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Arnaud Desplechin’s hybrid documentary “Spectateurs!” (“Filmlovers”) debuted a first trailer ahead of the film’s world premiere at Cannes on May 22.

The 88-minute docu is a love letter to cinema, inspired by Desplechin’s own discovery and passion for cinema.

Per the official Cannes description of the film, Desplechin wrote: “What does it mean, to go to the movies? Why have people been going for over one hundred years? I set out to celebrate movie theaters and their manifold magic. So, I walked in the footsteps of young Paul Dédalus, as if in a filmgoer’s coming-of-age story. Memories, fiction and discoveries come together in an irrepressible torrent of pictures.”

“Spectateurs!” weaves documentary and fiction with a cast including Milo Machado Graner, the young breakthrough actor of Justine Triet’s “Anatomy of a Fall,” and well-known French actors Mathieu Amalric (“The Diving Bell and the Butterfly”) and Françoise Lebrun...

Gad Elmaleh (fan of Nanni Moretti and Woody Allen films) on the set of Stay With Us (Reste Un Peu) with his parents

Stand-up comedian Gad Elmaleh, the director and star of Stay With Us (co-written with Benjamin Charbit) plays a version of himself who explores a lifelong fascination with the Virgin Mary. After living in America, Gad returns to Paris, where he is welcomed by his parents, played by the actor’s actual mother and father, Régine and David, his sister Judith and old friends, which include the actor Roschdy Zem (star of Arnaud Desplechin’s Oh Mercy! with Léa Seydoux and Sara Forestier). Cardinal Jean-Marie Lustiger, Simone Veil, and Henri Bergson get a shoutout as Gad reflects on some wide-ranging questions on faith as he meets with a priest (Father Barthélémy played by Nicolas Port), a rabbi (Pierre-Henry Salfati), a nun (Catherine Thiercelin), a theologian (Frédéric Lenoir), and...

Though we’re likely just two months from Arnaud Desplechin’s next feature Spectateurs! he’s already mobilized an enviable team for the next-next project. Ecran Total reports Léa Seydoux (his collaborator on Deception and Oh Mercy!), Jason Schwartzman, John Turturro, and Golshifteh Farahani (previously of Brother and Sister) are leading The Thing That Hurts, which has just secured financing from the Belgian entity Wallimage and will be supported by CG Cinéma.

Early details are scant, except notice that The Thing That Hurts shoots in Brussels and (per quick translation) “evokes the meeting, following the death of a famous American psychotherapist based in Paris, of some of her patients, who confided in their relationship with the deceased.” Desplechin’s cinema is nothing if not the mingling of memory with grief––these four playing in that world is nearly as sterling a guarantee as the film struggling to receive U.S.

Renowned French auteur Arnaud Desplechin, whose latest film “Brother and Sister” competed at Cannes Film Festival in 2022, is currently wrapping his next directorial effort, “Spectateurs!”

Les Films du Losange, which handles French distribution and international sales rights to the title, has unveiled a first still (above) in the run-up to the Unifrance Rendez-Vous With French Cinema market, where it will introduce the film to buyers.

The hybrid project weaves documentary and fiction with a cast including Milo Machado Graner, the young breakthrough actor of Justine Triet’s “Anatomy of a Fall,” and well-known French actors Mathieu Amalric (“The Diving Bell and the Butterfly”) and Françoise Lebrun (“The Book of Solutions”).

Now in post, the docufiction is described by Les Films du Losange as “a love letter to cinema, freely inspired by the director’s own discovery and passion for cinema.”

A Croisette regular, Desplechin previously directed “Deception,” an adaptation of...

Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.NEWSSubscribe to Notebook magazine before November 1 to receive Issue 4, which explores cinematic soundscapes in their diverse sonic forms and includes contributions from filmmakers like Pedro Costa, Garrett Bradley, and Dominga Sotomayor, pop musician Julia Holter, plus a wide range of artists, writers, and scholars. Subscribers will also receive with this issue a very special gift, a seven-inch record featuring a song by filmmaker Gus Van Sant and a field recording by sound designer Leslie Shatz.This week brought the sad, shocking news that the legendary Taiwanese director Hou Hsiao-hsien has retired from filmmaking due to illness. Hou's family confirmed in a statement that he is battling Alzheimer's, and the effects of long Covid have forced him to stop making films; they requested privacy during this time, adding that he is healthy overall, in the presence of family.

