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Alain Guiraudie’s Misericordia, a rural melodrama with a sinister twist, has won France’s Louis Delluc prize for best film of the year.

The comedic crime thriller follows a man who returns to his native small town for a funeral, where his stay is greeted by unexpected twists.

Misericordia premiered in Cannes and went on to play the fall festival trifecta of Telluride, Toronto and New York. Oscar and Bafta-winning Anatomy Of A Fall notably took the same post-Cannes route in 2023.

Les Films du Losange has sold Misericordia to a slew of territories including Sideshow and Janus Films for...

Alain Guiraudie’s Misericordia, a rural melodrama with a sinister twist, has won France’s Louis Delluc prize for best film of the year.

The genre-hopping crime thriller and dark comedy follows a man who returns to his native small town for a funeral when a mysterious disappearance, a threatening neighbour, and a priest with strange intentions add an unexpected twist to his stay.

Misericordia premiered in Cannes and after that became one of few French titles to complete the fall festival trifecta of Telluride, Toronto and New York film festivals. Oscar and Bafta-winning Anatomy Of A Fall notably took...

New Wave Films has acquired UK-Ireland distribution rights to Alain Guiraudie’s Misericordia.

New Wave will release the film theatrically in the territory in spring 2025, having acquired it from Les Films du Losange.

The ninth feature from French filmmaker Guiraudie, Misericordia mixes melodrama, crime and dark comedy, in the story of a man who returns to his native town for a funeral where a mysterious disappearance, a threatening neighbour, long-simmering desires and a strange priest all take prominence.

Felix Kysyl, Catherine Frot and Jean-Baptiste Duran all star. The film debuted in Cannes Premiere at Cannes Film Festival in May, going on to Telluride,...

The 2024 edition of the Valladolid International Film Week, also known as Seminci, wrapped on Saturday (October 26), giving its top award, the Golden Spike, to Misericordia by Alain Guiraudie.

Misericordia tells the story of a man who returns to his hometown for the funeral of his former boss, the village baker, and decides to stay for a few days with the man’s widow, getting involved in a series of unexpected events.

Guiraudie also won the best screenplay award.

The members of the Valladolid jury, Greek director Sofía Exarchou; Spanish actress Aida Folch; American critic Devika Girish; Spanish filmmaker Luis López Carrasco...

We’ve had more than our fair share of riffs on Pasolini’s “Teorema” as of late, from Bruce Labruce’s explicit and unwatchable remake this year to Emerald Fennell’s Tik Tok-ified (and unwatchable) retooling from the year before. Some more directly indebted to Pasolini’s transgressive blueprint than others, these reinterpretations all share an affinity for a strangely (sometimes inexplicably) alluring central figure who seduces his way into a small, elite circle. But everybody knows that the French can never be excluded in a game of horny wits, so “Misericordia” has entered the fray with its own particular spin on the material—one that, in practice, is far more intriguing (and chaste?) than any of those other desperate plays at shock value.

Where most films taking inspiration from “Teorema” bring the subject into an unattainable class that they can only infiltrate from below the belt, Alain Guiraudie...

Fans of Alain Guiraudie’s work may take the opening sequence of Misericordia as a sign that they’re in familiar terrain. A view from behind the windshield of a car winding its way through back roads to a small hillside village, it announces the premiere chronicler of lust and violence in the French countryside’s return to the milieu in which he made his name.

Indeed, Misericordia finds Guiraudie revisiting old standbys—a linking of queer desire and mortality, a distanced but lighthearted absurdism, and a refusal to get moralistic about transgressive behavior—under a relatively conventional set of aesthetic strategies. Fortunately, the ideas roiling under the former wildman’s newly placid surfaces are as potent as ever.

The driver in that opening sequence is Jérémie (Felix Kysyl), a baker returning to Saint-Martial, the provincial village of his youth, for the funeral of his mentor. Jérémie is put up by the baker’s widow,...

Alain Guiraudie’s Misericordia has scored multiple deals in key territories following its world premiere in Cannes and ahead of upcoming stops at Telluride, Toronto and New York film festivals.

Les Films du Losange has sold the film to Movies Inspired in Italy, Praesens in Switzerland, Zeta Filmes in Brazil, Salzgeber in Germany, Lat-e for Argentina, Mexico and Uruguay, Pilot Film for the Czech Republic and Slovakia, Velvet Spoon in Poland, Imagine Film for Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands, Bio Paradis in Iceland, Interior Xiii in Colombia, Panda Lichtspiele in Austria, and BookMyShow in India. Sideshow and Janus Films have snagged North American rights.

Alain Guiraudie’s Misericordia has scored multiple deals in key territories following its world premiere in Cannes and ahead of upcoming stops at Telluride, Toronto and New York film festivals.

