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Editors note: This review was originally published May 18 after its world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival where it co-won the Jury Prize. It opens in New York theaters Friday.

After breaking out internationally in 2012 with his Oscar-nominated drama The Broken Circle Breakdown, and making his Hollywood debut in 2018 with Beautiful Boy, Felix van Groeningen makes his Competition debut in Cannes with The Eight Mountains, perhaps the most understated film of his career so far.

This is a gentle tale of a decades-spanning friendship that seems a little out of its depth in such a heavyweight showcase. With terrific cinematography and two engaging leads, it’s easy on the eye — as well it should be at two hours and 27 minutes — but it’s lackluster in its telling and pales next to Paolo Sorrentino’s The Hand of God, which covered similar themes of adolescence and young adulthood last awards season.

Nashville’s Ryman Auditorium is famously also known as the Mother Church of Country Music and one-time home of the Grand Ole Opry, but it has played a crucial role in Rock & Roll history as well. On Thursday, the 130-year-old venue was designated an official landmark by the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, making it one of only 12 such locations in the United States.

Rock & Roll Hall of Fame President and CEO Greg Harris was joined by Nashville Mayor John Cooper and country band Old Dominion for the announcement, which...

Community has always been key for Horsegirl, the rising Chicago indie outfit whose fuzz-bombed songs started garnering attention when all three members were still in high school. The video for their 2021 single “Billy” captured a grainy house party packed with friends, and the clip for their latest single, “Dirtbag Transformation (Still Dirty),” is similarly communal, with Horsegirl and their cohort — who play in other local bands like Lifeguard, Friko, Dwaal Troupe, and Post Office Winter — taking over guitarist Penelope Lowenstein’s old elementary school.

Having instructed their friends to come equipped with props and costumes,...

Belle and Sebastian have unveiled a music video for their single, “Talk To Me Talk To Me,” off the group’s new LP, A Bit Of Previous. The video was written and directed by 15-year-old south London siblings Freya and Rosalie Salkeld.

“We had a small budget to make the video and were going to make it ourselves, but we ran out of time,” frontman Stuart Murdoch explained in a statement. “So we put out an open call to filmmakers who would be interested in making something for the existing budget,...

Chicago indie rockers Horsegirl channel their indie rock predecessors, and take a bit of music video inspiration from Ok Go, in the new clip for their latest song, “World of Pots and Pans.”

The simple video doesn’t involve elaborate treadmill choreography or anything like that, but still it finds the trio executing an impressive bit of real-time animation. In the clip, Horsegirl add and remove various objects and lyrics-embossed slides to a projector in perfect unison with the crunchy, pepped-up churn of “World of Pots and Pans.”

“It feels...

Radar Films, the Mediawan-owned production banner, is reteaming with “The Deep House” filmmakers Julien Maury and Alexandre Bustillo on “North Sentinel.” The well-established company, which is headed by Clement Miserez and Matthieu Warter, is developing several other English-language projects including a genre twist on “The Phantom of the Opera” directed by Xavier Gens (“The Divide”).

Rolling off “The Deep House,” an underwater horror film that was just acquired by Blumhouse and Epix, Maury and Bustillo will next direct “North Sentinel.” Pic is inspired by the true story of an explorer who set off to visit a dangerous island located deep in the Indian Ocean, where a tribe of indigenous people live, and was killed. Visiting the island or going anywhere near it has been banned by the Indian government. “North Sentinel” will revolve around a young American woman who embarks on a journey to the island in order find her missing brother.

Gaumont’s international sales arm will launch four new upcoming titles at Pre-Cannes Screenings next week.

French sales, production and distribution giant Gaumont has unveiled four new projects to introduce to buyers at the Pre-Cannes Screenings.

Shooting has just begun on Ramzi Ben Sliman’s in-house production Neneh Superstar, a ballet school drama starring big-screen debutant Oumy Bruni Garrel, Maïwenn and Aïssa Maïga. Bruni Garrel, who is the daughter of Valeria Bruni Tedeschi and Louis Garrel, plays a 12-year-old girl who wins a place at the prestigious dance school of the Opéra de Paris. She outshines the other students but...