Mysius is a Cannes regular whose credits include ‘Ava’ and ‘The Five Devils’.

French writer-director Lea Mysius is set to write and direct her third feature, an adaptation of Laurent Mauvignier’s best-selling French thriller The Birthday Party (Histoires De La Nuit).

It is being produced by Marie-Ange Luciani’s Les Films de Pierre, whose credits include the Palme d’Or winning Anatomy Of A Fall, alongside Jean-Louis Livi’s F Comme Film, which produced Florian Zeller’sThe Father.

Set in a hamlet in rural France, the story follows a man and his wife, their daughter and an artist neighbour.

Cesar-winning French actor Roschdy Zem (“Days of Glory”) and “Fauda” star Laëtitia Eïdo are co-starring in “Fatum,” a timely action film directed by Florent-Emilio Siri (“Hostage”) and scored by Oscar-winning Alexandre Desplat.

“Fatum,” which started filming on July 4 in Morocco, is produced by Mathias Rubin at Récifilms. Orange Studio is co-producing and has French distribution rights, as well as handles international sales. The film is also co-produced by France 2 Cinéma which pre-bought it along with Canal+, Disney+ and Palatine Etoile 21.

Zem, one of France’s most bankable actors who previously won a Cannes prize with “Days of Glory” and recently won a Cesar Award with “Oh Mercy!” stars in “Fatum” as Elyas, a former Special Forces soldier who has become solitary and paranoid since serving Afghanistan. Elyas is recruited to provide the security for Amina (Eido) and her daughter Nour who fled the Emirates and found refuge in a French castle.

Moussa (Sami Bouajila) is an easygoing fella. He’s a go-along-to-get-along, the rug that everyone walks on that really ties the room together. When his large and rambunctious family gathers to bicker and break bread, the twice-divorced father of three will smile when his siblings and adult children hit new decibels arguing in the gladiatorial arena that is the dinner table. If steps into verbal battle, it’s to apologize to or for someone else, and always to lower the stakes.

He’s just that kind of guy – until he’s not. This boisterous Franco-Moroccan clan is thrown for a loop when family rock Moussa suffers a traumatic brain injury, turning him into a wholly different man. Where once he was accommodating, this altered father and brother now suffers no fools. The infirm Moussa now speaks without a filter, calling out the brood that built their own adult lives on his indulgence.

A coming-of-age character study about a woman already of a certain age, Rebecca Zlotowski’s “Other People’s Children” feels, to put it bluntly, delightfully French. And that goes beyond the outer trappings, the Paris setting, the opening shot of the Eiffel Tower glittering in the night sky, or the countless dimly lit, book-lined apartments where the film’s characters enjoy wine and cigarettes, toasting to the pleasures of sophisticated adulthood.

Let those elements aside and consider this story of sentimental education in function and form: For one thing, . For another, consider this particular drama’s focus on complex emotional scales — finding story beats given Hollywood polish in “Jerry Maguire” and “Stepmom” and exploring them with a focus on the characters’ inner lives — flowing naturally from the French literary tradition. “Other People’s Children” leaves no doubt about its parentage.

Holding the screen for all 104 minutes, and using each one to display her apparently limitless range,...

Arnaud Desplechin’s Brother and Sister ended to the audible reception of somewhere around seven boos, two derisive whistles and nothing else; if you’re someone who believes indifference is a worse reaction than active hostility, this somehow seemed to split the worst possible difference. Consensus holds, not inaccurately, that Desplechin’s peak work is, at least for now, behind him, with the arguable exception of My Golden Days—non-coincidentally, a prequel to 1996’s My Sex Life. His experiments outside of erratic interpersonal dramas, like 2011’s self-explanatorily titled Jimmy P.: Psychotherapy of a Plains Indian and 2019’s crime drama Oh Mercy!, have been received with tepid bewilderment. I have more sympathy for these […]

The post Cannes 2022: Brother and Sister, Pamfir, R.M.N. first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

