Oliver Berben didn’t just have idle dreams as a youngster about becoming an astronaut one day. He was actually working on a career in space by studying aerospace and space technology at a Berlin university well into his 20s.
But after stumbling into the movie industry through a part-time student job as a driver and runner, Berben realized that he had found his calling on the ground – so he gave up on the galaxies. And now, after a quarter century as a personable down-to-earth producer and executive at Constantin Film, Berben is about to take the controls of one of Germany’s biggest and most powerful production-distribution companies as its chief executive.
“I never would have thought that I’d have the chance to work for this company let alone get into a position to lead it,” Berben says. “It still feels a little surreal.”
The lesson he learned...
But after stumbling into the movie industry through a part-time student job as a driver and runner, Berben realized that he had found his calling on the ground – so he gave up on the galaxies. And now, after a quarter century as a personable down-to-earth producer and executive at Constantin Film, Berben is about to take the controls of one of Germany’s biggest and most powerful production-distribution companies as its chief executive.
“I never would have thought that I’d have the chance to work for this company let alone get into a position to lead it,” Berben says. “It still feels a little surreal.”
The lesson he learned...
- 2/8/2024
- by Erik Kirschbaum
- Variety Film + TV
A distinct muse in the Guillaume Nicloux canon, author and sometimes actor Michel Houellebecq will once again become a titular member for what appears to be (at least the title confection) a Being John Malkovich inspired potential laugher. Titled Dans la peau de Blanche Houellebecq the mishmash will include actress-comedian Blanche Gardin who was a sidekick blast in Dumont’s France and one year later again on the Croisette, was in Quentin Dupieux’s Fumer fait tousser and the Critics’ Week dramedy Everybody Loves Jeanne. Production is expected to sometime next month in and around Paris.
Nicloux’s last completed fantasy film Lockdown Tower was a recent Deauville and Sitges invite and he recently completed La petite – a book to film project starring Fabrice Luchini, Mara Taquin and Maud Wyler.…...
Nicloux’s last completed fantasy film Lockdown Tower was a recent Deauville and Sitges invite and he recently completed La petite – a book to film project starring Fabrice Luchini, Mara Taquin and Maud Wyler.…...
- 10/31/2022
- by Eric Lavallée
- IONCINEMA.com
Warning: contains spoilers for Ghosts Series 4 episode 4 ‘Gone Gone’.
The Ghosts are us. We are the Ghosts. That’s the foundation of this unimprovable British comedy, now four series in. We – the living – may have corporeal form plus the freedom to occasionally leave our homes. They – the Ghosts – may have no earthly responsibilities and enjoy a comparatively less adversarial relationship with walls. But aside from that, we’re basically the same.
Give the living the gift of endless time and zero responsibilities, and we like to think that we’d write novels, compose symphonies and master every language Michel Thomas might care to teach us, but we wouldn’t. We’d do exactly what the Ghosts do – sit around, watch TV and complain about each other. We’re them. They’re us.
In Series 4 episode ‘Gone Gone’, directed by Simon Hynd, the Ghosts are more us than ever. Living through their own deaths,...
The Ghosts are us. We are the Ghosts. That’s the foundation of this unimprovable British comedy, now four series in. We – the living – may have corporeal form plus the freedom to occasionally leave our homes. They – the Ghosts – may have no earthly responsibilities and enjoy a comparatively less adversarial relationship with walls. But aside from that, we’re basically the same.
Give the living the gift of endless time and zero responsibilities, and we like to think that we’d write novels, compose symphonies and master every language Michel Thomas might care to teach us, but we wouldn’t. We’d do exactly what the Ghosts do – sit around, watch TV and complain about each other. We’re them. They’re us.
In Series 4 episode ‘Gone Gone’, directed by Simon Hynd, the Ghosts are more us than ever. Living through their own deaths,...
- 10/14/2022
- by Louisa Mellor
- Den of Geek
Iggy Pop praised Nine Inch Nails’ “dark and lonely” party music and “master artist” Trent Reznor as the Stooges singer welcomed The Downward Spiral band into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
“Listening to Nine Inch Nails’ music — which is so often called ‘industrial’ — I actually hear a lot of funk,” Pop said in his induction speech. “Just listen to ‘Closer,’ and the foundation could be Stevie Wonder or George Clinton, but on top of that is a focused and relentless process of emotional destruction which paints a portrait of pain,...
“Listening to Nine Inch Nails’ music — which is so often called ‘industrial’ — I actually hear a lot of funk,” Pop said in his induction speech. “Just listen to ‘Closer,’ and the foundation could be Stevie Wonder or George Clinton, but on top of that is a focused and relentless process of emotional destruction which paints a portrait of pain,...
- 11/8/2020
- by Daniel Kreps
- Rollingstone.com
“Enfant Terrible,” which received the Cannes 2020 label, is set to start its international journey with its first distribution deals announced as it joins the international festival circuit. The film, directed by Oskar Roehler, is about the life of German director Rainer Werner Fassbinder.
The German film, which received its local festival premiere at the Hamburg Film Festival, was released on home turf by Weltkino on Oct. 1. The biopic is set to start its international life with upcoming premieres at the festivals in Ghent (in competition), Istanbul (as a Gala screening) and Seville (in competition).
“Enfant Terrible” opened the German Film Festival in Paris on Oct. 7, and screened in the Masters section of the Moscow Film Festival on Oct. 7, and has received a nomination for the European Film Awards.
Alongside various ongoing and advanced negotiations, sales agent Picture Tree Intl. has announced the film’s first deals, including in the U.
The German film, which received its local festival premiere at the Hamburg Film Festival, was released on home turf by Weltkino on Oct. 1. The biopic is set to start its international life with upcoming premieres at the festivals in Ghent (in competition), Istanbul (as a Gala screening) and Seville (in competition).
“Enfant Terrible” opened the German Film Festival in Paris on Oct. 7, and screened in the Masters section of the Moscow Film Festival on Oct. 7, and has received a nomination for the European Film Awards.
Alongside various ongoing and advanced negotiations, sales agent Picture Tree Intl. has announced the film’s first deals, including in the U.
- 10/9/2020
- by Leo Barraclough
- Variety Film + TV
Benoit Delépine and Gustave Kervern’s eighth joint feature won the Berlinale’s special Silver Bear this year.
Wild Bunch has secured a slew of sales on French directorial duo Benoit Delépine and Gustave Kervern’s comedy Delete History, which won the Berlinale’s special Silver Bear this year.
Deals tied up at the Berlinale’s European Film Market include to France (Ad Vitam), Benelux (September Film), Switzerland (Pathé), Germany (X Verleih), Spain (La Aventura Audiovisual), Italy (Officine Ubu), Portugal (Apm), Sweden (Njutafilms), ex-Yugoslavia (McF), Hungary (Cirko Film), Czech Republic (Film Europe) and Baltics (A-One).
Outside of Europe, it sold...
Wild Bunch has secured a slew of sales on French directorial duo Benoit Delépine and Gustave Kervern’s comedy Delete History, which won the Berlinale’s special Silver Bear this year.
Deals tied up at the Berlinale’s European Film Market include to France (Ad Vitam), Benelux (September Film), Switzerland (Pathé), Germany (X Verleih), Spain (La Aventura Audiovisual), Italy (Officine Ubu), Portugal (Apm), Sweden (Njutafilms), ex-Yugoslavia (McF), Hungary (Cirko Film), Czech Republic (Film Europe) and Baltics (A-One).
Outside of Europe, it sold...
- 3/6/2020
- by 1100380¦Melanie Goodfellow¦0¦
- ScreenDaily
Berlinale 2020: From the Guillaume Nicloux's project Soumission to the hybrid film A Winter’s Journey, a great many titles have been added to the line-ups of French companies at the Efm. Beyond the main announcements which came last week at the start of the European Film Market of the 70th Berlinale (read the news), professionals from the French film industry have since revealed during the Berlin event a large array of new titles. We take a tour of the new announcements.Parisian company Incognita Films will produce Soumission by Guillaume Nicloux, an adaptation of the eponymous novel by Michel Houellebecq, which should begin filming next September with Jean-Paul Rouve in the leading role.Mk2 Films has added several titles to its international sales line-up (news): The Love Letter from French director Jérôme Bonnell (in post-production), Petite Solange from Axelle Roppert...
