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The Venice Film Festival has unveiled the names that will join Isabelle Huppert on the main Competition jury of its 81st edition, running Aug 28 – Sept 7.

Jury members include James Gray, Andrew Haigh, Agnieszka Holland, Kleber Mendonça Filho, Abderrahmane Sissako, Giuseppe Tornatore, Julia von Heinz, and Zhang Ziyi.

The jury will award the following official prizes to the feature films in Competition, with no joint awards allowed: Golden Lion for Best Film, Silver Lion – Grand Jury Prize, Silver Lion for Best Director, Coppa Volpi for Best Actress, Coppa Volpi for Best Actor, Special Jury Prize, Award for Best Screenplay, and “Marcello Mastroianni” Award for Best New Young Actor or Actress.

Jury head Huppert has a long relationship with the Venice Film Festival. She has won its Coppa Volpi for best actress twice with Story of Women (1988) and La Cérémonie (1995). In 2005, she was honored with a Special Golden Lion for the Overall...

Isabelle Huppert has been named as jury president for the main competition of the 81st edition of the Venice International Film Festival, running from 28 August to 7 September 2024.

The decision was made by the Board of Directors of parent body the Biennale di Venezia, who confirmed the recommendation of Venice Film Festival director Alberto Barbera.

“There is a long and beautiful history between the Festival and I. Becoming a privileged spectator is an honor. More than ever, cinema is a promise. The promise to escape, to disrupt, to surprise, to take a good look at the world, united in the differences of our tastes and ideas,” said Huppert on acknowledging the honor.

Huppert has a long relationship with the Venice Film Festival. She has won its Coppa Volpi for best actress twice with Story of Women (1988) and La Cérémonie (1995). In 2005, she was honoured with a Special Golden Lion for the Overall...

Isabelle Huppert will preside over the main jury of the upcoming Venice Film Festival.

The revered French actor has a longstanding rapport with the Lido, having won Venice’s

Coppa Volpi for best actress twice, first with “Story of Women” in 1988, and subsequently with “La Cérémonie” in 1995, both directed by Claude Chabrol.

Huppert – who has made a total of eight films with Chabrol – also has a close bond with the Cannes Film Festival where in 1978 she won the best actress statuette for Chabrol’s “Violette.” In 2001, Huppert won her second best actress award at Cannes for her tour-de-force performance as a sado-masochistic music professor in Michael Haneke’s “The Piano.” In 2005, Huppert was honored by Venice with a Special Golden Lion for her titular role in “Gabrielle,” Patrice Chéreau’s costume drama about an imploded marriage.

In 2017 she gained her first Academy Award nomination for her role as a rape...

Disney+ has unveiled the trailer for “Becoming Karl Lagerfeld,” the streamer’s highly anticipated original series starring Daniel Brühl as the iconic fashion designer.

Produced by Gaumont (“Lupin”) and Jour Premier, the six-part series chronicles the rise of Karl Lagerfeld through the world of 1970s Parisian high fashion. It will be available to stream on Disney+ in France and international territories, and on Hulu in the U.S., on June 7. “Becoming Karl” world premiered at Canneseries, where it received a standing ovation and warm reviews.

The lushly lensed series opens in 1972, when the 38-year-old Lagerfeld is a ready-to-wear designer, unknown to the general public. He falls in love with a sultry dandy, Jacques de Bascher (Théodore Pellerin), who inspires him to challenge himself and act on his ambition to become the world’s most famous French fashion designer. He faces off Yves Saint Laurent (Arnaud Valois), who reigned supreme with...

Netflix on Tuesday unveiled two new European series with A-list stars, announcing the Dutch crime drama Amsterdam Empire to star X-Men alum Famke Janssen and an unnamed French thriller series toplined by gallic veteran Isabelle Adjani (Camille Claudel, The Story of Adele H.).

Janssen will star and executive produce Amsterdam Empire, about a big-time cannabis dealer whose personal betrayal of his wife threatens the future of his pot imperium. Nico Moolenaar, Bart Uytdenhouwen and Piet Matthys, creators of Netflix Dutch crime series Undercover, created the new show, which Jonas Govaerts (H4Z4RD) will direct. The plot follows Jack van Doorn, the rich and notorious founder of the Jackal coffee shop empire in Amsterdam, who has an affair with a well-known journalist, drawing the ire of his wife Betty, who is looking for payback and knows all Jack’s dirty secrets. Pupkin Film will produce Amsterdam Empire together with A Team Productions.

French director Claire Denis is set to return to West Africa for her next feature film, an adaptation of late French playwright Bernard-Marie Koltès’s 1980 work Black Battles With Dogs (Combat de nègre et de chiens).

“It’s a play written by a friend of mine a long time ago and directed by Patrice Chéreau on stage in the 80s. He was dying from AIDS and he wanted me to make a film out of it,” Denis told Deadline on the fringes of the Doha Film Institute’s Qumra meeting in Qatar.

She is planning to film in either Senegal or Cameroon.

