France: Last News

Naman Ramachandran Acclaimed British actor, writer and director Samantha Morton who was awarded a Fellowship at the EE BAFTA Awards on Sunday has called for more investment in British cinema. The award is the highest recognition given by BAFTA to an individual for their exceptional contribution to the film, games or television industry. Addressing a press conference after accepting her award, Morton said: “We need more investment in British cinema.

Jessica Kiang It is increasingly weird to recall that for a while, French director Bruno Dumont was the kind of filmmaker who reminded you, often forcibly and somewhat against your will, that the word “auteur” contains most of the letters of “austere.” “The Empire,” another of the director’s proudly off-kilter comedies that pitches the bumbling denizens of a small French village into a vast, sinister conspiracy extending far beyond their foreshortened horizons, hovers several light years — and two janky light sabers — away from austerity. Unfortunately, though, the air out there is also a little thin on hilarity, with the film’s one-gag setup becoming stretched to the point that it doesn’t even matter that it’s a pretty good gag.

Outlander fans are known for their fierce love and loyalty to the hugely popular time-travel drama filmed and set in Scotland.

Somebody — or something — is speaking from inside a timber crate. “It’s so dark in here… a night so deep and opaque” read the subtitles; the voice is speaking in Fon, the local language of the West African country that was once called Dahomey and is now Benin. As the slats are nailed down, the voice is increasingly muffled; we are outside, but we are inside too, watching the light disappear.

Jessica Kiang In November 2021, 61 years after Benin gained independence from the French empire, 26 of the many thousands of plundered national antiquities were returned by France to their African home. Inserting an inquisitive, imaginative intelligence into this key moment in the troubled timeline of post-imperial cultural politics, French-Senegalese director Mati Diop fashions her superb, short but potent hybrid doc “Dahomey” as a slim lever that cracks open the sealed crate of colonial history, sending a hundred of its associated erasures and injustices tumbling into the light.

Elsa Keslassy International Correspondent Olivier Assayas, the celebrated French director of “Clouds of Sils Maria” and “Irma Vep,” is making his Berlinale competition debut this year with “Suspended Time,” his most personal film to date. Speaking to Variety ahead of the movie’s premiere at the Berlinale, Assayas says the film retells his experience during the lockdown and is based on his personal diary.

British actress Maisie Williams has revealed that, while playing Arya Stark in the Netflix fantasy drama Game of Thrones brought her worldwide fame and riches, it brought its personal darker side for her as a young person.

Ben Croll Launching in competition in Berlin, Mati Diop’s “Dahomey” traces the path of 26 royal treasures purloined by French soldiers in 1892 and restituted to the country of Benin in 2021. Moving from Paris to Cotonou, the inventive documentary allows the artifacts to speak for themselves, reflecting on their journey in Fon-language dialogue often set against an ethereal and evocative synthpop score. Variety spoke with filmmaker ahead of her film’s world premiere.

“The first shape I had in mind for this film was fiction,” filmmaker Mati Diop told a Berlin Film Festival presser this morning when quizzed on the structure of her inventive documentary Dahomey. 

Guy Lodge Film Critic Three years ago, in an awards season narrowed and clouded by the global pandemic, the BAFTA awards acted as an unprecedentedly accurate Oscar bellwether, matching the U.S. Academy’s eventual selections in all but one of 19 feature-film categories — from “Nomadland’s” best film victory to acting wins for Anthony Hopkins and Frances McDormand.

John Hopewell Chief International Correspondent Jean Labadie’s Le Pacte and sales agency Film Factory have joined Spanish pay giant Movistar Plus on the next film from Alberto Rodríguez (“Marshland”), which is shaping up fast with as one of the biggest packages from Spain this year at the Berlinale’s European Film Market. Le Pacte will co-produce the thriller out of France and handle French distribution rights. Film Factory is launching international sales at Berlin.

Leo Barraclough International Features Editor In Christine Angot‘s documentary “A Family,” which premieres Sunday in the Encounters section of the Berlin Film Festival, the French novelist explores how various members of her family reacted to the revelation that she was repeatedly raped by her father from the age of 13. The film starts with a startling confrontation between Angot and her stepmother in Strasbourg, with Angot pushing her way into her stepmother’s apartment with a camera-person and proceeding to question the woman about Angot’s late father’s crimes and the wife’s view on that. Angot says that this incident was not planned at all.