Close-Up is a feature that spotlights films now playing on Mubi. Guillaume Nicloux's To the Ends of the World is showing January and February, 2020 in the series From France with Love.A man, center-frame, despondent and immobile, sits on a bench, his head hanging heavy on his chest. Behind him, a foggy background reveals lightly-dressed soldiers trodding the ground in a casual manner, their movement slowed down to strolling. When Robert Tassen (a gritty Gaspard Ulliel) finally aligns his gaze with the spectator, even framed in long shot, his eyes are piercing, brimming with rage. Guillaume Nicloux’s fourteenth feature, To the Ends of the World, is a febrile film set in the time preceding the First Indochina War and, at once, a meditation on grief and ire, the personal and social overlapping in genesis of a war trauma which turns out to be a festering, often crippling wound.
- 1/28/2020
- MUBI
Effacer l’historique
Kooky Belgian duo Gustave Kervern and Benoît Delépine will present their ninth collaboration in 2020, Effacer l’historique, another exercise about social misfits attempting to succeed in tasks which seem woefully out of their depth. Sylvie Pialat and Benoit Quainon are producing, starring a lead trio of Blanche Gardin (who will also be appearing in Bruno Dumont’s latest), Denis Podalydes, and Corinne Masiero. Some of the directors’ usual suspects are also on hand in the cast, including Yolande Moreau, Benoit Poelvoorde, Bouli Lanners, and Michel Houellebecq. And they’ll be joined by American actor Denis O’Hare. The filmmakers reunite with their regular Dp, Hugues Poulain.…...
Kooky Belgian duo Gustave Kervern and Benoît Delépine will present their ninth collaboration in 2020, Effacer l’historique, another exercise about social misfits attempting to succeed in tasks which seem woefully out of their depth. Sylvie Pialat and Benoit Quainon are producing, starring a lead trio of Blanche Gardin (who will also be appearing in Bruno Dumont’s latest), Denis Podalydes, and Corinne Masiero. Some of the directors’ usual suspects are also on hand in the cast, including Yolande Moreau, Benoit Poelvoorde, Bouli Lanners, and Michel Houellebecq. And they’ll be joined by American actor Denis O’Hare. The filmmakers reunite with their regular Dp, Hugues Poulain.…...
- 12/31/2019
- by Nicholas Bell
- IONCINEMA.com
Slate also features directorial duo Gustave Kervern and Benoit Delépine’s comedy drama Delete History.
Wild Bunch has boarded sales on Just Philippot’s fantasy drama The Swarm about a woman who develops an obsessional bond with grasshoppers she is breeding as a high-protein crop.
The film, produced by Capricci and Manuel Chiche’s The Jokers Films, is a first feature for Philippot.
The emerging French director participated in Sundance’s international shorts competition earlier this year with his Canal+ acquired short film Acide, about a disturbing acidic cloud which passes over a country spreading panic.
In The Swarm, Suliane Brahim...
Wild Bunch has boarded sales on Just Philippot’s fantasy drama The Swarm about a woman who develops an obsessional bond with grasshoppers she is breeding as a high-protein crop.
The film, produced by Capricci and Manuel Chiche’s The Jokers Films, is a first feature for Philippot.
The emerging French director participated in Sundance’s international shorts competition earlier this year with his Canal+ acquired short film Acide, about a disturbing acidic cloud which passes over a country spreading panic.
In The Swarm, Suliane Brahim...
- 10/30/2019
- by 1100380¦Melanie Goodfellow¦0¦
- ScreenDaily
The event takes place from December 14-21.
French director Guillaume Nicloux will head the jury of the 11th edition of the European cinema-focused Les Arcs Film Festival, which takes place Dec 14-21 in the French ski resort.
Meanwhile, Oscar-nominated actor Isabelle Huppert has been announced as the honorary “godmother” of its Talent Village, nurturing emerging directors.
Nicloux’s credits include The Nun, Valley Of Love and most recently Thalasso (aka Just Great) starring Gerard Depardieu and cult French writer Michel Houellebecq as two dissolute men who meet in a health spa in a Northern French seaside resort.
Past jury presidents...
French director Guillaume Nicloux will head the jury of the 11th edition of the European cinema-focused Les Arcs Film Festival, which takes place Dec 14-21 in the French ski resort.
Meanwhile, Oscar-nominated actor Isabelle Huppert has been announced as the honorary “godmother” of its Talent Village, nurturing emerging directors.
Nicloux’s credits include The Nun, Valley Of Love and most recently Thalasso (aka Just Great) starring Gerard Depardieu and cult French writer Michel Houellebecq as two dissolute men who meet in a health spa in a Northern French seaside resort.
Past jury presidents...
- 10/18/2019
- by 1100380¦Melanie Goodfellow¦0¦
- ScreenDaily
Whether you love him or hate him, it’s undeniable that French writer Michel Houellebecq is one of the seminal authors of our time. After all, not many novelists today have had their names turned into adjectives, with the term “Houellebecquian” signifying the kind of darkly comic contemporary malaise — the melancholy of shopping malls and supermarkets, of tasteless microwave dinners and nondescript residential towers, of loveless copulating, eternal solitude and collective failure — that have characterized his novels since his breakthrough debut from 1994, Whatever.
Outside the literary sphere, Houellebecq may also be one of the only major writers ...
Outside the literary sphere, Houellebecq may also be one of the only major writers ...
- 9/20/2019
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Whether you love him or hate him, it’s undeniable that French writer Michel Houellebecq is one of the seminal authors of our time. After all, not many novelists today have had their names turned into adjectives, with the term “Houellebecquian” signifying the kind of darkly comic contemporary malaise — the melancholy of shopping malls and supermarkets, of tasteless microwave dinners and nondescript residential towers, of loveless copulating, eternal solitude and collective failure — that have characterized his novels since his breakthrough debut from 1994, Whatever.
Outside the literary sphere, Houellebecq may also be one of the only major writers ...
Outside the literary sphere, Houellebecq may also be one of the only major writers ...
- 9/20/2019
- The Hollywood Reporter - Film + TV
Madrid — James Franco’s “Zeroville,” Louise Archambault’s “And The Birds Rained Down” and José Luis Torres Leiva’s “Death Will Come And Shall Have Your Eyes” will compete for San Sebastian’s Golden Shell, the Spanish festival announced Friday.
Further new main competition titles unveiled take in Guillaume Nicloux’s “Thalasso,” Ina Weisse’s “The Audition,” Adilkhan Yerzhanov’s “A Dark-Dark Man,” and Mexican debutant director David Zonana’s “Workforce.”
The seven titles join three already-announced Spanish competition contenders: Alejandro Amenábar’s “While At War,” Aitor Arregi, Jon Garaño and Jose Mari Goenaga’s “The Endless Trench” and Belén Funes’ “A Thief’s Daughter.”
Playing out-of-competition will be “Heroic Losers,” , starring and co-produced by Ricardo Darín, which receives a Special Screening, and Daniel Sánchez-Arévalo’s “Diecisiete,” marking the first time a Netflix Original Film makes San Sebastian’s Official Selection cut.
After winning the Golden Shell in 2017 with “The Disaster Artist,...
Further new main competition titles unveiled take in Guillaume Nicloux’s “Thalasso,” Ina Weisse’s “The Audition,” Adilkhan Yerzhanov’s “A Dark-Dark Man,” and Mexican debutant director David Zonana’s “Workforce.”
The seven titles join three already-announced Spanish competition contenders: Alejandro Amenábar’s “While At War,” Aitor Arregi, Jon Garaño and Jose Mari Goenaga’s “The Endless Trench” and Belén Funes’ “A Thief’s Daughter.”
