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If you’ve never known what it’s like to be the only hot person in a small town, Alain Guiraudie’s “Misericordia” is here to show you just that, in all its darkly comic anguish.

The “Stranger by the Lake” director’s latest film, which premiered at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival before touring Telluride, Toronto, and New York, will open in select theaters on March 21. IndieWire exclusively announces the film’s release from Sideshow and Janus Films here. “Misericordia” finds Guiraudie returning to the land of queer desire, though this time with Jérémie (Félix Kysyl) coming back to his hometown to mourn the death of his former boss. Whom he may have been in love with.

A national rollout will kickoff after the film opens at IFC Center and Film at Lincoln Center in New York and the Landmark’s Nuart Theatre.

While back in his hometown of Saint-Martial in rural France,...

French films took an estimated €250.2m in overseas markets in 2024 from 38.1 million admissions, according to projected annual figures released by Unifrance today (January 13).

This represents an 11% drop from 2023’s final tally of €271.4m and 42.7 million admissions although the final 2024 figures won’t be announced until October. Last year’s January predicted figures for 2023 (€234m and 37.4 million admissions) ended up being surpassed by the final numbers.

Dramatic films led the way with 26.1% of ticket sales abroad, followed by comedies at 21.8%, and action and adventure films with 21.3%;animation – 2023’s top genre – dropped to 17.7%.

Europe remains the continent with the largest appetite for French fare,...

Happy New Year! As is our favorite way to celebrate the dawning of a new year, we’re looking ahead at a very big batch of 2025 releases we’ve a) already seen and b) can heartily recommend to you, our readers.

As is tradition, this list includes a hefty number of films we’ve caught on the festival circuit and are bound for a 2025 release near year. They include consistent favorite filmmakers like David Cronenberg, Steven Soderbergh, Jia Zhang-ke, and Miguel Gomes, plus a wide variety of brand-new and rising film stars to get to know right now. Some of these films have already popped up on our annual critics survey, but this list also includes a batch of films worthy of attention right now, and through the rest of the year.

For those of you eager to load up your movie-going calendar for the coming months, let this list...

Following The Film Stage’s collective top 50 films of 2024, as part of our year-end coverage, our contributors are sharing their personal top 10 lists.

The best film I saw in 2024, Alain Guiradie’s new masterpiece Misericordia, will sadly not be on the list you see below—such are the quirks of film distribution. Its distributors, Sideshow and Janus Films will release it next year. Thus, it must wait 12 months to occupy the top spot it richly deserves—which it will—barring a profusion of filmmaking genius in 2025.

Even so, the films that did reach U.S. screens in 2024 provided several highlights. An extraordinary, unprecedented occurrence was the sudden and rare elevation of Indian filmmaking to the most hallowed stages of world cinema. Payal Kapadia made history with All We Imagine As Light, the first Indian film to be selected in the Cannes Competition in 30 years. Perhaps its French origins helped, but...

Jacques Audiard’s musical film Emilia Pérez is the frontrunner at the nomination stage for the 30th edition of France’s Lumière awards.

The prizes, which are regarded as the French equivalent of the Golden Globes, will be voted on by members of the international press hailing from 38 countries this year.

They cover 13 categories spanning film, direction, screenplay, actress, actor, female revelation, male revelation, first film, animation, documentary, international co-production, cinematography and music.

Audiard’s Cannes Jury Prize winner Emilia Pérez has clinched six nominations, followed by Boris Lojkine’s Souleymane’s Story, which won the Un Certain Regard Jury Prize this year, and Alain Guiraudie’s Misericordia, with five nominations each.

Other frontrunners with four nominations each, include François Ozon’s When Fall Is Coming and Jonathan Millet’s Ghost Trail.

The winners will be announced in a ceremony at the Forum des images in Paris on January 20, 2025.

The full...

Jacques Audiard’s Emilia Perez has topped the nominations for France’s Lumière Awards.

The French-made, Spanish-language film earned six nominations for best film, director, screenplay, cinematography, music and actress for Karla Sofía Gascón in her starring role as the titular transitioning Mexican drug lord.

The Lumière nominations cap a strong week for Emilia Perez, which garnered 10 nominations for the 2025 Golden Globes,and was the big winner at the European Film Awards with five prizes.

Scroll down for full list of nominees

Boris Lojkine’s Souleymane’s Story, which tracks the daily life of an undocumented Guinean asylum seeker in Paris,...

