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It is an ongoing mystery why so many artists’ biopics, though undoubtedly coming from a place of deep admiration, choose to ignore the very thing that makes their subjects extraordinary — their art — in favor of outlining the less extraordinary (however torrid) circumstances of their private lives and loves. The latest example: the attractive but slight directorial debut of French actress Céline Sallette. Her feature “Niki” is a portrait of pioneering French-American painter, sculptor and illustrator Niki de Saint Phalle, in which the closest we ever get to any of her actual pieces is seeing the back of a canvas or two, as Niki (Charlotte Le Bon), bespeckled with paint splatter that highlights her delicate elf-princess beauty, frowns at her efforts in dissatisfaction. What exactly is she looking at? Unless you’re already intimately acquainted with every phase of her multivalent career and can navigate the film’s rather haphazard chronology,...

The Beast.She was there on harder terms than any one; she was there as a consequence of things suffered, one way and another, in the interval of years, and she remembered him very much as she was remembered—only a good deal better.So says John Marcher of May Bartram in Henry James’s novella The Beast in the Jungle (1903). Everything coalesces for John and May to reconnect on an October afternoon, having met years prior. Their meeting again is “the sequel of something of which he had lost at the beginning.” What follows is a strained dalliance, never physically realized. John is transfixed by May’s knowledge of his “secret,” the feeling of an imminent doom that has tailed him his entire life. Something awaits him, like a beast in the jungle. And May—only May, whose illness brings her closer and closer to her own death—knows what it is.

NYC Weekend Watch is our weekly round-up of repertory offerings.

Roxy Cinema

Our House of Tolerance 35mm presentation has its final showing on Friday; a print of John Frankenheimer’s Seconds plays this Saturday.

Film at Lincoln Center

A Ryusuke Hamaguchi retrospective has begun.

Paris Theater

A 1984 retrospective brings Spinal Tap, Starman, a 35mm print of Fanny and Alexander, and Now, Voyager.

Anthology Film Archives

“Essential Cinema” brings Pudovkin and Sharits, while “Ecocinema Behind the Iron Curtain” begins.

Film Forum

As Le Samouraï plays in a new 4K restoration, an Alain Delon retrospective and Ken Loach series are underway; Tootsie plays on Sunday.

Museum of the Moving Image

The Abyss screens on Saturday.

Metrograph

As a complete retrospective of Lee Chang-dong winds down, Liu Jian’s Have a Nice Day screens.

IFC Center

Dawn of the Dead plays through the weekend while Scooby-Doo (on 35mm) and John Waters’ Multiple Maniacs and Polyester show late.

Mubi’s May 2024 (streaming) lineup embraces their latest (theatrical) coup with a Radu Jude program. In addition to Do Not Expect Too Much From the End of the World arriving May 3, the Romanian director is highlighted with a six-film program launching on May 10. Lee Chang-dong and Bertrand Bonello are each given two-title highlights. While most of us can’t be at Cannes (I guess that’s a pun), the festival’s greatest tradition, booing, is celebrated with Jodie Foster’s The Beaver, Nicolas Winding Refn’s Only God Forgives, and Olivier Dahan’s Grace of Monaco. Among new releases, Al Warren’s Dogleg and the Ross brothers’ Gasoline Rainbow are notable selections.

As Lee Chang-dong recently told us in an extended interview, “Experiences in my life are what shaped me as a filmmaker, as obvious as that sounds. My artistic taste was shaped by the mountains and fields of my childhood village,...

NYC Weekend Watch is our weekly round-up of repertory offerings.

Roxy Cinema

Our House of Tolerance 35mm presentation returns on Friday, while a print of the James Dean-led Giant shows this Saturday alongside prints of Twilight and Half Baked; Decoder also screens.

Paris Theater

A 1984 retrospective brings Body Double and a 35mm print of Love Streams.

Japan Society

A two-title retrospective of the legendary Directors Company brings one of Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s best early films, Bumpkin Soup, and Sogo Ishii’s The Crazy Family.

Anthology Film Archives

“Essential Cinema” brings two early masterpieces by Ozu, while the Quebecois cinema retrospective has its final screenings on Friday; Roy Cohn/Jack Smith shows on Saturday and Sunday.

Film at Lincoln Center

Yi Yi and A Brighter Summer Day return.

Film Forum

As Le Samouraï plays in a new 4K restoration, an Alain Delon retrospective continues while a Ken Loach series starts.

No secret that we love The Beast. But it’s perhaps not even the best Bertrand Bonello film released in 2024. For more than two years I’ve been a major advocate of his lockdown horror Coma (at one point flying to another country to screen it), during which time the film’s struggled to achieve American distribution––a baffling, embarrassing oversight corrected by Film Movement, who are releasing this masterpiece-of-sorts at New York’s Roxy Cinema (where you can see House of Tolerance this weekend) on May 17, with other cities to follow. There’s now a trailer.

