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Brady Corbet is reminding audiences just how special of a filmmaker Mia Hansen-Løve is.

Corbet, whose feature “The Brutalist” is predicted to be a top contender at the 2025 Oscars, said during a visit to the Criterion Closet in the below video that Hansen-Løve is among the modern all-time greats. Writer/director/actor Corbet co-led Hansen-Løve’s 2014 autobiographical film “Eden” alongside fellow filmmaker Greta Gerwig.

“This one I actually have so I’m not going to take it,” Corbet said while holding a Blu-ray of Hansen-Løve’s 2021 film “Bergman Island.” He added, “I just want to call out Mia Hansen-Løve, one of my favorite directors that I worked with years ago on a film called ‘Eden.’ This is her film ‘Bergman Island.’ I encourage everyone to seek it out because I think she is one of our great contemporary treasures.”

Corbet further shared how much a trip to the Criterion Closet...

MK2 Films, the Paris-based indie powerhouse behind “Anatomy of a Fall,” has tapped former Kinology executive Emmanuel Pisarra as head of acquisitions.

Pisarra, who succeeds Olivier Barbier in this role, joins MK2 Films’ growing team, alongside Vanessa Saal, who was recently named executive consultant and U.K. lead; Yasmine Talli, who oversees co-productions; as well as consultants Frances Harvey and Anna Pokorska.

He will report to Fionnuala Jamison, MK2 Films’ managing director. Pisarra, who is attending the Berlin Film Festival, will be shaping the company’s upcoming slate while also leading sales to France and Benelux.

“I’ve long admired mk2 Films for its fearless, forward-thinking approach to cinema—one that values artistic integrity as much as commercial ambition,” said Pisarra. “Joining its exceptional team at such a pivotal moment is an incredible opportunity.”Pisarra brings extensive experience in acquisitions and sales.

At Kinology, Pisarra spearheaded global sales for films...

French filmmaker Alice Winocour’s fashion drama, “Couture,” starring Angelina Jolie is heading to EFM.

The movie, originally titled “Stitches,” recently wrapped production in Paris.

“In the frenzy of Fashion Week, three women cross paths in Paris, grappling with the world’s tragedies and the questions of their lives: American film director Maxine Walker (Jolie), South Sudanese model Ada (model Anyier Anei in her feature film debut) and French makeup artist Angèle (Ella Rumpf), working in the shadows of the catwalks,” reads an official synopsis of the project. “In the form of intertwining destinies, ‘Couture’ examines the souls and wounds of women’s bodies.”

Rounding out the cast is Louis Garrel.

UTA Independent Film Group, who helped raise the financing for the film and is handling global and North American rights, with HanWay Films representing international rights, will introduce the package at EFM. Pathé, which previously collaborated with Winocour on...

Exclusive: Anders Danielsen Lie (The Worst Person in the World), Bill Pullman (Independence Day) and Oscar nominee and Tony winner Laurie Metcalf (Lady Bird) have been set to star in biopic Everybody Digs Bill Evans about the acclaimed U.S. jazz pianist and composer.

Two-time Grammy nominee Grant Gee (Joy Division) will direct from a script written by Mark O’Halloran (Viva!), based on the book Intermission by Owen Martell.

The synopsis reads: “June 1961, NYC: legendary jazz pianist Bill Evans (Danielsen Lie) has found his musical voice and created the perfect trio, including bass player Scott Lafaro, said to be his soulmate through music. A residency at New York’s Village Vanguard culminates in the live taping of two of the greatest jazz records of all time in one night. Ten days later, Lafaro dies in a car crash. Numb with grief, Evans stops playing. Everybody Digs Bill Evans is the...

