Matthew Rankin’s Universal Language and late French director Sophie Fillieres’ This Life Of Mine both won prizes in the Cannes Directors’ Fortnight sidebar.
Rankin’s second feature Universal Language took the first-ever Audience Award in the section, which came with a €7,500 cash prize sponsored by the Chantal Akerman Foundation. It is the first audience award across the major Cannes sections, with no audience prizes given in the Official Selection or Critics’ Week sections.
The Persian- and French-language film is a comedy in which various storylines intertwine, including two women trying to retrieve some frozen cash; a tour guide leading...
Rankin’s second feature Universal Language took the first-ever Audience Award in the section, which came with a €7,500 cash prize sponsored by the Chantal Akerman Foundation. It is the first audience award across the major Cannes sections, with no audience prizes given in the Official Selection or Critics’ Week sections.
The Persian- and French-language film is a comedy in which various storylines intertwine, including two women trying to retrieve some frozen cash; a tour guide leading...
- 5/23/2024
- ScreenDaily
Late screenwriter-director Sophie Fillières’ seventh and final feature, “This Life of Mine” was the opening film at this year’s Directors’ Fortnight and today wrapped things up as the France Writers’ Guild’s favorite French-language feature, winning the Sacd Authors’ Favorite Prize.
In the film, Barbie, once a devoted mother and partner, faces the realities of middle age as she turns 55. Following a classic three-act structure, the film advances from comedy to tragedy to epiphany, at times toying with the absurd.
Said Anne Villacèque, Sacd administrator: “This year, we had to decide from a particularly eclectic selection. Choosing between novel and poetry, right arm and left arm, grandiose or more modest films. We chose the film whose heart beat the strongest and continued to move us long after seeing it.
“A daring, delicate, unpredictable film, the culmination of a work full of dissonance and side steps, as its director liked to say,...
In the film, Barbie, once a devoted mother and partner, faces the realities of middle age as she turns 55. Following a classic three-act structure, the film advances from comedy to tragedy to epiphany, at times toying with the absurd.
Said Anne Villacèque, Sacd administrator: “This year, we had to decide from a particularly eclectic selection. Choosing between novel and poetry, right arm and left arm, grandiose or more modest films. We chose the film whose heart beat the strongest and continued to move us long after seeing it.
“A daring, delicate, unpredictable film, the culmination of a work full of dissonance and side steps, as its director liked to say,...
- 5/23/2024
- by Jamie Lang
- Variety Film + TV
What is poignant about “This Life of Mine” — the final film by French writer-director Sophie Fillières — is all but impossible to extract from the beleaguered circumstances of its creation. Aged just 58, Fillières died last summer, shortly after completing the shoot of this wistful, somewhat autofictional study of midlife feminine crisis. Postproduction was supervised by her children, the actors Agathe and Adam Bonitzer, with the guidance of notes Fillières made in hospital, when it became clear to her that she’d never complete the project herself. What emerges from this process is a suitably elegiac testament to Fillières’ curious comic voice, centered on a fragile alter ego — played with a game lack of vanity by Agnès Jaoui — fearful that her life is passing her by. As filmmaking, however, it wants for shape and drive, and the intuitive editorial decision-making that only an author can bring to her work.
Heavy on wordplay and loose conversational drift,...
Heavy on wordplay and loose conversational drift,...
- 5/16/2024
- by Guy Lodge
- Variety Film + TV
Shortly before last year’s Cannes Film Festival, director Sophie Fillières attended a cast and crew screening of “Anatomy of a Fall.” The filmmaker had a supporting role in the film, playing the deceased’s sister, and she soon celebrated her work’s Palme d’Or win from afar, hanging back in Paris, where she was preparing to shoot her seventh feature, “This Life of Mine.”
The five-week production kicked off in late June, running smoothly and wrapping on the last day of July. The next day, Fillières checked into the hospital; in less than a month, she was gone.
If hardly offsetting the shock and hurt of her passing, Fillières leaves behind a remarkable legacy, as her final film will open this year’s Director’s Fortnight while a generation of French talents now looks to her with awe.
“Seeing Sophie’s work for the first time gave me...
The five-week production kicked off in late June, running smoothly and wrapping on the last day of July. The next day, Fillières checked into the hospital; in less than a month, she was gone.
If hardly offsetting the shock and hurt of her passing, Fillières leaves behind a remarkable legacy, as her final film will open this year’s Director’s Fortnight while a generation of French talents now looks to her with awe.
“Seeing Sophie’s work for the first time gave me...
- 5/14/2024
- by Ben Croll
- Variety Film + TV
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