Photo: ‘Days of The Bagnold Summer’/ Music by Belle and Sebastian Millennials, here’s your daily reminder that we’re getting old: Belle and Sebastian, the Scottish Indie band famous for soundtracking the ennui of ‘The O.C.’, ‘Juno’, and ‘Forgetting Sarah Marshall’, is twenty-seven years old. While the band has shed some members from the early days, frontman Stuart Murdoch is still doing his thing--the band’s most recent project is providing the score for the film ‘Days of The Bagnold Summer’, directed by Simon Bird and adapted from a 2012 graphic novel by Joff Winterhart. Related article: The Complete List of 2021 Oscar Nominations – Celebrations, Surprises & Snubs | The Show Must Go On Related article: A Tribute to Barry Jenkins: Hollywood’s Most Revolutionary Filmmaker & Oscar Winner Over the years, Murdoch has intermittently leaped into more active roles in the world of Cinema. In 2001, Belle and Sebastian provided an entire album...

The first clapperboard is set to slam in March on Christian Duguay’s new film, a Nolita Cinema production sold by TF1 Studio whose SVOD rights have reportedly been bought by Disney+. 8 March will see shooting begin on Ride Above by Canadian director Christian Duguay who is embarking upon his 4th feature film following on the heels of Jappeloup (1.8 million admissions in France in 2013 and a nomination for the Best Actor Lumières award as well as the Best New Female Hope César), Belle and Sebastian, The Adventure Continues (1.8 million French viewers in 2015) and A Bag of Marbles (1.3 million admissions in France in 2017). The cast comprises Pio Marmaï,...

Gaumont is set to unveil sprawling period thriller “The Colors of Fire,” based on Pierre Lemaitre’s international bestseller.

Directed by Clovis Cornillac, “The Colors of Fire” is headlined by a prestigious cast, including Lea Drucker (pictured), the Cesar-winning actor of “Custody,” as well as Benoit Poelvoorde (“Sink or Swim”), Olivier Gourmet (“Karl Marx”), Fanny Ardant (“DNA”), Alice Isaaz (“Elle”) and Cornillac.

Set for delivery in the second half of 2021, “The Colors of Fire” is budgeted at $16 million — a big budget by French standards — and is being produced in-house by Gaumont, as part of the company’s recent mandate to fully finance and produce select films. The movie is in post and shot entirely in Paris.

Lemaitre, author of “The Colors of Fire,” previously wrote “See You Up There,” whose film adaptation directed by Albert Dupontel won five César Awards and sold more two million theatrical admissions in France.

“Although...

Italy was the biggest market for French films.

The international box office for French films fell 52% to 40m admissions worldwide in 2018, against 82.5m in 2017, according to figures released by Unifrance on Thursday (January 17).

French cinema export body published the preliminary data at its annual press conference, this year taking place at the Ministry of Culture, on the fringes of its annual Rendez-vous with French Cinema in Paris (January 17-21).

According to the Unifrance numbers, the admissions generated a box office of €237m against €468m the year before. The figures were similar to those of 2016 when there were 34m admissions worldwide.

Canadian director Christian Duguay is directing the third season of Frank Spotnitz’s “Medici” television saga, which has started shooting in Rome with Italian actor Francesco Montanari attached to play radical preacher Girolamo Savonarola, who became leader of Florence after the Medici family’s overthrow in 1494.

Duguay succeeds Jon Cassar (“24”), who helmed “Medici: Masters of Florence. The Magnificent Part I,” which was the show’s second season.

Montanari, who broke out internationally with Sky’s “Crime Novel,” more recently played the relentless anti-Mafia prosecutor who is the central character in pubcaster Rai’s hit “The Hunter.” He won the best performance prize for this role at the Cannesseries festival in April.

In the third “Medici” season, “Medici: Masters of Florence. The Magnificent Part II,” Florentine statesman and ruler Lorenzo De Medici, played by Daniel Sharman, “has become a man who will have to fight against his demons and defend Florence...

Stuart Murdoch, lead singer and songwriter of Belle and Sebastian, has directed a movie. It is called God Help the Girl, it stars Emily Browning, and it opens this weekend. It’s obliquely autobiographical in a sense, its protagonist a spiritual stand-in for the musician. It is also not animated. In fact, there isn’t all that much animation tied to the work of Belle and Sebastian in general. The Scottish indie pop group has mostly stuck with narrative-minded live-action videos over the course of their career. There isn’t even a French cartoon based on the children’s book from which the band took their name, “Belle et Sébastien,” though there is a Japanese anime series from the early 1980s. All 52 episodes are on YouTube. However, that sort of tenuous excuse to watch a cartoon won’t be necessary this week. Belle and Sebastian have actually made two animated music videos, both...