Denis grew up in West Africa and set a number of her early films in the region, such as Chocolat (1988) and Beau Travail (1989). This will be her first major fiction feature shot on the African continent since the 2009 drama White Material, starring Isabelle Huppert as a coffee plantation...

French cinema guilds L’Arp and La Srf have put out a joint statement declaring solidarity with the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes.

Many of the demands around value sharing and A.I. regulation of the Hollywood writers and actors, who went on strike on May 2 and July 14 respectively, chime with long-running battles of the two organizations in France.

“This double social movement, a first since 1960 in Hollywood, is the sign of a major turning point, where the issues of value sharing, the integration of new models and artificial intelligence are central,” the bodies in a joint statement, issued on Thursday.

“At the heart of these demands, is the future of our sector. To guarantee that authors and artists continue to emerge and renew creation, we must on the one hand adapt value-sharing to new distribution models, so that the transition from linear does not lead to a weakening of creators,” it continued.

Vincent Perez as he appears in The Edge Of The Blade: 'It is like a choreography. I wanted to shoot it with wide shots to make it as realistic as possible' Photo: Gaumont He has done a fair amount of swashbuckling in his time therefore it’s no surprise that Vincent Perez should have used his prowess in a new film in which he stars alongside Roschdy Zem and which he also directs.

He co-wrote the script for duelling historical drama The Edge Of The Blade (Une affaire d’honneur) with his wife Karine Silla who have been together since he made his first short film L’Echange shown at the Cannes Film Festival in 1992.

The first time he clashed swords in a major way, he recalls at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival, was on stage in a production of Hamlet directed by the late Patrice Chéreau, an influential figure...

The Notebook Primer introduces readers to some of the most important figures, films, genres, and movements in film history.Women in Love.“British erotica” has long been considered an oxymoron, and this distinction is not entirely unfounded. While European auteurs like Jean-Luc Godard, Tinto Brass, Walerian Borowczyk, and Luis Buñuel were treating copulation as a springboard to philosophical ruminations, the British were paying to see Barbara Windsor’s bra popping off during an outdoor aerobics session in Carry On Camping (1969). Is this assessment fair? Well…yes and no. While many films point to a nation of buttoned-up prudes and furtive voyeurs, a deeper inspection reveals a colorful mosaic of sexual mores and shifting social values as film became an established part of life.Part of the challenge of defining British erotica lies with the difficulty of defining erotica itself. There’s enormous variability in the human response, and where some prefer explicit material,...

Sofiane Bennacer, the French actor who stars in Valeria Bruni Tedeschi’s Cannes competition title “Forever Young” (“Les Amandiers”), has been indicted on multiple charges of rape and violence.

Bennacer was part of the 32 emerging actors shortlisted for best newcomer at the Cesar Awards, France’s equivalent to the Oscars, which will be held in March. But in the wake of the indictment, the Cesar Academy pulled Bennacer out of the nominations process.

The Cesar Academy had previously said it would temporarily withdraw his name from the shortlist during the judicial process, but they decided on Friday that he will no longer be a part of it.

Four complaints have been filed against Bennacer. Three former girlfriends are accusing him of rape, and a third of violence. Out of these complaints, three formal investigations have been launched.

Bennacer took to social media to claim his innocence. “Does the presumption of innocence still exist?...

A restored version of Iván Zulueta’s ground-breaking 1979 film “Arrebato” (“Rapture”) is screening at the Lumière Festival’s International Classic Film Market (Mifc) in Lyon, France, thanks to Los Angeles distributor Altered Innocence and Madrid’s Mercury Films.

The cult film, considered a milestone in Spanish cinema from the post-Franco years, is seen as metaphor for how directors can be consumed by filmmaking. It centers on José, a frustrated low-budget horror movie director trying to complete a film while struggling with drug addiction. When he receives a package from past acquaintance Pedro — a Super-8 film reel and audiotape – José soon finds himself sucked back into the eccentric young man’s vampiric orbit.

“‘Arrebato’ has such a rich mix of horror influences, punk aesthetics, arthouse vibes, and queer cinema history that audiences can’t help being enraptured by this total gem of a film,” says Frank Jaffe, founder and head of Altered Innocence.

Paris-based sales company Charades has closed a raft of deals on “Forever Young,” Valeria Bruni Tedeschi’s film which competed at Cannes and earned a warm critical welcome.

“Forever Young” opens at the end of the 1980s in Paris and follows a young troupe of comedians who have just have been admitted to Les Amandiers, the prestigious theater school headed by Patrice Chéreau. Bruni Tedeschi wrote the script alongside Agnès De Sacy and regular collaborator Noémie Lvovsky. “Forever Young” stars Nadia Tereszkiewicz, Sofiane Bennacer and Louis Garrel, among others.

The movie was acquired Filmin (Spain), Kismet (Australia), Belas Artes (Brazil) Lev (Israel), Cineart (Benelux), Panda (Austria), Weird Wave (Greece), Leopardo Filmes (Portugal), Cinemanse (Finland), Triart (Sweden), Megacom (Adriatics), Russian World Vision (Russia) and Skeye (Airlines).

