Blandine Lenoir: Last News

Nick Vivarelli International CorrespondentFor its 75th edition, Switzerland’s Locarno Film Festival, long known as a global indie cinema temple, is looking to the future while repositioning itself as a forward-thinking hub for a wider range of movies, including studio and streamer titles, with broad audience appeal.“We believe that entertainment can be both serious and fun: I don’t see an opposing scenario where entertainment is only cheap, and seriousness is only extremely highbrow,” says the fest’s artistic director Giona A. Nazzaro.Now on his second edition at the fest’s helm, the Italian critic is putting his stamp on Locarno with a lineup that, along with straightforward auteur movies of various kinds, increasingly includes comedies and genre films.

Elsa Keslassy International Correspondent Best-known for her role as Noemie in the hit French series “Call My Agent!,” Laure Calamy has emerged in recent years as one of France’s biggest stars and most versatile actors. After a busy career in theater and many notable supporting roles, she finally got a shot at leading roles, and kudos have followed, for Caroline Vignal’s romantic comedy “My Donkey, My Lover and I,” which was part of Cannes’ Official Selection and earned her a Cesar award, and Eric Gravel’s social drama “A Plein Temps,” for which she won best actress at Venice in the Horizons section. Calamy is now on a roll and she’s shown that she can play anything. Case in point: Over this summer, she was at Locarno to present Blandine Lenoir’s period drama “Angry Annie,” in which she plays a working mother who joins the Movement for the Liberation of Abortion and Contraception (the film won Variety‘s Piazza Grande Award), and she’s now at Venice with Sebastien Marnier’s psychological thriller “The Origin of Evil,” in which she flirts with genre. In-between Locarno and Venice, she also made a stop at Angouleme Film Festival, where she presented “Angry Annie” and Marc Fitoussi’s “Two Tickets to Greece.”

Guy Lodge Film CriticThe fashions, fabrics and eye-crossingly patterned wallpapers of the 1970s abound in “Angry Annie,” a French period piece practically painted in avocado green and Le Creuset orange, with hand-crocheted accessories for good measure. Would that the rest of Blandine Lenoir’s rousing abortion drama felt quite so dated.

EXCLUSIVE: Paris-based company Indie Sales has sold Angry Annie, French director Blandine Lenoir’s latest feature, to a host of key territories ahead of the film’s world premiere at the Locarno Film Festival on Thursday.