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Jessica Hausner with Anne-Katrin Titze on Sylvie Testud’s Christine, Léa Seydoux’s Maria, Bruno Todeschini’s Kuno, and Gilette Barbier’s Frau Hartl in Lourdes: “I was thinking about the story of Heidi [by Johanna Spyri].”

In the first installment with Jessica Hausner on three of her feature films before her latest, the bewitching Club Zero (European Film Award Best Original Score to Markus Binder), we start the conversation with Lourdes, costumes, as always, designed by Tanja Hausner, cinematography by Martin Gschlacht, sound design by Erik Mischijew, and production design by Katharina Wöppermann (Shirin Neshat and Shoja Azari’s Women Without Men).

Kuno (Bruno Todeschini) with Christine (Sylvie Testud), Frau Hartl (Gilette Barbier) and Cécile (Elina Löwensohn)

Maria (Léa Seydoux), a newcomer to the...

Chicago – Patrick McDonald of HollywoodChicago.com audio film review for the U.S. release of “The Beast,” a science fiction film about the inherent psychological/emotional carriage within us all, co-written and directed by Bertrand Bonello. In select theaters now (see local listings). At Chicago’s Music Box Theatre on April 12th.

Rating: 5.0/5.0

The film involves a woman named Gabrielle (Léa Seydoux) who in 2044 is about to embark on a “DNA cleansing” to take away the trauma her past lives had endured. While going through the process she meets Louis (George MacKay) who gives her a sense of deja vu. It turns out that this couple has been together in a 1910 sense (Belle Époque Paris) and a 2014 sense (in Los Angeles). As the story of those three encounters play out within her cellular energy, the evolution of Gabrielle seems to have something to do with her connection to Louis.

”The Beast...

“The Beast” is a new science fiction romance, directed by Bertrand Bonello, starring Léa Seydoux, George MacKay, Guslagie Malanda, Dasha Nekrasova, Martin Scalia and Elina Löwensohn, opening April 5, 2024 in theaters:

“…in 2044, ‘AI’ has evolved and determined human emotion as a threat.

“As ‘Gabrielle’ is about to go through a process to ‘purify’ her ‘DNA’ and disconnect from those emotions - she does so by living through past lives.

“But when she begins to connect with a man named ‘Louis’ across history, she realizes her emotions are much stronger than she could anticipate…”

Click the images to enlarge…...

A scene from She Is Conann. Courtesy of Altered Innocence

Let’s begin with the title, She Is Conann. One might expect a distaff approximation of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s 1982 Conan The Barbarian, its sequel Conan The Destroyer two years later, and the zillion, or so, incarnations those spawned in live action or anime over the following 41 years. Or a reboot of 1985’s Red Sonja, in which statuesque Brigitte Nielsen matched Ahnuld’s Kalidor (think Conan Lite) blow-for-blow. But, as the Pythons would say, “And now for something completely different…”

This version comes from France, Belgium and Luxembourg. It’s sort of a post-apocalyptic or alternate universe piece of mysticism, with time travel in the mix. The tale is narrated in a wraparound with an elderly Conann telling her story to a possible successor to her throne, guided by dog-faced vassal, Rainer (Elina Lowensohn). I didn’t mention who plays Conann...

Decadent, hermetic, and gleefully hostile to realism, French writer-director Bertrand Mandico’s She Is Conann is the cinematic equivalent of a French Symbolist poem. Throughout, the oneiric imagery seeping from every frame takes precedence over narrative linearity. And yet, even as the film embodies the self-indulgent ideal of art for art’s sake, it devours itself from within and drops the viewer back into the arena of politics.

Lest we forget even for moment that we’re watching a film, She Is Conann is shot in black and white, aside from the sporadic flash of violence and one framing sequence set in hell’s antechamber, where a dead Conann (Françoise Brion) takes stock of her life of barbarism. For her guide, there’s the dog-headed punk clairvoyant Rainer (Elina Löwensohn), whose name could be an allusion to Rainer Maria Rilke or Rainer Werner Fassbinder. Their dialogue at any given moment...

The Wild Boys director Bertrand Mandico returned earlier this year, debuting his 35mm-shot queer fantasy She Is Conann at Cannes Film Festival. Now set for a February 2 release in NY, LA, Chicago, San Francisco, Denver and more, with the director and star Elina Löwensohn in person at NYC’s Anthology Film Archives, the new trailer has arrived from Altered Innocence.

Savina Petkova said in her review, “Following The Wild Boys and After Blue, Conann marks the third feature-length project from prolific shorts filmmaker Bertrand Mandico. Many are still not convinced long-form fits his intense and imaginative style, but what’s certain is that Conann makes one heck of a watch. Part of the self-contained cosmos of Mandico’s explosive vision, this new film is a provocative tale of endurance and self-discovery inspired by the fantasy character Conan the Barbarian (or the Cimmerian). Mandico takes the figure of a sword and...

“She Is Conann” is a new science fiction fantasy thriller feature, directed by Bertrand Mandico, starring Claire Duburcq, Christa Théret, Sandra Parfait, Agata Buzek, Nathalie Richard, Françoise Brion, Julia Riedler and Elina Löwensohn, releasing February 2, 2024 in theaters:

“…traveling through the abyss, underworld dog ‘Rainer’ recounts the six lives of ‘Conann’, perpetually put to death by her own future, across eras, myths and ages.