“Forever Young” will be distributed by Lucky Red in Italy and Ad Vitam in France. Charades is in talks to close Germany. It’s produced by Ad Vitam,...

Based on her own time spent in the acting school Les Amandiers, Valeria Bruni Tedeschi’s “Forever Young” aims to recreate a very specific time and place both in her life and in France, more than it cares to inform her audience about what, exactly, was so special about this school. Funded in the 1980s by Patrice Chéreau, a successful and daring director of theatre, opera and film, Les Amandiers did not last very long but for a few years it was considered to be one of the most exciting places in France and even Europe for young actors to develop their crafts, and for directors to find new talent.

Some, but not all, of this information can be gleaned from the film itself, and giving viewers a real feeling of its place and reputation at the time would have raised the stakes considerably.

Continue reading ‘Forever Young’ Review: Valeria...

There are no more potential-killing words of creative advice than “write what you know.” Certainly it’s a shame that when donning her screenwriter chapeau, Valeria Bruni Tedeschi — a fine actress and a director with a deft, light touch, especially with breezy character comedy — seems to have taken them so to heart. Once again she goes back to the autobiographical well for her latest directorial trifle, “Forever Young,” which she co-writes alongside Agnès De Sacy and regular collaborator Noémie Lvovsky.

Once again the result is set in a rarefied world of which Bruni Tedeschi has intimate knowledge: this time the 1980s acting school run by the late French theater, opera and film director Patrice Chéreau. And once again she fails to make much of a case for why any of it should resonate with anyone outside this tiny, hermetically enclosed community. Staying in your lane is hardly a...

Turning on the waterworks and ripping open her blouse to cap a performance of Jean-Paul Sartre’s “The Respectful Prostitute,” aspiring actress Stella (Nadia Tereszkiewicz) concludes her audition for France’s most prestigious theatre school with a question from the jury. As he puffs a cigarette and speaks the first lines of dialogue written expressly for this film, an inscrutable juror looks to the ingénue and asks, “Do you think an actress needs to be an exhibitionist?”

In that opening, we find the fulcrum for Valeria Bruni Tedeschi’s “Forever Young.” Asking the same question to the audience and to herself — with the Stella character a clear analogue for the director — Bruni Tedeschi dances around a definitive answer, turning out an autobiographical portrait that somehow leaves you knowing less about the subject at hand, and a study of actors, warts and all, that offers little insight into the artistic process.

A decade after presenting A Castle in Italy (2013), Valeria Bruni‑Tedeschi returns to the competition with Les Amandiers (Forever Young). Starring Louis Garrel as Patrice Chéreau and a slew of students lucky (or unlucky) to make it into the infamous school of actors in Nadia Tereszkiewicz, Alexia Chardard and Oscar Lesage, this is Bruni‑Tedeschi’s third trip to the fest as a director – she showcased 2007’s Actresses in the Un Certain Regard section. Having not seen that film – I wonder if both films speak to one another.

Simply put this follows a group of students admitted into Patrice Chéreau’s Théâtre des Amandiers in Nanterre in the 1980s.…...

Mixed Nuts: Tedeschi Returns to Acting School in Charming, Vigorous Homage

For her fifth narrative feature, the indefatigable Valeria Bruni Tedeschi conjures a nostalgic reunion in front of and behind the camera with Les Amandiers (Forever Young). Set in the late 1980s, the ensemble feature follows a group of twelve theater students auditioning for and receiving entrance to Patrice Chéreau and Pierre Romans’ famed Theatre des Amandiers in Nanterre. Set around the time Tedeschi herself worked with Chéreau in his 1987 film Hotel de France (she would also later feature in his 1998 film Those Who Don’t Love Me Can Take the Train), it’s a generous snapshot of impassioned youths honing their craft for a venerated, unabashedly gay creative whilst wading through drug addiction, the AIDS crisis and a myriad of personal dilemmas.…...

When Italian-French actress and director Valeria Bruni Tedeschi was in her twenties she had the formative experience of attending the prestigious acting school at the Théâtre des Amandiers in Nanterre, France, led by late great auteur Patrice Chéreau. Her fifth directorial effort, “Forever Young,” which is in competition in Cannes, is a tribute to that time and, ultimately, to any young person’s passion for the theatre. Tedeschi spoke to Variety in Cannes about how she mixed remembrances and re-invention to make this film. Excerpts.

How did you go about looking back at your time at Les Amandiers?

There was no preset recipe. What we [she and Noémie Lvovsky] did is start from autobiographical material and then elaborate on it. We changed it, mixed things up. Did some rethinking. Added to it, then subtracted. We had fun with reality to make up a story that has its rules and coherence. Reality is chaotic.