Playing out-of-competition will be “Heroic Losers,” , starring and co-produced by Ricardo Darín, which receives a Special Screening, and Daniel Sánchez-Arévalo’s “Diecisiete,” marking the first time a Netflix Original Film makes San Sebastian’s Official Selection cut.
After winning the Golden Shell in 2017 with “The Disaster Artist,...
- 8/2/2019
- by Emiliano De Pablos
- Variety Film + TV
Fears related to immigration, terrorism, and nationalism are a running theme in many Sundance entries this year, although probably none of the films addresses the commingled issues in such a potent yet roundabout way as Jacek Borcuch’s “Dolce Fine Giornata.” This satisfyingly complex drama stars Polish cinema veteran Krystyna Janda (going back to Wadja’s 1977 “Man of Marble”) as a celebrated poet whose enviable semi-retired life under the Tuscan sun rapidly frays when her “artistic license” in a public speech appears to condone suicide bombers.
This very European take on various hot-button topics lacks the kind of easily encapsulated gist that makes for easy marketing. But it’s a fine fifth feature for actor-turned-auteur Borcuch, as good as, yet very different from, 2009’s excellent teenage punk flashback “All That I Love.” Specialty distributors may want to climb on board his train now, as another film or two this strong...
This very European take on various hot-button topics lacks the kind of easily encapsulated gist that makes for easy marketing. But it’s a fine fifth feature for actor-turned-auteur Borcuch, as good as, yet very different from, 2009’s excellent teenage punk flashback “All That I Love.” Specialty distributors may want to climb on board his train now, as another film or two this strong...
- 2/3/2019
- by Dennis Harvey
- Variety Film + TV
Senegal-set drama Yao to market premiere during Unifrance Rendez-vous with French Cinema in Paris this week (Jan 17-21).
Wild Bunch has unveiled a slew of sales for Philippe Godeau’s Senegal-set, feel-good dramaYao, starring Omar Sy as a French-Senegalese writer who returns to his native country for a book tour, ahead of its market premiere during the Unifrance Rendez-vous with French Cinema in Paris this week.
In Europe, it has sold to Benelux (Cineart), Switzerland (Filmcoopi), Spain (Diamond Films), Greece (Spentzos Films), Italy (Cinema Srl), Scandinavia (Njuta), Iceland (Sena Film), ex-Yugoslavia (Fivia), Hungary (Mozinet), Czech Republic (Film Europe), Cis (Total Films...
Wild Bunch has unveiled a slew of sales for Philippe Godeau’s Senegal-set, feel-good dramaYao, starring Omar Sy as a French-Senegalese writer who returns to his native country for a book tour, ahead of its market premiere during the Unifrance Rendez-vous with French Cinema in Paris this week.
In Europe, it has sold to Benelux (Cineart), Switzerland (Filmcoopi), Spain (Diamond Films), Greece (Spentzos Films), Italy (Cinema Srl), Scandinavia (Njuta), Iceland (Sena Film), ex-Yugoslavia (Fivia), Hungary (Mozinet), Czech Republic (Film Europe), Cis (Total Films...
- 1/15/2019
- by Melanie Goodfellow
- ScreenDaily
Wild Bunch unveils sales on Omar Sy-starrer 'Yao', 'Raoul Taburin' and 'A Faithful Man' (exclusive)
Senegal-set, feel-good drama Yao to market premiere during Unifrance Rendez-vous with French Cinema in Paris this week (Jan 17-21).
Wild Bunch has unveiled a slew of sales for Philippe Godeau’s Senegal-set, feel-good dramaYao, starring Omar Sy as a French-Senegalese writer who returns to his native country for a book tour, ahead of its market premiere during the Unifrance Rendez-vous with French Cinema in Paris this week.
In Europe, it has sold to Benelux (Cineart), Switzerland (Filmcoopi), Spain (Diamond Films), Greece (Spentzos Films), Italy (Cinema Srl), Scandinavia (Njuta), Iceland (Sena Film), ex-Yugoslavia (Fivia), Hungary (Mozinet), Czech Republic (Film Europe), Cis...
Wild Bunch has unveiled a slew of sales for Philippe Godeau’s Senegal-set, feel-good dramaYao, starring Omar Sy as a French-Senegalese writer who returns to his native country for a book tour, ahead of its market premiere during the Unifrance Rendez-vous with French Cinema in Paris this week.
In Europe, it has sold to Benelux (Cineart), Switzerland (Filmcoopi), Spain (Diamond Films), Greece (Spentzos Films), Italy (Cinema Srl), Scandinavia (Njuta), Iceland (Sena Film), ex-Yugoslavia (Fivia), Hungary (Mozinet), Czech Republic (Film Europe), Cis...
- 1/15/2019
- by Melanie Goodfellow
- ScreenDaily
C’est Extra
France’s Guillaume Nicloux begins his fifteenth feature film C’est Extra by reuniting with two of his previous headliners, Michel Houellebecq and Gerard Depardieu. Produced by Sylvie Pialat and Benoit Quainon of Les Films du Worso, Nicloux’s title will also be co-produced by Wild Bunch. Nicloux has steadily been directing features since 1991, but has come into international renown over the past five years or so. Previously competing in Locarno with 1992’s La Vie Crevee (The Dead Life), Nicloux competed in Berlin with his 2013 remake of Rivette’s The Nun and took home a Best Screenplay win in Tribeca for The Kidnapping of Michel Houellebecq.…...
France’s Guillaume Nicloux begins his fifteenth feature film C’est Extra by reuniting with two of his previous headliners, Michel Houellebecq and Gerard Depardieu. Produced by Sylvie Pialat and Benoit Quainon of Les Films du Worso, Nicloux’s title will also be co-produced by Wild Bunch. Nicloux has steadily been directing features since 1991, but has come into international renown over the past five years or so. Previously competing in Locarno with 1992’s La Vie Crevee (The Dead Life), Nicloux competed in Berlin with his 2013 remake of Rivette’s The Nun and took home a Best Screenplay win in Tribeca for The Kidnapping of Michel Houellebecq.…...
- 1/4/2019
- by Nicholas Bell
- IONCINEMA.com
Company to unveil new films by Rebecca Zlotowski, Guillaume Nicloux and Roschdy Zem during Paris Rendez-vous in January.
Wild Bunch will kick-off sales on a quartet of new French films during the Rendez-vous with French Cinema in Paris in January including a coming-of-age tale by Rebecca Zlotowski, starring glamour girl and lingerie designer Zahia Dehar, and Guillaume Nicloux’s new collaboration with cult writer Michel Houellebecq and Gérard Depardieu.
Zlotowski’s An Easy Girl co-stars debutant actress Mina Farid as the naïve 16-year-old Naïma, whose eyes are opened to the world of love, sex and human relationships over a summer...
Wild Bunch will kick-off sales on a quartet of new French films during the Rendez-vous with French Cinema in Paris in January including a coming-of-age tale by Rebecca Zlotowski, starring glamour girl and lingerie designer Zahia Dehar, and Guillaume Nicloux’s new collaboration with cult writer Michel Houellebecq and Gérard Depardieu.
Zlotowski’s An Easy Girl co-stars debutant actress Mina Farid as the naïve 16-year-old Naïma, whose eyes are opened to the world of love, sex and human relationships over a summer...
- 12/20/2018
- by Melanie Goodfellow
- ScreenDaily
An upscale apartment in one of Moscow’s uglier neighborhoods is on the market: Zhenya (Maryana Spivak) and Boris (Alexei Rozin) are at the final stage of divorce and have already arranged new lives with new partners. They can’t wait to be done with each other, and neither needs the property; same goes for the only, unwanted child of their failed union, Alyosha, about twelve years old. After eavesdropping on another hateful, screaming fight, in which the word orphanage is brought up, the boy disappears, likely run away, possibly kidnapped. There are many directions a story can take from a premise like this. A Hollywood drama would see the bitter spouses bonding, perhaps achieving a reunion, or it would turn into a thriller (which is, actually, one of the unfulfilled promises of Loveless). In a European art film, which of course is Andrei Zvyagintsev’s main frame of reference,...