Les Films du Losange has sold the film to Movies Inspired in Italy, Praesens in Switzerland, Zeta Filmes in Brazil, Salzgeber in Germany, Lat-e for Argentina, Mexico and Uruguay, Pilot Film for the Czech Republic and Slovakia, Velvet Spoon in Poland, Imagine Film for Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands, Bio Paradis in Iceland, Interior Xiii in Colombia, Panda Lichtspiele in Austria, and BookMyShow in India. Sideshow and Janus Films have snagged North American rights.

Misericordia.In Misericordia (2024), the newest film by Alain Guiraudie, a beautiful stranger, Jérémie (Félix Kysyl), journeys back to his hometown to mourn the death of his former mentor, a master baker with whom he was in love. The deceased also happens to be the father of his childhood best friend (Jean-Baptiste Durand), now a baldheaded brute irrationally threatened by Jérémie’s extended sojourn, specifically the company he keeps with his newly widowed mother (Catherine Frot). Guiraudie unfolds an uncanny comic thriller, deceptively subtle in its sensuous subversions of noir templates, against the dewy autumnal backdrop of Saint-Martial, a mountainous commune in the countryside region of Occitanie, where he was raised. With its lonely gravel roads and vast wildernesses, Occitanie’s lush swaths of emptiness, suited for solitary wandering, give each banal moment of human contact a paranoid, dubiously suggestive charge. The region is a recurring setting across much of Guiraudie’s work,...

Marking a welcome re-embrace of the streamlined murdery perversities of his terrific “Stranger by the Lake,” Alain Guiraudie gives the Cannes Premiere section one of its darkly sparkling standouts with the unsettlingly offbeat “Misericordia.” In the director’s best work, Guiraudie’s trademark is to infuse genre dalliances with mordant wit and a deliciously peculiar, defiant queerness. And while it may initially appear to be straightforward — and while it thankfully avoids the wild tonal swings of muddy tragicomedy “Staying Vertical” (2016) and rather baffling terrorism sex-farce “Nobody’s Hero” (2022) — nobody could ever accuse this increasingly twisted psychodrama of playing it straight.

From the start, there’s something off. The prologue is a driving sequence, shot from the point of view of the unseen driver, through the narrowing country roads of hilly southwestern France. There is nothing overtly odd going on, even the landscape is banal, shot in hazy earth tones by Claire Mathon’s clever,...

In a career spanning four decades and eight features, Alain Guiraudie has cemented himself as one of our most astute chroniclers of desire. If there’s any leitmotif to his libidinous body of work, that’s not homosexuality (prevalent as same-sex encounters might be across his films) but a force that transcends all manner of labels and categories. His is a cinema of liberty: of vast, enchanted spaces and solitary wanderers who wrestle with their passions, and in acting them out, change the way they carry themselves into the world. Desire becomes an exercise in self-sovereignty, a way of reasserting one’s independence––a rebirth. It is often said that cinema is an inescapably scopophilic realm, where the act of looking is itself a source of pleasure, but Guiraudie has a way of making that dynamic feel egalitarian, as thrilling for those watching as it is for those being watched.

Cannes is over, the prizes have been given out at Saturday’s awards ceremony., and buyers have gone home, but the deals haven’t stopped. Some of the buzziest titles ahead of the festival are still are awaiting buyers. This year’s market hasn’t been weighed down by the writers or actors strikes in the same way as last year, meaning companies like A24, Neon, Apple, and more have jumped in on exciting packages of possibly future contenders, while art house, specialized distributors like Sideshow and Janus Films, Mubi, and Metrograph have been especially active.

Below we’re tracking everything that gets acquired throughout the festival and beyond.

Films Acquired After the Festival “Gazer”

Section: Director’s Fortnight

Director: Ryan J. Sloan

Buyer: Metrograph Pictures

Date Acquired: May 29

Cast: Ariella Mastroianni

Buzz: As IndieWire exclusively reported, Metrograph went big on this neo-noir thriller with a unique concept from a...

Sideshow and Janus Films have acquired the North American rights to Alain Guiraudie’s queer crime thriller “Misericordia,” starring Félix Kysyl, Catherine Frot, Jean-Baptiste Durand, Jacques Develay and David Ayala. The film was a selection of the Cannes Premiere section at this year’s festival.

The film follows Jérémie (Kysyl), a man returning to his hometown for the funeral of his former employer. After a mysterious disappearance, a priest and a townsperson make Jérémie’s short stay take an unexpected turn.

Guiraudie wrote and directed the film, produced by Charles Gillibert of CG Cinema. Janus Films and Sideshow are planning a theatrical release.

The deal was negotiated by Alice Lesort for Les Films du Losange on behalf of the filmmakers with Sideshow and Janus Films. The film is a CG Cinéma, Scala Films, Arte France Cinéma, Andergraun Films and Rosa Filmes co-production with the participation of Arte France, Ocs and Les Films du Losange.