Valeria Bruni Tedeschi’s “Forever Young” is a fictionalised account of her time at Les Amandiers, a prestigious acting school in Nanterre on the outskirts of Paris. As well as drawing on her own memories of student-dom in the mid-1980s, she and her co-writers, Noémie Nvovsky and Agnes De Sacy, interviewed other people who studied alongside her, and so their tragedy-tinged comedy drama, which is in Competition at Cannes, should have all the unruly specificity of real life.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t. It’s always watchable, and it has a distinctively grainy, intimate look, but the vague, generic characters and incidents are the kind of thing you might scribble on the back of an envelope without having done any research at all. If you’ve ever seen a film about performing arts students – the sort of people who are going to live forever and who are going to learn...

If you’re the parent of a kid who’s thinking about becoming an actor, nothing could be scarier than watching Forever Young (Les Amandiers).

Valeria Bruni Tedeschi’s overweeningly verité-style look at young members of theater whiz Patrice Chéreau’s legendary company in the 1980s is a let’s-put-on-a-show spectacle of an extreme order, one that emphasizes and encourages unlimited narcissism, uncensored selfishness, massive drug consumption and self-destructive behavior that would have made the Sex Pistols envious.

This Cannes competition entry is a deep dive into an all-for-art lifestyle that encourages, nay, insists upon waywardness and irresponsibility and the hell with anything else. Those seriously into the performing arts of the last four decades might be curious to check this out, but it’s a tough sit nonetheless.

The proceedings begin with an exceedingly intense audition scene in which hopefuls are bluntly asked, “Why do you want to act?...

Valeria Bruni Tedeschi is a perennial Cannes favorite, having won the Prix Spécial du Jury in 2007 for “Actrices” and scoring a Palme d’Or nomination for 2013’s “A Castle in Italy.” Her latest film, “Forever Young,” takes a look at Les Amandiers, the prestigious theater school where she studied under legendary teacher Patrice Chéreau. The film, which she co-wrote with several other former students, uses the school as a backdrop to tell the story of several young artists launching their careers.

The official synopsis for “Forever Young” reads: “it’s the end of the ’80s in Paris, a young troupe of comedians have just been admitted to Les Amandiers, the prestigious theater school headed by Patrice Chéreau. They set out in life and in their early career. Along the way, they will learn, act, love, fear, live to the fullest and also experience their first tragedies.”

Bruni Tedeschi’s time...

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,...

The Festival de Cannes has announced the lineup for the official selection, including the Competition and Un Certain Regard sections, as well as special screenings, for the 75th edition of the festival. See also the full lineups of Directors' Fortnight and Critics’ Week.Crimes of the FutureCOMPETITIONHoly Spider (Ali Abbasi): We follow family man Saeed as he embarks on his own religious quest — to “cleanse” the holy Iranian city of Mashhad of immoral and corrupt street prostitutes. After murdering several women, he grows ever more desperate about the lack of public interest in his divine mission.The Almond Tree (Valeria Bruni Tedeschi): The story takes place at the end of the 1980s. Stella, Victor, Adèle, Etienne are twenty years old. They pass the entrance examination for the famous school created by Patrice Chéreau and Pierre Romans at the Théâtre des Amandiers in Nanterre.Crimes of the Future (David Cronenberg...

Valeria Bruni-Tedeschi’s “Forever Young,” Golshifteh Farahani starrer “Romantique,” and the documentary “Last Dance” will be launched by sales boutique Charades at the Unifrance Rendez-Vous.

“Forever Young” (“Les amandiers”) stars Nadia Tereszkiewicz (“Possessions”), Louis Garrel (“An Officer and a Spy”), Vassili Schneider and Suzanne Lindon (“Spring Blossom”). The film opens at the end of the 1980s in Paris and follows a young troupe of comedians who have just have been admitted to Les Amandiers, the prestigious theater school headed by Patrice Chéreau. The film is produced by France’s Ad Vitam production and Italy’s Bibi Film.

“Romantique” (“Une Comedie romantique) marks Thibault Segouin’s feature debut, starring Farahani and Alex Lutz. The movie follows César, a notorious liar and a failing artist who lives in Montmartre in Paris and discovers he is the father of a three-year-old little girl. The film is produced by Latika and will be released by Alba Films.

Les Amandiers

There’ll definitely be some autobiographical elements in Valeria Bruni Tedeschi‘s fifth feature film as a filmmaker and it might be the formative years in her three-decade spanning career in front of the camera (and her bit part in Patrice Chéreau’s La reine Margot) that we might be accessing. Les Amandiers sees Tedeschi rework the idea of what the Nanterre-Amandiers Theatre meant and the legacy of a filmmaker who gave a lot to young actors in training around the time of AIDS crisis. With Louis Garrel playing the part of Patrice Chéreau, we also find Micha Lescot, Nadia Tereszkiewicz, Sofiane Bennacer, Léna Garrel and Vassili Schneider – production began in May in France and moved to New York City.…...

French actor Isabelle Huppert is set to receive the Berlin Film Festival’s Honorary Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival in February. Her films will also be honored as part of a special Homage section.