As the final weeks of 2024 roll on, more and more critics and publications will release lists of the best films of the year. But The Playlist missed covering one of the most anticipated annual lists when it hit social media last week: the Top 10 Films of 2024 for the esteemed French film magazine Cahiers du Cinema.

Read More: ‘Misericordia’ Review: Alain Guiraudie’s Nerve-Rattling Thriller Is A Dostoevskian Masterwork [Cannes]

Not to worry, we’ll cover it now, although fair warning: Cahiers’ choices stem from theaters that hit French cinemas this calendar year, so there’s a bit of carry-over from 2023.

Continue reading Alain Guiraudie’s ‘Misericordia’ Tops Cahiers du Cinema’s Top Films Of 2024 List, With Todd Haynes’ ‘May December’ At #2 at The Playlist.

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...

With turkeys packed in bellies and holiday gift shopping now officially underway, it’s getting to be that time of year where we look back on 2024 and reflect on what’s most important: The movies that made it all bearable. Kicking things off, the storied French film magazine Cahiers du Cinema has released its top 10, which include some selections from IndieWire’s own 2023 best-of list. Though our official 2024 list is not yet locked in, we also share some items on our 2024, so far best-of list. The list only includes movies that opened theatrically in France in 2024, hence the crossover.

Serving as the hub for the French New Wave and launching the careers of legendary talents such as François Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard, Cahiers du Cinema has been in publication since 1951 and continues to offer a bold, distinct voice in the world of film. One of its more unique choices over...

No matter the changes and upheavals from recent years, Cahiers du cinéma’s status as cinematic north pole has waned little––evidenced by annual top 10 lists combining beloved arthouse titles, one or two mainstream favorites, and titles whose status has yet to be established stateside.

This year is the epitome of such, topping out with Alain Guiraudie’s great Misericordia––his fifth time on the list and second in first place, after 2013’s Stranger by the Lake––and continuing with Todd Haynes’ May December. Works that have shown up many places this year and last find real estate with three those either lesser-seen or entirely disregarded in America: Rodrigo Moreno’s The Delinquents, Sophie Fillières’ Ma vie ma guele, and Jonás Trueba’s Septembre sans attendre. Meanwhile––and in a sterling confirmation that Cahiers knows what is up––there is love for M. Night Shyamalan’s Trap.

See the full...

The Valladolid International Film Festival in Spain recently concluded its awards ceremony, handing out prizes to films that used elements of different genres to explore meaningful social and political issues. The festival, which ran from October 18th to the 26th, recognizes innovative works that push creative boundaries in cinema.

French director Alain Guiraudie’s film “Misericordia” took home both the Golden Spike for best picture and Miguel Delibes screenplay award. According to the jury, the film balances genres and tones in a simple yet complex way. Beneath the surface of a small-town thriller and comedy lies a profound meditation on how desire and guilt impact human relationships.

Two Silver Spikes were also awarded, split between “Stranger Eyes” from Singapore and Spanish film “They Will Be Dust.” “Stranger Eyes” examines surveillance and isolation through its genre storytelling. “They Will Be Dust” presented the serious topic of euthanasia in a unique musical format.

Alain Guiraudie’s “Misericordia,” Carlos Marqués-Marcet “They Will be Dust” and Yeo Siew Hua’s “Stranger Eyes” all won big at Spain’s auteurist haven Valladolid Film Festival on Saturday, in a second edition under José Luis Cienfuegos whose prizes served as a vindication of the changes he has wrought at the festival as well as an indication of some ways European arthouse is going.

All three directors’ awards build on prior upbeat reception. Playing Cannes Premiere, “Misericordia,” which scooped Valladolid’s best picture Golden Spike and its screenplay trophy, was hailed by Variety as a “darkly comic backwoods fable of pansexual desire and small-town sociopathy” which marks a “welcome re-embrace of the streamlined murdery perversities of his terrific ‘Stranger by the Lake.'”

The Valladolid jury, made up of Greek director Sofia Exarchou, Spanish actress Aida Folch, critic and editor Devika Girish, German producer Ingmar Trost and Spanish director and writer Luis López Carrasco,...

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...

Carlos Marques-Marcet’s Toronto-winning musical drama They Will Be Dust, will open the 69th edition of the Valladolid International Film Week, also known as the Seminci, on October 18.

The end of life drama starring Alfredo Castro and Angela Molina won the Platform section at TIFF last month.

