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Exclusive: Homecoming and The Beach star Virginie Ledoyen has boarded Channel 5 series The Au Pair opposite David Suchet.

The Cesar-nominated French actress will play a whistleblower in the thriller, whose pivotal role kicks off in the opening scene and spans the rest of the show.

From Pernel Media and MK1 Studios, The Au Pair follows Zoe Dalton (Sally Bretton), who seems to have it all, including successful husband Chris (Kenny Doughty). When she hires an au pair, Sandrine (Ludmilla Makowski), the beguiling young French woman triggers an unsettling shift in the household as instincts and suspicions arise, hinting at hidden agendas.

The show for the Paramount UK network is Poirot icon Suchet’s first TV role for six years and he plays George, Zoe’s diabetic father who moves next door.

Having been Cesar-nominated for 1995’s A Single Girl, Ledoyen achieved international fame opposite Leonardo DiCaprio in The Beach,...

The April 25 decision by the New York Court of Appeals to overturn Harvey Weinstein’s felony sex crime conviction looked like a major blow to the #MeToo movement in the U.S. and to the progress made within the U.S. film industry since 2017 (when the first allegations against Weinstein were made public).

In France, they are still waiting for that first wave of progress. The outrage triggered by #MeToo echoed across la grande nation — it even spawned a French counterpart, #Balancetonporc, or “Expose Your Pig” — but, until very recently, efforts to challenge the structure of the French entertainment industry came to very little.

That, it seems, is changing. U.S.-style measures, including the use of intimacy coordinators for sex scenes or chaperones to supervise the treatment of minors, are slowly becoming standard practice on French movie sets. #MeToo is “really at the center of our discussion now, in...

Updated On April 22, 2024: With the addition of two new films to this year’s competition section, both directed by men, this year’s competition slate now includes 21 films, only four of which are directed by women. That tallies to just 19 percent of this year’s competition titles being helmed by women.

Our original story from April 11, 2024 follows.

Hot off last year’s record-breaking competition lineup — including seven films directed by women, plus an eventual Palme d’Or win for Justine Triet (only the third woman to win the festival’s top prize) — this year’s Cannes Film Festival has returned to old habits. The 77th edition will include (as of today’s announcement) just four films directed by women in the competition section, bringing representation down to 2021 levels (and returning the festival’s female-directed entries to a number that was only hit in 2011).

Among the competition titles announced today:...

Veteran French distributor Rezo Films is closing its doors after more than 32 years and nearly 400 films after struggling to stay afloat in an increasingly competitive distribution landscape.

Founded in 1992 by Jean-Michel Rey and Nadia Lassoujade, Rezo Films helped to launch the careers of several French auteurs including Abdellatif Kechiche, Pascal Bonitzer, Catherine Corsini, Xavier Dolan, Gaspar Noé, Stéphane Brizé and Jeremy Clapin.

Several of those films performed well for arthouse titles in the territory including Clapin’s debut feature I Lost My Body in 2019, Brizé’s Mademoiselle Chambon in 2009, and Kechiche’s Games Of Love And Chance (L’Esquive) with 373,618 tickets...

In Christine Angot’s documentary “A Family,” which premieres Sunday in the Encounters section of the Berlin Film Festival, the French novelist explores how various members of her family reacted to the revelation that she was repeatedly raped by her father from the age of 13.

The film starts with a startling confrontation between Angot and her stepmother in Strasbourg, with Angot pushing her way into her stepmother’s apartment with a camera-person and proceeding to question the woman about Angot’s late father’s crimes and the wife’s view on that.

Angot says that this incident was not planned at all. In fact, the documentary itself was not planned. It started when Angot went to Strasbourg as part of a book signing tour to support the publication of “Le Voyage dans l’Est,” which focuses on those in her inner circle who knew of the abuse and failed to intervene.

It was never Suzy Bemba’s plan to become a professional actress. This year’s European Shooting Star from France had dabbled in performance — “10 years of ballet, maybe six years of singing classes,” she recalls. After a knee injury made it impossible to keep dancing, she switched to acting as “a new way of expression” and started trying out for open auditions, driving with her mother the two and half hours into Paris from their home in the French countryside. Her mother sent out inquiries to French talent agencies, and one agreed to sign Bemba after she graduated high school.

But when Bemba graduated, acting was the last thing on her mind. “I wanted to go to med school, that was always the dream, so when I graduated, that’s what I did,” she says. “I kind of forgot about the idea of acting.”

It was only after her freshman...

European Film Promotion has revealed the 10 emerging actors who will take part in the 27th edition of European Shooting Stars program, which promotes European acting talent. Past Shooting Stars have included Carey Mulligan, Alicia Vikander, Maisie Williams and Riz Ahmed.