‘Follow her, from her childhood as a slave of ‘Sanja’ and her barbarian horde…

“…to her accession to the summits of cruelty at the doors of our world…”

Click the images to enlarge…...

"Six lives. Six incarnations." Altered Innocence has revealed the US trailer for a wild & crazy experimental French film called She Is Conann, a unique re-imagining of the classic Conan the Barbarian myth through a modern gender-swapped lens. Yes, you read that right! This premireed at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival last year in Directors' Fortnight, with stops at Fantastic Fest and Sitges. It'll be opening in February in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, San Francisco, Denver, and more, with director Bertrand Mandico and the star at opening weekend showings at Anthology Film Archives in NYC. Conan's life at different stages is shown with a different aesthetic and rhythm from the classic Sumerian era to the near future. The film is a barbaric fantasy sci-fi trip that boldly celebrates the influences of Fellini Satyricon, The Night Porter, The Hunger, and Fassbinder’s entire oeuvre to craft a moving portrait of a warrior...

Experimental French filmmaker Bertrand Mandico isn’t for everyone — i.e. an acquired taste whose visions push boundaries of cinematic expression — but he’s achieved something of a cult fandom over the last three decades. After last pairing with the director on 2022’s “After Blue” and 2017’s uninhibited Venice winner “The Wild Boys” — Cahiers du Cinéma’s top film of 2018 — the distributor Altered Innocence again teams with Mandico on another provocation. His 2023 Cannes premiere “She Is Conann,” nominated for the Queer Palm before going on to play at other festivals including Locarno, is an acid-trip transgressive riff on the Conan the Barbarian myth. IndieWire shares the trailer here.

Influences on the film include Tony Scott’s “The Hunger,” the works of Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Liliana Cavani’s “The Night Porter,” and Fellini’s “Satyricon.” Throw Ken Russell in there for good measure, with profane images in “She Is Conann” reminiscent of “The Devils.

In early 2020 Hal Hartley managed to Kickstarter-finance Where to Land, a feature based on, so he claimed, the best screenplay he’d ever written. Other things––you surely noticed––from early 2020 made small, independent features a difficult prospect. Nearly four years on, however, Hartley’s returning to finance that same film with the same $300,000 price tag in a new Kickstarter campaign.

Regulars Bill Sage and Robert John Burke are expected to star alongside Katelyn Sparks; no word on the once-cast Edie Falco, Parker Posey, and Elina Löwensohn, but any appearing in his film is about the least-surprising thing that might transpire. With an essential, extensive Hartley retrospective now running on the Criterion Channel, one hopes interest in this filmmaker––among the most appreciably sui generis America’s produced the last 40 years––is sufficient to finance a new project.

Here’s the official synopsis:

Joseph Fulton, a well-regarded fifty-eight year-old director of romantic comedies,...

Bertrand Bonello’s “The Beast,” a dystopian romance drama starring Lea Seydoux (“No Time to Die”) and George MacKay (“1917”), has been bought by distributors in all major markets following its world premiere in competition at the Venice Film Festival.

Represented in international markets by Kinology, “The Beast” has sold to the U.K. (Vertigo Releasing), Italy (iWonder), Spain (Caramel), Australia and New Zealand (Rialto), Benelux (Imagine), Scandinavia (NonStop), Latin America (Impacto), Middle East (Front Row), Poland (New Horizons), Greece (Weirdwave), Portugal (Alambique), Cis (Capella), Romania (Transilvania), Bulgaria (Cinelibri), Ex-Yugoslavia (McF Megacom), India (Superfine) and Indonesia (P.T. Falcon).

As announced on Monday, the movie was picked up by Sideshow and Janus Films for U.S. distribution.

The film is adapted from Henry James’ novella “The Beast in the Jungle” and is set it in the near future, where artificial intelligence reigns supreme and emotions are seen as dangerous. It...

“The Beast,” starring Léa Seydoux and George MacKay, has been picked up for domestic distribution by Sideshow and Janus Films, TheWrap has learned.

The romantic drama, based on Henry James’ novella ‘The Beast in the Jungle,’ will receive a theatrical release next year. It also co-stars Guslagie Malanda, Dasha Nekrasova, Martin Scali, Élina Löwensohn, Marta Hoskins, Julia Faure, Kester Lovelace, Félicien Pinot, and Laurent Lacote.

The film concerns a near future where artificial intelligence reigns and human emotions represent a threat to the ruling order. As such, Gabrielle (Seydoux) must purify her DNA by going back into her past lives. There, she reunites with Louis (MacKay), her great love. But she is overcome by fear, a premonition that catastrophe is on the way.

Sideshow and Janus Films commented: “Bertrand Bonello has made a bold, provocative and beautifully made film asking major questions about our humanity in the age of A.

Sideshow and Janus Films have acquired all U.S. rights for “The Beast,” which was written and directed by Bertrand Bonello, the filmmaker behind “Saint Laurent.”