Arnaud Desplechin’s Brother and Sister ended to the audible reception of somewhere around seven boos, two derisive whistles and nothing else; if you’re someone who believes indifference is a worse reaction than active hostility, this somehow seemed to split the worst possible difference. Consensus holds, not inaccurately, that Desplechin’s peak work is, at least for now, behind him, with the arguable exception of My Golden Days—non-coincidentally, a prequel to 1996’s My Sex Life. His experiments outside of erratic interpersonal dramas, like 2011’s self-explanatorily titled Jimmy P.: Psychotherapy of a Plains Indian and 2019’s crime drama Oh Mercy!, have been received with tepid bewilderment. I have more sympathy for these […]

The post Cannes 2022: Brother and Sister, Pamfir, R.M.N. first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

After seeing his last film (Deception) premiere in the Cannes Premiere section last year, Arnaud Desplechin returns to the competition section once again with Brother and Sister. This is his seventh comp offering after La sentinelle (1992), My Sex Life… or How I Got Into an Argument (1996), Esther Kahn (2000), A Christmas Tale (2008), Jimmy P: Psychotherapy of a Plains Indian (2013), and the yummy 2019 procedural Oh Mercy!. This sees him reteam with Marion Cotillard and Melvil Poupaud.

Their parents might be on death’s bed but you would not know it as estranged adult children are willing to use eye daggers, kitchen knifes and publishing houses to bring each other down.…...

An Arnaud Desplechin film showing up in the Cannes competition lineup is as expected as the changing seasons. An Arnaud Desplechin film starring two titans of French cinema, Marion Cotillard and Melvil Poupaud? Even more welcome. “Brother and Sister” is among the main competition titles heading to this year’s festival, which runs May 17 through May 28. Ahead of the film community’s big return to the Croisette, watch the first trailer for the film, exclusive to IndieWire, below.

In “Brother and Sister,” or “Frère et Soeur” as it’s known in French, Alice (Cotillard) and Louis (Poupaud) are siblings. She is an actress, while he was a teacher and a poet. For the past two decades, Alice has resented him, and they’ve remained estranged for the last 20 years. That is, until their parents become involved in a serious accident, and they are forced to toss blood under the bridge and reconcile anew.

After being cancelled in 2020 and then delayed in 2021, the Cannes Film Festival is finally back on track for May 2022 on the French Riviera. The 75th installment of the international cinema showcase will take place from May 17 to May 28, and there will be 18 films competing for the coveted Palme d’Or, the festival’s top prize. Last year that honor went to the French thriller “Titane,” directed by Julia Ducournau. As of this writing several details are still to be announced including who will be on this year’s jury and who will be serving as jury president after Spike Lee presided over last year’s program.

A filmmaker’s previous track record at Cannes can sometimes give us an idea of who’s in a good position to claim the Palme. For instance, seven of this year’s entries in the official competition come from directors who have previously won...

“When I met you, you were ripe,” says Denis Podalydès’s Philip to his younger mistress (Léa Seydoux) in Arnaud Desplechin’s adaptation with Julie Peyr of Philip Roth’s Deception (Tromperie). She responds: “No, I was rotting on the floor under a tree.”

Arnaud Desplechin’s Frère Et Sœur (Brother And Sister), starring Marion Cotillard, Golshifteh Farahani, Melvil Poupaud, and Cosmina Stratan has been selected to screen in the 75th anniversary edition of the Cannes Film Festival. Arnaud’s Ismael's Ghosts was the 2017 Cannes Opening Night Gala selection and his Philip Roth adaptation Deception was a 2021 highlight.

Arnaud Desplechin with Anne-Katrin Titze on Philip Roth: “He’s as is, he’s absolutely imperfect, selfish as I was saying.”

Desplechin will have had ten world premieres at Cannes: Oh Mercy!; My Golden Days; Jimmy P: Psychotherapy Of A Plains Indian; A Christmas Tale; Esther Kahn...

Denis Podalydès as Philip with Léa Seydoux in Arnaud Desplechin’s adaptation with Julie Peyr of Philip Roth’s Deception (Tromperie).

In the second of my series of conversations with Arnaud Desplechin we discuss filming Frère Et Sœur, starring Marion Cotillard with Golshifteh Farahani and Melvil Poupaud, and working on Deception (Tromperie) with longtime collaborator composer Grégoire Hetzel (Oh Mercy!; Ismael's Ghosts; My Golden Days; La Forêt; A Christmas Tale; Kings & Queen) and for the first time with cinematographer Yorick Le Saux.