From Feb. 16-19, the actors will be presented to the international press and industry, and the German public at the Berlin Film Festival. One of the highlights will be the Shooting Stars Awards Ceremony on Feb. 19 at the Berlinale Palast.

The Shooting Stars for 2024 are Belgium’s Thibaud Dooms, Bulgaria’s Margarita Stoykova, France’s Suzy Bemba, Georgia’s Salome Demuria, Germany’s Katharina Stark, Ireland’s Éanna Hardwicke, Italy’s Valentina Bellè, Lithuania’s Džiugas Grinys, Poland’s Kamila Urzędowska and Sweden’s Asta Kamma August.

The jury that selected the actors comprised of Austrian director, screenwriter and producer Barbara Albert, Lithuanian producer Živilė Gallego, Irish actor Moe Dunford,...

European Film Promotion has announced the 10 up-and-coming European acting talents for its 2024 European Shooting Stars list.

The actors, which include performers from this year’s award-season contenders Poor Things, Ferrari, and The Peasants, among others, will be lauded at the Berlin International Film Festival in February, next year.

The Shooting Stars class of 2024 includes:

Suzy Bemba (France) Suzy Bemba in ‘Homecoming’

French actress Suzy Bemba, who plays a Parisian sex worker who befriends Emma Stone’s character in Poor Things, and whose credits include standout roles in Anthony Chen’s Sundance film Drift and Catherine Corsini’s Homecoming.

Valentina Bellè (Italy) Valentina Bellè in ‘The Good Mothers’

Valentina Bellè from Italy, who plays Cecilia Manzini in Michael Mann’s Ferarri, won Italy’s Nastro D’Argento award for best supporting actress for her turn in Disney+ mafia drama The Good Mothers and has appeared in Disney+ series Genius: Picasso with...

10-strong line-up includes Italian actress Valentina Bellè and Irish actor Éanna Hardwicke.

European Film Promotion (Efp) has revealed the ten young European talents selected for the 27th edition of European Shooting Stars, its initiative to showcase promising on-screen talent from the continent.

Efp has selected seven actresses and three actors who will be presented to international press, industry, and the public during the 2024 Berlin Film Festival.

The line-up includes Italian actress Valentina Bellè who starred in two competition films at Venice this year: Michael Mann’s Ferrari and Lubo by Giorgio Diritti. She also plays the leading role in Disney + series The Good Mother,...

“Do Not Expect Too Much From the End of the World,” from Romania’s Radu Jude, added to its ever larger silverware collection, winning the top Albar Award at Spain’s Gijón Festival.

Gijón’s big win join not only a Special Jury Prize at August’s Locarno Film Festival, where the film was the most talked about – one of Jude’s aims– and lauded of competition titles among reviewers, plus a Chicago Silver Hugo best performance nod (Ilinca Manolache) in October and a Lisbon Fest Jury Prize late last month.

Over 61 editions, and most especially when José Luis Cienfuegos, now Valladolid chief, took over its reins in 1995, the Gijón-Xijón Film Festival (Ficx) has carved out an identity as highlighting edgier international auteurs and indie fare, moving into promoting often more singular movies from a burgeoning new generation of Spanish filmmakers, greeted with enthusiasm by discerning and predominantly YA audiences...

16 nominees in each category will compete in the first round of voting.

France’s Cesar Academy has revealed the breakout stars selected for its annual Revelations list of local up-and-coming talent who will vie in the most promising actor and actress categories at the 2024 awards set for February 23 in Paris.

16 nominees in each category will compete in the first round of voting among Academy members, that will then be whittled down to five in each category.

The Revelations committee is comprised of 18 casting directors active in French film production and is then validated by the board of the Academy.

Scroll...

France’s César Academy has unveiled its annual Revelations list showcasing 32 emerging acting talents making their mark in the French-speaking cinema world.

The 16 selected actresses include Suzy Bemba for her performance year in Catherine Corsini’s Homecoming. Bemba was also seen in Venice Golden Lion winner Poor Things this year.

The selection also features Rebecca Marder for Corsica-set thriller Grand Expectations; Garance Marillier, for bio-pic Marinette about French female soccer pioneer Marinette Pichon, and Park Ji-min for her award-winning performance in Return To Seoul.

The actor list includes Milo Machado Graner, who plays the visually impaired son in Justine Triet’s Anatomy of a Fall, Marc Zinga’s for his performance in Belgium’s Oscar entry Omen and Samuel Kircher for Catherine Breillat’s taboo-breaking drama Last Summer. His brother Paul Kircher is also in the selection for The Animal Kingdom.

The talents were selected by a committee of...

Europe has a brand-new media giant.

Vuelta Group, a private-equity fueled company headed by former Canal+ and Goldman Sachs executive Jerome Levy, made a very big launch on the European scene on Thursday, announcing its acquisition of Scandinavian independent film company Scanbox, German distributor/producer SquareOne Entertainment and French international sales company Playtime.