Valladolid, headed by José Luis Cienfuegos for a second year, is a key launchpad into the Spanish market for local and international films.

There are a total of 22 titles in the running for the festival’s top prize, the Golden Spike that comes with a €70,000 award for the Spanish distributor. The Silver Spike...

Watch the full episode above or listen to it below.

After a short, overwhelming stint in the mobile Criterion Closet, which boasts over 1,200 titles in the order they were added to the collection, Screen Talk co-hosts Anne Thompson and Ryan Lattanzio welcomed Criterion president Peter Becker to the annual New York Film Festival edition of “Screen Talk” Live.

But first, the co-hosts debated the merits of Luca Guadagnino’s artful but long “Queer” starring Daniel Craig as an aging gay junkie suffering from unrequited love. And they also argued about the NYFF closing nighter, “Blitz,” which some think lacks that Steve McQueen edge. His biggest budget film to date is also his most traditional, starring Saoirse Ronan and Elliott Heffernan as a mother and son separated during the London blitz of World War II. Reviews are stronger in Britain than stateside so far (Metascore: 76). Anne thinks it will play for Academy voters,...

AFI Fest is primed and ready to roll out.

The American Film Institute revealed the full lineup for this month’s festival, scheduled to take place in Los Angeles from Oct. 23-27. Joining the previously announced roster of films will be Tim Fehlbaum’s September 5, Payal Kapadia’s All We Imagine as Light, Samir Oliveros’ The Luckiest Man in America, Maisie Crow and Abbie Perrault’s abortion rights documentary Zurawski v Texas (executive produced by Hillary Clinton, Chelsea Clinton and Jennifer Lawrence), and Paul Schrader’s Oh, Canada, among many others.

The lineup includes six red carpet premieres, 12 special screenings, 13 luminaries picks, 15 discovery films, 12 world cinema films, 14 documentaries, four after-dark titles, 54 films in the short film competition and 28 films from the AFI Conservatory Showcase presented by AMC Networks. Other notable titles include Durga Chew-Bose’s Bonjour Tristesse with Chloë Sevigny; Mike Leigh’s Hard Truths, starring Marianne Jean-Baptiste; Paolo Sorrentino...

Jacques Audiard’s predicted Oscar-bound “Emilia Pérez” has unveiled its full bombastic trailer.

The Cannes award-winning musical follows four women in Mexico who are each pursuing their own happiness. The official synopsis reads: “The fearsome cartel leader Emilia (Karla Sofía Gascón) enlists Rita (Zoe Saldaña), an unappreciated lawyer stuck in a dead-end job, to help fake her death so that Emilia can finally live authentically as her true self.”

Selena Gomez plays Jessi, with Adriana Paz as Epifanía and Edgar Ramírez as Gustavo.

The film won the Cannes Jury Prize and the Cannes Best Actress Prize for the four lead stars of Gascón, Saldaña, Gomez, and Paz. The ensemble cast is also being feted at a slew of festivals.

The feature was also awarded the Cannes Soundtrack Award upon its world premiere, with music by Clément Ducol and Camille.

“Emilia Pérez” was selected by France as its International Feature Oscar submission,...

Like many of the fall film festivals, New York Film Festival had to mount its 2023 edition during the actors strike and without major stars like Emma Stone (“Poor Things”), Natalie Portman and Julianne Moore (“May December”) or Andrew Scott and Paul Mescal (“All of Us Strangers”) in attendance to promote their movies.

So, NYFF’s artistic director Dennis Lim is relieved the annual celebration of cinema is returning in 2024 with business as usual. This year’s fest runs from Sept. 27 through Oct. 14. “We are very happy to not have to work around those restrictions this year,” he says. “And we have many, many actors attending for some of the bigger films.”

He’s referring to movies like director Pedro Almodóvar’s “The Room Next Door,” starring Moore and Tilda Swinton; filmmaker Sean Baker for Palme d’Or-winner “Anora”; Steve McQueen’s historical drama “Blitz,” featuring Saoirse Ronan; Pablo Larraín’s...

The first batch of titles were announced in August, and now with Locarno and Venice firming up the selection process, we now have our second wave of films. Sixteen feature films (nominations of the European Film Awards will be revealed on 5 November) have been added and we find the likes of Venice competition winners in Pedro Almodóvar, Maura Delpero and Dea Kulumbegashvili, Orizzonti section winner Bogdan Mureşanu, Locarno Golden Leopard winner by Saulė Bliuvaitė and Toronto preemed Hard Truths by master filmmaker Mike Leigh.