The film is an adaptation of Henry James’ novella “The Beast in the Jungle.” It features a glossy cast that includes “No Time to Die” star Léa Seydoux and “1917” breakout George MacKay, along with Guslagie Malanda, Dasha Nekrasova, Martin Scali, Élina Löwensohn, Marta Hoskins, Julia Faure, Kester Lovelace, Félicien Pinot, and Laurent Lacote. The film is a Les Films du Bélier, My New Picture and Sons of Manual Production, and is produced by Justin Taurand and Bertrand Bonello.

The movie has updated James’ tale quite liberally, setting it in the near future where artificial intelligence reigns supreme and emotions are seen as dangerous. It follows Gabrielle (Seydoux) as she works to purify her DNA. Safe to say none of these things were preoccupations for James,...

The Beast, Bertrand Bonello’s time-hopping cosmic romance starring Lea Seydoux and George MacKay, has been acquired by Sideshow and Janus Films for the U.S. A theatrical release is planned for 2024.

The film, which had its world premiere in competition at the Venice Film Festival, later screened in Toronto and has just had its U.S. premiere at the New York Film Festival, was written and directed by Bonello (Saint Laurent), and is based on the Henry James novella The Beast in the Jungle. Guslagie Malanda, Dasha Nekrasova, Martin Scali, Élina Löwensohn, Marta Hoskins, Julia Faure, Kester Lovelace, Félicien Pinot and Laurent Lacote also star.

Set in the near future where artificial intelligence reigns supreme and human emotions have become a threat, The Beast sees Gabrielle (Seydoux) attempt to purify her DNA by going back into her past lives. There, she reunites with Louis (MacKay), her great love. But she is overcome by fear,...

Sideshow and Janus Films have acquired all US rights for The Beast (LA BÊTE), the latest feature from French filmmaker Bertrand Bonello (Saint Laurent) starring Léa Seydoux.

The film debuted in competition at this year’s Venice Film Festival and is based on Henry James’ novella The Beast In The Jungle. Synopsis reads: In the near future where artificial intelligence reigns supreme, human emotions have become a threat. To get rid of them, Gabrielle (Seydoux) must purify her DNA by going back into her past lives. There, she reunites with Louis (George MacKay), her great love. But she is overcome by fear, a premonition that catastrophe is on the way.

Starring alongside Seydoux and MacKay are Guslagie Malanda (Saint Omer), Dasha Nekrasova, Martin Scali, Élina Löwensohn, Marta Hoskins, Julia Faure, Kester Lovelace, Félicien Pinot, and Laurent Lacote. The film is a Les Films du Bélier, My New Picture, and Sons of Manual production,...

The new science fiction drama feature "The Beast" (aka "La Bête"), based on Henry James' 1903 novella "The Beast in the Jungle", is directed by Bertrand Bonello starring Léa Seydoux, Guslagie Malanda, Dasha Nekrasova, Martin Scali, Elina Löwensohn, Marta Hoskins, Julia Faure, Kester Lovelace, Félicien Pinot, Laurent Lacotte, Weronika Szawarska and Jasmine Van Deventer, with a North American release Tba:

"...the story is set in the near future, where emotions have become a threat. A woman, 'Gabrielle' (Seydoux), finally decides to purify her 'DNA' in a machine that will plunge her into her past lives and rid her of all strong feelings. 

" She then meets 'Louis' and feels a powerful connection, as if she had always known him. The tale then unfolds over three distinct periods: 1910, 2014 and 2044..."

Click the images to enlarge...

Altered Innocence has picked up North American rights to Bertrand Mandico’s gory, transgressive fantasy movie “Conann,” which had its world premiere in Cannes’ Directors’ Fortnight and will soon be making its way to Locarno Film Festival. Kinology is handling world sales.

The film will tour at film festivals throughout the fall and be released theatrically next year.

Following different iterations of the ruthless Connan the Barbarian, the film also stars Elina Löwensohn in canine prosthetics as Rainer, Conann’s spiritual guide.

In the film, guardian of the underworld, Cerberus, still has a muzzle, but here he is called Rainer, and has the breasts and the voice of a woman, wears a studded black leather jacket, and a flash camera fit for the paparazzi. Talking to us from the great beyond, he details the successive reincarnations of Conann the Barbarian, a bloodthirsty Amazon from ancient times.

“A visceral and impulsive queer illusionist,...

Following The Wild Boys and After Blue, Conann marks the third feature-length project from prolific shorts filmmaker Bertrand Mandico. Many are still not convinced long-form fits his intense and imaginative style, but what’s certain is that Conann makes one heck of a watch. Part of the self-contained cosmos of Mandico’s explosive vision, this new film is a provocative tale of endurance and self-discovery inspired by the fantasy character Conan the Barbarian (or the Cimmerian). Mandico takes the figure of a sword and sorcery hero––obviously interested in his pulp magazine origins––and fashions a timeless, iterative narrative of phantasmagoric fluidity… and glitter.

Conann is framed by a first-person narration, that of Rainer the hellhound (Elina Löwensohn in impressive dog-faced costume), who roams the netherworld and is suspiciously attracted to the main protagonist, however antagonistic he may appear. But the hero is Conann, a queer rendition of an otherwise masculine symbol,...