Movies like Lonely Planet on Netflix: Susannah Grant’s ‘Lonely Planet’ on Netflix is a gorgeous romance drama that stars Laura Dern in the leading role. Dern has had an illustrious acting career of over five decades. With projects ranging from David Lynch’s ‘Inland Empire’ to Steven Spielberg’s ‘Jurassic Park’, from Noah Baumbach’s ‘Marriage Story’ to HBO’s ‘Big Little Lies’, she has proved herself to be a versatile actor. After a string of intricate performances, she has returned with a breezy, tender romance that celebrates the value of leisure for a much-needed soul-searching.

In this gorgeous romance, Dern plays Katherine, a reclusive novelist who travels to Morocco for a writer’s retreat. She hopes a change in setting will help her get over her writer’s block. While there, she meets her apprentice, Owen (Liam Hemsworth) and falls for him. What starts out as an...

Berlin-based sales agency M-Appeal has boarded elevated genre title “Bury Your Dead,” which world premieres at the Sitges Film Festival in the competition section. The director is Brazilian filmmaker Marco Dutra.

Dutra’s previous feature “All the Dead Ones” premiered in Berlinale competition in 2020, while his gory werewolf tale “Good Manners,” co-directed with Juliana Rojas, won the Silver Leopard at Locarno in 2017. The directing duo’s debut horror film “Hard Labor” premiered in Cannes Un Certain Regard in 2011.

After the screening at Sitges next week, the film will play at BFI London Film Festival. Further fall festival selections will be announced shortly.

The film follows Edgar Wilson, a roadkill collector in rural Brazil, who dreams of escaping his small-town existence with Nete, the love of his life. When Nete decides to join her family in an apocalyptic cult, Edgar finds himself at a crossroads. With the world on the brink of destruction,...

Renowned French filmmaker Mia Hansen-Løve (One Fine Morning) has revealed her next film to be If Love Should Die, a biopic of 18th century English writer, philosopher, and women’s rights advocate, Mary Wollstonecraft.

Slated to film in the United Kingdom, France, Scandinavia and Portugal in 2025, the project’s logline is as follows: On the eve of the French Revolution, an impoverished young Englishwoman makes the bold decision to leave her life according to the ideals of the enlightenment.

Wollstonecraft is best known for her work A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, published in 1792, where she argued that women are not naturally inferior to men, even if they appeared so in her time because they lacked equal access to education. Wollstonecraft believed that both men and women should be treated as rational beings and imagined a social order founded on reason. Her ideas and writings laid the groundwork for the feminist movement,...

French director Mia Hansen-Løve’s If Love Should Die, a biopic of UK writer and philosopher Mary Wollstonecraft, will shoot next year in the UK, France, Scandinavia and Portugal.

It is being produced by Mubi, Caspian Films, Les Films Pelléas, Mer Film, Lorenzo Mieli for Our Films, and Arte France Cinéma.

Mubi and Arte France Cinéma are financing production. The Match Factory is handling worldwide sales.

Wollstonecraft is regarded as one of the founding feminist philosophers and is best known for her 1792 book A Vindication Of The Rights of Woman.

Hansen-Løve’s recent credits include One Fine Morning and Bergman Island.

The next film from French director Mia Hansen-Love (Things to Come, One Fine Morning) will be a period drama on the life of ground-breaking English writer and activist Mary Wollstonecraft.

Hansen-Love is writing and directing If Love Should Die on the visionary 18th-century writer, considered one of the founder philosophers of feminism. Filming is planned to take place in the U.K., France, Scandinavia and Portugal, starting in 2025.

“My ambition is to capture with as much acuity and truth as possible this pivotal era and the life of a woman that cinema has never before looked at,” Hansen-Love said in a statement. “Iconic in England, Mary Wollstonecraft is not known in France. That suits me: making a film about a figure who is too predictable, or too famous, has never interested me. I am attracted to characters engaged in a quest, devoid of certainties. The souls of artists, no doubt,...

Mia Hansen-Løve, one of France’s leading filmmakers whose movies have played at Cannes, Berlin and Toronto, will next direct “If Love Should Die,” an ambitious feature film about the life of visionary English writer and philosopher Mary Wollstonecraft.