- 2/15/2018
- MUBI
NEWSRaoul Coutard shooting BreathlessThe great cinematographer Raoul Coutard, legendary for his work shooting Jean-Luc Godard's Breathless, and also a collaborator of Philippe Garrel, Nagisa Oshima, Costa-Gavras and François Truffaut, has died at the age of 92.Keep film alive! The New York non-profit film organization Mono No Aware has launched a Kickstarter to fund "the nation's first ever non-profit motion picture lab." An ambitious and worthy goal!Two film projects in the works we're very excited about: Claire Denis' High Life, starring Robert Pattinson and Patricia Arquette and co-written by Zadie Smith, and Leos Carax's Annette, a musical to star Adam Driver (everywhere these days!) and Rooney Mara.The Film Society of Lincoln Center has announced the first part of its retrospective devoted to exiled Chilean fabulist Raúl Ruiz, which will include new digital restorations of Bérénice (1983) and The Golden Boat (1990), as well as 35mm prints of such...
- 11/29/2016
- MUBI
Alice Winocour on Disorder: "I thought also about Carpenter's films, the sound."
Following her enticing and spirited debut, Augustine, Alice Winocour again proves that she can package troubled states of mind in lush images and strong plots. Disorder (Maryland), written with Jean-Stéphane Bron, stars Matthias Schoenaerts (Jacques Audiard's Rust And Bone) and Diane Kruger with Paul Hamy (Katell Quillévéré's Suzanne, Maïwenn's My King), Zaïd Errougui-Demonsant, and Percy Kemp.
Vincent: "What is frightening for the character is to not have control over his own body."
Pascaline Chavanne's costumes (Jacques Doillon's Rodin, Emmanuelle Bercot's Standing Tall, Christophe Honore's Métamorphoses), Stanley Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut, Michelangelo Antonioni's La Notte, Vincent Lindon, László Nemes's Son Of Saul, Guillaume Nicloux's Valley Of Love, Michel Houellebecq's Submission, Julien Lacheray's editing, Gesaffelstein's sound, John Carpenter, David Lynch's Lost Highway and William Holden -...
Following her enticing and spirited debut, Augustine, Alice Winocour again proves that she can package troubled states of mind in lush images and strong plots. Disorder (Maryland), written with Jean-Stéphane Bron, stars Matthias Schoenaerts (Jacques Audiard's Rust And Bone) and Diane Kruger with Paul Hamy (Katell Quillévéré's Suzanne, Maïwenn's My King), Zaïd Errougui-Demonsant, and Percy Kemp.
Vincent: "What is frightening for the character is to not have control over his own body."
Pascaline Chavanne's costumes (Jacques Doillon's Rodin, Emmanuelle Bercot's Standing Tall, Christophe Honore's Métamorphoses), Stanley Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut, Michelangelo Antonioni's La Notte, Vincent Lindon, László Nemes's Son Of Saul, Guillaume Nicloux's Valley Of Love, Michel Houellebecq's Submission, Julien Lacheray's editing, Gesaffelstein's sound, John Carpenter, David Lynch's Lost Highway and William Holden -...
- 8/11/2016
- by Anne-Katrin Titze
- eyeforfilm.co.uk
Benoît Jacquot: 'For me, there is something very specific with Vincent Lindon' Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze Having just completed À Jamais, based on Don DeLillo's The Body Artist, starring Mathieu Amalric and Jeanne Balibar with costumes by Raf Simons (Dior And I), Benoît Jacquot joined me in New York for a conversation on his penetrating Diary Of A Chambermaid (Journal d'Une Femme De Chambre), co-written with Hélène Zimmer and starring Léa Seydoux.
Vincent Lindon heads a formidable supporting cast that includes Clotilde Mollet, Hervé Pierre, Yvette Petit, Dominique Reymond, Mélodie Valemberg, Patrick d'Assumçao, Joséphine Derenne, Rosette and Vincent Lacoste. Costume designer Anaïs Romand, also known for Farewell My Queen, Léos Carax's Holy Motors and Guillaume Nicloux's The Kidnapping of Michel Houellebecq, captures the period with precision and grace.
Jacquot's adaptation of Octave Mirbeau's novel, focuses on the myriad ways female bodies were treated as commodities, as...
Vincent Lindon heads a formidable supporting cast that includes Clotilde Mollet, Hervé Pierre, Yvette Petit, Dominique Reymond, Mélodie Valemberg, Patrick d'Assumçao, Joséphine Derenne, Rosette and Vincent Lacoste. Costume designer Anaïs Romand, also known for Farewell My Queen, Léos Carax's Holy Motors and Guillaume Nicloux's The Kidnapping of Michel Houellebecq, captures the period with precision and grace.
Jacquot's adaptation of Octave Mirbeau's novel, focuses on the myriad ways female bodies were treated as commodities, as...
- 6/9/2016
- by Anne-Katrin Titze
- eyeforfilm.co.uk
Valley of Love star Isabelle Huppert Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze
Jeff Nichols' Midnight Special, starring Michael Shannon, Kirsten Dunst and Jaeden Lieberher, prompted Isabelle Huppert to bring up Mud in our conversation on Guillaume Nicloux's haunting Valley Of Love. Anaïs Romand, George Cukor's The Women with Norma Shearer, Joan Crawford and Rosalind Russell and Woody Allen's Magic In The Moonlight came to mind.
Huppert and Gérard Depardieu, last seen on the screen together in Maurice Pialat's Loulou (1980), play a long divorced couple brought together by the death of their son. Similar in effect to what Nicloux did with The Kidnapping of Michel Houellebecq, fictional plot and biographical details merge so that in the end, only truth matters, once it has made its way through fact and fiction.
Isabelle Huppert: "For me, it's a great film about cinema ..."
Huppert, whose character is never named, arrives first in Death Valley.
Jeff Nichols' Midnight Special, starring Michael Shannon, Kirsten Dunst and Jaeden Lieberher, prompted Isabelle Huppert to bring up Mud in our conversation on Guillaume Nicloux's haunting Valley Of Love. Anaïs Romand, George Cukor's The Women with Norma Shearer, Joan Crawford and Rosalind Russell and Woody Allen's Magic In The Moonlight came to mind.
Huppert and Gérard Depardieu, last seen on the screen together in Maurice Pialat's Loulou (1980), play a long divorced couple brought together by the death of their son. Similar in effect to what Nicloux did with The Kidnapping of Michel Houellebecq, fictional plot and biographical details merge so that in the end, only truth matters, once it has made its way through fact and fiction.
Isabelle Huppert: "For me, it's a great film about cinema ..."
Huppert, whose character is never named, arrives first in Death Valley.
- 3/21/2016
- by Anne-Katrin Titze
- eyeforfilm.co.uk
Guillaume Nicloux and Isabelle Huppert at the Valley of Love premiere Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze
John Waters, Cindy Sherman, James Ivory, Angélique Kidjo, Emmanuel Finkiel (Je Ne Suis Pas Un salaud), Deniz Gamze Ergüven's Mustang co-writer Alice Winocour (Disorder), Nicolas Pariser and his star Melvil Poupaud (Le Grand Jeu) and Bang Gang (Une Histoire D'Amour Moderne) director Eva Husson joined Guillaume Nicloux and Isabelle Huppert on the red carpet.
The Kidnapping of Michel Houellebecq, Alfred Hitchcock casting James Bond Sean Connery for Marnie, Gianfranco Rosi's Sacro Gra and The End with Gérard Depardieu, came up in my conversation with the Rendez-Vous with French Cinema opening night film director, Guillaume Nicloux.
Isabelle Huppert and Gérard Depardieu in Valley Of Love
A long divorced couple, played by Depardieu and Huppert, meet up in Death Valley after their son committed suicide months earlier. They each received a letter promising them that if...