Huppert will be awarded the prize for lifetime achievement. In conjunction with the awards on Feb. 15 at the Berlinale Palast, the festival will screen her latest movie, Laurent Larivière’s “À propos de Joan” — unveiled on Wednesday in the fest’s first batch of titles — as a special gala premiere.

Huppert has a longstanding relationship with Berlin, and has starred in seven competition films to date. She was first a guest in Berlin with Jacques Doillon’s “La vengeance d’une femme” before appearing in Francois Ozon’s “8 Femmes” as an unprepossessing woman who emerges in the end as a confident beauty. The ensemble cast was awarded a Silver Bear for outstanding artistic accomplishment.

Strand Releasing will bring to Blu-ray Michael Haneke's apocalyptic Time of the Wolf (a.k.a. Le temps du loup), starring Isabelle Huppert, Anaïs Demoustier, Béatrice Dalle, Patrice Chéreau, and Maurice Bénichou.

The release will be available for purchase on December 21.

Synopsis:

Following a global cataclysm, Anne (Isabelle Huppert) and her family set out for a safe haven at their holiday home. But, when they arrive, the home is already occupied by other survivors.

Their hopes for safety are immediately dashed by a violent tragedy, which serves as a lesson to take nothing for g...

Cohen Film Collection is gearing up for a number of newly restored releases, among them Simon Callow’s 1991 drama “The Ballad of the Sad Café” and a number of Buster Keaton works.

Part of New York-based Cohen Media Group, Cohen Film Collection restores classic films and re-releases them theatrically. It’s vast catalogue includes the Merchant Ivory collection, of which “The Ballad of the Sad Café” is a part.

Based on the 1951 novella by Carson McCullers, the film stars Vanessa Redgrave, Keith Carradine and Rod Steiger.

The George Eastman Museum in Rochester, New York, is currently finishing the restoration of the film, which Cohen Film Group plans to release next year.

“There’s still a number of features to go, so we’re working our way through those, including some of the films set in India, which I’m personally really interested in,” says Tim Lanza, Cohen Film Collection vice president and archivist.

Elvis Costello enlisted actress Isabelle Adjani for a French-language rendition of his Hey Clockface song “Revolution #49.”

For “Revolution #49 (Parlé),” Adjani adds spoken word passages — penned by Muriel Teodori — to the instrumental opening track of Costello’s latest album.

“When [the Attractions’] Steve Nieve’s partner, Muriel Teodori, told me that she thought Isabelle Adjani might consider reading the French adaptation that Muriel had made of my original text, I assumed that I must be dreaming”, Costello said in a statement. “What I didn’t know was Isabelle and Muriel had been friends...

Each year it is a pleasure to introduce the ten actors who make up the European Film Promotion‘s Shooting Stars, and this year is no different. The initiative, to celebrate and promote the best in European acting talent, is dear to the heart of HeyUGuys, and we’ll be continuing our partnership this year with in-depth interviews with each of the 2021 cohort.

This year will, as expected, be slightly different from previous years. The ten emerging actors will be presented as part of a three-day online programme, a week before the 71st Berlinale commences. The digital event, held on the 23rd to the 25th of February, will be an online experience where we’ll be able to sit down and learn a little more about what makes these ten people the ones to watch.

Each of the actors were chosen by a carefully selected jury from a list of...

The French film centre will also support films by Clément Cogitore, Baya Kasmi, Nicolas Philibert, Sophie Fillières, Sébastien Betbeder, Mathieu Vadepied and Dominique Abel & Fiona Gordon. Eight projects were selected during the 5th and final 2020 session of the Cnc’s second committee for pre-production advances on receipts. Stealing focus amongst these projects we find Les Amandiers, which will be the 5th fiction feature directed by Valeria Bruni Tedeschi following on from It’s Easier For A Camel (the winner of the 2003 Louis Delluc Best First Film Award), The Summer House (screened out of competition in Venice 2018) and two films previously selected for Cannes: Actresses (gracing the Un Certain Regard section in 2007) and A Castle in Italy (in competition in 2013). Her new work will plunge us back into the universe of the Nanterre-Amandiers Theatre, as helmed by Patrice Chéreau at the beginning of the 1990s, training young...

Mentoring emerging cinematographers has always been a key mission at the EnergaCamerimage International Film Festival and this year’s online version of the event features a score of streaming master classes and seminars that inform and offer insights from top filmmakers and technology experts.

Streaming through the end of 2020 (online.energacamerimage.pl), the talks and teach-ins are, with rare exceptions, accessible without a password or online Camerimage entry card – unlike the usual live format of master classes at the festival, which invariably sell out if you don’t find a seat at least 20 minutes before the start.

One of the buzziest events from the festival, which officially ran Nov. 13-20, is the virtual career masterclass with cinematographer Phedon Papamichael, in which he discusses his remarkable career, leading up to his latest feature, Aaron Sorkin’s “The Trial of the Chicago 7.”

The Netflix drama is built around the sensational political...