Mubi, the auteur-driven global distribution and streaming powerhouse, is producing “If Love Should Die” with Georgina Paget and Thembisa Cochrane at U.K. banner Caspian Films (“The Colour Room”); “Anatomy of a Fall” producer David Thion and Philippe Martin at Paris-set Les Films Pelléas; Norway’s Mer Film, Lorenzo Mieli for Our Films and Arte France Cinema. Mubi and Arte France Cinema are financing the production. The Match Factory is handling worldwide sales.

Written and directed by Hansen-Løve, the film will for the first time tell the journey of Wollstonecraft, a 18th-century feminist pioneer whose ideas resonate with our times.

“On the eve of the French Revolution, an impoverished young Englishwoman...

Actress Vicky Krieps and filmmaker Maimouna Doucoure are among the jury members for the Un Certain Regard section of the 2024 Cannes Film Festival.

Also joining are Moroccan filmmaker Asmae El Moudir, and American film critic and writer Todd McCarthy.

Xavier Dolan was announced as jury president earlier this year.

The quintet will watch 18 films as part of the Un Certain Regard selection, including eight debut films.

Last year’s Un Certain Regard jury, headed by John C. Reilly, awarded six prizes including the main award to Molly Manning Walker’s How To Have Sex.

This year’s Un Certain Regard...

Premiering to much critical acclaim at Cannes in 2023, Austrian filmmaker Jessica Hausner’s new dark satire, “Club Zero,” lands in U.S. theaters today, Friday, March 15. Starring Mia Wasikowska, it centers on a young teacher who takes a job at an elite school and forms a strong bond with five students—a relationship that eventually takes a dangerous turn.

Continue reading ‘Club Zero’ Clip: Mia Wasikowska Teaches “Conscious Eating” In Jessica Hausner’s Acclaimed Satire [Exclusive] at The Playlist.

If any part of you has been curious as to how French filmmaker Olivier Assayas spent the early days of the global pandemic, along comes “Suspended Time” to answer your question, with very much the answer you might expect: pretty comfortably, thanks for asking. Alternating a thinly fictionalised portrait of the artist isolating at his family’s country home with fully autobiographical narration by the director himself, this mildly amusing but vastly indulgent bagatelle feels a tardy entry in the first wave of lockdown cinema — too late to feel fresh, but still too soon to have accumulated much meaningful perspective on an experience we all remember too well. Assayas devotees will take some pleasure in its formal fillips and self-references. Others need not apply.

At its most interesting — and quietly gossipy, if you are so minded — “Suspended Time” could be read as a reply work of sorts to “Bergman Island,...

Some apotheosis of film culture has been reached with Freddy Got Fingered‘s addition to the Criterion Channel. Three years after we interviewed Tom Green about his consummate film maudit, it’s appearing on the service’s Razzie-centered program that also includes the now-admired likes of Cruising, Heaven’s Gate, Querelle, and Ishtar; the still-due likes of Under the Cherry Moon; and the more-contested Gigli, Swept Away, and Nicolas Cage-led Wicker Man. In all cases it’s an opportunity to reconsider one of the lamest, thin-gruel entities in modern culture.

A Jane Russell retro features von Sternberg’s Macao, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, and Raoul Walsh’s The Tall Men and The Revolt of Mamie Stover; streaming premieres will be held for Yuen Woo-ping’s Dreadnaught, Claire Simon’s Our Body, Ellie Foumbi’s Our Father, the Devil, the recently restored Sepa: Our Lord of Miracles, and The Passion of Rememberance.

Denis Lavant, the iconic French actor of Claire Denis’ “Beau Travail” and Leos Carax’ “Holy Motors,” stars in “Redoubt,” the feature debut of rising contemporary artist-turned-director John Skoog.