As David Katz said in his review from 2022’s Berlinale, “Coma is anything but a navel-gazing work, and more one of imaginative empathy. It is not Being Bertrand Bonello, but addressed to and concerning a person of a far-removed generation and gender: his teenage daughter Anna. Some amusing early interactions with pop culture,...

Update: the Roxy have added encore dates for House of Tolerance. See them below along with ticket info.

Bonello Season approaches. In anticipation of the U.S. release of The Beast and, at long last, Coma––or just an excuse to watch one of this (any) century’s greatest films; either works!––The Film Stage is proud to present his masterpiece House of Tolerance at the Roxy Cinema on March 14, 16, and 17, marking New York’s first 35mm showing in five years.

Special thanks to our friends at Janus Films / Sideshow Films and Film Movement, who will present trailers for their upcoming, respective Bonello releases The Beast and Coma.

The Film Stage readers receive a discounted $12 ticket with mention of our program at the Roxy’s box office. (Don’t be shy––their employees are very nice.) We look forward to seeing you at the movies.

House of Tolerance on 35mm

Tuesday,...

Once more, and with feeling…

Roxy Cinema

Our 35mm print of Bertrand Bonello’s House of Tolerance has a final screening on Sunday; Spike Lee’s He Got Game and Hoosiers play on prints, while Blonde Ambition screens this Sunday.

Anthology Film Archives

The films of Med Hondo play in a massive retrospective.

Film Forum

Hondo’s West Indies begins screening in a 4K restoration; the Belmondo-led Classe tous risques begins playing in a new 4K restoration; Buster Keaton’s The Cameraman plays with live music on Sunday.

Film at Lincoln Center

The films of Wojciech Has are highlighted in a new series.

Paris Theater

A new retrospective shows just how incredible a year 1974 was: Chinatown, Badlands, Amarcord, California Split, The Conversation, Kiarostami’s The Traveler and more screen, many on 35mm.

Museum of the Moving Image

The Red Shoes screens on Saturday and Sunday.

Museum of Modern Art

The...

Cinephiles will have plenty to celebrate this April with the next slate of additions to the Criterion Channel. The boutique distributor, which recently announced its June 2024 Blu-ray releases, has unveiled its new streaming lineup highlighted by an eclectic mix of classic films and modern arthouse hits.

Students of Hollywood history will be treated to the “Peak Noir: 1950” collection, which features 17 noir films from the landmark film year from directors including Billy Wilder, Alfred Hitchcock, and John Huston.

New Hollywood maverick William Friedkin will also be celebrated when five of his most beloved movies, including “Sorcerer” and “The Exorcist,” come to the channel in April.

Criterion will offer the streaming premiere of Wim Wenders’ 3D art documentary “Anselm,” which will be accompanied by the “Wim Wenders’ Adventures in Moviegoing” collection, which sees the director curating a selection of films from around the world that have influenced his careers.

Contemporary cinema is also well represented,...

April’s an uncommonly strong auteurist month for the Criterion Channel, who will highlight a number of directors––many of whom aren’t often grouped together. Just after we screened House of Tolerance at the Roxy Cinema, Criterion are showing it and Nocturama for a two-film Bertrand Bonello retrospective, starting just four days before The Beast opens. Larger and rarer (but just as French) is the complete Jean Eustache series Janus toured last year. Meanwhile, five William Friedkin films and work from Makoto Shinkai, Lizzie Borden, and Rosine Mbakam are given a highlight.

One of my very favorite films, Comrades: Almost a Love Story plays in a series I’ve been trying to program for years: “Hong Kong in New York,” boasting the magnificent Full Moon in New York, Farewell China, and An Autumn’s Tale. Wim Wenders gets his “Adventures in Moviegoing”; After Hours, Personal Shopper, and Werckmeister Harmonies fill...

The anxious energy running through the films of Bertrand Bonello is fueled by seemingly contrary cross currents: a mix of naturalism and dream logic, coolness and hysteria, the emotional equivalents of ice and fire. While hopping across distinct genres—his filmography includes a portrait of a bordello in fin-de-siècle Paris (House of Tolerance), a 1960s/’70s fashion biopic (Saint Laurent), a contemporary zombie movie (Zombi Child) and a take on millennial hipster terrorists (Nocturama)—Bonello stays close to characters who get lost in psychic underworlds, highlighting the mind’s slippery dark side and the human tendency (abetted by genre conventions) to fall into one […]

The post Transfigured Night first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

The anxious energy running through the films of Bertrand Bonello is fueled by seemingly contrary cross currents: a mix of naturalism and dream logic, coolness and hysteria, the emotional equivalents of ice and fire. While hopping across distinct genres—his filmography includes a portrait of a bordello in fin-de-siècle Paris (House of Tolerance), a 1960s/’70s fashion biopic (Saint Laurent), a contemporary zombie movie (Zombi Child) and a take on millennial hipster terrorists (Nocturama)—Bonello stays close to characters who get lost in psychic underworlds, highlighting the mind’s slippery dark side and the human tendency (abetted by genre conventions) to fall into one […]

The post Transfigured Night first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

Roxy Cinema

Our 35mm presentation of Bertrand Bonello’s House of Tolerance screens on Saturday and Sunday; Jessica Hausner’s Hotel plays on Friday, as does a Frank Tashlin / Jerry Lewis double-bill of Hollywood or Bust and The Geisha Boy; The Bridges of Madison County and Lenny Cooke play on Saturday, while One Hand Don’t Clap shows Sunday; Red Rock West plays Saturday and Sunday.