Despite amassing more than 70 credits, this year’s recipient of the Camerimage Lifetime Achievement Award, Philippe Rousselot, shows no signs of stopping. As he tells Variety from his house in Brittany, he just can’t.

“Once you have piled up enough films, the decision is made. They needed to give this award to someone and I am very glad to accommodate,” he jokes. “Other people want us to retire, but it’s never a personal decision among DPs. We never stop working. We can’t get enough of it!”

Counting a BAFTA and two Césars among his many accolades, Rousselot was also nominated for an Academy Award three times, winning for Robert Redford’s “A River Runs Through It” in 1992.

“I was at the Oscar ceremony when ‘Hope and Glory’ was nominated. Of course we didn’t win. I asked John Boorman: ‘What is the importance of this award?...

Poland’s EnergaCamerimage Intl. Film Festival is honoring Oscar-winning French cinematographer Philippe Rousselot this year with its Camerimage Lifetime Achievement Award.

Celebrating the art of cinematography and its creators, the festival described Rousselot as “an incredibly versatile cinematographer whose body of work encompasses a wide variety of genres and styles.”

Rousselot, who received an Academy Award for his work on Robert Redford’s “A River Runs Through It” in 1993, has worked with such acclaimed filmmakers as John Boorman (“Emerald Forest”), Neil Jordan (“Interview with the Vampire”), Stephen Frears (“Dangerous Liaisons”), Miloš Forman (“The People vs. Larry Flynt”), Tim Burton (“Big Fish”), Guy Ritchie (“Sherlock Holmes”), Patrice Chéreau (“Queen Margot”), David Yates (“Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them”), Philip Kaufman (“Henry & June”), Jean-Jacques Annaud (“The Bear”) and Shane Black (“The Nice Guys”).

“He has shot independent European artistic films as well as visually impressive Hollywood blockbusters,” the festival added.

French cinematographer Philippe Rousselot, who won an Oscar for Robert Redford’s A River Runs Through It, will receive a Lifetime Achievement Award at respected cinematography festival Camerimage, which will be held in Torun, Poland, and virtually from Nov. 14-21.

The versatile Dp has worked with directors including Robert Redford, Tim Burton, Guy Ritchie, Stephen Frears, Patrice Chéreau, Neil Jordan, Shane Black, Miloš Forman, David Yates, Denzel Washington and Jean-Jacques Annaud.

In addition to his Oscar for A River Runs Through It, Rousselot received Academy Award nominations for his lensing of John Boorman’s Hope and Glory and Philip Kaufman’s Henry & June.

A fan of the work of ...

French cinematographer Philippe Rousselot, who won an Oscar for Robert Redford’s A River Runs Through It, will receive a Lifetime Achievement Award at respected cinematography festival Camerimage, which will be held in Torun, Poland, and through virtual presentations from Nov. 14-21.

The versatile Dp has worked with directors including Robert Redford, Tim Burton, Guy Ritchie, Stephen Frears, Patrice Chéreau, Neil Jordan, Shane Black, Miloš Forman, David Yates, Denzel Washington and Jean-Jacques Annaud.

In addition to his Oscar for A River Runs Through It, Rousselot received Academy Award nominations for his lensing of John Boorman’s Hope and Glory and Philip Kaufman’s Henry & June.

A fan of the ...

Isabelle Huppert with her Mrs. Hyde (Madame Hyde) director Serge Bozon Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze

The first time I talked with Isabelle Huppert at length was in Paris in 2006, when Serge Toubiana introduced us at the Cinémathèque Française (which had then recently opened in the Frank Gehry building at 51 rue de Bercy) private reception for Le Roman D’isabelle, La Femme Mystère. Over the years Isabelle and I have had conversations on her work with Catherine Breillat for Abuse Of Weakness, Guillaume Nicloux’s Valley Of Love with Gérard Depardieu, and Serge Bozon’s Mrs. Hyde (Madame Hyde). In October of last year, I met with Isabelle Huppert in one of the suites of the Four Seasons for a conversation on her starring role in Ira Sachs' Frankie, co-written with longtime collaborator Mauricio Zacharias.

Ilene (Marisa Tomei) with Frankie (Isabelle Huppert)

Patrice Chéreau’s Joseph Conrad adaptation Gabrielle...

Camille ClaudelIt seems impossible to talk about Isabelle Adjani without mentioning her eyes. Round, blue, and prone to tears, Adjani’s eyes are filled with a heartbreaking expressiveness reminiscent of the actresses of the silent film era. A series collecting some of Adjani’s most memorable performances, now playing at New York’s French Institute Alliance Française, is titled (obviously) “Magnetic Gaze.” The 10-film series offers a sampling of her work, from her breakthrough as the title character in François Truffaut’s The Story of Adèle H. (1975), a haunting portrait of l’amour fou, to her most recent role in—of all things—an action comedy, Romain Gavras’s The World is Yours (2018). Adjani is extra. She works a close-up with an intensity few actresses can surpass. When she tears up, so do we. While “Magnetic Gaze” is missing some canonical Adjani films the collection here shows the actress at her most emotionally volatile.