Sideshow and Janus Films have acquired the North American rights to Alain Guiraudie’s Misericordia, which screened this week at Cannes in the Premiere sidebar section.

Janus and Sideshow, which negotiated the deal with Les Films du Losange, are planning a theatrical release for the film.

Written and directed by Guiraudie, the film stars Félix Kysyl, Catherine Frot, Jean-Baptiste Durand, Jacques Develay and David Ayala. CG Cinéma, Scala Films, Arte France Cinéma, Andergraun Films and Rosa Filmes co-produced with the participation of Arte France, Ocs and Les Films du Losange. Charles Gillibert of CG Cinema served as producer.

Misericordia centres...

Revisiting the murder mysteries of his award-winning 2013 feature, Stranger by the Lake, but with a more darkly comic tone found in much of his other work, French writer-director Alain Guiraudie’s latest, Misericordia (Miséricorde), plays like two films at once: The first is a sinister, small-town homicide story in the vein of Hitchcock’s Shadow of a Doubt, in which a man shows up to wreak havoc on the seemingly innocent. The second is a twisted variation on Pasolini’s Teorema, in which a family is torn apart by a visitor’s pervasive sexuality and refusal to leave them alone.

The two movies don’t always crystallize into one, and if you’re looking for a credible crime thriller in which everyone behaves logically, Misericordia may not be for you. If, on the other hand, you’re looking for an exploration of repressed sexual desire and religious hypocrisy in backwoods France,...

Alain Guiraudie is back at Cannes with a bittersweet and unexpectedly warmhearted dark comedy about latent homosexual desire, “Miséricorde.” Remember, the French writer/director is the filmmaker behind the 2013 perverse gay classic “Stranger by the Lake,” a simmering and sinister cruising tale about how our drives toward death and sex are of the same flesh. “Miséricorde,” debuting in the Cannes Premiere section, is a decidedly lighter-on-its-feet (in all senses of the idiom) story of a lonely and faithless man’s obsession with his dead former boss, who’s also the father of the childhood best friend he maybe once loved.

When Jérémie (Félix Kysyl) returns to Saint-Martial, a provincial village nestled in a wood in Southern France, he immediately bonds with his former boss’ widow, Martine (Catherine Frot). Is it romantic obsession, or projecting a mother figure upon her? Or is Jérémie really in love with her dead husband, and...

Les Films du Losange has taken international sales rights to French filmmaker and Cannes regular Alain Guiraudie’s Misericordia, set to world premiere at Cannes Film Festival’s in the non-competitive Premiere section.

The film, from prolific producer Charles Gillibert of CG Cinema, is described as a tense rural drama set in an oppressive French village where inhabitants struggle to hide their most intimate secrets and shameful sins.

Guiraudie returns to Cannes after premiering Staying Vertical in Competition in 2016, Stranger By The Lake in Un Certain Regard in 2013, The King Of Scape in Directors’ Fortnight in 2009 and No Rest For The Brave,...

Amidst the potential 2024 majors––Jia Zhangke, Olivier Assayas, Leos Carax, Arnaud Desplechin, Paul Schrader, and Kiyoshi Kurosawa but a handful––we should invest as much hope in a new film from Alain Guiraudie. Late last year we reported on his feature Miséricorde (Mercy in English), and this week CG Cinéma’s Romain Blondeau announced the commencement of shooting with Claire Mathon (his Dp on Staying Vertical and Stranger By the Lake) in tow.

Miséricorde is said to follow a noir-like plot concerning Jérémie, a 30-year-old who returns to his native Saint-Martial for a friend’s funeral. While there “he must contend with rumors and suspicion, until he commits an irreparable act and finds himself at the centre of a police investigation.” Knowing Guiraudie’s unflinching visions of violence and sexuality (not least in his superb novel Now the Night Begins), I am already girding my loins. Catherine Frot, Felix Kysyl,...

Just weeks before Alain Guiraudie is set to begin production on his seventh feature film, we learn (via the lesinrocks folks) that the cast of Miséricorde is comprised of veteran actress Catherine Frot along with Felix Kysyl, Jean-Baptiste Durand, Jacques Develay and David Ayala. Guiraudie will be reteaming with cinematographer Claire Mathon for a third time – they previously paired on Stranger by the Lake and Staying Vertical. Mathon was most recently on the set for Pablo Agüero’s Saint-Ex. Sold by the Les Films du Losange folks, with production beginning in next month we figure that a Cannes showing is not in the cards with a Locarno or Venice premiere more probable.…...

“It’s absolutely clear, there is a real appetite for British independent cinema in France,” said artistic director Dominque Green.