Currently in post, the black-and-white film is produced by Plattform Produktion, the Goteborg-based banner run by two-time Palme d’Or winning director Ruben Ostlund (“Triangle of Sadness”) and Erik Hemmendorff. Skoog previously directed the California-set documentary short “Shadowland” which completed for a Golden Bear at the Berlinale.

“Redoubt” (“Reduit”) is a narrative film that expands on Skoog’s video installation by the same name which won the prestigious Baloise Art Prize in 2014, and is also part of the artist’s exhibition “Walls.”

Lavant’s reclusive character in “Redoubt” is inspired by Karl-Göran Persson, a farmer known as a good samaritan on the verge of madness, who lived near Skoog’s home town Kvidinge during WWII. After receiving a warning by the Swedish...

Exclusive: Shooting has wrapped on Went Up the Hill, the psychological ghost story starring Cannes award winner Vicky Krieps and Stranger Things actor Dacre Montgomery.

Above is a first look at the Samuel Van Grinsven flick, which is headed for next week’s AFM via Bankside Films. Buyers in LA will be presented with a promo reel, with Bankside repping international sales and co-repping North American rights with CAA Media Finance.

The film was shot on location in New Zealand and was the latest collaboration between London-based Bankside and Causeway Films following their partnership on Danny & Michael Philippou’s Talk to Me, which is nearing $100M at the global box office. We first told you about it last year.

Went Up the Hill stars Montgomery as Jack and Krieps as Jill. Abandoned as a child, Jack ventures to remote New Zealand to attend the funeral of his estranged mother and there meets her grieving widow,...

Hélène Mouchet (Vicky Krieps) is probably dying. She has been diagnosed with an idiopathic fibrosis of the lungs, meaning none of her doctors really has much idea of how to treat her condition. They do know that it will eventually result in suffocation, unless she is able to undergo a lung transplant — which is far from certain to work. In “More Than Ever,” a thoughtful, well-acted drama from writer-director Emily Atef (changing the pace from her work on TV’s “Killing Eve”), this setup is the basis for an exploration, through the lens of one woman’s experience, of how serious disease might be faced, both medically and socially. Strand Releasing is bringing the film to U.S. audiences more than a year after its Un Certain Regard premiere in Cannes.

Hélène finds the awkward response of her social circle unendurable; people mean well, but are terrified of saying the wrong thing.

Awards gala fundraiser set for September 10.

Vicky Krieps, star of Viggo Mortensen’s upcoming TIFF world premiere The Dead Don’t Hurt, will receive the TIFF Tribute Performer Award at the fifth annual awards gala on September 10.

The Luxembourgish, Berlin-based actor joins recently announced fellow Tribute Performer Award recipient Colman Domingo in the acting category.

Past recipients of the award include Brendan Fraser and the ensemble cast of My Policeman in 2022, Jessica Chastain and Benedict Cumberbatch, and Kate Winslet and Anthony Hopkins.

“Vicky’s transformative performances illuminate the screen, weaving emotions into a tapestry of storytelling,” said TIFF CEO Cameron Bailey.

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is expanding its membership.

According to a press release, the organization that hands out Oscars each year at the Academy Awards has extended invitations to join the Academy to 398 artists and executives who have made notable contributions to the motion picture industry.

“The Academy is proud to welcome these artists and professionals into our membership. They represent extraordinary global talent across cinematic disciplines and have made a vital impact on the arts and sciences of motion pictures and on movie fans worldwide,” said Academy CEO Bill Kramer and Academy President Janet Yang in a joint statement.

Read More: The Academy Announces 2024 Oscars Date As Well As Submission Deadline

There are some big names and familiar faces among the invitees, including musicians Taylor Swift and David Byrne, and numerous actors, ranging from Selma Blair to Keke Palmer to “Elvis” Oscar nominee Austin Butler.

Those who accept will be only additions to Academy’s membership in 2023.