Vuelta (Latin for “to go around”) is planning future acquisitions in France, Italy, Spain and the Benelux region as it looks to build a pan-European television and film studio focusing on the production and distribution of European content across the continent.

The Vuelta launch is a further sign of consolidation in the European indie market, which has already seen several independent producers and distributors subsumed into Pe-backed studios such as Leonine and Mediawan or snatched up by global indie giants like Fremantle and Banijay.

The Veulta setup will see each of its subsidiary companies continue to operate...

Exclusive: Deadline spoke to leading international sales firm Playtime about why it made sense to join new European film and TV studio Vuelta Group, which we revealed earlier this morning.

Paris-based Playtime, founded in 1997, is well known for handling leading European projects including Oscar winner Son Of Saul, Cannes winner 120 Bpm and horror hit Goodnight Mommy. The firm, which handles the international rights to a library of more than 600 titles, has collaborated with filmmakers including Céline Sciamma, Jacques Audiard, François Ozon, Claire Denis, Olivier Assayas, Naomi Kawase and Nanni Moretti.

It was most recently at the Cannes Film Festival with Competition titles About Dry Grasses by Nuri Bilge Ceylan and Homecoming by Catherine Corsini. It is currently financing and pre-selling Monsieur Aznavour with Tahar Rahim.

In addition to its Paris office, the Playtime Group includes sales and financing companies Films Boutique in Berlin, Be For Films in Brussels and Film Constellation in London.

Exclusive: A significant shakeup in the European indie film space is underway with the formation of new studio Vuelta Group, Deadline can reveal.

Headed by French media veteran Jerome Levy as Group Chairman, Vuelta has $50 million-backing from an unnamed U.S. private equity firm and has recently acquired Paris-based international sales firm Playtime Group (in a deal closed in the past week), German distributor-producer SquareOne and Nordic distributor-producer Scanbox.

Talks are underway for companies to join from Italy, Spain and Benelux, as well as another from France.

Amid the proliferation of platforms in Europe and consolidation from fellow U.S.-backed indie studios such as Leonine and Mediawan, Vuelta’s partners have taken the view that they’ll be stronger together.

The joint venture will focus on distribution as well as film and TV production. Each company will continue to operate autonomously and with their former branding but they will sit within the Vuelta Group,...

Jean Labadie, founder and president of Le Pacte, accused local press of a “media omerta”.

Ahead of its release in France on July 12, Catherine Corsini’s Cannes Competition title Homecoming (Le Retour) is once again the centre of a media storm, this time involving the film’s distributor Le Pacte, state film body the Cnc and local press.

The Cnc sent a rare statement to journalists on Thursday (June 28) hitting back at what they call a “misleading and defamatory” press release sent from Jean Labadie, president and founder of the film’s French distributor Le Pacte, which accused local press...

The French distributor of Catherine Corsini’s Cannes 2023 Palme d’Or contender Homecoming has lashed out at local media over its coverage of misconduct allegations linked to the film and also leveled criticism at the country’s National Cinema Centre (Cnc).

Le Pacte CEO Jean Labadie reportedly sent a press release to French media outlets on Wednesday afternoon criticizing “the media sphere” for its coverage.

Deadline requested a copy of the release but has not received a reply from the press attaché or Labadie.

“The controversy that followed has resulted in the film being invisible ahead of its release in 15 days. Despite generally positive reactions to the film from a proven and recognized filmmaker, we see that the film risks little media coverage or nothing at all,” the statement is reported to have read.

Homecoming was at the heart of a media storm prior to the Cannes Film Festival amid...

The 76th edition of the Cannes film festival concludes today with the Closing Ceremony and presentation of the coveted award, the Palme d’Or which was awarded to Justine Triet’s Anatomy of a Fall.

The Jury, presided over by director Ruben Östlund and includes director Maryam Touzani, actor Denis Ménochet, writer/director Rungano Nyoni, actress/director Brie Larson, actor/director Paul Dano, writer Atiq Rahimi, director Damián Szifron and director Julia Ducournau, selected the winners from the 21 films in Competition this year.

The Closing Ceremony marks the end of the 76th Festival de Cannes, and was followed by the screening of Peter Sohn‘s film Elementary in the Grand Théâtre Lumière.

Related: Cannes Film Festival Winners Announced

The last 2 weeks the Croisette has been a buzz with extravagant parties and bold fashion statements captured at the 21 world premieres on the Palais des Festivals red carpet.

Johnny Depp’s period...

