News

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

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

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

Blue Fox Entertainment has acquired U.S. rights to Cédric Klapisch’s (“The Spanish Apartment”) hit dance film “Rise” (“En corps”) from Studiocanal.

One of 2022’s highest grossing French films, “Rise” sold nearly 1.3 million tickets in local theaters and was sold around the world. The movie tells the story of a young ballet dancer whose life is upended when she suffers a career-threatening injury and catches her boyfriend cheating on her. As she begins her physical and emotional rehabilitation, she finds solace in friends, a new love, and a new contemporary dance troupe.

Marion Barbeau, a dancer-turned-actor, delivers a breakthrough performance in the lead role, and stars opposite French stars, including François Civil (“Three Musketeers”), Pio Marmaï (“How I Became a Super Hero”), Denis Podalydès (“Anaïs in Love”), as well as Hofesh Shechter (“Send Me an Angel”).

“We are so thrilled to bring Cedric’s beautiful film to US audiences,...

Pulsar Content has boarded Anissa Bonnefont’s erotic drama “La Maison” based on Emma Becker’s controversial bestselling novel chronicling the young author’s two-year undercover experience working as a sex worker at a Berlin brothel.

Now in post-production, “La Maison” is headlined by Ana Girardot, the rising French star of “The Returned,” “Back to Burgundy” and “Escobar: Paradise Lost,” as well as Rossy De Palma and Aure Atika (“10 Days With Dad”). De Palma will also be at Cannes to preside over the jury of the Golden Camera Award.

Pulsar Content has secured worldwide sales and unveiling a first still of the movie (pictured above). The outfit will introduce the project to buyers at Cannes with a promo reel. Rezo will distribute “La Maison” in France.

Radar Films, a Mediawan company whose credits include “Vicky and her Mystery,” “The Deep House” and “Divorce Club” is producing the movie with and Belgian banner uMedia co-producing.

Studiocanal has begun worldwide sales on writer-director Cédric Klapisch’s “Rise” (En corps) at the virtual American Film Market this week.

A story of resilience set in Paris and Brittany, “Rise” traverses the the worlds of classical and contemporary dance with a young woman’s journey from success to rock bottom, and back again.

The cast includes emerging actor and dancer Marion Barbeau, Pio Marmaï (“How I Became a Super Hero”), Denis Podalydès (“Anaïs in Love”), François Civil and Hofesh Shechter (“Send Me an Angel”).

Barbeau plays Elise, who thought she had the perfect life, with an ideal boyfriend and a promising career as a ballet dancer. But it all falls apart the day she catches him cheating on her with her stage backup, and after she suffers an injury on stage, it seems like she might not be able to dance ever again. The path to physical and emotional...

The U.S. lineup for films coming to Mubi this September has been announced, featuring some of my personal favorites of the last few years, notably Philippe Lesage’s severely overlooked coming-of-age drama Genesis, John Gianvito’s Helen Keller documentary Her Socialist Smile, Joe DeNardo, Paul Felten’s formally thrilling Slow Machine, and Robert Greene’s documentary Bisbee ’17, as well as Jia Zhangke’s latest release Swimming Out Till the Sea Turns Blue.

Also in the lineup is Bill Forsyth’s delightful Gregory’s Girl, Ari Folman’s hybrid feature The Congress, and Manoel de Oliveira’s Visit, or Memories and Confession, which was made in 1982, and only allowed to screen after his death.

See the lineup below and get 30 days free here.

September 1 | Yellow Cat | Adilkhan Yerzhanov | Festival Focus: Venice

September 2 | Visit, or Memories and Confessions | Manoel de Oliveira | Rediscovered

September 3 | Slow Machine | Joe DeNardo, Paul Felten | Mubi Spotlight

September...

The director’s feature debut stars Ana Girardot, among others; the Gloria Films and 2.4.7 Films production is being sold abroad by Playtime. After kicking off on 2 March, and then grinding to a halt on 16 March because of the health crisis, the shoot for Arnaud Malherbe’s feature debut, the fantasy tale Ogre, resumed on 15 June in the Morvan, where it is slated to wrap on 18 July. The cast includes Ana Girardot, young actor Giovanni Pucci and Samuel Jouy.Malherbe has short films such as Macadam Peau-rouge (in the national competition at Clermont-Ferrand in 2009) and Dans...