Marion Cotillard stars in Arnaud Desplechin’s upcoming Frère Et Sœur Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze

Arnaud Desplechin’s adaptation with Julie Peyr of Philip Roth’s Deception (Tromperie), starring Denis Podalydès, Léa Seydoux (Bruno Dumont’s France), Emmanuelle Devos, and Anouk Grinberg was a highlight of the 74th Cannes Film Festival and New York’s Rendez-Vous with French...

Company enjoyed A-list festival success in 2021 with Cannes and Venice winners Titane and Happening.

Wild Bunch International (Wbi) has unveiled an eclectic French-language slate for 2022 featuring new films from Louis Garrel, Kim Chapiron, Alice Diop, Léa Mysius and Rebecca Zlotowski as well as directorial duo Benoît Delépine and Gustave Kervern.

The company is launching sales on the new French titles at the Unifrance Rendez-vous with French Cinema, which is scheduled to run as an in-person event in Paris from January 11 to 17.

Wild Bunch enjoyed a high-profile festival run for its 2021 slate which saw Titane win the Palme d’Or in...

Andreas Fontana’s haunting Azor, co-written with Mariano Llinas, stars Fabrizio Rongione and Stéphanie Cléau: “The cinematography was done by Gabriel Sandru and we were talking a lot about that.”

Andreas Fontana’s Azor, co-written with Mariano Llinas, shot by Gabriel Sandru with costumes by Simona Martínez, stars Fabrizio Rongione and Stéphanie Cléau.

Andreas Fontana with Anne-Katrin Titze on Jorge Luis Borges: “Borges of course in terms of literary inspiration is very important.”

In my discussion with the director we touch on the influence of Howard Hawks and Jorge Luis Borges, Joan Didion’s codes and games, casting director Alexandre Nazarian, the cinematography, costumes, and filming in Argentina with non-professional actors, “men who are very impressive”.

Boredom is seen as “divine punishment,” old money...

You have to feel for Léa Seydoux, the star who was slated to be the all-but-official face of this year’s Cannes Film Festival, with four vehicles in the official selection. Covid intervened, preventing her representing any of them in person. But the one she’s best in was also the lowest-profile.

Placed out of competition in the new Premieres sidebar, Arnaud Desplechin’s “Deception” is a strange, stifling but frequently intriguing attempt to find a cinematic match for the literary voice of Philip Roth, from his autofictional 1990 novel of the same name. It often succeeds, which is to say the filmmaking often appropriates the self-aggrandizing indulgences and knowingly oppressive masculinity of a work that isn’t among the author’s finest. But it’s Seydoux’s sly, bright presence, as an obscure object of desire who gradually places the protagonist’s failings in relief, that keeps us involved.

That...

A Normandy-set cop movie with far more on its mind than simply solving the case, Xavier Beauvois’ Berlinale competition entry “Drift Away” examines the toll that law enforcement takes on an earnest sergeant (Jérémie Renier), and also how the locals react to intrusions by authority figures. Though not necessarily intended as such, it’s a nuanced rebuttal to recent anti-police protests in France and abroad, since it humanizes the role of an officer even as it hinges on the outcome of an armed confrontation between two gendarmes and a desperate farmer. Still, social-justice advocates may find it too convenient, and they wouldn’t be wrong.

Such cases are rarely cut and dried, and while this one duly upsets a community where gun violence is all but unheard of, the situation wears hardest on Renier’s character, Laurent Sandrail, who already is having a tough time separating work stress from his private life.

This was the original release weekend for ‘Wonder Woman 1984’ before its Covid-induced delay.

France, Wednesday, September 30

French comedy My Cousin by Jan Kounen was the biggest release of the week in France on just under 700 prints for Pathé. Vincent Lindon stars as the uptight chief of a family business empire on a mission to get his wayward cousin, who owns half its shares, to sign off on a mega-deal.

Cannes 2020 label feature animation Josep was the second widest launch on 200 prints for Sophie Dulac Distribution. This was followed by Israeli-French drama The End Of Love by Keren Ben Rafael...

France’s Oscars unfold amid politically charged atmosphere following protests over nominations for Polanski’s An Officer And A Spy.

Ladj Ly’s explosive social drama Les Misérables won best film at a politically charged 45th Cesar awards on Friday evening which also saw Roman Polanski feted with best director for historical drama An Officer and A Spy.

The ceremony for France’s equivalent of the Oscars in the Salle Pleyel concert hall in central Paris unfolded in an atmosphere of heightened tension.