April directed by Dea Kulumbegashvili

Conclave directed by Edward Berger

Hard Truths directed by Mike Leigh

Harvest directed by Athina Rachel Tsangari

Misericordia directed by Emma Dante (Italy)

Moon directed by Kurdwin Ayub (Austria)

Mr.…...

The European Film Academy has added a further 16 feature films to the longlist – known as the Feature Film Selection – for the European Film Awards. With the already announced 29 films the list comprises 45 titles.

These films will now be considered for the nomination stage of the European Film Awards. The nominees will be revealed on Nov. 5.

Among the titles are several Venice award-winners: Pedro Almodóvar’s Golden Lion winner “The Room Next Door,” Grand Jury Prize winner “Vermiglio,” Special Jury Prize winner “April,” and Horizon winner “The New Year That Never Came.” Other titles include Edward Berger’s “Conclave,” Mike Leigh’s “Hard Truths” and Luca Guadagnino’s “Queer.”

The films were selected by the European Film Academy Board, who consulted with a team of invited experts.

The European Film Awards take place on Dec. 7 in Lucerne, Switzerland.

These are the additional titles in the Feature Film Selection:

“April,” directed by Dea Kulumbegashvili

“Conclave,...

In Alain Guiraudie’s Misericordia, a young man named Jérémie (Félix Kysyl) returns to the village where he lived as a teenager to attend the funeral of his former employer. Like his protagonist, Guiraudie is back in familiar territory with his seventh feature, which finds the French filmmaker revisiting the murder mystery template of his 2013 breakthrough Stranger by the Lake. Except here, Guiraudie trades the thriller trappings of that earlier film for something more mischievous and darkly comic, more along the lines of his offbeat fables The King of Escape (2009) or Staying Vertical (2016). A kind of rural riff on […]

The post “I Didn’t Expect It to Make People Laugh So Much”: Alain Guiraudie on Misericordia first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

In Alain Guiraudie’s Misericordia, a young man named Jérémie (Félix Kysyl) returns to the village where he lived as a teenager to attend the funeral of his former employer. Like his protagonist, Guiraudie is back in familiar territory with his seventh feature, which finds the French filmmaker revisiting the murder mystery template of his 2013 breakthrough Stranger by the Lake. Except here, Guiraudie trades the thriller trappings of that earlier film for something more mischievous and darkly comic, more along the lines of his offbeat fables The King of Escape (2009) or Staying Vertical (2016). A kind of rural riff on […]

The post “I Didn’t Expect It to Make People Laugh So Much”: Alain Guiraudie on Misericordia first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

Sideshow and Janus Films have acquired all US rights from Sbs International to David Cronenberg’s Cannes world premiere and recent TIFF gala screening The Shrouds starring Vincent Cassel, Diane Kruger and Guy Pearce.

‘The Shrouds’: Cannes Review

The film will receive its US premiere in the Main Slate at New York Film Festival next month and stars Cassel as Karsh a businessman and grieving widower who invents a controversial technology that enables the living to monitor their deceased loved ones in their shrouds.

After multiple graves, including that of Karsh’s wife, are desecrated, the businessman sets out to track down the perpetrators.

Sideshow and Janus Films have acquired all U.S. rights to The Shrouds, written and directed by David Cronenberg and are planning a spring 2025 theatrical release.

The film world premiered at the Cannes Film Festival where it screened In Competition. It played the Toronto International Film Festival as part of the Gala program and is set for its U.S. premiere in the Main Slate at the New York Film Festival next month.

The deal was negotiated by Sideshow and Janus Films with Sbs International. Producers are Saïd Ben Saïd, Martin Katz and Anthony Vaccarello for Saint Laurent. It’s an Sbs, Prospero Pictures & Saint Laurent Productions Film with the participation of Telefilm Canada, Eurimages, Ontario Creates in association with Sphere Films, Crave & CBC Films with the support of Canal +, Ocs & the Centre National du Cinema et de L’image Animée.