Sasha Polak’s Silver Haze scooped the top prize at this month’s Dinard Film Festival, the French seaside festival that spotlights UK and Irish cinema for French audiences, that ran from September 27 to October 1.

Berlinale Panorama title Silver Haze won the Golden Hitchcock for best film. Polak’s feature reunites the Dutch filmmaker with UK actor Vicky Knight, after working together on Dirty God in 2019. It is loosely based on Knight’s own experience as a child, in which she survived an arson attack.

Catherine Frot: 'There is such humanity in the kind of social issues tackled by UK filmmakers' Photo: Richard Mowe There is no denying the love of all things British that pertains in Dinard, the Brittany town that hosts le Festival du Cinéma Britannique every year and now in its 34th edition.

Everywhere you turn there are Union Jacks, a red telephone box, a blue police box and an unmistakeable statue of Alfred Hitchcock, adorned with the odd passing seagull. The town is twinned with Newquay just across the sea.

The spirit of Alfred Hitchcock looms large over Dinard Photo: Richard Mowe The red carpet for last night’s marathon opening must be one of the longest in any festival - it stretches half the length of the main street where crowds of onlookers and well-wishers line-up enthusiastically.

Last night many of the film teams were on parade including Shirley Henderson...

The Trouble With Jessica

The black comedy The Trouble With Jessica will open the Dinard Festival du film britannique on France’s Emerald Coast close to St Malo on 27 September it was revealed in a programme announcement today.

The film, which deals with the events in the aftermath of a death at a dinner party, stars Shirley Henderson, Rufus Sewell, Olivia Williams, Indira Varma, Alan Tudyk, Anne Reid and Sylvester Groth. It will only be released in the UK on 23 November through Parkland Entertainment.

Jury president Catherine Frot Photo: © Renaud Joubert The Festival in its 34th incarnation which is devoted to throwing the spotlight on British, Irish and Scottish cinema for French audiences, closes on 1 October with a screening of The Old Oak, which veteran director Ken Loach has avowed will be his final film. It tells of a downtrodden mining community in County Durham and its struggle to survive in a changing world.

Florian Zeller, the Oscar-winning director and playwright of “The Father” and “The Son,” received the Medal of Honor, France’s highest decoration, at an intimate ceremony in Paris on Wednesday.

The event, hosted in the gardens of the French authors and composers guild (Sacd), gathered a flurry of talent and luminaries from the worlds of film, TV, theater and literature — reflecting the breadth of Zeller’s body of work. Zeller was appointed Knight of the Legion of Honor by France President Emmanuel Macron.

Guests included Isabelle Huppert, Pierre Arditi, Catherine Frot and Elodie Navarre who have starred in Zeller’s plays; Christopher Hampton, with whom he shares a best adapted screenplay Oscar for “The Father;” “Simone” actor Elsa Zylberstein; Mediawan boss Pierre-Antoine Capton, with whom he launched the L.A.-based company Blue Morning Pictures; Victoria Bedos (“La famille Belier”); Orange Studio’s Kristina Zimmermann and Sebastien Cauchon, who distributed...

Omar Sy stars in the World War One drama inspired by real events.

Mathieu Vadepied’s French-Senegalese war drama Father & Soldier (released in France as Tirailleurs), starring and produced by Omar Sy, has become the first film released in 2023 to garner one million admissions in France following its opening by Gaumont on January 4.

The film hit the ground running in its first weekend of release, selling over 456,000 tickets and taking the number two spot at the box office behind Avatar: The Way Of Water, but ahead of Puss In Boots: The Last Wish. The momentum continues as the film...

The words “War of the Roses” take on a lighter meaning in “The Rose Maker,” a sweet, gently scented French diversion that is likely to teach you far more than you already knew about hybridizing flowers, even if it doesn’t have a whole lot else to say. Following veteran rose farmer Eve Vernet as she attempts to keep her family business afloat in the face of soulless corporate competition — even if it entails a little botanical skulduggery — Pierre Pinaud’s short but unhurried film benefits immensely from the warmly flinty presence of Catherine Frot (“Marguerite”) in the lead, lending a sense of purpose and personality to a character without much color on the page.

Outside her performance, “The Rose Maker” is short on texture and shading, except when it comes to the spectacular multi-hued roses bred by Eve, and caressed by Dp Guillaume Deffontaines’ camera with dewy reverence. Pinaud...

The Rose Maker (La fine fleur) Music Box Films Reviewed for Shockya.com & BigAppleReviews.net, linked from Rotten Tomatoes by Harvey Karten Director: Pierre Pinaud Screenwriters: Fadette Drouard, Blandine Jet, Philippe Le Guay, Pierre Pinaud Cast: Catherine Frot, Manel Foulgoc, Fatsah Bouyahmed, Olivia Côte, Marie Petiot, Vincent Dedienne Screened at: Critics’ link, NYC, 3/10/21 Opens: April […]

The post The Rose Maker Movie Review appeared first on Shockya.com.