Vicky Krieps, Paul Mescal, Warner Bros Discovery head David Zaslav, Aftersun writer-director Charlotte Wells, She Said director Maria Schrader, and Kerry Condon are among 398 who have been invited to join the Academy.

Some 40% of the 2023 class identify as women, 34% belong to underrepresented ethnic/racial communities, and 52% are from 50 countries and territories outside the United States. There are 76 Oscar nominees including 22 winners among the invitees.

Those who accept the invitations will be the only additions to the Academy’s membership. Should they all accept, the total number of members...

“Everything Everywhere All At Once” Oscar winners Ke Huy Quan, Daniel Kwan, and Daniel Scheinert, recent acting nominees Austin Butler, Paul Mescal, and Stephanie Hsu, and bold-face names for the extremely online like Taylor Swift, Abel Tesfaye (a.k.a. The Weeknd), and Warner Bros. Discovery boss David Zaslav were among the 398 people announced as new members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences on Wednesday.

“The academy is proud to welcome these artists and professionals into our membership. They represent extraordinary global talent across cinematic disciplines and have made a vital impact on the arts and sciences of motion pictures and on movie fans worldwide,” said academy CEO Bill Kramer and academy president Janet Yang in a joint statement.

This year’s class of new members is heavy on 2022 breakouts, like the aforementioned Kwan and Scheinert – invitees in both the directors’ brand and the producers’ branch. In keeping with academy practice,...

The Academy has invited 398 artists across cinematic disciplines to join its membership, including Taylor Swift, Keke Palmer and this year’s Best Supporting Actor winner Ke Huy Quan.

“The Academy is proud to welcome these artists and professionals into our membership. They represent extraordinary global talent across cinematic disciplines and have made a vital impact on the arts and sciences of motion pictures and on movie fans worldwide,” said Academy CEO Bill Kramer and Academy President Janet Yang.

Also scoring invitations are actors Selma Blair, Austin Butler, Ram Charan, Kerry Condon, Bill Hader, Nicholas Hoult, Stephanie Hsu, Noémie Merlant, Paul Mescal, Nt Rama Rao Jr. and Paul Reiser, directors Joseph Kosinski, Maria Schrader and Michael Showalter, writers Josh Friedman, Kazuo Ishiguro and Charlotte Wells.

“Everything Everywhere All at Once” duo The Daniels (Credit: Getty Images)

Eight people were invited to join the Academy by multiple branches and must choose which...

Singer-songwriters Taylor Swift and David Byrne, Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav, Netflix chief content officer Bela Bajaria, Everything Everywhere All at Once filmmakers Daniels (Kwan and Scheinert), Nobel Prize-winning writer Kazuo Ishiguro, former SXSW chief Janet Pierson, WME co-chairs Christian Muirhead and Richard Weitz, and actors including Selma Blair, Austin Butler, Bill Hader, Paul Mescal, Nicholas Hoult, Keke Palmer, Ke Huy Quan and Rrr stars Ram Charan and N.T. Rama Rao Jr. are among the 398 artists and executives from around the world who have been invited to join the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences this year, the Oscar-dispensing organization announced Wednesday.

“The Academy is proud to welcome these artists and professionals into our membership,” Academy CEO Bill Kramer and president Janet Yang said in a statement. “They represent extraordinary global talent across cinematic disciplines and have made a vital impact on the arts and sciences of motion...

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has released the names of its newest round of invitees, increasing the number of voting members past 10,000, should everyone accept.

With the addition of the 398 artists and executives that the Academy extended invitations to (totaling one more invite than last year), the Academy now boasts a membership that is 34 percent women, 18 percent from underrepresented ethnic and racial communities, and 20 percent from countries or territories outside of the United States. Though their invites have a rolling deadline, they must accept them and pay dues in order to vote for the Oscars and gain access to benefits like the Academy Screening Room.

Among the list of possible new members are, predictably, many of the filmmakers behind Best Picture winner “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” including Best Supporting Actor winner Ke Huy Quan, Best Supporting Actress nominee Stephanie Hsu, Best Film Editing winner Paul Rogers,...