Bertrand Mandico’s new film After Blue is a sci-fi head trip that is going to catch the interest of some viewers, while leaving others feeling dried out and bored. It’s a bold effort, to be sure. A drug-fueled fever dream of a film that aims to recapture the strangest of the strange of 70’s science fiction. In some aspects, it’s a success. It has a wild color palette and style that is visually arresting, but as a story, the film fails to pull itself together enough to form a cohesive narrative that will keep most audiences interested.

When humans made the Earth too toxic for habitation, they fled to a far-off planet they dubbed After Blue. Men quickly died out, unable to adapt to the atmosphere of the planet. Women continued to thrive through artificial insemination, living in small, close-knit communities. One day, teenaged Roxy (Paula Luna...

Charades (“I Lost My Body”) has boarded “Chicken for Linda!,” an animated feature directed by Chiara Malta and Sébastien Laudenbach (“The Girl Without Hands”) in the run up to this week’s Annecy Animation Festival.

Produced by Dolce Vita Films (“A Son”) and Miyu Productions (“Plethore de Nords”), and coproduced by Italy’s Palosanto, “Chicken for Linda!” will be presented in the work-in-progress section at Annecy.

Comedy-laced, the animated feature follows a loving mom, Paulette, who feels guilty after unfairly punishing her daughter Linda and would do anything to make it up to her. She sets off to make a chicken with peppers, even though she doesn’t know how to cook.

But how will she find a chicken on the day of a general strike? The heartwarming mother-daughter tale also touches on overcoming grief through the plot involving the recent death of the young girl’s father.

“After the...

Her name is Roxy, but the village girls call her Toxic. With peroxide-blond hair and the Lolita-like naiveté of a vintage sexploitation-movie heroine, Roxy wanders through a post-apocalyptic world as unfamiliar to us as it is to her — for we have all stepped into the parallel dimension that is underground filmmaker Bertrand Mandico’s erotic imagination. Welcome to the dirty paradise of “After Blue.”

Humans have poisoned Earth and fled to a new planet, which they’ve dubbed After Blue. Screens and machines have since been banished, making way for a kind of old-world mysticism of sparkling dust, psychedelic lights and occult symbols — like a third eye, superimposed over the pubic triangle of the most enlightened. Operating in the mode of Polish porno-surrealist Walerian Borowczyk, Mandico creates sensual mood trips using only practical effects (this one could be the “Barbarella”-style sci-fi film-within-a-film being produced in Mandico’s 2018 meta-textual short...

A voice introduces us to the future: “You are in space,” it says, “...the Earth was sick and rotten.” Bertrand Mandico’s second feature, the comedy-western-fantasy After Blue (Dirty Paradise), is named after a post-Earth home to humanity. This other planet, After Blue, located in another solar system, offers anyone with ovaries—anyone without them dies choked by their own hairs—the hope of a redemption. “If everything is to be done, nothing is to be done again,” declares a sign in the natural wilderness: strict and arbitrary rules are established to “strike the evil at its roots,” as one of the surviving women state. At best phantasmagorical, the dream of a humanity free of evil—through its systematic eradication of one gender—produces distortions where community becomes authoritarian, and purification, commanded.One day on an excursion outside her community, Roxy (Paola Luna) discovers buried in the sand a female...

In the not-so-distant future, on a planet far, far away, a mother and daughter travel across a hostile landscape with one mission and one mission only: to kill Kate Bush.

Don’t worry, it’s not beloved 1980s singer-songwriter Kate Bush, but a once-dormant evil Polish woman named Katajena Bushovsky now spreading violence and hatred. This is the quest at the center of Bertrand Mandico’s new film “After Blue (Dirty Paradise).”

The film’s title comes from its setting: “After Blue (Dirty Paradise)” is an acid space western set on the planet that comes after Earth, and it is indeed a dirty paradise, though more the former than the latter. After Blue is populated only by women, or so we’re informed, and they hoped to start society anew with greater peace and prosperity. No screens, no machines (though there are guns).

Also Read:

‘Stranger Things’ Catapults Kate Bush...

In a faraway future, on a wild and untamed female inhabited planet called After Blue, a lonely teenager named Roxy (Paula Luna) unknowingly releases a mystical, dangerous, and sensual assassin from her prison.

Roxy and her mother Zora (Elina Löwensohn) are held accountable, banished from their community, and forced to track down the murderer named Kate Bush. Haunted by the spirits of her murdered friends, Roxy sets out on a long and strange journey across the supranatural territories of this filthy paradise.

The newest vision from Bertand Mandico (The Wild Boys) plays like a lesbian El Topo (in space!) with stunning 35mm in-camera practical effects, otherworldly set pieces, and a dazzling score by Pierre Desprats.

In t...

After his delirious, vividly strange debut The Wild Boys, Bertrand Mandico is back with After Blue (Dirty Paradise), which premiered at Locarno Film Festival last year and will now arrive in U.S. theaters starting June 3. Set in a faraway future, on a wild and untamed female inhabited planet called After Blue, the queer sci-fi fantasy romance follows a lonely teenager named Roxy who unknowingly releases a mystical, dangerous, and sensual assassin from her prison. Roxy and her mother Zora (Elina Löwensohn) are held accountable, banished from their community, and forced to track the murderer named Kate Bush down. Haunted by the spirits of her murdered friends, Roxy starts a long journey pacing the supernatural territories of this filthy paradise. Ahead of the release, the new U.S. trailer has now arrived.