Anthology Film Archives

Films by Jean-Luc Godard and more play in Afterimage.

Museum of Modern Art

The essential work of Ernie Gehr plays in a new retrospective.

Film Forum

The Japanese horror series continues with Ugetsu, Throne of Blood, Audition, Godzilla, and more; Chitty Chitty Bang Bang plays on 35mm this Sunday.

IFC Center

The End of Evangelion plays this Sunday; The Big Lebowski, Fight Club, Under the Silver Lake, and The Shining play late.

The post NYC Weekend Watch: House of Tolerance on 35mm...

Bertrand Bonello is a cinephile filmmaker of equal caliber to Martin Scorsese or Quentin Tarantino and as brilliant at threading his fascinations into an original tapestry––he just so happens to work in French and a far-dimmer spotlight. Thus it was great, while preparing to screen his unbelievable House of Tolerance at New York’s Roxy Cinema on March 16 and 17, stumbling upon an interview (conducted by Gabe Klinger around the 2011 Cannes premiere) wherein Bonello outlined his dizzying combination of influences––I wasn’t kidding when I called House a lovechild between Tarantino’s Death Proof and Hou’s Flowers of Shanghai.

I’ll add, relevant to our Roxy showing, something Bonello said at the time of release: “I wanted something very, very, very, very soft. I wanted that we could feel the skin of the girls––the costumes, the hair. That’s why the film is shot in 35. That’s...

Pulsar Content has closed major deals on “Niki,” a biopic of French-American artist Niki de Saint-Phalle.

“Niki” marks the feature debut of popular French actor Céline Sallette and stars Charlotte Le Bon (“The Walk” “Saint-Laurent”) as de Saint-Phalle. Pulsar closed deals with Neue Visionen (Germany), Movies Inspired (Italy), Paradiso (Benelux), Praessens (Switzerland), Vercine (Spain), Magic Films (Cis), Best Films (Baltics), Shaw (Singapour), Sky Digi (Taiwan) and Immovision (Brazil).

The movie portrays Saint-Phalle from the age of 23, when she’s still a model and an aspiring actor who is married and has a two-year-old daughter, Laura. Together, they flee the U.S. during the oppressive McCarthy era and come to France, where they experience a short-lived euphoria. Soon, distant and frightening memories begin to emerge in Niki’s mind. Her vocation as an artist will be her salvation.

Le Bon is an actor-turned-director whose feature debut “Falcon Lake” bowed at Cannes.

The Marrakech International Film Festival has unveiled the 10 cinema figures who will participate in its In Conversation With program at its 20th edition running from November 24 to December 2.

They comprise Australian actor Simon Baker, French director Bertrand Bonello, U.S. actor Willem Dafoe, Indian filmmaker and producer Anurag Kashyap; Japanese director Naomi Kawase; Danish-u.S. actor and director Viggo Mortensen; U.K. actor Tilda Swinton; and Russian director and screenwriter Andrey Zvyagintsev.

Danish actor Mads Mikkelsen and Moroccan director Faouzi Bensaïdi, who will receive the festival’s honorary Étoile d’or prize this year, will also participate in the program.

Baker’s was seen most recently in Toronto title Limbo and Tribeca 2022 selection Blaze, with early features including L.A. Confidential (1997), David Frankel’s The Devil Wears Prada (2006), and J. C. Chandor’s Margin Call (2011), followed by hit series The Mentalist (2008–2015).

Bensaïdi’s first feature A Thousand Months world premiered...

A release is planned for 2024.

Sideshow and Janus Films have acquired all US rights to Bertrand Bonello’s The Beast from Kinology, following its world premiere in competition at Venice.

The partners plan a theatrical release on the dystopian romance feature, starring Lea Seydoux and George MacKay, in 2024.

The film has begun its festival rollout since premiering at Venice last month and has screened at Toronto, New York and Busan in South Korea. It will next play the BFI London Film Festival.

Liberally inspired by Henry James’ novella The Beast In The Jungle, it is set in the near future...

Editor’s Note: This review originally published during the 2023 Venice Film Festival. Sideshow and Janus Films will release “The Beast” in U.S. theaters on April 5, 2024.

Compelling evidence that every major arthouse director should be required to make their own “Cloud Atlas” before they die, Bertrand Bonello’s sweeping, romantic, and ravishingly strange “The Beast” finds the French director broadening — and in some cases challenging — the core obsessions of his previous films into a sci-fi epic about the fear of falling in love.

Split into three lightly intercut parts that trace the connection between two star-crossed souls (embodied by Léa Seydoux and George MacKay) from 1910 to 2044, Bonello’s latest and most accessible movie begins by literalizing the same basic premise that has undergirded previous work like “House of Tolerance” and “Zombi Child”: The past is always present (a dialectic explored here with the help of a machine that encourages...