It has been a rocky six weeks for the awards, following a backlash by female rights activists...

France’s Oscars unfold amid politically charged atmosphere following protests over nominations for Polanski’s An Officer And A Spy.

Ladj Ly’s explosive social drama Les Misérables won best film at a politically charged 45th Cesar awards on Friday evening which also saw Roman Polanski feted with best director for historical drama An Officer and A Spy.

The ceremony for France’s equivalent of the Oscars in the Salle Pleyel concert hall in central Paris unfolded in an atmosphere of heightened tension.

It has been a rocky six weeks for the awards, following a backlash by female rights activists...

France’s Oscars unfold amid politically charged atmosphere following protests over nominations for Polanski’s An Officer And A Spy.

Ladj Ly’s explosive social drama Les Misérables won best film at a politically charged 45th Cesar awards on Friday evening which also saw Roman Polanski feted with best director for historical drama An Officer and A Spy.

The ceremony for France’s equivalent of the Oscars in the Salle Pleyel concert hall in central Paris unfolded in an atmosphere of heightened tension.

It has been a rocky six weeks for the awards, following a backlash by female rights activists...

France’s Oscars unfold amid politically charged atmosphere following protests over nominations for Polanski’s An Officer And A Spy.

Ladj Ly’s explosive social drama Les Misérables won best film at a politically charged 45th Cesar awards on Friday evening which also saw Roman Polanski feted with best director for historical drama An Officer and A Spy.

The ceremony for France’s equivalent of the Oscars in the Salle Pleyel concert hall in central Paris unfolded in an atmosphere of heightened tension.

It has been a rocky six weeks for the awards, following a backlash by female rights activists...

France’s Oscars unfold amid politically charged atmosphere following protests over nominations for Polanski’s An Officer And A Spy.

Ladj Ly’s explosive social drama Les Misérables won best film at a politically charged 45th Cesar awards on Friday evening which also saw Roman Polanski feted with best director for historical drama An Officer and A Spy.

The ceremony for France’s equivalent of the Oscars in the Salle Pleyel concert hall in central Paris unfolded in an atmosphere of heightened tension.

It has been a rocky six weeks for the awards, following a backlash by female rights activists...

The stormiest and most beleaguered Cesar Awards ever took place in Paris on Friday, with “Les Miserables” being named 2019’s best French film while protesters lined the streets outside the Salle Pleyel protesting the nominations for Roman Polanski’s “J’accuse,” which is known as “An Officer and a Spy” outside France.

Despite the furor, Polanski won two Cesar awards, one for best director and another for adapted screenplay, which he shared with his co-writer Robert Harris. His film also won for its costumes.

It was Polanski’s fifth Cesar in the directing category, the most of any director. His previous awards were for “Tess,” “The Pianist,” “The Ghost Writer” and “Venus in Fur.”

Despite all the attention on Polanski, the Oscar-nominated “Les Miserables” was the big winner of the night, taking home four awards. In addition to the best-film prize, director Ladj Ly’s taut drama also won for most...

The 45th César Awards ceremony took place on Friday, February 28, at the Salle Pleyel in Paris to honor the best in French cinema of 2019 — and at a fractious moment for the Académie des Arts et Techniques du Cinéma. The event was emceed by French comedian Florence Foresti, with actress Sandrine Kiberlain presiding. See the full list of winners below.

Earlier this month, the entire board of directors of the French academy announced their planned resignation after the publication of an open letter from hundreds of members calling for a complete overhaul of the organization. The announcement unspooled in the wake of allegedly dodgy financial practices, an overall lack of transparency, and the repeated omission of filmmakers Claire Denis and Virginie Despentes from the Academy’s annual Dîner des Révélations event, focused on emerging talent. The young guests are asked to nominate talent they’d like to see at the event,...

Rebecca Zlotowski’s An Easy Girl (Une Fille Facile) featuring Mina Farid, Zahia Dehar, Benoît Magimel, Nuno Lopes, Clotilde Courau and Lakdhar Dridi, is a Rendez-Vous with French Cinema highlight Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze

Rendez-Vous with French Cinema Early Bird highlights in the UniFrance and Film at Lincoln Center 25th edition include Nicolas Pariser’s Alice And The Mayor (Alice Et Le maire), starring Anaïs Demoustier and Fabrice Luchini with Antoine Reinartz and Nora Hamzawi; Alice Winocour’s Proxima with Eva Green, Zélie Boulant, Matt Dillon, Sandra Hüller, and Lars Eidinger, score by Ryuichi Sakamoto; Bruno Dumont's Joan Of Arc (Jeanne), his sequel to Jeannette: The Childhood Of Joan of Arc, starring Lise Leplat Prudhomme, and Rebecca Zlotowski’s An Easy Girl (Une Fille Facile).