It’s that time of year again — the break between Cannes and the fall festivals, when the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences makes its membership invitations. The Oscars group said today that it has extended offers to 398 artists and execs — one more than last year — who have distinguished themselves by their contributions to motion pictures.

The list includes actors, directors, writers, producers, musicians, executives, artist reps, publicists and below-the-liners such as casting directors, cinematographers, costume designers, film editors, makeup artists and hairstylists, production designers and sound pros.

“The Academy is proud to welcome these artists and professionals into our membership,” Academy CEO Bill Kramer and Academy President Janet Yang said in a statement. “They represent extraordinary global talent across cinematic disciplines and have made a vital impact on the arts and sciences of motion pictures and on movie fans worldwide.”

As usual, the invitees include newly minted Oscar winners,...

Aussie actress Mia Wasikowska earned a reputation in the mid-2010s for insidious roles in indies like “Stoker” and “Maps to the Stars.” After Tim Burton’s “Alice in Wonderland” and “Alice Through the Looking Glass” films found her briefly courting the mainstream, she largely faded from view to pursue passion projects and more prickly, socially conscious fare like last year’s “Blueback” and this year’s “Club Zero.” The new film set in a boarding school and around new teacher Miss Novak’s (Wasikowska) unusual methods makes Austrian director Jessica Hausner one of seven women in a record-breaking competition section. Within the walls of the boarding school, it’s not long before other teachers notice their new hire is teaching young students of the Gen Z set that eating less is somehow healthier.

Written and directed by Hausner, “Club Zero” is about many things, namely how the idealism of...

It’s hard to think of a film industry profession that has attracted more attention in the past year than intimacy coordinators. As Hollywood continues to take gradual steps to make sets more inclusive, hiring experts to choreograph sex scenes and ensure that all performers agree to what they’ll be doing has become a popular trend. The prevalence of voices calling for more sex scenes only adds to the demand for the job.

But for every artist who praises the experience of working with an intimacy coordinator, there seems to be another one who criticizes the practice. Debates over the delicate balancing act between performer safety and artistic spontaneity don’t appear to be going away any time soon, and it’s hard to find a Hollywood figure who doesn’t have a strong opinion about it.

In a new interview with The Guardian, Mia Hansen-Løve offered her take on the controversial issue.

The French director on making the closest thing to an autobiography, stripping Léa Seydoux of her glamour and dating fellow film-makers

French screenwriter and director Mia Hansen-Løve, 42, was born in Paris to parents who were both philosophy professors. She studied German at university, then had stints as an actor and film critic before making her directorial debut in 2007 with All Is Forgiven. Her subsequent films include Father of My Children, Goodbye First Love, Eden and Bergman Island. Her new film, One Fine Morning, is about a single mother caring for her ailing father while embarking upon a new romance. She lives near Paris with her partner, film-maker Laurent Perreau, and their children.

How closely was your new film, One Fine Morning, inspired by your own late father’s illness?

All my films, in one way or another, use autobiographical elements. Or I should say biographical, because the majority are not...

In the role of a lifetime, Léa Seydoux plays a widowed single mum caught between new romance and the failing mind of her father in the French director’s deeply personal Cannes prize winner

The French writer-director Mia Hansen-Løve became a festival fixture with films such as All Is Forgiven (2007), Father of My Children (2009) and more recently the Palme d’Or nominated Bergman Island (2021). My own favourite Hansen-Løve films include the pulsing Eden (2014) and the ruminative Things to Come (2016), the latter of which contains one of Isabelle Huppert’s finest screen performances. But in this, her latest Cannes prize winner, Hansen-Løve hits a career high note, delivering a quietly thoughtful and ultimately life-affirming portrait of the strange interaction between loss and rebirth. It’s a miraculous balancing act that pretty much took my breath away.