Leonardo Goi said in his review, “In the post-apocalyptic nightmare of After Blue, humanity—or what’s left...

French helmer Bertrand Mandico has achieved a cult following for his gender-bending sensorial surrealist visions, with more than 20 short films and two feature films completed to date.

His first feature, “The Wild Boys,” about five wealthy adolescent boys sent to a tropical island, all played by actresses, premiered in Venice. It won the Louis-Delluc 2018 prize for best first film and topped Cahiers du Cinéma’s 2018 list of Top 10 films.

His sophomore feature “After Blue (Dirty Paradise),” is a sci-fi western, again primarily with a female cast, including Mandico’s fetish actress Elina Löwensohn. It had its world premiere at Locarno in 2021, where it won the Fipresci prize, followed by its North American premiere in Toronto’s Midnight Madness sidebar, and U.S. premiere in the Fantastic Fest, where it won Best Film. It won the Special Jury Prize at Sitges.

The helmer is now completing post-production on his third feature,...

If you unearthed a glittery demon with one hairy arm who awakened your deepest desires from the third eye between her legs, what lengths would you travel to find her again? This, and plenty more completely insane scenarios, are among the many posed in Bertrand Mandico’s seductive, ethereal, and bizarre epic “After Blue,” aptly subtitled “Dirty Paradise.”

Set on a fantasy planet where only women can survive the harsh climate, the adventure follows a mother and daughter on a grueling journey to find and kill the evil “Kate Bush,” rumored to be death herself. One part “Annihilation” and one part “The Love Witch,” and cast under the veneer of a sadistic “The NeverEnding Story,” the film

The fantastical fable is narrated by Roxy (Paula-Luna Breitenfelder), a petulant teenager with a bleached-blonde mullet, who stares blankly into the camera in conversation with a mysterious disembodied voice. “The Earth was sick,...

Altered Innocence has picked up North American rights to Bertrand Mandico’s sophomore feature film “After Blue (Dirty Paradise),” which just had its world premiere at the Locarno Film Festival. The film will make its North American premiere at Toronto Film Festival in the Midnight Madness sidebar, and the U.S. premiere will be held at Fantastic Fest.

The film takes place on the planet After Blue, where teenager Roxy unwittingly frees a dangerous criminal buried in the sand. Roxy and her mother Zora (Elina Löwensohn) are deemed responsible, exiled from their community, and sentenced to track down the killer. They start a long journey pacing the supranatural territories of their filthy paradise.

The deal was negotiated between Frank Jaffe from Altered Innocence and Grégoire Melin from Kinology.

Jaffe commented: “Beyond the fact that Bertrand Mandico’s ‘The Wild Boys’ (Les garçons sauvages) was the film that launched the theatrical arm of Altered Innocence,...

In the post-apocalyptic nightmare of After Blue, humanity—or what’s left of it—roams a former paradise turned wasteland. The Armageddon that wrecked the Earth in some undetermined past left no machines behind, no screens, and, perhaps most conspicuously, no men. In the distant planet the human race fled to, and which writer-director Bertrand Mandico’s film is named after, “they were the first to die,” we’re warned early on: “their hairs grew inside them, and killed them.” As it was for its predecessor, The Wild Boys, After Blue is suffused in a feverish ecstasy, that wild excitement that comes from a watching one world crumble and another jutting into being from scratch, a vision of a clean slate in which everything—and everyone—can be reinvented, and every norm challenged.

At its heart is Roxy (Paula Luna Breitenfelder), a teenage girl living with her mother Zora (Elina Löwensohn...

The 33rd edition of the festival crowned Argentina’s La chica nueva its champion, but also honoured the co-productions New Order, Karnawal and Nothing But the Sun. Unspooling online this year between 19 and 28 March, with a second instalment set to unfold in cinemas from 9 to 13 June (if the French sanitary horizon is sufficiently clear by then), the 33rd Cinélatino – Rencontres de Toulouse has confirmed the dynamism of European co-production when it comes to South American feature films. Indeed, whilst it was a fully Argentine film (La chica nueva by Micaela Gonzalo) which walked away with the Grand Prize on the fiction side of things, the jury - which notably included Chilean filmmaker Marcela Said, the American actress of Romanian descent Elina Löwensohn and France’s Christophe Leparc (director of the Cinemed festival and secretary general for the Directors’ Fortnight) - also saw fit to bestow prizes upon...

The Berlinale in recent years has been a prime launching pad for Italian films directed by women, which though fewer in number to their male counterparts, make up a considerable portion of the country’s representation on the festival circuit — Alice Rohrwacher (“Happy as Lazzaro”) at Cannes, Susanna Nicchiarelli (“Nico”) at Venice, and Berlin regular Laura Bispuri (“Daughter of Mine”) are all festival faves.

Here is a compendium of new and upcoming Italian films and TV series directed by women including two (out of nine Italian titles overall) in Berlin this year.

“Ordinary Justice”

This first feature by Chiara Bellosi, who previously made several docs, looks at a day in a Turin courthouse where the lives of two women and a young girl on opposite sides of a murder case intersect. In Berlin, Generation 14Plus.

“Faith”

An observational doc by Valentina Pedicini is about a reclusive spiritual sect of kung...