Another year, another “strange time” for festivals. And yet, despite a pair of on-going strikes and an entertainment world that seems hellbent on remaining in flux, as the air turns chillier, it’s still time for the laurels to come out, and there are plenty of new films to get excited about seeing soon.

This year’s fall festival season includes new films from Hayao Miyazaki, Michael Mann, David Fincher, Ellen Kurras, Yorgos Lanthimos, Errol Morris, Pablo Larraín, Kitty Green, Andrew Haigh, Harmony Korine, and Anna Kendrick, and that’s only the start. There are films about everything from vampiric dictators to (actual) dicks, dumb money to stupid dreams, true stories of courage to fake stories of Nicolas Cage invading people’s minds, at least one very big suit, and so very much more.

And while a handful of films have opted to skip out on the festivals, like the...

One of the most buzzed-about international movies of the fall festival circuit, Bertrand Bonello’s “The Beast,” has already lured several distributors ahead of its world premiere in competition at Venice.

Represented by Kinology, the dystopian romance is headlined by Léa Seydoux (“Crimes of the Future”) and George MacKay (“1917”) as star-crossed lovers.

The gripping film, which marks Bonello’s most ambitious to date, is set in a near future where artificial intelligence reigns supreme and human emotions have become a threat. Gabrielle (Seydoux), a woman haunted by an irrational fear, is being told that she must purify her DNA to heal from past traumas in order to get a proper job. Through the process, Gabrielle revisits past lives and immerses herself in buried memories from 1910 and 2014, where she reunites with Louis (MacKay), her great love. While their bond has transcended lifetimes and eras, it’s also at the root of...

Pulsar Content has acquired “Niki,” a film about the famous French-American artist Niki de Saint-Phalle, for international sales. The Paris-based banner will introduce the period project to buyers at the Cannes market with exclusive first stills.

“Niki” marks the feature debut of popular French actor Céline Sallette and stars Charlotte Le Bon (“The Walk” “Saint-Laurent”) as de Saint-Phalle.

Le Bon recently made her feature debut with “Falcon Lake” — which bowed at Cannes last year — and previously starred in Robert Zemeckis’s “The Walk,” as well as Terry George’s “The Promise” and Jalil Lespert’s “Saint-Laurent.” Le Bon stars in “Niki” opposite Damien Bonnard (“Les Misérables“).

The movie will portray Saint-Phalle from the age of 23, when she’s still a model and an aspiring actor who is married and has a two-year-old daughter, Laura. Together, they flee the U.S. during the oppressive McCarthy era and come to France, where they experience a short-lived euphoria.

Léa Todorov’s first feature focuses on visionary Italian physician and educator Montessori.

Indie Sales has boarded Léa Todorov’s first feature Maria Montessori and has released a first look image from the project, which is currently in post-production.

The Franco-Italian co-production intertwines the real-life story of visionary Italian physician and educator Montessori with a fictional Parisian cabaret star hiding her child diagnosed with a disability to protect her career. The film’s French title is La Nouvelle Femme.

Set in the early 1900s, the film stars Jasmine Trinca as the titular character, known for her teaching experience with children...

Film has its market premiere this month at EFM.

Indie Sales has boarded Léa Todorov’s first feature Maria Montessori ahead of the film’s market premiere at EFM.

The Franco-Italian co-production intertwines the real-life story of visionary Italian physician and educator Montessori with a fictional Parisian cabaret star hiding her child diagnosed with a disability to protect her career. The film’s French title is La Nouvelle Femme.

Set in the early 1900s, the film stars Jasmine Trinca as the titular character, known for her teaching experience with children with learning challenges that led to the founding of the now famous Montessori method.

George MacKay (“1917”) is set to headline alongside Lea Seydoux (“Crimes of the Future”) in “The Beast,” a decade-spanning dystopian romance thriller directed by Bertrand Bonello (“Saint Laurent”).

Kinology (“Annette”) is handling international sales on “The Beast,” which will shoot in French and English and will start filming in August.

Taking place between Paris and California, “The Beast” is set in the near future where emotions have become a threat. Seydoux stars as Gabrielle, a woman who has finally decided to purify her DNA in a machine that will immerse her in her past lives and rid her of any strong feelings. But when she meets Louis (Mackay), and feels a powerful connection to him as if she’d known him forever. Late French actor Gaspard Ulliel was previously attached to star in the film.

“The Beast” marks Bonello’s most ambitious project to date. The helmer’s best-known credits include “Tiresa,...

The last French acting star to preside over the jury was Isabelle Huppert in 2009.

French actor Vincent Lindon has been named president of the jury for the 75th Cannes Film Festival, running May 17-28.

He will be joined by eight other jury members comprising UK actress and director Rebecca Hall, Indian actress Deepika Padukone, Swedish actress Noomi Rapace, Italian actress and director Jasmine Trinca, Iranian director Asghar Farhadi, French director Ladj Ly, US director Jeff Nichols and Norwegian director Joachim Trier.