The 2023 Cannes Film Festival is jam-packed with buzzy world premieres, from Martin Scorsese’s “Killers of the Flower Moon” to Wes Anderson’s “Asteroid City.” Todd Haynes is also back to unveil “May December,” featuring the A-list pairing of Natalie Portman and Julianne Moore, while Disney is bringing Harrison Ford to the Croisette for “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny.” New films from Pedro Almodovar, Jessica Hautner, Jonathan Glazer, Catherine Corsini, Hirokazu Kore-eda and more are also set to make their debuts at Cannes this year.

Cannes is often seen as a launching pad for Oscar season. Warner Bros. in 2022 kicked off its lengthy awards run for Baz Luhrmann’s “Elvis” on the French Riviera, with the film going on to land eight Academy Award nominations, including best picture. Palme d’Or winner “Triangle of Sadness” also picked up Oscar nods for best picture, director and original screenplay. Two international film nominees,...

The Cannes Film Festival red carpet is usually accustomed to protests and demonstrations. Last year there were multiple.

This year, policing has been beefed up and local authorities have banned demonstrations anywhere near the Palais as France grapples with violent anti-pension reform protests.

However, a couple of protestors have still managed to make themselves heard on the tapis rouge, even if the media pickup has been limited. On Sunday night, ahead of the screening of French movie Acide, an unnamed women wearing a dress in the colors of the Ukrainian flag doused herself in fake blood, seemingly in protest of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

The woman was quickly jumped on by officials and escorted away. The episode was posted to Twitter by multiple sites and accounts, including the below footage culled from Afp:

Woman at the Cannes Film Festival red carpet wearing Ukranian colored dress pours fake blood on herself pic.

Leading French producer Marc Missonnier, who had his Cannes Film Festival accreditation revoked after he publicly criticized its selection of Catherine Corsini’s Homecoming, has finally received a badge.

Missonnier tweeted a picture of his accreditation badge on Monday saying: “All’s well that ends well. Thank you Cannes Film Festival for this gesture and to all those who showed their support. Back to Paris this afternoon.”

Finalement, tout est bien qui finit bien ! Merci @Festival_Cannes pour le geste et à tous ceux qui m’ont témoigné leur soutien. Retour à Paris cet après-midi.

All ends well. Thanks @Festival_Cannes for the move and to all of you showing your support. Back to Paris this afternoon pic.twitter.com/81NnrFy6ni

— Marc Missonnier (@marcmissonnier) May 22, 2023

The producer, whose credits include François Ozon’s 8 Femmes and Swimming Pool as well as Xavier Giannoli’s Marguerite, posted a series of Tweets...

The €26m production starts principal photography on May 30 in the Paris region.

UTA Independent Film Group has boarded Playtime’s buzzy upcomimg biopic Monsieur Aznavour. starring Tahar Rahim, to lead on US sales.

The film about the legendary French singer Charles Aznavour also stars Bastien Bouillon and Marie-Julie Baup.

Mehdi Idir and French rap artist Grand Corps Malade direct following the duo’s hit films Step by Step and School Life. T

The producers are prolific French producers Eric and Nicolas Altmayer of Mandarin & Compagnie and Jean-Rachid’s Kallouche Cinema.

The €26m production starts principal photography on May 30 in...

Enraging, bracing and sublime, the 76th edition of the French film festival kicks off with a controversial visit from Johnny Depp and gallops through films from Pedro Almodóvar, Catherine Corsini, Steve McQueen and more

On the opening night of the Cannes film festival the guests gather for the premiere of Jeanne du Barry, a historical romp. It is the tale of a courtesan who catches the eye of a libidinous king and thereby flies in the face of propriety and good taste. The palace, we learn, is a place thick with intrigue, byzantine protocols and ridiculous rules that make no discernible sense. “It’s grotesque,” says one character. “No, it’s Versailles,” says another.

The royal court has its troubles – and so too does Cannes, where the traditional grand unveiling was all but derailed by the arrival of Johnny Depp, a Hollywood star dogged by allegations of domestic abuse whose...

by Cláudio Alves

The second day of Cannes saw the start of the competition screenings, with Hirokazu Kore-eda and Catherine Corsini leading the pack. Though The Film Experience's writer at the festival, Elisa Giudici, wasn't convinced by the Japanese master's latest effort, Monster has been met with critical support. Nothing comparable to the reception of his Palme d'Or-winning Shoplifters, but still encouraging. As for Corsini, her Homecoming has caused controversy because of a sex scene featuring underage actors, which the director admits she'd approach differently in the future, citing the need for intimacy coaches. A masturbation scene was also eventually cut from the film after it cost production funding from France's National Cinema Centre.

Looking back at these auteur's past works, let's choose to remember less divisive fare. In both cases, familial bonds are at the forefront, tales of mothers and their children lost in dysfunction. They are Kore-eda's Nobody Knows,...