Opening the festival is Hirokazu Kore-eda’s The Truth (La Vérité), starring Catherine Deneuve (also in Cédric Kahn’s Happy Birthday - Fête De Famille), Juliette.

Dominique Blanc, Gaël Kamilindi, Clément Hervieu-Léger, Michel Vuillermoz, Jennifer Decker, Florence Viala, and Christophe Montenez in Tony Kushner’s Angels In America, directed by Arnaud Desplechin at the Comédie-Française Photo: Christophe Raynaud de Lage

In the final instalment of my in-depth conversation with Arnaud Desplechin on Oh Mercy!, which received six César nominations, we discussed how a Bob Dylan album and a joke by Kent Jones inspired the title. The director and co-screenwriter (with Léa Mysius) spoke about the influence of Emmanuel Lévinas, the performance by Lumière winner Roschdy Zem as Commissaire Daoud, the costumes by Nathalie Raoul, and the dynamic between Sara Forestier as Marie and Léa Seydoux as Claude.

Lieutenant Cotterel (Antoine Reinartz) confronts Marie (Sara Forestier) and Claude (Léa Seydoux)

Anne-Katrin Titze: Now we’ve chatted more about the animals than about your marvellous actresses. I would like to talk about the frown. The permanent frown on Sara’s face.

Arnaud Desplechin on the roles played by Léa Seydoux, Sara Forestier and Antoine Reinartz in Oh Mercy!: "They look as children.” Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze

Arnaud Desplechin’s coruscating Oh Mercy!, co-written with Léa Mysius, received six César nominations: Best Film, Director, Adapted Screenplay, Actor (Lumière winner) Roschdy Zem, Supporting Actress Sara Forestier, and Original Score by Grégoire Hetzel. Arnaud’s staging and direction of Tony Kushner’s Angels in America, (French text by Pierre Laville) at the Comédie-Française in Paris, starring Michel Vuillermoz as Roy Cohn opened on January 18.

Roschdy Zem won a Lumière and received a César nomination for his portrayal of Commissaire Yacoub Daoud in Oh Mercy!

In the second instalment of my in-depth conversation with Arnaud, he credits The Rider director Chloé Zhao and her cinematographer Joshua James Richards’ framing of horses as an influence. We discuss his screening of Alfred Hitchcock’s The Wrong Man...

France’s César Academy members’ support for Polanski’s film unswayed by rape allegations.

France’s Academy of Cinema Arts and Sciences unveiled the nominations for the 45th edition of the César awards at its traditional news conference at Fouquet’s restaurant in Paris on Wednesday morning.

Roman Polanski’s historic drama An Officer And A Spy – about the infamous 19th Century Alfred Dreyfus affair - topped the list with nominations in 12 categories, including best film and best director.

The French release of the film, which won the grand jury prize at the Venice Film Festival last September, was hit...

The French cinema-focused awards are regarded as the country’s equivalent of the Golden Globes.

Ladj Ly’s Oscar hopeful Les Misérables was the big winner at France’s Lumiere awards in Paris on Monday evening (January 27), winning best film for the explosive drama revolving around a stand-off between youngsters and police officers on a tough Paris housing estate.

The French cinema awards - overseen by the Lumière Academy comprising some 130 international correspondents hailing from 40 countries based in France – are regarded as the country’s equivalent of the Golden Globes.

Ly also won the best screenplay prize for Les Misérables,...

Cannes Jury Prize winner is also France’s submission to the Oscars this year.

Ladj Ly’s debut feature and Cannes Jury Prize winner Les Misérables, revolving around social tensions in a tough Paris suburb, is the frontrunner in the 25th edition of France’s Lumière awards this year, with seven nominations.

The awards which are voted on by some 130 international correspondents hailing from 40 countries are France’s equivalent of the Golden Globes.