In the same release, Cannes also announced that Trinca’s debut feature Marcel! will world premiere as a Special Screening.

Volodymyr Zelensky meets with Bernard-Henri Lévy just days before he is elected President of Ukraine Photo: Yann Revol, courtesy Cohen Media Group

Bernard-Henri Lévy on Wednesday, April 20 moved up our scheduled time to meet from 3:00pm (New York time) to 2:30pm so he could watch from the start the final French presidential debate between Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen. The election is today, Sunday April 24.

In The Will To See (Une Autre Idée Du Monde), co-directed with Marc Roussel, produced by Kristina Larsen, and executive produced by Emily Hamilton, Bernard-Henri Lévy takes us up close to many of the never-ending crises around the world.

Bernard-Henri Lévy: “I was in Ukraine a few days ago. Before that I was in the area of Odessa, Mykolaiv, I continue to go.” Photo: Cohen Media Group

This must-see documentary, shot by Olivier Jacquin and Roussel is dedicated to Paris Match Managing...

Sporting a powerful slate of new shows at MipTV, Studiocanal, owned by Vivendi’s Canal Plus, has announced what it describes as a “substantial” distribution deal with U.S. streaming service MHz Networks.

The deal features banner Canal Plus Creation Originale series “UFOs” and “Paris Police” as well as a modern classic, the pay TV’s groundbreaking premium crime drama “Spiral.”

Covering VOD and home entertainment rights, the licensing agreement takes in Season 1 and the brand new Season 2 of “UFOs,” which is part of Studiocanal’s MipTV’s sales slate, led by “Django,” starring Matthias Schoenaerts and Noomi Rapace and Canneseries official selection title “Infiniti.”

The sales also include Season 1 and Season 2, now in production, of large-scale period crime drama “Paris Police” and the renewal of the entire eight seasons of the multiple award-winning “Spiral.” Series will be made available to MHz Networks’ viewers across North America.

A retro French...

Cinephiles love to quote Roberto Rossellini, after his viewing of Chaplin’s oft-maligned late work A King in New York: “This is the film of a free man.” Alain Guiraudie, among the more accomplished French filmmakers of this century, is one of few who directs with that similar sense of freedom––which is not to say he’s on the same canonical level as Chaplin, or most other auteurs, where that line is invoked. Although there are many ways one can interpret the adjective “free,” Guiraudie’s work seems very related to his unconscious, manifesting the eclectic amorous desires that bubble up from there, in strange combinations that push the boundaries of queer sexuality ever further. And there’s also the sense that audience and industry reaction––especially after Stranger By the Lake brought him wider attention a decade ago––is not something that makes him second guess his natural instincts.

Brussels-based company Best Friend Forever has acquired “Coma,” the latest film by celebrated French director Bertrand Bonello (“Saint Laurent”). “Coma” will have its world premiere premiere at the Berlin Film Festival in the Encounters section.

Weaving genre, animation and live action, the stylish movie boasts an exciting cast including Louise Labeque (“Zombi Child”) and Julia Faure (“Camille Rewinds”), with voices by beloved late actor Gaspard Ulliel, as well as Louis Garrel, Laetitia Casta, Anaïs Demoustier and Vincent Lacoste.

“Coma” explores online behavior and content consumption through the eyes of a teenage girl who immerses audiences into her dreams and nightmares. Locked in her room, her only relationship to the outside world is virtual. Navigating between dreams and reality, she’s guided by a disturbing and mysterious YouTuber, Patricia Coma.

Bonello’s 10th feature, “Coma” was produced by Les Films du Bélier and My New Picture. Co-producers are Remembers Production, the...

The filmmaker has cast Léa Seydoux and Gaspard Ulliel; the next film by Sophie Letourneur and the feature debut by Emmanuelle Nicot will also be co-produced by the French-German channel. Arte France Cinéma’s (headed up by Olivier Père) first selection committee of 2021 has chosen to get involved in three projects as a co-producer and pre-purchaser. Standing out among them is La bête by Bertrand Bonello, which will be the eighth feature by the filmmaker, following The Pornographer (Cannes Critics’ Week in 2001), On War (Directors’ Fortnight 2008), Tiresia (in competition at Cannes in 2003), House of Tolerance (in competition at Cannes in 2011), Saint Laurent (in competition at Cannes in 2014), Nocturama (in competition at Toronto and at San Sebastian in 2016) and Zombi Child (Directors’ Fortnight 2019). Staged by Les Films du Bélier, La bête will boast a cast including Léa Seydoux and Gaspard Ulliel, and will tell...

Memory Box

It’s been over a decade since the last narrative feature from Lebanese directors Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joriege, but they’re back with fourth feature Memory Box (aka The Notebooks), produced by Abbout Productions’ Georges Schoucair and Haut Et Court’s Carole Scotta. Manal Issa (Nocturama), Rim Turki and Paloma Vauthier are among the cast in the production lensed by French-Canadian Josée Deshaies (of Bertrand Bonello’s House of Tolerance and Saint Laurent). Key figures of contemporary Lebanese cinema, Hadjithomas and Joriege have been working in documentary film for the past decade but are best remembered for their 2005 film A Perfect Day, which won the Fipresci prize out of Locarno and 2008’s I Want to See, which starred Catherine Deneuve and premiered in Un Certain Regard at Cannes.…...