John Waters, Cindy Sherman, James Ivory, Angélique Kidjo, Emmanuel Finkiel (Je Ne Suis Pas Un salaud), Deniz Gamze Ergüven's Mustang co-writer Alice Winocour (Disorder), Nicolas Pariser and his star Melvil Poupaud (Le Grand Jeu) and Bang Gang (Une Histoire D'Amour Moderne) director Eva Husson joined Guillaume Nicloux and Isabelle Huppert on the red carpet.
The Kidnapping of Michel Houellebecq, Alfred Hitchcock casting James Bond Sean Connery for Marnie, Gianfranco Rosi's Sacro Gra and The End with Gérard Depardieu, came up in my conversation with the Rendez-Vous with French Cinema opening night film director, Guillaume Nicloux.
Isabelle Huppert and Gérard Depardieu in Valley Of Love
A long divorced couple, played by Depardieu and Huppert, meet up in Death Valley after their son committed suicide months earlier. They each received a letter promising them that if...
- 3/19/2016
- by Anne-Katrin Titze
- eyeforfilm.co.uk
Three unlikely heroes take to the road in this broad comedy (think Sideways sans pathos), featuring improbable sex and a kooky cameo from Michel Houellebecq
France does not cultivate “national treasures” in the same way the English do. But if it did, this film would make Gérard Depardieu’s status impregnable – and that of Michel Houellebecq, who contributes another of his extraordinary movie cameos. And writer-directors Benoît Delépine and Gustave Kervern might be taken yet further into France’s national heart.
Their new film, in competition at Berlin, features Depardieu (already an established Delépine-Kervern player) as a fleshy farmer seen at one stage stoically, if briefly, shovelling dung. Depardieu is the co-star of this gamey and outrageous road-trip comedy, with as strong a taste as the wine that the characters are habitually knocking back. Like all of Delépine and Kervern’s movies, Saint Amour is broad yet deadpan, with a...
France does not cultivate “national treasures” in the same way the English do. But if it did, this film would make Gérard Depardieu’s status impregnable – and that of Michel Houellebecq, who contributes another of his extraordinary movie cameos. And writer-directors Benoît Delépine and Gustave Kervern might be taken yet further into France’s national heart.
Their new film, in competition at Berlin, features Depardieu (already an established Delépine-Kervern player) as a fleshy farmer seen at one stage stoically, if briefly, shovelling dung. Depardieu is the co-star of this gamey and outrageous road-trip comedy, with as strong a taste as the wine that the characters are habitually knocking back. Like all of Delépine and Kervern’s movies, Saint Amour is broad yet deadpan, with a...
- 2/19/2016
- by Peter Bradshaw
- The Guardian - Film News
The Wandering
Director: Guillaume Nicloux
Writer: Guillaume Nicloux
Shortly after premiering his latest film Valley of Love at the 2015 Cannes Film Festival, Guillaume Nicloux very quietly filmed his next feature, Dans les bois (The Wandering), reuniting him with star Gerard Depardieu. Described as a fantasy thriller where Depardieu plays a man who walks his dog in the woods and gets lost only to start having strange encounters with ‘enigmatic creatures,’ we’re pumped to see Nicloux’s latest, also starring director Xavier Beauvois. The film sounds like a departure for Nicloux, whose reputation has advanced significantly with his last three features, including Love, The Nun, and The Kidnapping of Michel Houellebecq. But several of Nicloux’s earlier works include similar sounding fantastical elements, such as 2006’s The Stone Council or The Key (2007).
Cast: Gerard Depardieu, Audrey Bonnet, Swann Arlaud, Xavier Beauvois
Production Co.: X Les Films du Worso, Lgm Productions
U.
Director: Guillaume Nicloux
Writer: Guillaume Nicloux
Shortly after premiering his latest film Valley of Love at the 2015 Cannes Film Festival, Guillaume Nicloux very quietly filmed his next feature, Dans les bois (The Wandering), reuniting him with star Gerard Depardieu. Described as a fantasy thriller where Depardieu plays a man who walks his dog in the woods and gets lost only to start having strange encounters with ‘enigmatic creatures,’ we’re pumped to see Nicloux’s latest, also starring director Xavier Beauvois. The film sounds like a departure for Nicloux, whose reputation has advanced significantly with his last three features, including Love, The Nun, and The Kidnapping of Michel Houellebecq. But several of Nicloux’s earlier works include similar sounding fantastical elements, such as 2006’s The Stone Council or The Key (2007).
Cast: Gerard Depardieu, Audrey Bonnet, Swann Arlaud, Xavier Beauvois
Production Co.: X Les Films du Worso, Lgm Productions
U.
- 1/13/2016
- by Nicholas Bell
- IONCINEMA.com
Like most Norwegian schoolchildren of his generation, Karl Ove Knausgaard started learning English at the age of 10. The curriculum didn’t extend to the study of literature, so he had to come to British and American authors on his own. Though he says the opposite, his English is excellent, but there were two words I used that he didn’t know: placid (crucial because he grew up in a placid country, but in a home that was anything but); and refinement (crucial because his prose is marked by its high variance of refinement, veering between the cooked and the raw). I met Knausgaard on a recent afternoon outside the offices of the New York Times, which had just published his review of Michel Houellebecq’s Submission. (Our meeting occurred before the attacks in Paris.) We walked east a few blocks and up to 44th Street for a drink at the...
- 11/18/2015
- by Christian Lorentzen
- Vulture
The persistent subject of Michel Houellebecq’s fiction is the stunted French heterosexual male and his eventual desolation in the liberalized post-1960s sexual marketplace. In this sense, his new book, Submission, is of a piece with his five previous novels. The narrator, François, is a middle-aged professor of literature who drinks and smokes to excess, loses his job, is left by his ex-student girlfriend, pays escorts for sex, eats a lot of bad takeout, and is dizzy with self-pity and self-disgust. The book is a diary of a defeated man, and often a very funny one. But of course that’s not the whole story. The novel is set in 2022, a time of political realignment in France that sees the rise of a Muslim president, Mohammed Ben Abbes, and the rapid Islamicization of many of the country’s institutions, including its universities.As you might remember, the January attack...
- 10/29/2015
- by Christian Lorentzen
- Vulture
Lorin Stein, editor of The Paris Review, discusses tackling Michel Houellebecq’s Submission (Farrar, Straus and Giroux), a novel set in a near-future France that has just elected a Muslim president. English translation of the above: “It was arousing, in a way, to pick a Muslim, given the overall political situation.” The scene: Here, the book’s protagonist, François, a professor who specializes in decadent 19th-century writer J. K. Huysmans, is choosing a prostitute online in the year 2022. The problem: “The translation was finding its rhythm,” says Stein. “But very near to the end of the book, there was this sentence that hadn’t seemed funny to me and that I couldn’t translate.” He discussed the problem with his editor, Mitzi Angel, who grew up speaking French. The first, failed attempt: “At first I wrote, ‘Given the political situation, choosing a Muslim turned me on.’ But this was very un-Houellebecqian.
- 10/7/2015
- by Ian Epstein
- Vulture
Judging from his books and many of his public statements, French author Michel Houellebecq has a taste for politically incorrect provocation. Guillaume Nicloux’s The Kidnapping of Michel Houellebecq, a narrative film in which Houellebecq plays himself, shows a different side of the writer. Dramatizing a mysterious three-day period in the writer’s life in which he disappeared from a book tour by suggesting that he was kidnapped and taken to a small town in France, it shows a Houellebecq who acts like a Woody Allen-ish nebbish. The film’s treatment of its narrative is more comic than menacing, and Houellebecq comes off as quite likable, even charming. I talked to Nicloux in early March.>> - Steven Erickson...