Updated: On New Year’s Day, Deadline wrote about the plight of director Hal Hartley, who had till Saturday to raise $92,000 to be able to make his next film, Where To Land. He sought to raise the money through Kickstarter, which is how he has funded five previous modestly budget films. Well, he’s now six for six. Hartley’s film passed the $300,000 minimum threshold, with one day to spare. Good for Deadline readers, who surely helped his cause and start off the year knowing a worthy indie filmmaker is still in business.

Exclusive, January 1, 9:51 A.M.: Stalwart independent writer/director Hal Hartley’s next film has a ticking clock thriller mechanism built into it, even before he begins shooting a scene. Hartley, still going some 30 years after bursting on the scene with a bunch of other maverick moviemakers in the indie heyday of the 1990s, needs about...

Independent movie maverick Hal Hartley is once again turning to grassroots fundraising for his next film project, “Where to Land.” Hartley is currently seeking $300,000 on Kickstarter to fund the production, which will be anchored by Edie Falco in the lead, and the filmmaker and his team at Possible Films have until Saturday, January 4 to reach the goal. At the time of publication, he’s reached $266,440, which means he $33,560 to go. The film will also star Bill Sage, Tatiana Abracos, Robert Burke, Jade Golden, Aida Johannes, Elina Löwensohn, DJ Mendel, Parker Posey, and Jay Thomas.

The film tells the story of a 58-year-old director of romantic comedies (not unlike 60-year-old filmmaker Hartley himself) looking back on his life, and looking to become the assistant groundskeeper at a local cemetery. Hartley, whose oeuvre includes quirky, offbeat character studies like “Trust” and “Fay Grim,” has always worked on a smaller scale.

Hartley recently...

Elina Löwensohn, Paula Luna Breitenfelder, Vimala Pons, Agata Buzek, Pauline Lorillard and Camille Rutherford star. An Ecce Films production sold by Kinology. On 12 November 2019 will begin the seven-week shoot for After Blue, the second feature from Bertrand Mandico after The Wild Boys. The cast includes the American actress of Romanian origins Elina Löwensohn, the young Paula Luna Breitenfelder (in her first on-screen appearance), Vimala Pons,...

There’s a scene in the middle of Hal Hartley’s 1992 indie “Simple Men” where a cryptic brunette played by gamin actress Elina Löwensohn — ice-pale, with blunt black bangs — interrupts the plot with a choreographed dance number to a fuzzy track by Sonic Youth. Hartley wanted to break the fourth wall, and here comes filmmaker Chiara Malta (who co-wrote the script with Sébastien Laudenbach and Marco Pettenello) to smash his rubble into dust with her playful narrative debut.

“Simple Women” spins that musical moment into a dizzying story about ambition and artistic competition in which Löwensohn plays herself as the object of obsession for an aspiring Italian director named Federica (Jasmine Trinca), who’s been fixated on Löwensohn’s “Simple Men” character since the ’90s for making epilepsy look glamorous. That Federica wears owl-eyed glasses that make her the mirror image of Malta is no coincidence in a movie that...

‘The Australian Dream.’

Daniel Gordon’s The Australian Dream and Ben Lawrence’s Hearts and Bones will have their international premieres at the Toronto International Film Festival.

In addition, Eva Orner’s Bikram: Yogi, Guru, Predator will be among 25 titles in the Tiff Docs section, along with The Australian Dream.

Good Thing Productions and Passion Pictures’ The Australian Dream opened the Melbourne International Film Festival. Written by Stan Grant, the film looks at race, identity and belonging from the perspective of former Sydney Swans captain and Indigenous rights activist Adam Goodes.

In 2013 Goodes sparked a national conversation about racism after requesting a 13-year-old Collingwood supporter be removed from the ground after calling him an “ape.”

Madman Entertainment will launch the film on 100—plus screens on August 22.

Lawrence’s debut feature Hearts and Bones, which had its world premiere at the Sydney Film Festival, will screen in the Discovery program.

Produced...

Close-Up is a feature that spotlights films now playing on Mubi. Bertrand Mandico's The Wild Boys (2017), which is receiving an exclusive global online premiere on Mubi, is showing from September 14 – October 14, 2018 as a Special Discovery.“I’m sick to death of this self. I want another.”—Orlando, Virginia Woolf, 1928Bertrand Mandico’s The Wild Boys depicts a metamorphosis from male to female, set against a landscape of gender fluidity. Upon a cursory glance, Mandico’s cinema seems to exist to be deconstructed. Like his short films, his first feature occupies an epicene world that collapses the binaries of biological sex and gender, extrapolating a dilemma described in Laura Mulvey’s “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” which addresses men’s creation and spectatorship of images of women on film. In The Wild Boys, Mandico complicates the spectatorship of biological sex in that the titular boys are all played by women.

No one makes movies quite like French husband-and-wife team Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani. The directing duo first made a splash in 2009 with “Amer,” a postmodern homage to Italian giallo films that was followed up by another giallo homage, 2013’s “The Strange Color of Your Body’s Tears.” Both films are filled with a stunning blend of eye-popping and provocative visuals, a kaleidoscope of colors that evokes Dario Argento’s sumptuous technicolor nightmares, woven together with scores lifted from giallos from yesteryear. With this intoxicating cinematic formula, Cattet and Forzani quickly became must-watch genre filmmakers.