“Building on a...

by Cláudio Alves

When talking about the four French Oscar finalists, one point of the quartet felt perpetually overlooked. Much was said about Emilia Pérez, the eventual selection, and plenty of discussion on All We Imagine as Light, its international provenance and potential as an unlikely Indian or Luxembourgian submission. Then, of course, there was the big-budget wannabee blockbuster of the lot, a new Count of Monte Cristo adaptation that secured US distribution and announced a fortuitous late-year release date hours before Audiard's musical stole its thunder. In the middle of all this commotion, Alain Guiraudie's Misericordia slipped by unnoticed. A shame, since it's one of the year's most beguiling films…...

by Nathaniel R

Selena Gomez in "Emilia Perez"

We've already posted two reviews of Emilia Perez here at Tfe, from Elisa (pro) and Cláudio (con), and it's been a potential Oscar player since it's premiere at Cannes in May.  Today France announced that the buzzy drug cartel trans musical curiousity would represent them at the Oscars, beating out fellow finalists Misericordia, All We Imagine as Light, and The Count of Monte Cristo. This is the second time France has submitted the often thrilling auteur Jacques Audiard. His previous submission, Un Prophete, was nominated for the prize back in 2009 but surely split the 'critical consensus' vote with Michael Haneke's The White Ribbon, allowing Argentina to slip between them for the win for the sleeper success The Secret in Their Eyes.  France hasn't won the Oscar in this category since 1992's Indochine. Could Emilia Perez finally spell gold again for the birthplace of cinema?...

If the race for Best International Feature Film feels rushed this year, it is: the Academy pushed up country submission deadlines by a month. Films still have until November 15 to play in theaters in their respective countries. The Academy has also laid down more rigorous rules for who serves on the Oscar selection committees: 50 percent must be filmmakers (including artists and craftspeople). France, for example, beefed up its committee from seven members to 11.

As a country with a robust film industry, France has often been criticized for picking the “wrong” Oscar submission, from Cannes Palme d’Or winner “Titane” (Neon), which was not nominated, to “The Taste of Things” (IFC Films) over Neon’s eventual Best Picture contender, “Anatomy of a Fall.”

In fact, Audrey Diwan, director of “Happening” — a film many thought should have been submitted instead of “Titane” — is now on the French selection committee, along with veteran...

Things are looking up for “Emilia Pérez.” France has chosen the upcoming Netflix release as its submission for the Best International Feature Oscar. Acquired by the streaming service out of Cannes, the film won both the Jury Prize and Best Actress prize for its female ensemble at the 2024 edition of the annual international film festival along the French Riviera.

The operatic crime drama about a fearsome Mexican drug cartel leader that enlists a plucky lawyer to help coordinate their gender reassignment surgery is written and directed by French auteur Jacques Audiard, whose 2009 film “A Prophet” was one of the last of France’s submissions to receive a Best International Feature nomination.

The film was chosen by revamped Oscar committee featuring 11 French professionals on both the artistic and industry side of filmmaking, including recent Oscar-nominated producers Nadim Cheikhroua (“Four Daughters”) and David Thion (“Anatomy of a Fall”), Oscar-winning filmmaker Florian Zeller,...

France has selected Jacques Audiard’s bold musical “Emilia Perez” to represent the country in the Oscars’ Best International Feature Film race, giving that category an instant frontrunner at the 97th Academy Awards.

The Netflix film, which caused a sensation at the Cannes Film Festival with its story of a Mexican drug lord undergoing sex reassignment surgery, is considered one of the year’s likeliest Best Picture nominees, making it a clear favorite in the international category as well.

It was chosen on Wednesday by a selection committee that had narrowed its choices to four: “Emilia Perez,” Payal Kapadia’s “All We Imagine as Light,” Matthieu Delaporte’s “The Count of Monte Cristo” and Alain Guiraudie’s “Misericordia.”

Last year, that committee chose “The Taste of Things” over “Anatomy of a Fall,” going with a ravishing romance over an edgier drama that had won the top prize in Cannes. “The Taste of Things...

France has picked Jacques Audiard’s Mexico-set musical Emilia Perez to represent the country in the best international feature category at the 2025 Academy Awards as it attempts to sing its way to a victory in the category for the first time in more than 30 years.

The primarily Spanish-language song-filled film is about cartel leader Emilia, who enlists an unappreciated lawyer to help fake her death so Emilia can live authentically as her true self.

It won both the Cannes Jury prize for director Audiard and a shared best actress award for its female cast Karla Sofía Gascón, Selena Gomez, Zoe Saldana...

France has selected Jacques Audiard’s Spanish-language musical Emilia Pérez to represent it in the Best International Feature Film category at the 97th Academy Awards.