- 8/25/2015
- Fandor: Keyframe
Judging from his books and many of his public statements, French author Michel Houellebecq has a taste for politically incorrect provocation. Guillaume Nicloux’s The Kidnapping of Michel Houellebecq, a narrative film in which Houellebecq plays himself, shows a different side of the writer. Dramatizing a mysterious three-day period in the writer’s life in which he disappeared from a book tour by suggesting that he was kidnapped and taken to a small town in France, it shows a Houellebecq who acts like a Woody Allen-ish nebbish. The film’s treatment of its narrative is more comic than menacing, and Houellebecq comes off as quite likable, even charming. I talked to Nicloux in early March.>> - Steven Erickson...
- 8/25/2015
- Keyframe
To say this is a strange and interesting film doesn't begin to describe the Opening Night and Paris Premiere of "Valley of Love" by Guillaume Nicloux, which had its World Premier in competition at Cannes last month.
Starring two of Europe's most famous actors (Isabelle Hupert and Gérard Dépardieu) who play two lost souls on a mystical mission in one of the most barren, frightening and glorious places on earth - Death Valley.
Speaking in French, Isabelle and Gérard, lovers and parents in their youth but now separated for many years and really not knowing each other anymore, just lost their adult son Michael, a gay man.
However, 6 months after his death, they each receive a strange and compelling letter from him in which he beckons each of them to come together for a reunion, a meeting with him in Death Valley, in various places on succeeding days.
Despite the absurdity of the situation, the now much older mother and father each decide to go there and wait for Michael.
The film then, in glorious locales, becomes a dialogue between two strangers about their lives, their former connection, and about a son whom both barely knew.
The two actors are fascinating. Dépardieu seems particularly lost and even speaks about his vast girth (He Is fat!!!) which seems symbolic of his wasted life and he doesn't hesitate here to show it off.
Hupert, whenever she is on screen, takes over and rages with amazing skill about her anger, disappointment and loss of the son she mourns but hardly knew.
The film is a compelling, interesting discourse on life's disappointments set in a vast mysterious location. The spiritual upheaval both characters experience at the end throws their confused, lost lives further into question in ways they never expected.
Credits
Guillaume Nicloux - director
Guillaume Nicloux - screenplay
Sylvie Pialat - producer
International rights are being handled by Le Pacte, U.S. Rights are still available.
Abut the Director
From experimental cinema ("The Flying Children," "Punctured Life") to his triptych of noir films (A Private Affair, Hanging Offense, The Key ), from unconventional comedy (The Octopus, Holiday) to political film ("The Gordji Affair"), through to drama ("Happiness Is No Joke," "La Reine des Connes"), Guillaume Nicloux’s work is dense and highly personal. "La Religieuse" and "L’Enlèvement" de Michel Houellebecq, presented at the last Berlinale Film Festival, is no exception. "Valley of Love," shot in the USA, starring Gérard Depardieu and Isabelle Huppert, is his 15th film. Guillaume Nicloux is also a novelist and he has been teaching at Femis for ten years.
Starring two of Europe's most famous actors (Isabelle Hupert and Gérard Dépardieu) who play two lost souls on a mystical mission in one of the most barren, frightening and glorious places on earth - Death Valley.
Speaking in French, Isabelle and Gérard, lovers and parents in their youth but now separated for many years and really not knowing each other anymore, just lost their adult son Michael, a gay man.
However, 6 months after his death, they each receive a strange and compelling letter from him in which he beckons each of them to come together for a reunion, a meeting with him in Death Valley, in various places on succeeding days.
Despite the absurdity of the situation, the now much older mother and father each decide to go there and wait for Michael.
The film then, in glorious locales, becomes a dialogue between two strangers about their lives, their former connection, and about a son whom both barely knew.
The two actors are fascinating. Dépardieu seems particularly lost and even speaks about his vast girth (He Is fat!!!) which seems symbolic of his wasted life and he doesn't hesitate here to show it off.
Hupert, whenever she is on screen, takes over and rages with amazing skill about her anger, disappointment and loss of the son she mourns but hardly knew.
The film is a compelling, interesting discourse on life's disappointments set in a vast mysterious location. The spiritual upheaval both characters experience at the end throws their confused, lost lives further into question in ways they never expected.
Credits
Guillaume Nicloux - director
Guillaume Nicloux - screenplay
Sylvie Pialat - producer
International rights are being handled by Le Pacte, U.S. Rights are still available.
Abut the Director
From experimental cinema ("The Flying Children," "Punctured Life") to his triptych of noir films (A Private Affair, Hanging Offense, The Key ), from unconventional comedy (The Octopus, Holiday) to political film ("The Gordji Affair"), through to drama ("Happiness Is No Joke," "La Reine des Connes"), Guillaume Nicloux’s work is dense and highly personal. "La Religieuse" and "L’Enlèvement" de Michel Houellebecq, presented at the last Berlinale Film Festival, is no exception. "Valley of Love," shot in the USA, starring Gérard Depardieu and Isabelle Huppert, is his 15th film. Guillaume Nicloux is also a novelist and he has been teaching at Femis for ten years.
- 6/15/2015
- by Peter Belsito
- Sydney's Buzz
A Croisette anomaly of sorts and still a relative unknown despite his three decade and dozen film span, Guillaume Nicloux’s only previous Cannes showing was 1994’s Faut pas rire du bonheur landing in the Directors’ Fortnight. An American based West Coast meeting place grief-stricken drama, this also happens to be Isabelle Huppert and Gerard Depardieu’s on-screen reunion a good 35 years after Maurice Pialat’s “Loulou”. Working with Huppert once again after 2013’s The Nun, Valley of Love actually follows last year’s The Kidnapping of Michel Houellebecq. While our panel gave the film your average passing grade of three, our Nicholas Bell appears to have been the among the few touched by the awkwardness of the affair stating that the film is “a rather beautiful, melancholy poem about guilt, grief, and the tragedy of expectation.”...
- 5/24/2015
- by Eric Lavallee
- IONCINEMA.com
Valley of Love
Written and directed by Guillaume Nicloux
France 2015
Minimalist drama Valley of Love is the final French entry in this year’s competition. It stars two living monuments of French cinema, Isabelle Huppert, in no less than two films in competition this year, and Gerard Depardieu whose performance in last year’s out of competition Welcome to New York was apparently a tour de force. Valley of Love is the baby of prolific French filmmaker Guillaume Nicloux (none of whose films I had previously seen and about whom I had no expectations whatsoever.)
First things first, the film is a chamber drama with little plot beyond the two leads errant in the scorching barrenness of Death Valley National Park. They incarnate a former couple of French actors, Isabelle and Gérard, reunited at the behest of their son who has recently committed suicide. A letter sent to each of...
Written and directed by Guillaume Nicloux
France 2015
Minimalist drama Valley of Love is the final French entry in this year’s competition. It stars two living monuments of French cinema, Isabelle Huppert, in no less than two films in competition this year, and Gerard Depardieu whose performance in last year’s out of competition Welcome to New York was apparently a tour de force. Valley of Love is the baby of prolific French filmmaker Guillaume Nicloux (none of whose films I had previously seen and about whom I had no expectations whatsoever.)
First things first, the film is a chamber drama with little plot beyond the two leads errant in the scorching barrenness of Death Valley National Park. They incarnate a former couple of French actors, Isabelle and Gérard, reunited at the behest of their son who has recently committed suicide. A letter sent to each of...
- 5/23/2015
- by Zornitsa Staneva
- SoundOnSight
It has been a long time since Isabelle Huppert and Gérard Depardieu shared the screen together. They were in 1974's "Les valseuses," and six years later appeared together in "Loulou" in 1980. Now three decades and some change later, they are pairing up again for "Valley Of Love" and are headed to the Cannes Film Festival to show off the result. Read More: The 20 Most Anticipated Films Of The 2015 Cannes Film Festival Guillaume Nicloux ("The Kidnapping of Michel Houellebecq") directs this one about estranged parents who are brought together by the suicide of their son. Here's the official synopsis: Isabelle and Gérard go to a strange appointment in Death Valley, California. They have not seen each other for years and are here to answer to an invitation from their son Michael, a photographer, which they received after his suicide, six months ago. Despite the absurdity of the situation, they...
