Katell Quillevere: Last News

Jessica Kiang In her career to date, French director Katell Quillévéré has demonstrated an unusual talent for connecting to her characters so intensely that in some moments they seem less to be up on the screen in front of you, than sitting right next to you. Or even, as with the daydreams and interior musings that punctuated her wonderful last film “Heal the Living,” right inside you. But with her fourth feature, “Along Came Love,” that intimate connection appears to have been broken, as though this turbid post-war romantic saga is coming to us through the decades via a long-distance call that keeps dropping. Perhaps to establish some authenticity early, the film opens with archival footage of the French liberation celebrations at the end of World War II. The jubilant scenes darken as “collaborator” Frenchwomen, accused of pursuing relationships with the occupying Germans, are lined up for ritual public humiliation. Last year, Alice Diop’s extraordinary “Saint Omer” also alluded to the practise of shame-shaving these women’s heads, then allowed the viewer to infer the connection to its seemingly unrelated story. By contrast, “Along Came Love” makes the link ploddingly literal — and also a little dubious considering the florid melodrama that is about to unfold — by morphing from archive to (admittedly well-matched) monochrome footage of thus-disgraced Madeleine (Anaïs Demoustier), fleeing the retributive mob and taking refuge in a barn, where she tries to scrub the painted swastika off her pregnant belly. 

Elsa Keslassy International Correspondent The American French Film Festival, formerly known as COLCOA, has set the dates of its 2023 edition to Oct. 18-22. Organized by the Franco-American Cultural Fund, the festival will host its 27th edition at the Directors Guild of America Theater on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood. “Created by the Franco-American Cultural Fund, this event is the largest French film festival in North America and the largest festival dedicated to French Films and TV programs in the world,” said Cécile Rap-Veber, CEO of Sacem (the guild for authors, composers and publishers of music) who presides over the Franco-American Cultural Fund.

French hip-hop series Le Monde de Demain has scooped the Grand Prize at the Series Mania International Competition.

Marta Balaga Netflix and Arte’s musical show “Le Monde de Demain” (“The World of Tomorrow”) took the top prize in the International Competition of television festival Series Mania at the event’s awards ceremony Friday.The series, created by Katell Quillévéré, Hélier Cisterne – both also directing – Vincent Poymiro and David Elkaïm, takes a look at the birth of the French hip-hop movement in the 1980s. Made with the collaboration of Laurent Rigoulet and the participation of Kool Shen, JoeyStarr and DJ Détonateur S, it was described by the organizers as “a personal chronicle about a Parisian suburban youth reaching adulthood, claiming its own space in a new France, a country to reinvent.” In the acting categories, Michelle De Swarte was noticed for her role in the U.K.’s “The Baby,” produced by Sky, HBO and OCS, while Israeli actor Yehuda Levi impressed the jurors with his performance in “Fire Dance,” a Yes TV, Firma Productions and Kuma Studios production about an 18-year-old girl falling for a much-older married son of their ultra-Orthodox community’s leader.“He had to be charismatic in a manly way,” helmer Rama Burshtein-Shai told Variety ahead of the series’ premiere.“Levi, a very big star here in Israel, is so talented.