Rather than sticking with this successful formula, they branched out with their latest film, “Let the Corpses Tan,” putting their own spin on the western. “Let the Corpses Tan” takes place on a sun-soaked, isolated island hideaway, where a grizzled thug named Rhino (Stéphane Ferrara) and his gang plan to hide away with an eccentric artist,...

Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani’s Let the Corpses Tan is a film about sensations, derived more so from the mechanics of filmmaking than from storytelling. Like their previous works, it exists as a standalone genre film in the classic European mold, even when divorced from its stylistic trappings, with sunshine and gunfire supplanting dark corridors and unsheathed daggers. In the last ten years, the reception of Cattet and Forzani has come to understand theirs as a tactile cinema: What happens onscreen is never quite as important as how it looks and sounds—or perhaps, how it ‘feels’—while it’s happening. While Corpses is certainly exploitation cinema formally in its emulation of European westerns and gangster films, it is also exploitation cinema by design in its manipulation and abstraction of photography and sound.As with their two previous features Amer (2009) and The Strange Color of Your Body’s Tears...

“Let the Corpses Tan” tells you right away what it’s about. It’s about painting with bullets. And what a beautiful picture it makes.

The third film from directors Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani is, like their previous works “Amer” and “The Strange Color of Your Body’s Tears,” a reinvigoration of cult European filmmaking. The so-called “Eurosleaze” works of sensuality and violence that are sometimes celebrated, and sometimes rudely dismissed. The filmmakers seem to find within these allegedly outdated genres a fantastic inspiration, and they use iconic color timing, bold camera angles, and vibrant music to get away with telling stories so shocking, they probably wouldn’t be acceptable otherwise.

“Let the Corpses Tan” is a brusque about-face from their first two Giallo-inspired killer thrillers. It’s a dense shootout of a movie, incorporating elements of the spaghetti western, the ultraviolent grindhouse, and a surreal rumination on art itself.

"The church would rather ignore a miracle than validate a sham." Music Box Films has released an official Us trailer for an indie religious drama title The Apparition, which premiered at a few minor film festivals earlier this year. The latest film from French filmmaker Xavier Giannoli, the story is about a journalist who is sent by the Vatican to investigate a young girl claiming to be visited by the Virgin Mary. "Jacques gradually uncovers the hidden motivations and pressures at work and sees his beliefs system profoundly shaken." Vincent Lindon stars as Jacques, and the cast includes Galatéa Bellugi, Patrick d'Assumçao, Anatole Taubman, Elina Löwensohn, Claude Lévèque, Gérard Dessalles, Bruno Georis, Alicia Hava, as well as Candice Bouchet. Even though the title makes this seem like a horror, it's much more of a religious thriller with some unique twists. Here's the official Us trailer (+ poster) for Xavier Giannoli's ...

Let The Corpses Tan Trailer

Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzan‘s Let The Corpses Tan / Laissez bronzer les cadavres (2017) movie trailer stars Elina Löwensohn, Stéphane Ferrara, Hervé Sogne, Bernie Bonvoisin, and Pierre Nisse. Let The Corpses Tan‘s plot synopsis: based on the novel by Jean-Patrick Manchette, “Belgian filmmakers Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani trade in [...]

Continue reading: Let The Corpses Tan Movie Trailer: A Quentin Tarantino-like Action Thriller; Score by Ennio Morricone

The post Let The Corpses Tan Movie Trailer: A Quentin Tarantino-like Action Thriller; Score by Ennio Morricone appeared first on FilmBook.

The newest thriller from directors Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani, Let the Corpses Tan – also known by its French title Laissez bronzer les cadavres – now has its first U.S. trailer just ahead of its late-summer domestic release. After its initial premiere at the Locarno Film Festival, Let the Corpses Tan went on to screen at a handful of prestigious festivals around the world – including Toronto International (where we reviewed), Sitges, London, and the AFI Fest. Having directed Amer and The Strange Color of Your Body’s Tears, Cattet and Forzani have shown their dominance and hyper-stylization within the thriller genre – and now they’re bringing their expertise to the barren countryside in their neo-western Let the Corpses Tan.

The film tells the story of a gang of thieves who, after smuggling 500 pounds of gold, run into trouble when faced against complications from a pair of locals and police officers.

"I couldn't look away!" Kino Lorber has debuted an official Us trailer for the gritty, French "neo-western" thriller titled Let the Corpses Tan, or Laissez bronzer les cadavres. This premiered at the Locarno and Toronto Film Festivals last year, and is the latest feature from directors Hélène Cattet & Bruno Forzani. Here's the plot: A grizzled thug and his gang head to an island retreat with a haul of 250 kilograms of gold bullion to lay low; however, a bohemian writer, his muse, and a pair of gendarmes further complicate things, as allegiances are put to the test. The cast includes Elina Löwensohn, Stéphane Ferrara, Bernie Bonvoisin, Michelangelo Marchese, and Marc Barbé. The trailer does a better job at introducing this stylish film than any text, so dive in and give it a look. Based on a classic pulp novel by Jean-Patrick Manchette, and featuring music by the master Ennio Morricone. Here's...