Distrib Films has acquired U.S. rights to Lucie Borleteau’s “The Perfect Nanny” and Cédric Klapisch’s “Someone Somewhere,” both of which will screen at the Rendez-Vous with French Cinema in New York, a festival organised by the Film Society of the Lincoln Center and UniFrance.

A psychological thriller, “The Perfect Nanny” is adapted from Leila Slimani’s bestselling novel “Chanson Douce” which was awarded France’s highest literary prize, the Prix Goncourt, in 2016.

Represented in international markets by Studiocanal, “The Perfect Nanny” follows Myriam (Leïla Bekhti), a lawyer who decides to return to work after having children. She and her husband (Antoine Reinartz) think they’ve found the perfect nanny for their son and daughter. The film’s U.S. remake rights have been acquired by Legendary and Paul Downs Colaizzo is on board to adapt and direct the English-language adaptation. “The Perfect Nanny” was produced by Pascal Caucheteux...

There are two big takeaways in “Someone, Somewhere,” director Cédric Klapisch’s return to Paris after satisfying detours to New York (“Chinese Puzzle”) and eastern France (“Back to Burgundy”). The first, which makes for the better movie, is you can’t love someone until you’ve learned to love yourself. The second, which drags the movie down, is that our hyper-connected era has, paradoxically, kept us from establishing meaningful relationships. Both lessons need to be learned by Mélanie (Ana Girardot) and Rémy (François Civil), lonely thirtysomething neighbors who’d be perfect for each other if only they could overcome their individual hangups, stop substituting computer screens for real connections and actually meet.

At this point, no one can argue that Facebook and Tinder are acceptable alternatives to engaging with the world around you. Had Klapisch advanced the idea 10 years ago, it would have been downright prescient. In 2019, however, his...

Sold by Studiocanal, produced and distributed by Mars Films, “Love at Second Sight,” Hugo Gélin’s follow-up to Omar Sy-starrer “Two is Family” – which scored a noteworthy €62 million ($67.9 million) outside France in 2017 – begins with a post-catastrophe Winter.

Wasn’t this meant to be a romantic comedy? Images of Paris’ River Seine half-buried by a glacier of snow and cold-curdled ice mark of course a metaphor, though its sense will take some time to register. The opening gambit of “Love at Second Sight,” is echoed by the ambition of its parallel universe premise. At high school, Raphaël discovers Olivia, also a teen, playing the piano with extraordinary skill and emotion. It’s love at first sight. Though young, they get married. Raphaël has some vague ideas for a pulp sci-fi novel, set in a wintery dystopian post-Apocalypse Paris. With vital input from Olivia, who puts her own career on hold, the novel gets published.

In the run-up to the UniFrance Rendez-Vous in Paris, the rising sales company Charades has added three French films to its slate, “My Traitor, My Love,” a war romance-drama; “Lost And Found,” a romantic comedy; and “The Girl With a Bracelet,” a family drama.

Directed by Helier Cisterne (“Vandal”), “My Traitor, My Love” (pictured) opens in 1956 in Algeria, at a time when it was a French colony. The film stars hot French actor Vincent Lacoste (“Amanda”) and Vicky Krieps (“Phantom Thread”) as Fernand and Helene, a young couple madly in love whose destiny will be irrevocably changed by the outbreak of the Algerian War of Independence. Fernand is an activist figting for independence alongside the Algerians. The film was penned by Katell Quillévéré (“Heal the Living”) and Cisterne whose feature debut “Vandal” won the Louis Delluc Prize in 2013.

“My Traitor, My Love” is produced by Les Films du Bélier,...

Chanson Douce

French director Lucie Borleteau heads into sophomore territory with Chanson Douce (translates as Lullaby), an adaptation of the novel by Leila Slimani (known as The Perfect Nanny stateside). Why Not Productions’ Pascal Caucheteaux and Gregoire Sorlat are producing alongside Nathalie Gastaldo Godeau from Pan-Europeenne, with France 3 Cinema serving as co-producer. Cinematographer Alexis Kavyrchine is lensing a cast which includes Karin Viard, Leila Bekhti and Antoine Reinartz. Borleteau’s first feature, 2014’s Fidelio: Alice’s Odyssey (read our review), competed in Locarno, winning Ariane Labed Best Actress, eventually snagging a Cesar nomination for Best First Feature.…...

