her latest film The Pool.

Festival director Diana Iljine and artistic director Christoph Gröner talk to Screen about this year’s event and the Filmfest’s significance as a launchpad for international careers of German films.

Notre-Dame On Fire Trailer — Jean-Jacques Annaud‘s Notre-Dame On Fire / Notre-Dame brûle (2022) movie trailer has been released by Pathe. The Notre-Dame On Fire trailer stars Samuel Labarthe, Jean-Paul Bordes, Mikael Chirinian, Jérémie Laheurte, Chloé Jouannet, and Pierre Lottin. Crew The screenplay is written by Jean-Jacques Annaud and Thomas Bidegain. Produced by Jérôme Seydoux. Plot Synopsis Notre-Dame [...]

Continue reading: Notre-dame On Fire (2022) Movie Trailer: Fire-fighters Fight a Blaze at Notre Dame Cathedral in Jean-Jacques Annaud’s Film...

"Up there with a few men, we can do it." Pathe UK has released their own official UK trailer for the Notre-Dame On Fire movie from France, dramatizing the tragic fire at Paris's Notre Dame cathedral in 2019. The French title is just Notre-Dame Brûle and it's supposed to tell a story "from inside the Notre-Dame de Paris fire of April 2019." Made by the same director from Seven Years in Tibet and Enemy at the Gates, Frnech filmmaker Jean-Jacques Annaud who has stay away from Hollywood for a while now. The film retraces how heroic men & women firefighters put their lives on the line to accomplish this awe-inspiring rescue. The ensemble cast features Samuel Labarthe, Jean-Paul Bordes, Mikael Chirinian, Jérémie Laheurte, Chloé Jouannet, and Pierre Lottin. It's set to open in the UK this July after first premiering in France this March, but there's still no US plans yet. I guess...

France is the world’s third-biggest animation producer, according to data from the Cnc, with 7,790 employees last year.

A rising number of international productions, especially TV animation series, are flocking to France, attracted by its 30 tax rebate for international projects (Trip) program.

A higher 40 tax rebate is available for VFX projects with over €2 million (2.14 million) VFX spend in France, with seven projects supported in 2021, including Ridley Scott’s “The Last Duel.”

In 2021, animation repped 46 of all foreign production spend under the Trip scheme, marking a 62 increase between 2019 and 2021.

Demand for animation and VFX staff is surging in France with 16 job growth in 2021 alone.

The number of Trip-supported animation projects doubled between 2019 and 2021, and the number of all film and TV projects (fiction and animation) increased by 231. Seventy-one per cent of all supported projects in 2021 were for streaming platforms.

Animated shows for streamers, line produced in France, have become the country’s fastest-growing programming area.

“The Three Musketeers,” Pathé Films’s 75-million two-part adventure epic saga based on Alexandre Dumas’s masterpiece, has been bought in major international territories rolling off a busy Cannes market.

Pathé unveiled a sprawling 15-minute promoreel for both “The Three Musketeers” – D’Artagnan” and “The Three Musketeers – Milady” at Cannes Marché du Film. Both movies are directed by Martin Bourboulon and boast a star-studded cast, including Vincent Cassel, Eva Green, Vicky Krieps, Romain Duris, Pio Marmaï, François Civil, Lyna Khoudri and Louis Garrel.

Produced by Dimitri Rassam for Chapter 2, a Mediawan Company, and Pathé, the two films were picked up for Latin America (CDC United Network /Cine Video y TV (Zima)), Scandinavia (Nordisk Film), South Korea (First Run Inc.), Poland (Monolith Films), Czech Republic and Slovakia (Aqs Inc.), Ex-Yugoslavia (Blitz Films), and Bulgaria, Hungary and Romania Vertical (Entertainment Kft.). Pathé is in advanced talks with distributors for the rest of Asia,...

To the degree that a global sales division can shape its own image, Pathé’s international arm has built and bolstered its current brand around strong IP, recognizable faces and unbelievable but true stories.

To see those elements in play, one need only look to last year, when projects including Paul Verhoeven’s “Benedetta” and Martin Bourboulon’s “Eiffel” lifted from world and film history as they showcased stars such as Virginie Efira, Romain Duris and Emma Mackey, while collectively finding homes in more than a hundred international territories.

To witness those same imperatives, but supercharged, one need only glimpse Pathé’s 2022 slate, which goes long on hometown IP and star power.

“Being exhibitors ourselves, we make films for the big screen,” says Marie-Laure Montironi, exec VP of international sales. “Today, names and universal stories drive audiences to cinemas. To hook people, you need a big spectacle, a big story,...

Pathé may be one of France’s oldest film groups, but it is young at heart. The only French film company that is still fully involved in exhibition, production, distribution and sales, Pathé has been confronting the challenges wrought by the pandemic and the arrival of streamers with bold steps and ambitious new projects. During the Cannes Film Festival, the company will receive Variety’s Intl. Achievement in Film Award.

In the past two years, the family-owned film group, which is led by the visionary businessman Jérôme Seydoux, saw its “Coda” win three Oscars for family drama; greenlit the country’s biggest-budgeted movies in recent history, “Asterix and Obelix: The Middle Kingdom” (75 million) and the two-part adaptation of Alexandre Dumas’ masterpiece, “The Three Musketeers — D’Artagnan” and “The Three Musketeers — Milady” (75 million); it ventured into TV series; and forged bonds with streaming services, including Netflix and Apple TV+.

“When theaters were shut down,...