There have been quite a few high-quality American films about male prostitution, from John Schlesinger’s Oscar-winning “Midnight Cowboy” to Gus Van Sant’s “My Own Private Idaho” and Gregg Araki’s “Mysterious Skin,” and from France there has been Patrice Chéreau’s “L’Homme blessé,” and several films from André Téchiné, most notably “J’embrasse pas,” which translates as “I Don’t Kiss.”

Camille Vidal-Naquet’s first feature “Sauvage/Wild” is very much in the Téchiné tradition of “J’embrasse pas,” and the subject of kissing or not kissing is actually central to the narrative. What’s most impressive about this film is the intricacy of Naquet’s screenplay, which plays out in a series of subtly mirroring episodes that follow the life of Leo, a 22-year-old street kid played by Félix Maritaud, who made an impression on screen in “Bpm (Beats Per Minute)” and carries this movie almost singlehandedly.

Éric Caravaca’s reflective documentary traces his family’s history to their life in Morocco and an unspoken tragedy

Éric Caravaca is the French actor and director who has starred in films such as Philippe Garrel’s Lover for a Day, Patrice Chéreau’s His Brother and The Officer’s Ward by François Dupeyron – to whom this film is dedicated. It is a sad, thoughtful, if slight piece of work, a 67-minute cine-memoir about his family, personal myths and memories.

It was worked on over a long period: Caravaca’s dad, a wary interview subject, died during filming. Caravaca’s parents, Angela and Gilberto, were from Morocco but came to France in the early 60s, when Éric and his brother Olivier were born. But there was a family mystery: their sister Christine died in infancy in Morocco, in circumstances his parents were always reluctant to discuss. Her grave, in “Plot...

Raúl Ruiz frequently remarked that he was the perfect person to adapt Marcel Proust’s vast set of novels Remembrance of Things Past (or, more literally, In Search of Lost Time) to the screen because, having reached the end of reading the entire work, he instantly forgot it all. He was joking, of course, but his jest disguised a serious method. The only way to convey Proust on screen, in Ruiz’s opinion, was to approach it not as a literal condensation of multiple characters and events, but as a psychic swirl of half-remembered, half-forgotten fragments and impressions—full of uncanny superimpositions and metamorphoses. “‘The best way to adapt something for film,” he summed up, “is to dream it.” Ruiz’s dreaming was always accompanied by extensive, meandering, seemingly eccentric research. In the case of Time Regained, he plunged (as he revealed in a splendid, lengthy interview with Jacinto Lageira...

Luca Guadagnino is currently in the thick of the Oscar race with his critically acclaimed romance “Call Me by Your Name,” and he’s set to remain in the headlines for the next year thanks to his upcoming “Suspiria” movie. The director finished production on the Amazon-backed film earlier this year, which means we should be seeing it in fall 2018 Whatever you do, stop calling it a remake.

Read More:Luca Guadagnino Couldn’t Direct the Year’s Most Talked-About Sex Scene Until He Tried it Himself

The movie has already received backlash from fans who think it’s very unwise to touch Dario Argento’s 1977 classic of the same name. But while the basic plot will stay the same (a young American ballerina begins training at a German dance academy and uncovers its dark secrets), Guadagnino’s “Suspiria” is not intended to be a remake after all. The director...

Starring Shashi Kapoor, Madhur Jaffrey, and Felicity Kendal, with original music by Satyajit Ray, Merchant Ivory’s 1965 Shakespeare Wallah will be rereleased in an incredible 4K restoration in New York at Quad Cinemas on November 10th.

Cohen Media Group has announced the brand new 4K scan and restoration from the original camera negative and magnetic soundtrack, and featuring a new 5.1 audio mix from the stereo 35mm mags, all approved by director James Ivory.

The incredible Shakespeare Wallah was the feature film that really put Merchant Ivory Productions on the international movie map, winning them great critical acclaim and now recognized as a classic. Starring Shashi Kapoor, Madhur Jaffrey, and a young Felicity Kendal, the film’s inspiration lies in the real-life adventures of Ms. Kendal’s family as a traveling theater group in India during the final days of English colonial rule. The ‘Buckingham Players’ try to uphold British tradition...

Winter is indeed upon us, as “Game of Thrones” has just wrapped its truncated seventh season with a jaw-dropping finale that moves plenty of pieces (most of them terrifying, ice-cold, and dragon-aided) into place for a game-changer of a final season…that won’t come until sometime in 2018. It’s the Long Night, all over again (and, if those gently falling snowflakes during some of the finale’s last moments are any indication, fans of the HBO series aren’t the only ones headed for a chilling, unforgiving few months).

In order to keep diehard viewers sated until its last episodes hit the small screen, here are some ideas for films that might help ease the pain, from classic Westerns to underseen historical dramas, all with that special “Thrones” touch (murderous, political, bloody, and at least partially beholden to mythical beasts).