Hilary Swank in ‘I Am Mother.’

Executives at Studiocanal are so confident that Grant Sputore’s I Am Mother will get a meaningful Us release they plan to launch the sci-fi thriller in Australia after the Us.

Adelaide Film Festival audiences will see a work-in-progress of Sputore’s debut feature, which stars Hilary Swank, newcomer Clara Rugaard, a former Disney Channel star in Denmark, and Rose Byrne, on October 12.

Rugaard plays a lonely teenager who is raised by ‘Mother,’ a kindly robot designed to repopulate the Earth following the extinction of mankind. That bond is threatened when a blood-drenched woman played by Swank turns up, calling into question everything the girl had been told about the outside world.

Byrne will voice the robot, which was designed by Kiwi special effects house Weta Workshop. Sputore described the collaboration with the Weta team led by founder Richard Taylor as a “dream.”

After...

The Maui Film Festival celebrates its 19th anniversary this year, and, despite taking place in an ever-more crowded calendar of summer film fests, its popularity continues to grow. The event attracts locals and mainlanders alike, and draws both casual fans and ardent cineastes with its unique mixture of sun, sand and life-affirming cinema.

And this time around, in an unexpected turn, the eruption of the Kilauea Volcano on the neighboring Big Island of Hawaii has raised the Maui fest’s profile to new highs.

“People shouldn’t worry,” says fest founder and director Barry Rivers. “That’s 100 miles away and we’re not affected at all.”

Rivers stresses that Maui’s rugged beauty, with its beaches, ocean and backdrop of mountains and jungle, makes it “a very special location — and a lot of the festival is held outdoors.” Venues include the Celestial Cinema at the Wailea Gold & Emerald Golf Course,...

Updated at 10:55Am Pt with more numbers and analysis. Magnolia and Participant’s Sundance documentary Rbg opened in 34 locations Friday with momentum behind it and it delivered a solid start.

Directed by Julie Cohen and Betsy West, the feature spotlighting U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg grossed 560,000, or $16,471 per location, making it one of the top non-fiction releases of the year. The headway was all the more impressive given the long shadow of The Avengers.

Music Box Films opened The Guardians in a single location, grossing $7,199 over the weekend, while French-Dutch crime-drama Racer And the Jailbird bowed in two theaters, taking in $2,222. Bleecker Street’s Disobedience by Sebastián Lelio continued to lure audiences in a second-week expansion, grossing $310,272 from 31 runs, averaging $10K. Sundance Selects’ Let The Sunshine In by Claire Denis also flexed muscle in its second weekend, taking in $66,754 in seven locations.

Sony Classics added runs...

For CinemaCon’s annual gathering of theater owners in Las Vegas, the Motion Picture Assn. of America released a new report showing a 6% drop in theatrical attendance in the U.S. and Canada in 2017, representing a 22-year low.

Though the breakout success of “Black Panther” is likely to quiet some worries about superhero fatigue, distributors and exhibitors working the mid-range and low-budget end of the spectrum are facing some doubts about the viability of their product in the age of tentpoles and streaming media.

The situation isn’t dire. A largely tepid year for specialty releases was offset by a strong awards-season showing for a handful of films. The breakouts of 2017 included “The Shape of Water” ($63.5 million), “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri” ($54.2 million), “Lady Bird” ($48.9 million), “The Big Sick” ($42.8 million) and “Wind River” ($33.8 million).

“It’s definitely a tough time,” says Jeff Bock, box office analyst for the tracking firm Exhibitor Relations.

Structural flaws let down Cédric Klapisch’s tale of siblings who return to run the family vineyard when their father dies

Cédric Klapisch is a reliable purveyor of sunny and undemanding commercial French movies. Here is another: this one about the heartaches and life-affirming joys of running a family vineyard. The original title is Ce Qui Nous Lie or “That Which Binds Us”. The characters at one stage debate the merits of a smooth, fruity wine versus something more taut and acidic: it would be tempting to say that Klapisch goes too predictably for the first option, but the problems here are more with structure than taste.

When their widower dad dies, it creates huge problems for three grownup siblings, who must now take over the Burgundy family vineyard. Jean (Pio Marmaï) has only recently returned to his hometown from Australia, where he runs a winery, and is now in...