Les Misérables has been nominated for best film, director, screenplay, cinematography, first film and twice in the best new actor section for two of its cast members,...

Pedro Almodóvar, Bong Joon-ho, and Kelly Reichardt are some of the auteurs hitting the Big Apple to screen their latest works at this year’s New York Film Festival, which runs Sept. 27-Oct. 13 at the Lincoln Center.

Now in its 57th year, the gathering for cinephiles has become a key stop for moviemakers hoping to propel their films into the awards race. To that end, Almodóvar and Bong will bring “Pain and Glory” and “Parasite,” two movies that earned rave reviews out of Cannes and that look to be major contenders for this year’s foreign language Oscar. Reichardt, an indie maverick who has previously scored with the likes of “Meeks Crossing” and “Night Moves,” will screen “First Cow,” a drama that unfolds in the old West.

Their movies are among the 29 films screening as part of the festival’s main slate. Other films that will get splashy premieres at...

“There are eight million stories in the naked city; this has been one of them.” This line, which closes film noir classic “The Naked City,” would fit comfortably among the dialogue of Arnaud Desplechin’s latest work, “Oh Mercy!,” making its debut in the Official Competition of the Cannes Film Festival. Best known for his unwieldy family dramas, the film is a genre swerve for Desplechin.

Continue reading ‘Oh Mercy!’: Arnaud Desplechin Tackles The Crime Genre With Léa Seydoux & Sara Forestier [Cannes Review] at The Playlist.

Xavier Dolan is “enfant terrible” no more. The director has now turned 30, and he got emotional and teary-eyed while introducing his latest film, “Matthias and Maxime,” on Wednesday at Cannes.

And critics could sense that his latest film suggests the director is slowing down and looking back on his youth with more sensitivity and even maturity.

“‘Matthias & Maxime’ deals with friendship and self discovery in a way that will be familiar to fans of Dolan’s previous work, but it is a, dare we say, more mature work,” TheWrap’s Steve Pond wrote in his review, calling the film a return to form despite the young director’s blistering pace and constant presence at Cannes. “There’s a reflection to go with the gleeful, transgressive energy, a sense of looking back fondly at the jarring but seminal moments that form identity.”

Also Read: 'Matthias & Maxime' Film...

French auteur Arnaud Desplechin (My Golden Days, recent Cannes opener Ismael’s Ghosts) gives us two movies for the price of one with Oh Mercy! (Roubaix, une lumiere). Or, to be more precise, one fascinating, hourlong movie about the lower classes and underbelly of contemporary northern France and the other an hourlong CSI: Roubaix episode that’s filled with not only familiar but also quite repetitive interrogations, prison-cell visits and reconstruction attempts at the actual crime scene.

Because of Desplechin’s reputation, a Cannes competition slot and the participation of Bond Girl Lea Seydoux in a supporting role — ...

French auteur Arnaud Desplechin (My Golden Days, recent Cannes opener Ismael’s Ghosts) gives us two movies for the price of one with Oh Mercy! (Roubaix, une lumiere). Or, to be more precise, one fascinating, hourlong movie about the lower classes and underbelly of contemporary northern France and the other an hourlong CSI: Roubaix episode that’s filled with not only familiar but also quite repetitive interrogations, prison-cell visits and reconstruction attempts at the actual crime scene.

Because of Desplechin’s reputation, a Cannes competition slot and the participation of Bond Girl Lea Seydoux in a supporting role — ...

Le Pacte, the Paris-based company that has French rights to five movies competing at Cannes, has boarded Jean-Paul Salomé’s “La Daronne,” a crime comedy starring Isabelle Huppert as a French-Arabic translator working for the anti-drug squad in Paris.

Based on Hannelore Cayre’s popular novel, “La Daronne” follows the story of Patience Portefeux (Huppert), who gets embroiled in a failed drug deal, inheriting a pile of marijuana. While keeping her job with the anti-drug squad, Portefeux crosses to the other side and becomes a well-known drug dealer.

Kristina Larsen at Les Films du Lendemain and Jean-Baptiste Dupont at La Boetie Films produced the film. Jean Labadie’s Le Pacte will distribute in France and is handling international sales on the movie. Camille Neel’s sales team at Le Pacte is unveiling a promo of “La Daronne” at Cannes.

At the Marché, Le Pacte is also selling Benoît Forgeard’s offbeat comedy “Yves,...