- 5/11/2015
- by Kevin Jagernauth
- The Playlist
Neil Armfield.s Holding the Man, Simon Stone.s The Daughter, Jeremy Sims. Last Cab to Darwin and Jen Peedom.s feature doc Sherpa will have their world premieres at the Sydney Film Festival.
The festival program unveiled today includes 33 world premieres (including 22 shorts) and 135 Australian premieres (with 18 shorts) among 251 titles from 68 countries.
Among the other premieres will be Daina Reid.s The Secret River, Ruby Entertainment's. ABC-tv miniseries starring Oliver Jackson Cohen and Sarah Snook, and three Oz docs, Marc Eberle.s The Cambodian Space Project — Not Easy Rock .n. Roll, Steve Thomas. Freedom Stories and Lisa Nicol.s Wide Open Sky.
Festival director Nashen Moodley boasted. this year.s event will be far larger than 2014's when 183 films from 47 countries were screened, including 15 world premieres. The expansion is possible in part due to the addition of two new screening venues in Newtown and Liverpool.
As previously announced, Brendan Cowell...
The festival program unveiled today includes 33 world premieres (including 22 shorts) and 135 Australian premieres (with 18 shorts) among 251 titles from 68 countries.
Among the other premieres will be Daina Reid.s The Secret River, Ruby Entertainment's. ABC-tv miniseries starring Oliver Jackson Cohen and Sarah Snook, and three Oz docs, Marc Eberle.s The Cambodian Space Project — Not Easy Rock .n. Roll, Steve Thomas. Freedom Stories and Lisa Nicol.s Wide Open Sky.
Festival director Nashen Moodley boasted. this year.s event will be far larger than 2014's when 183 films from 47 countries were screened, including 15 world premieres. The expansion is possible in part due to the addition of two new screening venues in Newtown and Liverpool.
As previously announced, Brendan Cowell...
- 5/6/2015
- by Don Groves
- IF.com.au
Official Selection for 2015 line-up completed with extra titles for Competition, Un Certain Regard, Special Screening and Midnight Screening strands.Click here for the full line-up
The 68th Cannes Film Festival has completed its Official Selection. Headlining the additions are two more Competition titles, taking the number of films in the running for the Palme d’Or up to 19.
The first is Chronic by Mexican director Michel Franco, starring Tim Roth and Bitsie Tulloch (Grimm). The film marks Franco’s English-language debut and centres on a depressed nurse practitioner who assists terminally ill patients and tries to reconnect with the family he abandoned. Wild Bunch handles sales
Franco and Roth decided to work together after meeting at Cannes in 2012, where the film-maker’s previous feature After Lucia won Un Certain Regard and Roth served on the jury.
The Mexican filmmaker was also in the running for Cannes’ Golden Camera in 2009 with his debut feature, Daniel and Ana.
The...
The 68th Cannes Film Festival has completed its Official Selection. Headlining the additions are two more Competition titles, taking the number of films in the running for the Palme d’Or up to 19.
The first is Chronic by Mexican director Michel Franco, starring Tim Roth and Bitsie Tulloch (Grimm). The film marks Franco’s English-language debut and centres on a depressed nurse practitioner who assists terminally ill patients and tries to reconnect with the family he abandoned. Wild Bunch handles sales
Franco and Roth decided to work together after meeting at Cannes in 2012, where the film-maker’s previous feature After Lucia won Un Certain Regard and Roth served on the jury.
The Mexican filmmaker was also in the running for Cannes’ Golden Camera in 2009 with his debut feature, Daniel and Ana.
The...
- 4/23/2015
- by michael.rosser@screendaily.com (Michael Rosser)
- ScreenDaily
Parabellum director Lukas Valenta Rinner: "A lot of people mention the connection to Austrian cinema like Ulrich Seidl for example." Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze
"The world is no longer a predictable place," we hear in Parabellum as we follow the featureless man and a group of blindfolded tourists into a swamp delta for a survival training unlike any other. Lukas Valenta Rinner directs with confidence and a detached gaze the goings-on in the explorer's camp that offers courses on homemade explosives and the mandatory survival underwater training. John Huston's The African Queen and Benoît Jacquot's Farewell, My Queen are about two different kind of personal survival. Austrian parallels come into play with his New Directors/New Films colleagues, Goodnight Night Mommy directors, Veronika Franz, and Severin Fiala, as well as Michael Haneke and Ulrich Seidl. Pablo Seijo connected with his character through Michel Houellebecq's books.
The participants...
"The world is no longer a predictable place," we hear in Parabellum as we follow the featureless man and a group of blindfolded tourists into a swamp delta for a survival training unlike any other. Lukas Valenta Rinner directs with confidence and a detached gaze the goings-on in the explorer's camp that offers courses on homemade explosives and the mandatory survival underwater training. John Huston's The African Queen and Benoît Jacquot's Farewell, My Queen are about two different kind of personal survival. Austrian parallels come into play with his New Directors/New Films colleagues, Goodnight Night Mommy directors, Veronika Franz, and Severin Fiala, as well as Michael Haneke and Ulrich Seidl. Pablo Seijo connected with his character through Michel Houellebecq's books.
The participants...
- 4/2/2015
- by Anne-Katrin Titze
- eyeforfilm.co.uk
One of the happy surprises of the 2014 Berlinale was “The Kidnapping of Michel Houellebecq.” Guillaume Nicloux’ 90-minute film is a faux documentary inspired by the real-life and still-unexplained disappearance of the celebrated and reclusive French author, who didn’t show up for part of a 2011 book tour, leading to a media frenzy and even to worries of an Al-Qaeda plot, and then returned days later, lips sealed. Nicloux’ genius is to fill in the blanks, and he does so hilariously. It helps, of course, to know at least a bit about Houellebecq, who is as ornery and controversial as he is talented. In novels like “Platform” (2002) and “The Elementary Particles" (2000), he has openly criticized Islam and free economic markets, which he feels create winners and losers in love as well as life. Many critics consider him to be sexist, misogynist, racist, not to mention pornographic and generally repugnant. He is certainly an eccentric,...
- 3/25/2015
- by Tom Christie
- Thompson on Hollywood
In the new issue of the London Review of Books, James Meek takes a long hard look at Mad Men, Adam Shatz reviews Michel Houellebecq's Soumission just as Guillaume Nicloux's The Kidnapping of Michel Houellebecq opens at New York's Film Forum, and Michael Wood considers David Robert Mitchell's It Follows, which expands this weekend to 1200 theaters. Also: Interviews with Errol Morris, Abel Ferrara and Lisandro Alonso; Keith Phipps on Noah Baumbach; a huge Orson Welles retrospective in Munich; and in Austin, Richard Linklater heads back to the 1980s. » - David Hudson...
- 3/25/2015
- Fandor: Keyframe
In the new issue of the London Review of Books, James Meek takes a long hard look at Mad Men, Adam Shatz reviews Michel Houellebecq's Soumission just as Guillaume Nicloux's The Kidnapping of Michel Houellebecq opens at New York's Film Forum, and Michael Wood considers David Robert Mitchell's It Follows, which expands this weekend to 1200 theaters. Also: Interviews with Errol Morris, Abel Ferrara and Lisandro Alonso; Keith Phipps on Noah Baumbach; a huge Orson Welles retrospective in Munich; and in Austin, Richard Linklater heads back to the 1980s. » - David Hudson...
- 3/25/2015
- Keyframe
Michel Houellebecq is France's most famous contemporary writer, owing in no small part to controversy that he either stirs up or can't escape from. In 2002, he was tried for (and eventually acquitted of) "inciting racial hatred" for calling Islam "the dumbest religion" during an interview to promote his 2001 novel, Platform. His latest book, Submission, a satiric portrayal of France under Shariah law in 2022, was published in that country on January 7 — the same day of the slaughter at the office of Charlie Hebdo, which had featured a cartoon of the author on that week's cover. In Guillaume Nicloux's droll, loose docu-concoction The Kidnapping of Michel Houellebecq, the writer plays a version of himself: less the world-renowned provocateur than a...