"I promised him I'd never quit." Music Box Films has revealed an official trailer for The Rose Maker, an indie comedy from France that originally premiered in 2020. It's finally opened in the US this April after first debuting in French cinemas last summer. Eve Vernet was the largest rose grower. It is now on the verge of bankruptcy, on the verge of being bought out by a powerful competitor. In addition, Véra, her faithful secretary, employed three ex-convict employees without any gardening skills. They must team up to rescue the business and save her flowers. La Fine Fleur (which translates to The Fine Flower) stars Catherine Frot, Manel Foulgoc, Fatsah Bouyahmed, Olivia Côte, Marie Petiot, Vincent Dedienne, as well as Rukkmini Ghosh. This actually looks quite charming! I love a good underdog story about someone who figures out how to make things work on her own, while discovering the hidden talents of newcomers.

New international deals have also been done on ’The Rose Maker’ starring Catherine Frot.

Ahead of this year’s Cannes, Paris-based sales company Charades has secured a raft of deals on two titles from last year’s Cannes: Laurent Tirard’s comedy drama The Speech, which was feted with the Cannes 2020 label, and Chloé Mazlo’s Skies Of Lebanon, which received the Critics’ Week label last year.

The Speech has sold to Canada (MK2 Mile End), South Korea (Pan Cinema), Austria (Panda), Sweden (Njuta), Singapore (Shaw Organisation), Airlines (Skeye), Turkey (Fabula), Argentina (Zeta Films), India (Big Tree), Uruguay (Movie) and...

Gaumont has boarded Tristan Séguéla’s high-concept comedy “For Better And For Worse,” headlined by Cesar-winning Fabrice Luchini (“The Mystery of Henri Pick”) and Catherine Frot (“Marguerite”), two of France’s most bankable stars. The movie will begin shooting in April.

Luchini stars in the bold comedy as Jean, the conservative mayor of a small town in Brittany who’s in the middle of a re-election campaign when his devoted wife of forty years, Edith, tells him she wants to become a man. For a politician campaigning on family values, this is a no-go, but Edith make a deal with him: she will postpone her transition until after the elections. But campaigns are all about digging up dirt to keep the rumor mill turning.

Seguela previously directed “A Good Doctor,” which was a box office hit in France and sold to many territories. “For Better And For Worse” is produced by well-established banner Albertine Productions.

Debut film was one of 15 titles feted with a Cannes 2020 label selection last year.

Kino Lorber has acquired US and English-speaking Canada rights to French filmmaker Charlène Favier’s drama Slalom and plans to release it theatrically in April.

Set against the ski resorts of the French Alps, the debut feature stars rising French actress Noée Abita as a young alpine skiing champion who falls prey to her coach, played by Jérémie Renier.

The film was one of 15 first features to be feted with a Cannes 2020 label selection last year.

”Slalom may thrill with hyper ski action but it wins...

With 2017’s “This Is Our Land,” director Lucas Belvaux examined the ways in which far right movements attract, recruit and reformat new converts, curdling contemporary anxieties for acrid political goals. With his follow-up, “Home Front,” the Franco-Belgian auteur explores the roots of those prejudices. The film, which was part of Cannes’ selection last year, is screening this week at UniFrance’s Rendez-Vous with French Cinema in Paris (Jan. 13-15).

Adapted by Belvaux from Laurent Mauvignier 2009 novel “The Wound,” the film follows two working-class cousins as they fulfil their colonial military duties in 1960s Algeria and as they nurse their scars and traumas in Burgundy of 2003. While the more cerebral Rabut has tried to forge ahead, his cousin Bernard remains a livewire, looking for any provocation to snap back into violence. Local draw Catherine Frot rounds out the cast.

Synecdoche and Artemis Productions are producing. The Party Film Sales in partnership...

In the driving seat: Yolande Moreau (behind left), Noémie Lvovsky and Juliette Binoche (front) in How To Be A Good Wife by Martin Provost Photo: UniFrance

As a mere male, director Martin Provost has demonstrated his feminist credentials long before Me Too made it fashionable and politic to do so. In Séraphine, winner of seven Césars (the French Oscars) he explored the life of an outsider artist unforgettably incarnated by Yolande Moreau. With The Midwife (Sage Femme) he united Catherine Frot and Catherine Deneuve as they confront life’s shifting sands. En route there was also his portrait of writer Violette Leduc with Emmanuelle Devos as the contemporary and protegé of Simone de Beauvoir.

Martin Provost: "My strong feminist streak comes from my mother. She was more important in my life than my father …” Photo: UniFrance

Provost’s new film How To Be A Good Wife is distinctly different and...