Brazil’s Fantaspoa, the largest genre film festival in Latin America, is proud to reveal the first wave of films selected for their upcoming fourteenth edition, running from May 17th through June 3rd. The celebrated genre film fest, which takes place annually in Porto Alegre will announce their full line-up, consisting of more than 100 films, on the first week of May.

Fifteen features have just been announced, in addition to the previously-announced opening night film, Rodrigo Aragão’s Brazilian feature A Mata Negra, and closing night film, A Pedra da Serpente – the first feature from award-winning Brazilian filmmaker Fernando Sanches, co-produced by the festival’s own Fantaspoa Produções.

Honored guests at Fantaspoa 2018 include “Masters of Horror” creator Mick Garris, renowned for his cinematic adaptations of Stephen King novels; and Romanian actress Elina Löwensohn, famous for starring in features from Hal Hartley, Michael Almereyda, and other greats. Attending filmmakers include Marc Carreté,...

The last few weeks have felt like an endless marathon for this writer, trying to keep up with a myriad of cinematic delights, including this latest batch of films I saw while at the 2017 Fantastic Fest last month. Read on for my thoughts on this trio of amazing indie movies, including first-time feature filmmaker Coralie Fargeat’s Revenge, My Friend Dahmer from Marc Meyer, and Let the Corpses Tan by Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani.

Revenge: It’s no secret that the decision to attend Fantastic Fest this year came with some controversy attached to it, especially in regards to the issues of sexual assault and the way women can be, and have been, treated by society. And for Fargeat, she embraced this controversy with her bold decision to still screen her film Revenge in Austin, and I have to say, I am So glad she did. In what...

Review by Matthew Turner

Stars: Elina Lowensohn, Stephane Ferrara, Bernie Bonvoisin, Herve Sogne, Michelangelo Marchese, Marc Barbe, Pierre Nisse, Marine Sainsily, Dorilya Calmel, Aline Stevens, Dominique Troyes, Bamba | Written and Directed by Helene Cattet, Bruno Forzani

Belgian co-directors Helene Cattet and Bruno Forzani garnered an instant cult following with Amer (2009) and The Strange Colour of Your Body’s Tears (2013), both of which paid luxurious homage to 1970s giallo movies. Their latest film, Let the Corpses Tan (or Laissez Bronzer les Cadavres, original language fans) sees the pair applying their expert pastiche skills to violent European crime thrillers of the same decade, to deliriously enjoyable effect.

Loosely adapted from a 1971 French novel by Jean-Patrick Machete and Jean-Pierre Bastid, the plot is deceptively simple and a good deal more coherent than either of Cattet and Forzani’s previous films. Former Hal Hartley muse Elina Lowensohn plays Luce, a middle-aged artist who lives in a run-down,...

In the argument of “style over substance,” movies like Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani’s Let The Corpses Tan make a case for limitless artistic boundaries. In every sense, this is a Giallo-fied Spaghetti Western stand-off that feeds off ambition. Like a six-shooter filled with posh glitter, liquified gold, graphic gore and creative architecture unlike anything mainstream cinema will back. There’s a narrative, but it’s flimsy and underdeveloped with full intent – all focus is on the exploration of cinematic techniques. Cattet and Forzani never care if you even know a character’s name, as they’re only interested in how their craniums will splatter when popped by a steel-manufactured projectile.

Yet, nonetheless, there is indeed a story at play – criminals who hide out with a vacationing family, and the two cops who spark a can-go-wrong, will-go-wrong exchange. Rhino (Stephane Ferrara) fights for his gang’s stolen gold, Luce (Elina Löwensohn) stirs the pot,...

Having plunged as deep as their knives could go into the long-dead corpse of the giallo genre in Amer and The Strange Color of Your Body’s Tears, Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani now forge a kind of hybrid of the spaghetti Westerns and Italian crime films of the late ’60s, stripping out nearly all story and keeping the sublime transfixion on material iconography and brute behaviour. Adapted from Jean-Patrick Manchette’s lean debut novel from 1971 (co-written by Jean-Pierre Bastid, who, like Manchette, was also immersed in genre cinema), Let the Corpses Tan opens with target practice shooting up neo-expressionist paintings, introducing the two groups (artists and gangsters) hiding atop a Corsican redoubt. After a whip-fast gold heist along the coast (executed by Cattet and Forzani with a fiercely staccato musical precision) attracts the local police, the mixed-class gang holes up in the sun-baked ruins to fight first against the law and,...

Mubi's retrospective Bertrand Mandico's Cinema is showing July 26 - October 7, 2017 in many countries around the world.The cinema of French filmmaker and animator Bertrand Mandico is unique in its approach to depicting the human body. For Mandico, the body’s status as a film subject is comparable to and interchangeable with that of any other film subject. That is, ‘animate objects’—such as human characters or animals—occupy the same cinematic roles as ‘inanimate’ ones—such as housewares or artificial structures, collapsing the binary that exists between the two. Mandico’s films time and again blur the line between binaries—animate and inanimate, male and female—and in doing so demonstrate their arbitrary nature as film subjects. Bodies and objects in Mandico’s cinema often appear abstracted and juxtaposed vis-a-vis each other, such as when women portray lamps and men portray statues in Our Lady of Hormones (2014). At first glance,...