- 3/25/2015
- Village Voice
Michel Houellebecq, the énfant terrible of French Literature, is regarded by many as the best European writer to emerge in decades. My first Houellebecq was Elementary Particles in the late 90s- the book was repulsive, depraved, nihilistic and shocking but I couldn't put it down. I gotta admit that I am a big fan. I've read all his books since then. What's great about his work is, however incendiary and miserablist it might sound, there is always much humanism that runs through at its core.However, he's been accused of being an Islamophobe for some incendiary passages in many of his novels, namely Platform. It was his caricature on the cover of Charlie Hebdo when the place was shot up by Islamic militants, leaving 12 people...
[Read the whole post on twitchfilm.com...]...
[Read the whole post on twitchfilm.com...]...
- 3/24/2015
- Screen Anarchy
The new Film Comment features pieces on Bertrand Bonello's Saint Laurent, Virgil Vernier's Mercuriales, Riley Stearns's Faults, Guillaume Nicloux's The Kidnapping of Michel Houellebecq, Kornél Mundruczó's White God, Robert Kenner's Merchants of Doubt, Noah Baumbach's While We’re Young, Rupert Goold's True Story, Richard Laxton's Effie Gray, Kirby Dick's The Hunting Ground, David Zellner and Nathan Zellner's Kumiko, The Treasure Hunter, Kristian Levring's The Salvation and more. Also in today's news: Sight & Sound on women film critics, Adrian Martin on Ernst Lubitsch, David Bordwell on Strange Interlude (1932), the Paris Review on John Carpenter's The Thing (1982) and lots more. » - David Hudson...
- 3/9/2015
- Keyframe
The new Film Comment features pieces on Bertrand Bonello's Saint Laurent, Virgil Vernier's Mercuriales, Riley Stearns's Faults, Guillaume Nicloux's The Kidnapping of Michel Houellebecq, Kornél Mundruczó's White God, Robert Kenner's Merchants of Doubt, Noah Baumbach's While We’re Young, Rupert Goold's True Story, Richard Laxton's Effie Gray, Kirby Dick's The Hunting Ground, David Zellner and Nathan Zellner's Kumiko, The Treasure Hunter, Kristian Levring's The Salvation and more. Also in today's news: Sight & Sound on women film critics, Adrian Martin on Ernst Lubitsch, David Bordwell on Strange Interlude (1932), the Paris Review on John Carpenter's The Thing (1982) and lots more. » - David Hudson...
- 3/9/2015
- Fandor: Keyframe
The new Film Comment features pieces on Bertrand Bonello's Saint Laurent, Virgil Vernier's Mercuriales, Riley Stearns's Faults, Guillaume Nicloux's The Kidnapping of Michel Houellebecq, Kornél Mundruczó's White God, Robert Kenner's Merchants of Doubt, Noah Baumbach's While We’re Young, Rupert Goold's True Story, Richard Laxton's Effie Gray, Kirby Dick's The Hunting Ground, David Zellner and Nathan Zellner's Kumiko, The Treasure Hunter, Kristian Levring's The Salvation and more. Also in today's news: Sight & Sound on women film critics, Adrian Martin on Ernst Lubitsch, David Bordwell on Strange Interlude (1932), the Paris Review on John Carpenter's The Thing (1982) and lots more. » - David Hudson...
- 3/9/2015
- Fandor: Keyframe
The new Film Comment features pieces on Bertrand Bonello's Saint Laurent, Virgil Vernier's Mercuriales, Riley Stearns's Faults, Guillaume Nicloux's The Kidnapping of Michel Houellebecq, Kornél Mundruczó's White God, Robert Kenner's Merchants of Doubt, Noah Baumbach's While We’re Young, Rupert Goold's True Story, Richard Laxton's Effie Gray, Kirby Dick's The Hunting Ground, David Zellner and Nathan Zellner's Kumiko, The Treasure Hunter, Kristian Levring's The Salvation and more. Also in today's news: Sight & Sound on women film critics, Adrian Martin on Ernst Lubitsch, David Bordwell on Strange Interlude (1932), the Paris Review on John Carpenter's The Thing (1982) and lots more. » - David Hudson...
- 3/9/2015
- Keyframe
Edited by Adam Cook
The lineup for this year's New Directors/New Films, "presented jointly by the Film Society of Lincoln Center and The Museum of Modern Art," has been announced. "For the Birds": Richard Brody picks on the Academy Awards. There's an intriguing new film journal on the scene: "The Completist," authored by Rumsey Taylor. Head over to the site to read his "Statement of Intentions". Described as being "roughly quarterly", we're looking forward to future instalments. In Film Comment, Tanner Tafelski writes on the films of John Korty:
"Carroll Ballard, Francis Ford Coppola, George Lucas, Philip Kaufman, and Michael Ritchie all are, or were, San Francisco–based filmmakers. Yet none of these people seem to be Bay Area filmmakers like Martin Scorsese, Abel Ferrara, or Spike Lee are New York filmmakers. Avant-garde cinema, on the other hand, has a rich history with the West Coast in general,...
The lineup for this year's New Directors/New Films, "presented jointly by the Film Society of Lincoln Center and The Museum of Modern Art," has been announced. "For the Birds": Richard Brody picks on the Academy Awards. There's an intriguing new film journal on the scene: "The Completist," authored by Rumsey Taylor. Head over to the site to read his "Statement of Intentions". Described as being "roughly quarterly", we're looking forward to future instalments. In Film Comment, Tanner Tafelski writes on the films of John Korty:
"Carroll Ballard, Francis Ford Coppola, George Lucas, Philip Kaufman, and Michael Ritchie all are, or were, San Francisco–based filmmakers. Yet none of these people seem to be Bay Area filmmakers like Martin Scorsese, Abel Ferrara, or Spike Lee are New York filmmakers. Avant-garde cinema, on the other hand, has a rich history with the West Coast in general,...
- 2/25/2015
- by Notebook
- MUBI
First edition of the new Icelandic film festival to open with award-winning actor Sverrir Gudnason in attendance.
The inaugural Stockfish Film Festival (Feb 19-March 1), launched by a group of industry veterans, is to kick off in Iceland with Jens Östberg’s crime thriller Blowfly Park (Flugparken).
The film’s star, Sverrir Gudnason, will be in attendance as an honorary guest of the festival. The crime thriller saw Gudnason pick up the best actor award at Sweden’s Guldbagge awards last month.
Director Östberg will also attend the festival to present the film.
Blowfly Park will also be a part of the Stockfish on Wheels initiative, where a select few films from the festival will tour Iceland afterthe festival. Amongst other films screening at Stockfish are Party Girl, Black Coal, Thin Ice, Goodbye to Language 3D and The Kidnapping of Michel Houellebecq.
Stockfisheffectively revives the Reykjavik Film Festival (Rff), which ran from 1978 to 2001.
The organisers, led by Oscar-nominated...
The inaugural Stockfish Film Festival (Feb 19-March 1), launched by a group of industry veterans, is to kick off in Iceland with Jens Östberg’s crime thriller Blowfly Park (Flugparken).
The film’s star, Sverrir Gudnason, will be in attendance as an honorary guest of the festival. The crime thriller saw Gudnason pick up the best actor award at Sweden’s Guldbagge awards last month.
Director Östberg will also attend the festival to present the film.
Blowfly Park will also be a part of the Stockfish on Wheels initiative, where a select few films from the festival will tour Iceland afterthe festival. Amongst other films screening at Stockfish are Party Girl, Black Coal, Thin Ice, Goodbye to Language 3D and The Kidnapping of Michel Houellebecq.
Stockfisheffectively revives the Reykjavik Film Festival (Rff), which ran from 1978 to 2001.
The organisers, led by Oscar-nominated...
- 2/19/2015
- by michael.rosser@screendaily.com (Michael Rosser)
- ScreenDaily
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