Leading French producer Michael Gentile’s Paris-based outfit The Film is about to start shooting Julie Delpy’s next directorial outing, “The Barbarians,” and Laurence Arné’s “Les Hennedricks” starring Dany Boon.

Delpy’s comeback to French filmmaking since “Lolo,” “The Barbarians” is a satirical comedy unfolding in a small town in Brittany which is preparing to welcome Ukrainian refugees after voting unanimously to greet them in exchange for subsidies from the government. But instead of seeing Ukrainians come into town, they see Syrian refugees, causing some tensions among locals and testing their liberal beliefs. Delpy will star in the film opposite Sandrine Kiberlain (“Mademoiselle Chambon”), Laurent Lafitte (“Elle”) and Ziad Bakri (“The Weekend Away”), India Hair (“Angry Annie”), Mathieu Demy (“The Bureau”) and Delpy’s father Albert Delpy.

Delpy penned the script with Matthieu Rumani (“Family Business”), in collaboration with Lea Domenech (“Bernadette”). “The Barbarians” will start filming on...

Welcome, Insiders. Cannes is now well under way while the picket lines remain busy in LA. Jesse Whittock here in London. I’ve rounded up all the big and important news from film and TV, so sit back and enjoy the read. Subscribe here.

Cannes Gets In Gear Cannes

Controversy: Diana Lodderhose here reporting from Cannes where it’s been all systems go on the Croisette since the festival kicked off with the opening of Johnny Depp starrer Jeanne du Barry on Tuesday. It wouldn’t feel like a proper Cannes without a healthy dose of controversy. Festival head Thierry Frémaux responded to French actress Adèle Haenel’s suggestion that Cannes is part of a French eco-system that turns a blind eye to sexual violence. “It’s not true and the proof is that if you believed it, you would not be here, listening to me now, taking your accreditations...

Documentary about rural Chinese people who move to work in a textile factory is currently on a 2.7 average.

Wang Bing’s documentary Youth (Spring) took the early lead on Screen’s 2023 Cannes jury grid, with a 2.7 average score.

A 212-minute chronicle of the lives of Chinese people who come from rural areas to work in a textile factory near Shanghai, it scored seven threes (good) from our critics, with one four (excellent) from Le Monde’s Clarisse Fabre. Scores of two (average) from The Telegraph’s Robbie Collin and Tim Robey, and Positif’s Michel Ciment, and a one (poor) from filfan.

The European Producers Club (Epc) has issued a statement expressing solidarity for French producer Marc Missonnier who has had his Cannes accreditation revoked for criticizing the festival on social media.

The body, which celebrates its 30th anniversary this year, is an association of 160 influential film and TV producers from across Europe, including Missionnier.

“The European Producers Club was informed that one of our esteemed members, the renowned French producer Marc Missonnier, had his accreditation revoked by the Cannes Film Festival due to his expressed opinions about the official selection on social media,” read the statement.

“The European Producers Club strongly disagrees with this action, as it can be seen as a restriction on freedom of expression. Critics and criticism play a vital role in the film industry, and individuals’ dedication and civic opinions should not hinder their professional access to the Cannes Film Festival and its market.”

In the lead-up to Cannes,...

This year’s Cannes Film Festival features an unusually robust selection of documentaries, two in the Main Competition alone, where nonfiction films almost never appear. And if the ones that have screened in the festival’s first three days have anything in common, it’s scale. These docs go big, go long and go deep.

The two that screened on Wednesday were Steve McQueen’s “Occupied City,” a four-hour tour of 130 different sites in that city, what happened there during World War II and what’s happening now; and Wim Wenders’ “Anselm,” which uses Wenders’ beloved 3D to create the enormous spaces in which German maximalist artist Anselm Kiefer creates his monumentally-scaled work.

Thursday brought another entry in Cannes’ massive-doc sweepstakes. Chinese director Wang Bing, who has two films in this year’s festival, is in the competition with “Youth,” a three-and-a-half hour look not at the carefree young people of his home country,...

Catherine Corsini’s new film “Le Retour,” or “Homecoming,” opens with a moment of grief. A mother (Aïssatou Diallo Sagna) is nervously traveling with her two young daughters when she gets a phone call. Something terrible has happened and she begins to weep. Though that interaction hangs over the rest of the action, which then jumps ahead 15 years, we don’t find out exactly the circumstances of that pivotal call until well into the running time of this disjointed film. By the time we do, the impact of what has occurred is less traumatic than it is confusing, a product of thin characterization and messy storytelling.

At the same time, Corsini has tapped incredible actors for this sun-drenched saga of familial bonds in Corsica, which is best when it’s relying on their dynamics and worst when it’s going for big revelations.

The woman in those first frames is Khédidja,...

Catherine Corsini, whose Cannes competition entry “Homecoming” has been at the center of a firestorm due to a sexually suggestive scene between two minors, admitted during the press conference that she will work an intimacy coach and “will be more careful to make actresses more at ease” on future films.