Memento Films International has closed major territory sales on its prestige director-driven film slate, including “Persian Lessons,” “My Salinger Year” and “Under The Stars.”

“Persian Lessons,” a drama directed by “House of Sand and Fog” helmer Vadim Perelman, is set in Occupied France in 1942. The film centers on a man who is arrested by the SS alongside other Jews and sent to a concentration camp in Germany and is enlisted to teach Farsi to the head of the camp played by German star Lars Eidinger.

The movie world premiered at the Berlin Film Festival in the Panorama section and was sold by Memento Films International to France (Kmbo), Latin America (California), Poland (Best Films), Romania (Independenta), Baltics (Kinosoprus), UK & Eire (Signature), Turkey (Filmarti), Bulgaria (6AMedia), Hungary (Cinetel), Czech Republic & Slovakia (Film Europe), Hong-Kong & Macao (Bravos), South Korea (Jin Jin Pictures), Taiwan (Movie Cloud), Australia & New Zealand (Rialto), Airlines (Captive Entertainment...

Omar and The Mountain Between Us director Hany Aby-Assad is lining up Arabic-language thriller Huda’s Salon, which Paris-based Memento Films International is launching at the Efm in Berlin.

The feature, which is due to shoot in Palestine this year, will follow a woman whose visit to a hair salon turns into a nightmare when she is blackmailed by its owner. Abu-Assad has scripted and will direct. He will also produce with Film Clinic. Manal Awad (Degradé), Ali Suliman (Jack Ryan) and Maisa Abd Elhadi (Baghdad Central) are among attached cast.

Dutch-Palestinian-Israeli filmmaker Abu-Assad has received two Oscar nominations: in 2006 for Paradise Now, and in 2013 for Omar. Latest film from The Mountain Between Us (2017) starred Kate Winslet and Idris Elba.

Memento’s Efm slate also includes Asghar Farhadi drama A Hero, Australian production The Drover’s Wife and Catherine Frot drama Under The Stars Of Paris. The firm also has festival opener My Salinger Year.

Charades, the sales firm launched three years ago by former execs at Wild Bunch, Gaumont and Studiocanal, will roll into the Berlinale’s European Film Market with a raft of pre-sales on anticipated French projects, including “The Rosemaker” with Catherine Frot and Laurent Tirard’s “The Speech.”

Charades will unveil the promos of both films, as well as “Madeleine Collins,” Antoine Barraud’s psychological drama headlined by Virginie Efira, and will be hosting the market premieres of Sebastien Demoustier’s “The Girl With a Bracelet” which is generating strong box office returns in France, where it opened last week, and Bruno Merle’s “Felicita.”

A psychological drama, starring Chiara Mastroianni and Roschdy Zem, “The Girl With a Bracelet,” has already attracted 100,000 admissions in five days. The film follows a 16-year-old who stands trial for the murder of her best friend and begins to confess to a secret life that she kept from her parents.

One of the widest-selling titles at the UniFrance Rendez-Vous, a showcase of French cinema that wraps Monday, is Claus Drexel’s “Under the Stars of Paris.” The French-German speaks to Variety about the pic and his upcoming prostitution documentary “The Amazons.”

“Under the Stars of Paris” centers on a homeless woman – played by Catherine Frot – who tries to help a lost 8-year-old boy from Burkina Faso to find his mother on the streets of Paris. The pic, repped by Memento Films, has been sold to more than 15 countries, including Benelux, Brazil, Bulgaria, China, Cyprus, Denmark, Greece, Israel, Lichtenstein, Mexico, Portugal, Switzerland and Taiwan.

Drexel is finalizing his documentary “The Amazons” (previously titled “L’heure Mélusine”) about prostitutes working in the Bois de Boulogne in Paris, which he hopes to conclude in mid-2020.

Drexel was born in Germany, but moved with his family to France at the age of 3, initially in Grenoble,...

A mix of comedies such as Isabelle Huppert starrer “Mama Weed” and Michaël Youn’s “Divorce Club,” and director-driven titles like Claus Drexel’s “Under the Stars of Paris” were among the most buzzed-about market premieres of the UniFrance Rendez-Vous with French Cinema. The five-day showcase kicked off Jan. 17 with the world premiere of Martin Provost’s “How to Be a Good Wife” with Juliette Binoche, and wrapped Monday.

“Divorce Club” stars Arnaud Ducret and François-Xavier Demaison as a pair of 40-something divorcees who set up a dedicated membership club. Represented in international markets by Snd, the film just won the top prize at the Alpe d’Huez Comedy Film Festival.

Jean-Paul Salomé’s “Mama Weed” (pictured) stars Oscar-nominated actress Huppert as a French-Arabic translator working for the anti-drug squad in Paris. Le Pacte has now sold the film in major territories. “Mama Weed” was also presented at the Alpe d’Huez festival.