The drama stars Karla Sofía Gascón as cartel leader Emilia who enlists the help of unappreciated lawyer Rita (Saldana) to help her fake her death so she can live authentically as her true self.

It premiered at Cannes, where it earned its four actresses – Gascón, Saldaña, Selena Gomez, and Adriana Paz – a collective Best Actress award, and also clinched the jury prize.

The film was selected from a short list of four films which also included swashbuckler The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre de La Patellière and Matthieu Delaporte; French-produced Indian drama All We Imagine as Light by Payal Kapadia and Misericordia by Alain Guiraudie.

This year’s revamped selection committee featured sales agent Carole Baraton, producer Nadim Cheikhroua (Four Daughters), Venice Golden Lion...

France’s revamped Oscar committee has selected Jacques Audiard’s exhilarating redemption thriller “Emilia Perez” for the international feature film race. The movie won two major awards at the Cannes Film Festival and earned rave reviews.

“Emilia Perez” stars Karla Sofía Gascón as a fearsome drug lord who embraces her true self as a woman. The Spanish-language film earned one of Cannes’s longest standing ovations and went on to win the Jury Prize (in a jury presided over by Greta Gerwig), on top of a best actress prize for the ensemble cast, including Gascón, Zoe Saldaña, Selena Gomez and Adriana Paz. The movie was bought by Netflix for the U.S. and the U.K. following its Cannes premiere.

Audiard is a revered French auteur who won a Palme d’Or with “Dheepan,” and was previously nominated for a foreign-language Oscar with “A Prophet” starring Tahar Rahim.

Although “Emilia Perez...

Maverick director Alain Guiraudie rarely makes concessions.

Through offbeat titles like 2013’s “Stranger by the Lake,” 2016’s “Staying Vertical” and 2022’s “Nobody’s Hero,” the French filmmaker has explored death and desire with an unflinching eye, offsetting social bemusement with an awe for nature. His work is defiant, queer, and idiosyncratic, which makes a recent bout of institutional support all the more surprising – especially to the auteur himself.

After launching out of at Cannes, Guiraudie’s latest film “Misericordia” – produced by Charles Gillibert’s CG Cinema and released in France by Les Films du Losange — then hit a fall festival grand slam, playing in Telluride, Toronto and New York before making the shortlist for France’s International Feature. Time will tell whether the newly revamped committee goes with Guiraudie’s psychosexual thriller over Jacques Audiard’s “Emilia Pérez,” Alexandre de La Patellière and Matthieu Delaporte’s “The Count of Monte Cristo...

Payal Kapadia’s Cannes Grand Prix winner “All We Imagine as Light” could find itself being in the enviable position of being the entry of choice at the Oscars’ international feature category from not one but two countries – France and India.

Earlier this week, “All We Imagine as Light” sparked a surprise as it turned up in the roster of four movies shortlisted by France’s Oscar committee; alongside Jacques Audiard’s “Emilia Perez,” “The Count of Monte Cristo,” an epic adventure film adapted from Alexandre Dumas’ classic, as well as Alain Guiraudie’s “Misericordia.”

Mainly produced by Thomas Hakim and Julian Graff through their France-based company Petit Chaos, the film secured distribution deals in most major territories months ago, including in the U.S. (where Janus Films and Sideshow will release it in the fall) and France (Condor Distribution), and is on track to become one of the most...

Cannes-premiering quartet Emilia Pérez, French box office hit The Count Of Monte Cristo, Misericordia and All We Imagine as Light have made the shortlist for France’s international feature film Oscar submission.

The four films were selected by a recently revamped 11-member selection committee appointed by France’s cultural minister Rachida Dati per a recommendation from national film body Cnc, which announced the selection on Wednesday evening.

Former head of Cannes’ Critics’ Week Charles Tesson presides over the selectors, who include producers Patrick Wachsberger, David Thion and Nadim Cheikhroua, sales agents Carole Baraton of Charades and Kinology’s Gregoire Melin,...

Cannes-premiering quartet Emilia Pérez, French box office hit The Count Of Monte Cristo, Misericordia and All We Imagine as Light have made the shortlist for France’s international feature film Oscar submission.

The four films were selected by a recently revamped 11-member selection committee appointed by France’s cultural minister Rachida Dati per a recommendation from national film body Cnc, which announced the selection on Wednesday evening.