Read More:‘Game of Thrones’ Review: Finale ‘The Dragon...

Engel also co-founded UK distributor New Wave Films.

Art-house “trailblazer” Pamela Engel, known for co-founding distributor Artificial Eye and programming London cinemas including the Lumiere, Chelsea Cinema, Camden Plaza and the Renoir, has died aged 82.

A huge figure in the UK’s independent film business, Engel’s death has sparked messages of praise across the distribution and exhibition sectors.

Born Pamela Balfry in 1934, the UK executive started out in the late 1950s as a secretary for then Sight and Sound editor Penelope Houston.

She would go on to work as an assistant to Richard Roud at the London and New York Film Festivals before joining Derek Hill’s art-house venue Essential Cinema in the late 1960s.

Odyssey

Balfry and first husband Andi Engel established distributor Artificial Eye in 1976, thus “beginning an odyssey of distribution and exhibition unlikely ever to be surpassed,” in the words of former London Film Festival director Sheila Whitaker.

Despite separating...

Author: Linda Marric

Actor & director Vincent Perez is every bit as European as his name would suggest. Born in Switzerland to a German mother and a Spanish father, Perez first cut his teeth playing classical roles in some of the most popular French movies of the 1990s, and went on to star in Cyrano de Bergerac (Jean-Paul Rappeneau, 1990), La Reine Margot (Patrice Chéreau, 1994) and Indochine (Régis Wargnier, 1992) to name but a few.

Earlier this week, we had the pleasure of meeting Vincent for an interview and asked him about his new movie Alone In Berlin, which he co-wrote as well as directed. Adapted from Hans Fallada’s popular 1947 novel by the same name, the film tells the story of a law abiding German couple and their quiet resistance during Nazi rule in Berlin. Staring Emma Thompson and Brendan Gleeson, Alone In Berlin has so far been met with mixed reviews,...

French actor Eric Caravaca, who headlined Patrice Chereau’s 2002 drama My Brother and is one of the leads of Philippe Garrel’s new Directors’ Fortnight premiere, Lover for a Day, tries to uncover his own complex family history in the documentary Plot 35 (Carre 35). The film focuses especially on his sister, who was born and who died before him, at the age of 3, and whose short existence was almost never talked about by his parents. But with forefathers that escaped from Spain to Morocco and Algeria and then had to leave for France when those countries became independent,...

Xavier Dolan’s new film seemed like the event so far at Cannes judging by the longest press queue since the beginning of the festival, as well as the hustlers offering hugs in exchange for a screening invitation. Unfortunately, it seems destined to join the ample list of other highly anticipated big-name entries that didn’t quite live up to expectations (the Dardenne brothers’ “The Unknown Girl”, Alain Giraudie’s “Staying Vertical”, Pedro Almodóvar’ “Julieta”, among others). Is it the departure from Québec and shift to A-list French actors, the adaptation of an existing 1990s play rather than an original script, or the pressure to equal the resounding success of “Mommy”? While the direction has traces of the usual showy Dolan brio and crowd-pleasing aesthetic flashes, I’d posit he is underserved by the overly theatrical, verbose script and indoor setting, and seems to at times lose the reins of the jam-packed French A-listers,...

Hit Me With Your Best Shot: Queen Margot (1994)

Director: Patrice Chereau. Cinematography: Phillipe Rousselot. 

Starring: Isabelle Adjani, Daniel Auteuil, Vincent Perez, Jean-Hugues Anglade, and Virna Lisi 

Awards: 2 Cannes jury prizes, 5 César Awards, 1 Oscar nomination.

They say that death always takes your lovers..."

When I was young and extremely sexually naive, let's say hypothetically in High School French class, I was startled to discover that the French phrase "La petite mort," which translates literally to 'the little death' referred to a sexual orgasm. I had no idea why these two towers of Human Obsession, Sex and Death, would be linked up like twins. But the movies, ever the personal tutor for young cinephiles, kept forcing the connections.

Which brings us to the decadent, opulent, erotic, violent and visceral 16th century French epic Queen Margot, this week's Best Shot subject. (The shot choices are after the jump due to the graphic nature of the film.

Two FriendsThough known primarily as an actor, Louis Garrel has been conducting appreciable efforts behind the camera as well. After directing three short films, including a César-nominated Petit tailleur, and most recently La règle de trois, Louis Garrel expands upon his fascination of threes with his first feature length film, Two Friends (Les deux amis), in which he also stars. Based loosely on the French play The Moods of Marianne, Garrel's film finds professional movie extra Vincent (Vincent Macaigne) in frenzied love with Mona (Goldshifteh Farahani), who cannot and will not give in to his romantic advances due in part to her restrictive situation, which she keeps secret. She works behind a pastry counter by day, but every evening must return to prison for curfew, not unlike an incarcerated Cinderella. Vincent enlists his best friend, the caddish Abel (Louis Garrel), to help win her over or at least understand her cooling passion.