A Grab-bag of All Things French Cinéma NOW

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Lots is happening in French cinema right now–from Cannes winners to various films coming out around the U.S. to festivals of French cinema. Read on to find out what’s happening in le ciné! 

• Cannes Film Festival 2022 winners announced

Ruben Östlund won his second Palme d’Or, for his satirical Triangle of Sadness, at the 75th Cannes Film Festival, which closed Saturday night. The Swedish director previously won the fest’s top prize in 2017 for The Square, becoming one of only nine directors to win twice. The list includes Francis Ford Coppola, Shohei Imamura, Bille August, Emir Kusturica, Michael Haneke, Ken Loach and the Dardenne Brothers.

Revered French auteur Claire Denis won her first Cannes award for Stars at Noon with her second film ever to screen in competition. She shared the Grand Prix with Belgian director Lukas Dhont’s Close.

The full list of winners:

Palme d’Or: Triangle of Sadness by Ruben Östlund

Grand Prix: Close by Lukas Dhont and Stars at Noon by Claire Denis

Special Prize for Cannes’ 75th anniversary: Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, Tori and Lokita

Jury Prize: EO and Le Otto Montagne

Best Actress: Zar Amir Ebrahimi, Holy Spider

Best Actor: Song Kang Ho, Broker

Best Director: Park Chan-wook, Decision to Leave

Best Screenplay: Boy from Heaven

Camera d’Or: War Pony, directed by Gina Gammell and Riley Keough

Short Film Palme d’Or: The Water Murmurs

• Léa Seyoux stars in the Cannes Film Festival—comme d’hab

The French star and her Blue is the Warmest Color co-star Adèle Exarchopoulos were the first actors even to be awarded the coveted Palme d’Or in 2013, when they shared the prize with the film’s director Abdellatif Kechiche. Last year, the 36-year-old Seydoux acted in four films at the festival, but missed out when she tested positive for COVID-19.

Seydoux was back this round with two films that received a lot of attention at the festival. In Mia Hansen-Love’s (Bergman Island) One Fine Morning, Seydoux plays a young widow and single mother having a passionate affair with an old friend. Sony Pictures Classics acquired the film last week for U.S. theatrical distribution. Seydoux also stars in David Cronenberg’s dystopian Crimes of the Future, with Viggo Mortenson, which opens June 3 in theaters. The film, in which Seydoux and Viggo Mortenson play a couple who make a theatrical performance of removing tumors and organs live on stage, provoked many walkouts and a 7-minute standing ovation at the premiere.

• French films featured in Paramount Classic Film Series

Don’t dream it. See it! The Paramount Summer Classic Film Series celebrates its 48th anniversary with a lineup of classics and new films that runs all summer long through the end of September at the Paramount Theater in downtown Austin, TX.

French screenings in the first batch announced include: Rififi, on Tuesday, June 7 @ 7:30, and 60th anniversary screenings of Jules and Jim, on Saturday, June 18 @ 1pm and Cléo from 5 to 7, Saturday, June 18 @4pm.

More info on the series, ici.

 

• The Valet, a Remake of 2006 French comedy, La Doublure, Streams on Hulu

In this Hulu original, Samara Weaving (Nine Perfect Strangers) plays a movie star who hires a valet (CODA’s Eugenio Derbez) to pose as her boyfriend to cover up her affair with a married man. La Doublure was directed by Francis Weber and starred Gad Elmaleh, Alice Taglioni, Daniel Auteuil, Kristin Scott Thomas and Virginie Ledoyen.

 

 

•  Films on the Green spotlights 12 literary adaptations in 9 parks across Manhattan and Brooklyn

Films on the Green is a free outdoor French film festival produced annually in New York City parks by Villa Albertine, the French Embassy, FACE Foundation, and NYC Parks. This year’s edition will run from June 3 – September 9. Highlights include Jean-Luc Godard’s Bande à Part, Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s Delicatessen, and The Velvet Queen, directed by Marie Amiguet and Vincent Munier.

For more information, click here.

• French Films at Tribeca Film Festival 2022

The much-loved annual event runs from June 8-19, with talks, screenings of films new and retrospective, music, immersive experiences, outdoor and free events, some virtual, others in-person at venues throughout NYC.

A slate of French films and French productions includes:

The Wild One, a documentary directed by Tessa Louise-Salomé about Jack Garfein, Holocaust survivor, theater and film director, key figure in the formation of the Actors Studio. The film traces Garfein’s life, powered by his vivid recollections and augmented by readings by Willem Dafoe.

Babysitter, a narrative feature directed by Monia Chokri about a household upended when Cédric is suspended from work for kissing a female reporter on live TV, his girlfriend fights postpartum depression, and a sexy young babysitter enters their lives, shifting the family’s paradigm.

Lucky, a documentary directed by Loren Denis and Anthony Vibert, about model, musician, dancer, and drag queen Luc Bruyère who lost his left arm at birth to Agenesis.

Five-O (Ça passe), directed by Ismaïl Alaoui Fdili, Yassine Lassar Ramdani, Elsie Otinwa, Florence Fauquet, Ming Fai Sham Lourenço, Eloise Monmirel, tells the story of Amin, a young spotter with the gift of the gab who’s given an opportunity to become a soloist in her opera.

Living in the Heart of Love is a music video directed by Charles Mehling that tracks two female heroes and a cast of like-minded characters who traverse Paris after hours, down for whatever magic the night has in store.

More info and tickets here.

• Neptune Frost opens in select theaters on June 3

Saul Williams and Anisia Uzeyman’s Afro-Futurist Sci-Fi musical opens June 3 in NYC with a national rollout to follow. The film, which also screened at Cannes’ Directors Fortnight, Toronto International Film Festival, The New York Film Festival, BFI London, and Sundance Film Festival, is executive produced by Lin-Manuel Miranda and Stephen Hendel (Finding Fela) and features original music by multi-hyphenate, multidisciplinary artist Saul Williams.

The Afrofuturist, sci-fi punk musical “takes place in the hilltops of Burundi, where a group of escaped coltan miners form an anti-colonialist computer hacker collective and attempt to take over the authoritarian regime that has been exploiting the region’s resources and people. When an intersex runaway and an escaped miner find each other through cosmic forces, their connection sparks glitches within the greater divine circuitry.”

Indie Goodbye Petrushka premieres at Dances with Films, LA

This playful romantic comedy directed by Nicola Rose follows oddball puppeteer Claire (Lizzie Kehoe) who blows off film school in New York to follow Thibault (Thomas Vieljeux), a hunky French figure skater she barely knows, to Paris.

More info on Dances with Films here.

 

Andrea Meyer has written creative treatments for commercial directors, a sex & the movies column for IFC, and a horror screenplay for MGM. Her first novel, Room for Love (St. Martin’s Press) is a romantic comedy based on an article she wrote for the New York Post, for which she pretended to look for a roommate as a ploy to meet men. A long-time film and entertainment journalist and former indieWIRE editor, Andrea has interviewed more actors and directors than she can remember. Her articles and essays have appeared in such publications as Elle, Glamour, Variety, Time Out NY, and the Boston Globe.  

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