The scandal over the inclusion of Corsini’s film in competition was sparked after news broke of the fact that this scene between the two young actors Esther Gohourou and Harold Orsini had been added without obtaining proper government approval — which prompted the National Film Board to cut all their subsidies for the movie, and the Cannes Film Festival to hold their competition slot for several days while they investigated the matter. After the backlash, Corsini and her producer Elisabeth Perez admitted that they had made a mistake and should have sent the updated scripted to the Commission des Enfants du Spectacle,...

If you thought Maïwenn’s Johnny Depp movie Jeanne du Barry arrived at Cannes with a lot of baggage, Catherine Corsini’s Homecoming didn’t spare in its ruffling of French media feathers with stories about harassment of workers on the pic’s set and a masturbation scene involving minors.

Corsini and her producer Elisabeth Perez already addressed and defended themselves against several of these allegations in a published open letter in April, specifically that the masturbation scene in question between the film’s 15-year old and 17-year-old actors saw them “both dressed, and the scene filmed their faces” with “no touching or inappropriate contact between the two.”

On Thursday at a press conference after last night’s world premiere, Corsini reflected on what she’d do differently when shooting future sex scenes, while many of the actors from the film also at the conference defended their cinematic maestra as well.

The film has been mired in controversy surrounding the filming of its intimate scenes.

French filmmaker Catherine Corsini said she was “too proud and pretentious” to use intimacy coaches on the set of her Cannes competition title Homecoming, while speaking at the film’s press conference today (May 18).

France’s Cnc pulled funding on the film after Corsini failed to inform the organisation of an intimate scene involving two minors that was added to the script without being pre-approved in the shooting schedule. Separate allegations of harassment and inappropriate behaviour surfaced, unrelated to the intimate scene in question, leading the...

Hirokazu Kore-eda’s Monster scored 2.3 and Catherine Corsini’s Homecoming scored 2.

Hirokazu Kore-eda’s Monster and Catherine Corsini’s Homecoming are the first titles to land on Screen’s Cannes 2023 competition jury grid.

Kore-eda’s seventh competition entry received an average of 2.3 while Corsini’s return to Cannes averaged at 2.

This year, 12 critics are taking part in the jury grid to score all 21 titles competing for the festival’s Palme d’Or.

For the first time this year, the jury grid will update live on screendaily.com, in addition to being printed in our Cannes daillies.

Monster received a mixture...

Hirokazu Kore-eda and Catherine Corsini titles earn middling scores from our critics.

Hirokazu Kore-eda’s Monster and Catherine Corsini’s Homecoming are the first titles to land on Screen’s 2023 Cannes Competition jury grid.

Kore-eda’s seventh competition entry received an average of 2.3 while Corsini’s return to Cannes averaged at 2.0, with one score still to report.

This year, critics from 11 outlets, alongside Screen’s critics, are taking part to score all 21 titles competing for the festival’s Palme d’Or.

For the first time this year, the jury grid will update live on screendaily.com, in addition to being printed in our Cannes daillies.

Hirokazu Kore-eda’s Monster scored 2.3 and Catherine Corsini’s Homecoming scored 1.9.

Hirokazu Kore-eda’s Monster and Catherine Corsini’s Homecoming are the first titles to land on Screen’s Cannes 2023 competition jury grid.

Kore-eda’s seventh competition entry received an average of 2.3 while Corsini’s return to Cannes averaged at 1.9.

This year, 12 critics are taking part in the jury grid to score all 21 titles competing for the festival’s Palme d’Or.

For the first time this year, the jury grid will update live on screendaily.com, in addition to being printed in our Cannes daillies.

Monster received a mixture...

The second film in the comp and first French film item and one of seven feature debuts from female filmmakers comes with an interesting non-footnote. She has had her share of controversy in the past for what we find on the screen and will have received a bit of fanfare before anyone has laid eyes on the film this time out, Catherine Corsini‘s third trip to the competition and fourth trip to Cannes (her 2012 film Trois mondes was in the Un Certain Regard section) was actually one of the last entries for this 2023 horse race. Following La Repetition in 2001, and 2021’s La Fracture (aka The Divide), Le retour (Homecoming) was a project that went into production in September of last year and saw the filmmaker re-team with her La Fracture discovery in actress Aïssatou Diallo Sagna.…...

How did John Cameron Mitchell become the head of this year’s Queer Palm award jury in Cannes? “Sexual favors,” he quips.

While the director of “Hedwig and the Angry Inch” and “How to Talk to Girls at Parties” (which played out of competition at Cannes) is joking, sexuality is at the heart of one of the world’s most prestigious LGBTQ+ film awards. And with more anti-queer legislation being enacted around the world than at any time in recent memory, the attention it brings to films that humanize this scapegoated population is arguably more important than ever.