Léa Seydoux, whose own career encompasses everything from Palme d’Or winners to Bond blockbusters,...

On some basic level, Mia Hansen-Løve makes movies because she has a “very, very bad” memory. “It’s a way to hold on to events that I want to remember, to really make sure the things that matter to me will still exist even if I forget them,” says the French filmmaker. She scrunches up the already rumpled tissue in her lap and releases it again. “I’m always worried that I will forget everything.” That fear goes a long way in explaining the many parallels that exist between Hansen-Løve’s real life and the lives explored on screen in her emotionally intense, often award-winning films.

Hansen-Løve was only 23 when she wrote her debut All Is Forgiven; 25 when she directed it. The film, nominated for Best First Feature at the 2008 César Awards (the French equivalent of the Oscars), was loosely inspired by her uncle and cousin. Goodbye First Love (2011) told...

The woman at the centre of the subtle but cathartic One Fine Morning is cursed by her consciousness. Try as she might, she can’t escape the fact that she’s ultimately alone, trapped in her own head, and tied through her actions to each and every person around her. It’s a torturous existence. Sandra (Léa Seydoux), a young widow, cares for her eight-year-old daughter. She also cares for her father Georg (veteran actor Pascal Greggory), whose sight is mostly gone and whose memory is crumbling away due to a neurodegenerative disease. At work, as a translator, she patiently reinterprets the words of strangers, or guides American World War Two veterans back down the paths of their old traumas.

She has carved up and rationed out every last part of her heart. There’s no more left for her own use, as she’s forced to admit: “I just...

It’s been an interesting year for cinema thus far, and that won’t be slowing down in April.

There’s Leonor Will Never Die (7 April) – a meta love letter to Filipino cinema, led by the marvellous Sheila Francisco – and also Lola (7 April), a Second World War time travel drama whose low budget shows that you can do impressive things with very little. Albert Serra’s Pacifiction (21 April) is an intoxicating descent into danger and, as with the Spanish filmmaker’s previous films, it may be divisive, but demands to be seen – even if just to form your own opinion.

Ben Affleck directs and stars in Air (7 April), which follows Nike’s revolutionary partnership with a young Michael Jordan. Affleck’s receiving some of the best reviews of his career for the film. Meanwhile, grisly horror Evil Dead Rise (21 April) has generated word-of-mouth hype since its premiere at South by Southwest.

Mia Wasikowska has quietly become one of my favorite working actors. This was not something I expected after she was consumed in the muck of Tim Burton's truly dreadful live-action adaptation of "Alice in Wonderland," but looking back, I can't place any of the blame on that film's utter failure on her. But I can't say that it didn't affect how I viewed her at the time. Since then, though, she made her way back to smaller projects from top-tier filmmakers, like Park Chan-wook's "Stoker," Jim Jarmusch's "Only Lovers Left Alive," and David Cronenberg's "Maps to the Stars." Because of my association of her with "Alice," I always framed her being good in these movies as a nice surprise, which was unfair. It embarrassingly wasn't until the offbeat Western comedy "Damsel" from directing duo David and Nathan Zellner that I realized, "Oh, she's just great all the time,...

Mia Wasikowska has spoken about her decision to step out of the Hollywood limelight in the late 2010s to return to her native Sydney, Australia.

The now-33-year-old actor landed her breakthrough role leading Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland (2010) opposite Johnny Depp. She was 21 at the time.

The film’s box office success catapulted Wasikowska to fame among the Hollywood “It girls” of the era.

Her career continued on an upward trajectory as she booked starring film roles in Jane Eyre (2011), Stoker (2013), Madame Bovary (2014) and Crimson Peak (2015).

However, it was just after she reprised her role as young Alice in Burton’s spinoff, Alice Through the Looking Glass (2016), that she disappeared from the big screen.

“I want to do more things in life other than be in a trailer,” Wasikowska recently told IndieWire in a new interview. “I didn’t entirely like the lifestyle of going back to back to back.