Former head of Cannes’ Critics’ Week Charles Tesson presides over the selectors, who include producers Patrick Wachsberger, David Thion and Nadim Cheikhroua, sales agents Carole Baraton of Charades and Kinology’s Gregoire Melin,...

Cannes-premiering quartet Emilia Pérez, French box office hit The Count Of Monte Cristo, Misericordia and All We Imagine as Light have made the shortlist for France’s international feature film Oscar submission.

The four films were selected by a recently revamped 11-member selection committee appointed by France’s cultural minister Rachida Dati per a recommendation from national film body Cnc, which announced the selection on Wednesday evening.

Former head of Cannes’ Critics’ Week Charles Tesson presides over the selectors, who include producers Patrick Wachsberger, David Thion and Nadim Cheikhroua, sales agents Carole Baraton of Charades and Kinology’s Gregoire Melin,...

France’s Oscar committee has shortlisted four movies, including Jacques Audiard’s redemption thriller “Emilia Perez” and “The Count of Monte Cristo,” an epic adventure film adapted from Alexandre Dumas’ classic, as well as Payal Kapadia‘s “All We Imagine as Light” and Alain Guiraudie’s “Misericordia.”

All four movies word premiered at the Cannes Film Festival. “Emilia Perez” won two major awards, the Jury Prize and a best actress nod for its ensemble female cast, Karla Sofía Gascón, Selena Gomez, Zoe Saldana and Adriana Paz; while “All We Imagine as Light,” a tale of two Mumbai nurses bonding, won the Grand Prize, becoming the first Indian film in 30 years to win the award. Kapadia was also the first Indian female director to compete at Cannes. Guiraudie’s darkly comic and provocative “Misericordia” played at Cannes Premiere and recently screened at Telluride and Toronto, while “The Count of Monte Cristo,...

France has unveiled the four titles in the running to represent it in the Best International Feature Film category at the 97th Academy Awards.

They are:

All We Imagine as Light by Payal Kapadia The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre de La Patellière, Matthieu Delaporte Emilia Pérez by Jacques Audiard Misericordia by Alain Guiraudie

This year’s candidate is being decided by a restructured selection committee – featuring Venice Golden Lion winner Audrey Diwan and Oscar winners, writer, director and producer Florian Zeller and producer Patrick Wachsberger – as...

Sideshow and Janus Films have snapped up North American rights to Vermiglio, Maura Delpero’s Italian drama that won the Silver Lion at Venice and screened at Toronto earlier this week.

The companies said they planned to release the feature theatrically in the coming months. The deal was struck with US firm Anonymous Content and Paris-based Charades, which co-represent the North American rights to the film.

‘Vermiglio’: Venice Review

Written, directed and produced by Delpero, the film is set in the remote mountain village of Vermiglio in 1944 where war looms as a distant but constant threat. The arrival of Pietro,...

Sideshow and Janus Films have acquired North American rights to Maura Delpero’s intimate epic “Vermiglio,” which recently won the Venice Film Festival’s Silver Lion Grand Jury Prize.

The drama, which is set at the end of World War II in an Alpine village where the arrival of a soldier causes disruption in the dynamics between three sisters, subsequently had its North American premiere in the special presentations section at Toronto.

Sideshow and Janus Films plan to release “Vermiglio” theatrically in the coming months, they said in a statement.

In her Variety review, critic Jessica Kiang called “Vermiglio” “quietly breathtaking,” going on to note that the film “unfolds from tiny tactile details of furnishings and fabrics and the hide of a dairy cow, into a momentous vision of everyday rural existence in the high Italian Alps.”

Venice jury president Isabelle Huppert praised the Silver Lion winner for being a...

Sideshow and Janus Films have scooped up North American rights to Maura Delpero’s acclaimed Italian period drama Vermiglio, winner of the Venice Film Festival’s silver lion grand jury prize.

The film debuted in competition in Venice and received its North American premiere Tuesday night at the Toronto Film Festival. Sideshow and Janus say they will release the title in North American theaters in the coming months.

Vermiglio is a follow-up to Delpero’s well-received 2019 directorial debut Maternal. She wrote, directed and produced the new feature, which is loosely based on her own family history.

“We were deeply moved and impressed by Vermiglio, a new Italian classic that is intimate in scale but epic in scope, unfolding like a memory over four ravishingly shot seasons during the Second World War,” said Sideshow and Janus Films.