“The Queer Palm, the festival and any awards help to dignify work, so that it often can be distributed and sometimes celebrated in its own queer-phobic country,” says Mitchell, who helped start a queer dance night at the American Pavilion in 2004 and DJs when he’s in town. “[The trans-themed] ‘Joyland’ was banned in...

Put a Label on It: Corsini’s Corsica is a Lieu for Inter & Intra-personal Growth

Napoleon Bonaparte’s birthplace is certainly a site rich in history — and in the context of Catherine Corsini’s twelfth feature film, the past is the best place for emotional archeological digging. Working (not always overtly) with themes of colonialism, racism, power dynamics and first loves while brimming with light-heartedness but nonetheless, a tonally serious synergy, Le retour (Homecoming) is a drama that details what happens in Corsica should maybe stay in Corsica — a place where it’s the memories and life lessons learned that become as meaningful as polaroid proof itself.…...

The second scandal-tinged project to premiere at the Cannes Film Festival in as many days, Catherine Corsini’s “Homecoming” is vastly more interesting than that other film maudit, “Jeanne du Barry,” though the pair make for worthy foils.

While Maïwenn’s stuffy historical epic drew protests on the Croisette due to the extracurricular activities of its stars, Corsini’s windswept jaunt very nearly didn’t make the trip – the title was omitted from the competition when news of irresponsible on-set practices broke just before the selection was announced. That the lack of oversight involved a minor seemed to seal the project’s fate before a subsequent investigation and the absence of any formal complaints put the title back on track.

Still, the damage was substantial. Unlike the stars of “Jeanne du Barry,” whose deeds are clear and whose supporters and critics remain galvanized on either side, the general murkiness of...

The story template of “Homecoming” is a standard one: Years after an unexplained trauma, a family returns to the place they once called home, where hidden truths come to light and bitter conflicts arise over the course of one seemingly idyllic summer. Yet for all the secrets and lies that shape the narrative of Catherine Corsini’s straightforwardly told but consistently intriguing new film, its most interesting tensions often emerge from things its characters already know, even if they haven’t acknowledged them out loud. For Black single parent Khédidja (Aïssatou Diallo Sagna), arriving at the Corsican birthplace of her children after 15 years away, disinterring a buried past throws her maternal insecurities into sharp relief; for her teenage daughters Jessica (Suzy Bemba) and Farah (Esther Gohourou), what revelations the trip yields only underline their respective senses of not-belonging in their own small family.

This is complex, delicate material, simmering with...

There is the good sister, with A grades, university prospects and a sense of decorum in company. And then there is the younger sister who can’t see a volume button without turning up the music, who is quick to complain or pick an argument, who spots someone else’s drug stash and thinks she could steal it and maybe make some pocket money selling deals on the beach, because what – what – could possibly go wrong with that plan?

And yet Farah (Esther Gohourou) can always make Jessica (Suzy Bemba) laugh. She can even persuade her to climb over a wall to swim in someone else’s pool because, in the end, where’s the harm? They are nothing alike, but they fit together like Legos.

Catherine Corsini’s Cannes competition entry Homecoming (Le Retour) borrows some key elements from the director’s own life. Like the girls in the film,...

Despite plenty of incidental action, Corsini’s film about a woman’s painful return to Corsica leaves too many questions unanswered

Despite some warm and sympathetic performances and lovely cinematography, there is something weirdly glib in director and co-writer Catherine Corsini’s new film in which a summer of drama gives us supposedly tragic personal discoveries uneasily coexisting with some almost photo love-style holiday romance.

Khedidja (Aïssatou Diallo Sagna) is a black woman in her 40s living in Paris with her two teen daughters – promising student Jess (Suzy Bemba) and tearaway Farah (Esther Gohourou) – and working as a nanny for a wealthy white couple, Sylvia (Virginie Ledoyen) and Marc (Denis Podalydès), who have little kids. Marc also has a spoilt moody teen daughter (Lomane de Dietrich) from his first marriage. Sylvia and Marc are heading off with their family for the summer to their villa in Calvi, Corsica and they...

A French producer who said he was boycotting the Cannes Film Festival over its selection of Catherine Corsini’s Competition film Homecoming, claims his accreditation has been cancelled in retaliation.

Marc Missonnier, whose credits include François Ozon’s 8 Femmes and Swimming Pool as well as Xavier Giannoli’s Marguerite, previously criticized Cannes for including Homecoming after accusations of misconduct on set.

He wrote on Twitter tonight (translated from French): “I’ve just arrived on Croisette like every year for more than 30 years. Even if this year will be different because, as I announced, I will not be going to see any of the films in Official Selection.”