Philippe Clement believes he can make Rangers millions by selling their young stars for a huge profit.

It's hard to imagine Philippe Clement living the millionaire’s lifestyle in the casinos of Monte Carlo.

EXCLUSIVE: Urban Sales has unveiled key deals for Mascha Halberstad’s CGI animation Fox And Hare Save The Forest ahead of its world premiere in the Berlin Film Festival’s young audience-focused Generation Kplus sidebar this weekend.

Guy Lodge Film Critic If any part of you has been curious as to how French filmmaker Olivier Assayas spent the early days of the global pandemic, along comes “Suspended Time” to answer your question, with very much the answer you might expect: pretty comfortably, thanks for asking. Alternating a thinly fictionalised portrait of the artist isolating at his family’s country home with fully autobiographical narration by the director himself, this mildly amusing but vastly indulgent bagatelle feels a tardy entry in the first wave of lockdown cinema — too late to feel fresh, but still too soon to have accumulated much meaningful perspective on an experience we all remember too well.

When real-life couple Justine Triet and Arthur Harari set out to write Anatomy of a Fall, about a woman on trial for the murder of her husband, they built the story on relationships first and foremost.

The Oscar-nominated artisans from Ridley Scott‘s epic Napoleon joined me as part of Apple Original Films‘ presentations at Deadline’s Contenders Film: The Nominees event. Veteran production designer Arthur Max and costume designers Janty Yates and David Crossman talked extensively about what it was like to work with Sir Ridley on the ambitious, large-scale production that saw Joaquin Phoenix play Napoleon Bonaparte and Vanessa Kirby his wife Josephine.

Elsa Keslassy International Correspondent Cohen Media Group, the U.S. distribution company behind Matteo Garrone’s Oscar-nominated “Io Capitano,” has acquired North American rights to “The President’s Wife,” a biting movie starring Catherine Deneuve as the former first lady Bernadette Chirac. The deal closed during the European Film Market currently taking place and running alongside the Berlin Film Festival.

As we race to the Oscar finish line, it has certainly been a year to remember. The movie business all but shook off the last vestiges of the Covid era with the phenomenon that was Barbenheimer — collectively, Barbie and Oppenheimer earned more than $2 billion globally at the box office. Not only is cinema alive and kicking, but both of those box office behemoths are Oscar-nominated for Best Picture.

Air have officially kicked off their ‘Moon Safari’ anniversary tour in Rouen – watch the footage below.The French duo recently announced their European and UK tour to play ‘Moon Safari’ in full for the first time, as their critically-acclaimed record celebrated its 25th anniversary last year.Now, Air have hit the ground running in Rouen, France, where they performed classics such as ‘Sexy Boy’ and ‘All I Need’. They also played a string of hits from other albums including ‘Cherry Blossom Girl’ from 2004 album ‘Talkie Walkie’, ‘High School Lover’ from their Virgin Suicides soundtrack and closed with ‘Electronic Performers’ from ’10 000 Hz Legend’.Check out footage from their inaugural ‘Moon Safari’ anniversary show and the full setlist below:Moon Safari Tour '24Show 1 MERCI !!@nicolasgodin @jbdunckel pic.twitter.com/Qh0rQ2z5Sn— AIR (@airofficial) February 16, 2024Act I:‘La femme d’argent’‘Sexy Boy’‘All I Need’‘Kelly Watch the Stars’‘Talisman’‘Remember’‘You Make It Easy’‘Ce matin‐là’‘New Star in the Sky (Chanson pour Solal)’‘Le voyage de Pénélope’Act II:‘Radian’‘Venus’‘Cherry Blossom Girl’‘Run’‘Highschool Lover’‘Surfing on a Rocket’‘Don’t Be Light’Encore:‘Alone in Kyoto’‘Electronic Performers’Air recently announced a huge UK outdoor show at Halifax Piece Hall to add to their UK tour.