Exclusive: Portrait Of A Lady On Fire star Adèle Haenel has signed with CAA. The multi-award winning French actress recently received a Best Actress César nomination for her role in Céline Sciamma’s Portrait, and previously took the prize for 2014’s Les Combattants (Love At First Fight).

Portrait Of A Lady On Fire was nominated for the Best Foreign Language Film Golden Globe and BAFTA this year, despite not being the official French submission to the Academy Awards. The drama releases in the U.S. via Neon on February 14.

Haenel’s other credits include last year’s Deerskin; 2017’s Bpm (which was France’s entry for the Oscars); the Dardenne brothers’ The Unknown Girl in 2016; 2013’s Suzanne; 2011’s House Of Tolerance from Bertrand Bonello; and Sciamma’s 2007 breakout Water Lillies. In total, she has been nominated for six César Awards. Along with the lead honor for Love At First Fight,...

Bertrand Bonello’s most famous film, “House of Tolerance,” showed his affinity for collapsing the supposed distance between the past and present, proving to his audience we haven’t changed as much as we’d like to think. His last film, the controversial “Nocturama,” a fantasia of terrorism and capitalism intertwined, proved he was unafraid to explore hot button issues using both genre techniques and art film bravado.

Continue reading ‘Zombi Child’: Bertrand Bonello Stylishly Unearths The Colonialist Tensions Of The Zombie Mythos [Nyff Review] at The Playlist.

"Can voodoo help me live?" Get a look at an official trailer for Zombi Child, the latest by French filmmaker Bertrand Bonello. It first premiered in the Directors' Fortnight section at the Cannes Film Festival, and will play at the New York Film Festival. Bonello moves fluidly between 1962 Haiti, where a young man named Clairvius Narcisse (Mackenson Bijou), made into a zombie by his brother, ends up working as a slave in the sugar cane fields, and a girls' boarding school in Paris, where a white teen girl (Louise Labèque) befriends Clairvius' descendant (Wislanda Louimat), who was orphaned in the 2010 Haiti earthquake. These two disparate strands ultimately come together in a film that "evokes Jacques Tourneur more than George Romero, and feverishly dissolves boundaries of time and space as it questions colonialist mythmaking." Also with Katiana Milfort & Adilé David. See below. Here's the official festival trailer (+ poster) for Bertrand Bonello's...

Since any New York City cinephile has a nearly suffocating wealth of theatrical options, we figured it’d be best to compile some of the more worthwhile repertory showings into one handy list. Displayed below are a few of the city’s most reliable theaters and links to screenings of their weekend offerings — films you’re not likely to see in a theater again anytime soon, and many of which are, also, on 35mm. If you have a chance to attend any of these, we’re of the mind that it’s time extremely well-spent.

Museum of the Moving Image

“See It Big! Action,” one of the finest genre retrospectives in recent memory, is underway with screenings such as Raiders of the Lost Ark and Seven Samurai.

Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit plays throughout the weekend as part of an Earth Day celebration.

Once undistributed for fear it would “incite racial tension,...

“Vernon Subutex,” one of Canal Plus’ banner Original Series, will world premiere at the opening night of this year’s Canneseries.

Directed by Cathy Verney and starring Romain Duris (“The Beat That My Heart Skipped”) and Céline Sallette (“House of Tolerance”), the Canal Plus Création Originale will premiere three episodes, out of competition, at the Palais des Festivals in Cannes on April 5. International sales are handled by Studiocanal.

The premier and opening night slot will give a high-profile at this year’s event to Canal Plus, a partner of Canneseries, as the French pay TV giant attempts to mark itself apart in France as a quality but still edgy and Ya-appealing original series producer.

The series is inspired by a popular pair of novels from author Virginie Despentes, a bestseller in France which was crying out for a small screen adaptation.

The series’ nine, half-hour episodes track the titular main character,...

Would you believe me if I told you that one of the most transcendent moments in contemporary cinema is soundtracked by the Moody Blues? Nothing against the English arena rock stalwarts, who last year were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, but even in the late 1960s, at the absolute height of their powers as progenitors of an eternally (and proudly) unfashionable progressive rock sound, the Moody Blues were anything but cool. Which is to say, then as now, they’re not exactly the first band you’d expect to hear in a movie, let alone a French movie set in an early 20th century brothel. Director Bertrand Bonello used the Moody Blues to spectacular effect in his 2011 masterpiece House of Tolerance, a feverish evocation of fin de siècle Paris in which period perfect detail and flagrant artifice collide in a of slipstream of pre- and postmodern aesthetics.