The film stars Catherine Frot as a homeless woman who takes a lost Burkinabe boy under her wing.

Memento Films International (Mfi) has unveiled pre-sales on Claus Drexel’s French-language drama Under The Stars of Paris starring Catherine Frot, ahead of its market premiere at Unifrance’s Rendez-vous with French cinema in Paris this weekend.

The Paris-based sales company has pre-sold the film to a slew of European territories including Switzerland (Jmh distributions), Denmark (41 Shadows), Portugal (Outsider Films), Greece (Spentzos) and Bulgaria (6A Media).

It has also been acquired for Brazil (A2 Filmes), Mexico (Alamedia), China (QC Media), Taiwan...

Des hommes

Belgium’s Lucas Belvaux has assembled one of his highest profile casts in some time with his latest feature Des hommes (Home Front), which reunites him with his Une Trilogy (2002) stars Catherine Frot and Jean-Pierre Darroussin who will be joined by Gerard Depardieu and Yoann Zimmer. Produced by David Frenkel and Patrick Quinet, Belvaux employs Bruno Dumont’s recent favored Dp Guillaume Deffontaines to lens. Belvaux, a five-time Cesar nominee competed in Cannes with his 2006 title The Right of the Weakest.…...

The actress is headlining Pierre Pinaud’s second feature film staged by Estrella Productions and sold worldwide by Charades. Filming on The Rose Maker, Pierre Pinaud’s second feature film after On Air (screened within the MyFrenchFilmFestival 2013) which is scheduled to wrap on 24 October, has now entered into the home strait having kicked off on 2 September. Leading the cast is the brilliant Catherine Frot shored up by rapper Melan Omerta, alongside Fatsah Bouyahmed (One Man and his Cow), Olivia Côte (recently at her best in In Safe Hands and soon to be seen in Cévennes), Marie Petiot (who made a name for herself in the French TV series Hippocrate)...

Paris-based sales outfit Charades has boarded Pierre Pinaud’s sophomore feature “The Rose Maker,” a comedy with French star Catherine Frot (“The Midwife”), along with “Africa Mia,” a documentary about the birth of Afro-Cuban music, as well as the U.K. drama “Lynn + Lucy.”

Pinaud will be directing “The Rose Maker” with the popular French helmer Philippe Le Guay, whose credits include the critically acclaimed romantic comedy “The Women on the 6th Floor.”

Penned by Pinaud and Fadette Drouard, the film is a social comedy starring Frot as Eve, a childless woman who has isolated herself from others and is a famous rose maker on the verge on bankruptcy. In a desperate attempt to rescue her business, she hires Serge, Nadège and Fred, three lame ducks enrolled in a back-to-work program who do not have any horticulture skills, and unexpectedly finds out that nurturing others is even more rewarding than creating flowers.

Jean Paul Gautier model Alex Wetter set to star.

Other Angle Pictures is launching sales on French-Portuguese actor Ruben Alves’s upcoming comedy Miss, starring androgynous model Alex Wetter as a young man who sets his heart on winning the Miss France contest.

It is Alves’ second feature after 2013’s well-travelled The Gilded Cage about a Portuguese caretaker couple working in a Paris apartment block, which drew 1.2m spectators in France and sold well internationally.

Wetter is a well-known model on the Paris fashion scene who has walked the catwalk for the womenswear collections of Jean-Paul Gautier and others. He...

Other Angle has picked up international sales rights to “A Good Doctor” with Michel Blanc, “Just The Three of Us” with Catherine Frot, and “The Father Figure” in the run-up to the UniFrance’s Rendez-Vous in Paris.

Directed by Eric Besnard, “The Father Figure” is a supernatural comedy drama following a writer who mourns the death of his father and starts seeing him reappear; but he turns out to be the only one able to see him. The film stars François Berleand, Guillaume de Tonquedec and Josiane Balasko.

“Just the Three of Us,” which marks the feature debut of José Alcala, is a love-triangle comedy starring Daniel Auteuil and Catherine Frot. Auteuil stars a man on a mission to get his wife back after she leaves him for another man. Both “The Father Figure” and “Just The Three of Us” will be released by Apollo Films in France.

“A Good Doctor,...

Intelligent comedy about women’s liberation tale unfolds in all-girls school against the backdrop of May 1968.

Memento Films International (Mfi) will kick off sales on Martin Provost’s 1960s-set comedy-drama How To Be A Good Wife, starring Juliette Binoche, at the Unifrance Rendez-vous with French Cinema in Paris this week (January 17-21).

Binoche will star as the co-head of an all-girls housekeeping school in a small town in the eastern French region of Alsace in the late 1960s. She runs the school alongside husband with the mission to train teenage girls to become perfect housewives. The schools were common in...