The Italian-language movie is named after the small village where it is set, high...

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,...

France has revealed the 11 members of its newly revamped Oscars selection committee as the country attempts to win its first award in the best international feature category in more than 30 years.

Former head of Cannes’ Critics’ Week Charles Tesson will preside over the group of leading industry figures who include Oscar-winning producer Patrick Wachsberger, Charades co-founder Carole Baraton, Kinology founder Gregoire Melin, filmmakers Audrey Diwan and Florian Zeller, producer and distributor Rosalie Varda, actress Clémence Poesy, Anatomy Of A Fall producer David Thion, distributor, producer and author Michèle Halberstadt of Arp Selection, and Four Daughters producer Nadim Cheikhroua.

France’s...

France’s National Film Board has unveiled its revamped and expanded Oscar committee which is presided over by Charles Tesson, the former artistic director of Cannes’ Critics Week.

Along with Tesson, the committee includes “Emmanuelle” director Audrey Diwan who won Venice’s Golden Lion with “Happening” in 2021; critically acclaimed French playwright, director and producer Florian Zeller (“The Father”); former Lionsgate boss Patrick Wachsberger; international sales veterans Carole Baraton from Charades, and Gregoire Melin from Kinology; powerful French distributor Michèle Halberstadt from Arp Selection; producers Rosalie Varda (“Faces Places”) from Ciné-Tamaris, Nadim Cheikhroua (“Olfa’s Daughters”) and David Thion (“Anatomy of a Fall”) at Les Films Pelléas; and actor Clemence Poesy.

Appointed by France’s culture minister, Rachida Dati, the committee is facing the difficult task of picking the French film that is best suited to give the country its first Oscar win for best international feature in over three decades.

This year’s Venice Film Festival lineup was not only the starriest in recent history, it was also the steamiest. Literally and figuratively. Aside from the brutal heatwave that plagued festivalgoers, the roster was filled with sexually charged movies, ranging from “Babygirl,” starring Nicole Kidman, to Luca Guadagnino’s “Queer” with Daniel Craig. Elsewhere in the festival circuit, Audrey Diwan’s “Emmanuelle” is kicking off San Sebastian, while Alain Guiraudie’s “Misericordia,” which opened at Cannes, is playing at virtually every major fest this fall.

But like Kidman’s character in “Babygirl” who only gets triggered when something is at stake, erotic movies in 2024 aren’t created as mere entertainment as they once were; they exist to push boundaries and break down clichés revolving mainly around female and gay protagonists.

“Babygirl,” directed by Dutch helmer Halina Reijn (“Bodies Bodies Bodies”), tackles the complexity of female sexuality and the issue of...

Paris-based sales and distribution company Les Films du Losange has boarded “Resurrection,” a sci-fi detective movie directed by Chinese director Bi Gan, whose 2018 film “Long Day’s Journey Into Night” played at Cannes.

Headlined by Chinese-language stars Jackson Yee (“Better Days”) and Shu Qi (“The Assassin”), the movie recently wrapped the second part of its shooting schedule. It is expected to resume filming in the fourth quarter of this year.

“Resurrection” tells the story of a woman whose consciousness falls into the “eternal time zone” during a surgical procedure. Trapped in many dreams, she finds an android corpse and tries to wake it up by telling it stories. The android then wanders through her stories and its senses gradually awaken.

Co-produced by Charles Gillibert’s CG Cinema, the project marks Bi’s first film since “Long Day’s Journey Into Night,” which contained a bravura final 59-minute sequence consisting of a single shot in 3D.

The Busan International Film Festival will expand its screening program by some 8% in what it calls “an effort to maintain a scale befitting Asia’s top film festival.” This is despite a 50% cut in government financial support.

The festival will open on Oct. 2 with “Uprising,” a star-studded period drama from Netflix that was scripted and produced by Park Chan-wook (“Oldboy”) and directed by Kim Sang-man.

It will close on Oct. 11 with the Eric Khoo-directed “Spirit World,” which the Singaporean director shot in Japan with French icon Catherine Deneuve in the lead role.

“Uprising” involves a servant (played by Gang Dong-won) and his master, the som of a noble family with military connections. While they agree that the servant should be free, complications arise. The film also stars Cha Seung-won, Kim Shin-rock, Jin Sun-kyu and Jung Sung-il. “With Park Chan-wook’s signature humor oozing through the well-woven narrative, full of intense conflict and tension,...