Related: Amid Controversy, ‘Homecoming’ Director Catherine Corsini Addresses What She’d Do Differently Shooting Underage Sex Scenes

Missonnier said he had travelled to Cannes to participate in the market but that when he went to collect his accreditation he was in for a surprise.

The letter targets “the political positions displayed by the Cannes Festival” in particular.

More than 123 French actors and actresses have signed an open letter denouncing sexual harassment in the French film industry, calling it “a dysfunctional system that crushes and annihilates”.

On the same day that Cannes welcomed Maïwenn’s Jeanne Du Barry and its star Johnny Depp, and just ahead of the premiere of Catherine Corsini’s Homecoming in competition, the letter targets “the political positions displayed by the Cannes Festival” in particular. “By rolling out the red carpet to men and women who assault, the festival sends the...

Catherine Corsini, an outspoken queer activist and co-founder of France’s feminist organization 50:50, should have been celebrating her new film’s inclusion in the competition lineup of the Cannes Film Festival. Instead, she found herself in the middle of a firestorm after “Homecoming,” her coming-of-age story, failed to get the proper government approvals for a scene of a sexual nature involving two minors.

Corsini admits that mistakes were made. But she says that she took every effort to protect her young actors from being exploited.

That scene, which was eventually cut from the movie, became the object of wild rumors, which Corsini said are false, “crazy, completely out of control.” “I’m hallucinating at things I’m reading, accusing me of having forced Esther to do a blowjob or masturbate herself,” she said.

Audiences will get to decide if “Homecoming” is sensitively wrought or exploitative as the film premieres in Cannes on Wednesday.

Social media routinely perks up when videos start circulating of actor Ben Affleck speaking Spanish. For many, they don’t know that the actor is fluent in the language and regularly speaks it in interviews. This revelation was also a surprise for Brazilian actress Alice Braga (“Queen of the South”), who stars opposite Affleck in the new Robert Rodriguez feature, “Hypnotic.”

“Ben speaks super good Spanish, like, impressively good,” Braga told TheWrap. “I never knew that! I was like, ‘You speak Spanish?'” In the film, Braga and Affleck play a couple thrown together when Affleck’s cop character, Roarke, is drawn into a shadowy world involving hypnotic suggestion that might connect to the disappearance of Roarke’s young daughter.

Braga said the revelation that Affleck could speak Spanish came during a quiet moment on set when her and Affleck got to talking. “As an actor you sit and wait for cameras to be ready,...

When it comes to the films we associate him with, a lot has changed since the ‘90s when Robert Rodriguez was among the most exciting indie names in cinema with the inventive likes of “El Mariachi,” “From Dusk Till Dawn” and the best segment of the “Four Rooms” anthology. He now has several “Spy Kids” movies, high-profile music videos and middling efforts like “Alita: Battle Angel” under his belt, though this critic can’t help but think of him as the same scrappy independent auteur of decades past in search of a meaty, inventive story.

Which is why the Ben Affleck-starring “Hypnotic” looked and sounded exciting, at least on paper, signaling a brainy yet accessible neo-noir detective tale with an original Rodriguez spin. Sadly, the film is a tedious and erratically cut caper, whose shape-shifting story feels like an uneven and over-plotted rehash of various recognizable films that we’ve seen before.

As the lead-up to the 76th edition of the Cannes Film Festival gets underway, so too does the film market at the festival. And Black Bear International will have a very enticing project for sale on the Croisette: “Shell,” a thriller starring Elisabeth Moss, Kate Hudson, and Kaia Gerber.

Read More: Cannes 2023: Robert Rodriguez’s ‘Hypnotic’ Joins New Films From Catherine Corsini & More In Lineup

“Teen Spirit‘ director and actor Max Minghella will direct the film, a thriller set in the near future as humanity’s cultural obsession with youth and beauty reaches disturbing new extremes.

Continue reading ‘Shell’: Elisabeth Moss, Kate Hudson & Kaia Gerber To Star In Upcoming Thriller at The Playlist.

The 76th Festival de Cannes already had a jury president in two-time Palme d’Or winner Ruben Ostlünd. It now has eight more members to fill out its jury. Two of those members just happen to be Oscar winner Brie Larson and Emmy and BAFTA Award nominee Paul Dano.

Read More: Cannes 2023: Robert Rodriguez’s “Hypnotic” joins new films from Catherine Corsini and more

The other members of the jury include another Palme d’Or winner, “Titane” director Julia Ducournau, “Wild Tales” Oscar nominee Damián Szifrón noted French actor Denis Menochet, BAFTA Award-winning filmmaker Rungano Nyoni, Moroccan director Maryam Touzani, and novelist and filmmaker Atiq Rahimi.

Continue reading Brie Larson & Paul Dano Join Ruben Ostlünd On The 2023 Cannes Jury at The Playlist.