Zombi Child

Art-house auteur Bertrand Bonello returns with what’s described as a mix between ‘ethnology and fantasy’ for his eighth feature, Zombi Child. Following the controversial and eventually muted release of his formidable 2016 title Nocturama (check out our interview), which provides the perspectives of a group of Parisian youths following a bomb attack in the city, Bonello’s latest has been co-produced and pre-purchased through Arte France Cinema. After winning the Fipresci Prize in Critics’ Week at Cannes in 2001 for his sophomore feature The Pornographer, Bonello became a fixture at the Croisette, premiering in competition with Tiresia (2003), House of Tolerance (2011), and Saint Laurent (2014), while his 2008 On War went to Directors’ Fortnight.…...

Unless his movie bears striking similarities to real-life atrocities, Bertrand Bonello is hardly a point of focus for international press. Thus word of the French writer-director’s Nocturama follow-up comes shortly before production is expected to commence: he, per Arte, has been preparing Zombi Child, which the supplied synopsis lays out (minus some possible translation snafus) like so:

“On the border of ethnology and fantasy, Bertrand Bonello recounts the destiny of the Haitian Clairvius Narcisse, victim of a voodoo spell that turned him into a zombie. Mixing stories and epochs between Haiti in 1962 and Paris today, between Narcisse, a 15-year-old Haitian girl and her aunt, a voodoo priestess, Bonello places the Haitian zombie, the origins of the cinematographic genre, in its history and dimension.”

And none of which sounds so outside Bonello’s boundaries. Those only familiar with his past three films may seem him as a stately European filmmaker...

Nocturama director wants young filmmakers to “shake us up”.

French film director, composer and screenwriter Bertrand Bonello will chair the Cinéfondation and Short Films Jury at the 71st Festival de Cannes (8-19 May).

Bonello, who succeeds Cristian Mungiu in the position, has directed seven features and eight short films, including Parisian-set terrorism thriller Nocturama in 2016.

His films Tiresia, House Of Tolerance and Saint Laurent have all screened in Competition at the Festival de Cannes.

Bonello said: “What do we expect from young people, unknown filmmakers and early films? Let them shake us up, let them make us look at what we’re unable to see,...

The 21st century is less than two decades old, but its first batch of Best Picture winners already paint an extraordinary portrait of a world in flux. From a massive historical epic to an intimate digital indies — from a musical that riffs on showbiz standards to period drama that reflects on present crises — these 17 films range from “problematic” to “perfect” and hit all points in between. More than that, they illustrate Hollywood’s evolving definition of greatness, and the relationship between the film industry and the times that forge it.

Read More:2018 Oscar Predictions

Here are the 17 Best Picture winners of the 21st century, ranked from worst to best.

17. “Crash”

“Brokeback Mountain” deserved better, but the Academy didn’t know it. Paul Haggis’ painfully obvious ensemble drama about racial prejudices in Los Angeles was a smug, one-note drama designed to make white liberals feel good about themselves. (It took a...

There are few filmmakers working this very day that are more exciting than Bertrand Bonello. A career spanning now over 20 years, Bonello has become synonymous with surreal, painterly films, films that are as expertly crafted and framed as they are intellectually stimulating. Be it the superb Jean Pierre-Leaud-led The Pornographer or the baroque House Of Tolerance, Bonello is a captivating voice in world cinema.

His latest marks no change in that.

Nocturama tells the story of a group of youths as they make their way through the streets of Paris. As the opening sequences begin to unfold, we the viewer become privy to the bombing plot that they are attempting to hatch. These almost Bressonian moments of procedure and impending dread are marked by the finalization of their bombing, and ultimately the fleeing of these young men and women into a nearby shopping mall. Surrounded by the consumerist culture they so viscerally loathe,...

A nocturama is the part of the zoo where they keep the small animals that only come out at night. The term is obscure, but evocative—so, an apt title for the audacious and disturbing new film by the French writer-director Bertrand Bonello (House Of Pleasures, Saint Laurent), the longer second part of which finds a group of mostly teenage terrorists hiding out in a windowless Paris department store after a spree of bombings and assassinations. We’ve seen them carry out these attacks over the movie’s mesmerizing first 50 minutes, sometimes replayed from multiple angles, though we are never exactly sure of their goal. Maybe it doesn’t matter. Bonello is a decadent movie poet of literal and emotional interiors with a uniquely cubist approach to both time and realism; his style is druggy and dreamlike because it’s so cornered, self-confined, self-refracting. In Nocturama, his radicalized night ...

“Nocturama” will soon open in theaters, but its journey hasn’t been easy.

A story about a group of Parisian teenagers who plot and pull off a deadly terrorist attack, Bertrand Bonello’s icy thriller had the misfortune of being completed after the November 2015 Paris attacks. Now the “House of Tolerance” and “Saint Laurent” director has opened up in a new piece for Artforum to discuss how “Cannes didn’t want the film” and the ways in which “haters” online hurt its chances of success.