Fireman drama has drawn 1m spectators at the French box office since release late November release.

WTFilms is reporting strong buyer interest in French director Fréderic Tellier’s breakout hit Through The Fire (Sauver ou Périr), starring Pierre Niney as a hero fireman who is badly disfigured while rescuing colleagues from a burning building.

The film has sold to China (Lemon Tree), Canada (A-z Films), Latin America (California Filmes), Hong Kong (Edko), Taiwan (MovieCloud), Korea (EnterMode), Belgium (Athena Films) and Greece (Odeon). Encore has picked it up for airlines.

Paris-based sales company WTFilms is expecting to seal further deals at...

Early 2019 slate also includes Sundance selection ‘Midnight Traveler’.

Doc & Film International will kick-off sales on Belgian filmmaker Lucas Belvaux’s upcoming Algerian War legacy drama Des Hommes, co-starring Gérard Depardieu and Catherine Frot, at the Unifrance Rendez-vous with French Cinema in Paris next week (Jan 17-21).

Based on the eponymous novel of Laurent Mauvignier, Depardieu co-stars as the tortured, alcoholic figure of Feu-de-Bois, a brutish troublemaker haunted by a tough childhood and the horrors he saw as a young French soldier in Algeria during the country’s 1954-62 independence war.

The story unfolds some 40 years later in remote Burgundy region...

Early 2019 slate also includes Sundance selection ‘Midnight Traveler’.

Doc & Film International will kick-off sales on Belgian filmmaker Lucas Belvaux’s upcoming Algerian War legacy drama Des Hommes, co-starring Gérard Depardieu and Catherine Frot, at the Unifrance Rendez-vous with French Cinema in Paris next week (Jan 17-21).

Based on the eponymous novel of Laurent Mauvignier, Depardieu co-stars as the tortured, alcoholic figure of Feu-de-Bois, a brutish troublemaker haunted by a tough childhood and the horrors he saw as a young French soldier in Algeria during the country’s 1954-62 independence war.

The story unfolds some 40 years later in remote Burgundy region...

Celle que vous croyez

For his sixth film, Celle que vous croyez, France’s Safy Nebbou assembles an all-star cast led by Juliette Binoche, Nicole Garcia, Charles Berling, Guillaume Gouix, Francois Civil, Marie-Ange Casta, Claude Perron and Jules Houplain. Produced by Michel Saint-Jean of Diaphana Films, the project is being co-produced through Scope Pictures and France 3 Cinema. Cinematographer Gilles Portes lensed the production. Nebbou is best known for his 2008 title Mark of Angel, a melodrama based on a true story starring Catherine Frot and Sandrine Bonnaire.…...

Jamel Debbouze is producing under his Kissfilms banner alongside Nicolas Duval-Adassovsky.

Source: Arno Roth

‘;New Biz In The Hood’

French director Mohamed Hamidi, whose 2016 breakout picture One Man And His Cow drew 1.3 million spectators in France and sold well internationally, has started shooting his latest comedy about a trendy communication agency forced to locate to a tough, no-go zone in an outer Paris suburb.

TF1 Studio will launch sales on the film – entitled New Biz In The Hood! (Zone Franche) - at the Unifrance Rendez-vous with French Cinema in Paris this week (Jan 18-22). The company has released an exclusive first image from the first week on set.

Nicolas Duval-Adassovsky at Paris-based Quad is producing alongside actor-producer star Jamel Debbouze under his Kissfilms banner. Directorial duo Eric Toledano and Olivier Nakache are also on board through their production company Ten Films.

Lellouche co-stars as Paris entrepreneur Fred Bartel who falsely claims his rising communication agency is situated...

Comedy from director Mohamed Hamidi (One Man And His Cow) to start shooting in Paris.

Source: Wiki Commons

Jamel Debbouze, Gilles Lellouche, Mohamed Hamidi

French director Mohamed Hamidi, whose 2016 breakout picture One Man And His Cow drew 1.3 million spectators in France and sold well internationally, has started shooting his latest comedy starring Gilles Lellouche and Jamel Debbouze.

The film, provisionally entitled New Biz In The Hood! (Zone Franche), is about a trendy communication agency forced to locate to a tough, no-go zone in an outer Paris suburb.

TF1 Studio will launch sales on the project at the Unifrance Rendez-vous with French Cinema in Paris this week (Jan 18-22).

Nicolas Duval-Adassovsky at Paris-based Quad is producing alongside actor-producer star Debbouze under his Kissfilms banner. Directorial duo Eric Toledano and Olivier Nakache are also on board through their production company Ten Films.

Lellouche co-stars as Paris entrepreneur Fred Bartel who falsely claims his rising communication agency is situated in a tough...