Read More‘Nocturama’ Is ‘Elephant’ For The The Age Of Isis — Tiff Review

Bonello has premiered several films on the Croisette, making “Nocturama” conspicuous in its absence at last year’s edition of the festival; many suspected the film’s subject matter was the reason for its exclusion. “It was very difficult for people to see this kind of narrative,” writes Bonello, who admits that...

André Téchiné’s “Golden Years” is a bit of a wash. The true story of a World War I deserter who spent the roaring twenties living as a woman, Téchiné’s film is a surprising misfire, especially because it arrives only one year after the director’s masterful “Being 17.” Both films share thematic – if not exactly narrative – parallels, telling of volatile couplings reordered by sexual exploration. But Téchiné seems to have forgotten the hard-won lessons of his previous film, dialing down any hint of life’s thrilling uncertainty for a stodgily theatrical approach that tells the story in the most superficial way possible.

It is the story of Paul and Louise Grappe, a young couple living their golden years before the Great War breaks and Paul (“Stranger By The Lake” star Pierre Deladonchamps) is sent to the front. The war prove entirely too hellish for him and so he blows off his own finger,...

Grasshopper Film has released the official Us trailer for its upcoming film “Nocturama.” The clip premiered exclusively on The Film Stage on Thursday. The terrorism thriller hails from acclaimed director Bertrand Bonello (“Saint Laurent,” “House of Pleasures”).

Read More: ‘Nocturama’ Is ‘Elephant’ For The The Age Of Isis — Review

Written and directed by Bonello, “Nocturama” follows a group of teens from different backgrounds who plan a series of bombings throughout Paris. The film premiered last year at the Toronto International Film Festival, a mere 1o months after the terrorist attacks perpetrated by Isis in the French capital.

In his review of the film, IndieWire’s David Ehrlich described “Nocturama” as “a vague and intriguingly inert thriller that waits 50 minutes before revealing ‘what they had to do’ and never bothers explaining why they had to do it. It’s hypnotic all the same. Fresh off his emotionally extravagant biopic of fashion designer Yves Saint Laurent,...

It reportedly had to fight tooth and nail for festival placement of any kind, yet few titles on last fall’s circuit earned praise like that bestowed upon Bertrand Bonello‘s galvanizing Nocturama. A picture caught somewhere between the nastier side of Robert Bresson and more melancholy inclinations of George A. Romero, it follows a group of teens determined to coordinate a series of bombings throughout Paris — which indeed made the movie a difficult sell mere months after Isil-sponsored attacks on the very city, and continues to make it more hot-button than anyone could’ve anticipated.

But it’s getting a U.S. release this summer from Grasshopper Film, who have let us premiere Nocturama‘s rapid-fire, fear-drenched domestic trailer. If you’re even the slightest bit intrigued by what’s seen therein, you’ll want to give this picture a shot: as I said in my review out of Tiff,...

Bertrand Bonello’s last film, a Yves Saint Laurent biopic, followed the famed 20th century designer from enfant terrible into the 2000s and his doddering old age. Saint Laurent’s fashion may have changed the world, but that world is now being changed by forces far more radical than any of his designs. The enfants terrible of Paris in Bonello's latest movie, Nocturama, aren’t provocative artists but rather a gang of 20-something Parisian terrorists. Shockingly, despite the ties to radical Islam of the attacks in France over the last year and a half, the terrorism of Nocturama’s youths seem to be enacted without explanation, as if in a cultural vacuum. When originally conceived, this cinematic possibility of Bonello’s clearly had the aim of presenting an abstract action. But since the real world has yet again surpassed the cinema by realizing the horrors originally considered on the silver screen,...

Let’s start with the best. French writer-director Bertrand Bonello’s oblique, transgressive treatment of terrorism in Nocturama (Grade: A-) positions his film as a modern-day answer to Weekend and the culmination of an informal trilogy that began with his opium-dream portrait of a fin de siècle brothel, House Of Pleasures, and continued with the anti-biopic Saint Laurent. With no ideology to speak of, Bonello’s teenage terrorists wage an obscure war against a modern, materialist world that they are clearly a part of, retreating after their spree of assassinations and bombings into a massive department store, where they plan to wait out the night. Holed up in this consumerist dream space, they play dress-up, host a dinner, are visited by ghosts, watch coverage of their attack on display model TVs, and act out fantasy lives—only to have it all come to a halt when Nocturama reveals itself as...

Bertrand Bonello has been directing features for almost 20 years and has yet to make a clear breakthrough with the U.S. art-house scene. When I say his last two films, House of Pleasures and Saint Laurent, came close enough, I really mean “actually had U.S. distribution”; box-office-wise, though, they didn’t seem to make a splash. This is all the more unfortunate when Bonello strikes me as one of the most interesting directors of his generation, and, regardless of categorization, probably one of the best working today, my thoughts on which are evidenced by naming Saint Laurent the best film of 2015.

Perhaps proper notices awaited Madeleine Among the Dead, a Vertigo riff that, not unlike last year’s Phoenix (itself a sleeper hit), would rework the story from the woman’s perspective – but in a more literal homage, as we can see in a nine-and-a-half-minute sequences posted to Le CiNéMA Club.