Mia Wasikowska seemed to be everywhere at one point. Starting in 2010, the young actress was on a seemingly unending spree of plum roles in indie films and studio products alike, from Cary Fukunaga’s “Jane Eyre” to “Alice in Wonderland” and “The Kids Are All Right,” “Maps to the Stars,” Tracks,” “Stoker,” and “Crimson Peak.” But it seemed to stop when Tim Burton’s “Wonderland” sequel “Alice Through the Looking Glass” sputtered, a financial bleed-out for Disney that also took a critical beating, though not for Wasikowska’s performance. A not unheard-of phenomenon then occurred: A once in-demand, ubiquitous performer suddenly seemed to have vanished.

Well, the Australian actress never went away, exactly — she just stepped out of the limelight. “I want to do more things in life other than be in a trailer,” she told IndieWire in a recent interview discussing her new film “Blueback,” an endearing eco-conscious message...

Mia Wasikowska’s first project in The States was the HBO series In Treatment. She was just 16 years old, but if you watched it then, you were probably in awe, like me, marveling at this seemingly fully formed acting artist, performing, with nuance and subtlety, well beyond her years. She continued to wow us with stellar work in Jane Eyre, Madame Bovary, Alice In Wonderland, Stoker, The Double, Tracks, Damsel and Bergman Island, to name a few. Her latest is an absolutely beautiful film called Blueback. In this woefully brief episode, she talks about the underwater acting she had to do […]

The post “The Reality of a Life of Acting All the Time Is Different From the Perception”: Mia Wasikowska first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

Mia Wasikowska’s first project in The States was the HBO series In Treatment. She was just 16 years old, but if you watched it then, you were probably in awe, like me, marveling at this seemingly fully formed acting artist, performing, with nuance and subtlety, well beyond her years. She continued to wow us with stellar work in Jane Eyre, Madame Bovary, Alice In Wonderland, Stoker, The Double, Tracks, Damsel and Bergman Island, to name a few. Her latest is an absolutely beautiful film called Blueback. In this woefully brief episode, she talks about the underwater acting she had to do […]

The post “The Reality of a Life of Acting All the Time Is Different From the Perception”: Mia Wasikowska first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

An adrenaline junkie crosses tracks with a motorbike stunt ring, and the rest is a bloodied history.

Director Lola Quivoron’s feature debut “Rodeo” centers on a gearhead (Julie Ledru) who gets deeper with a con artist crew of motorcyclists. The film, produced by Charles Gillibert, debuted at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival, where it won the Coup de Cœur du Jury special prize.

Per the film’s official synopsis, “hot-tempered and fiercely independent, Julia (Ledru) is a gearhead who thrives in hostile environments and turns every situation to her advantage. She has a talent for scamming condescending men who think it’s cute that she shows interest in their used motorbikes and can’t fathom her riding away with gleeful abandon. Her obsession with the high-octane world of urban Rodeos, illicit gatherings where riders show off their bikes and latest daring stunts, sparks a chance meeting with a volatile clique.

The past year was a big one for autobiographical filmmaking, with James Gray’s childhood heartbreak in “Armageddon Time,” Sam Mendes’ ode to moviegoing in the UK with “Empire of Light,” Alejandro G. Iñarritu’s dreamlike self-reflexive filmmaker odyssey “Bardo,” and, of course, Steven Spielberg’s “The Fabelmans,” which turned the world’s most successful director into an Oscar frontrunner for his most personal movie. The others came up short in their own campaigns, but the best autobiographical movie of the past year was one the awards season never fully embraced.

Mia Hansen-Løve’s “One Fine Morning” is only the latest sensitive and personal project from the French auteur to build its drama from her own life. Among the recent movies that fall into that trend, it provides the strongest example of a filmmaker attuned to the challenges of drawing from her own story, as Hansen-Løve has done for years.

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This review originally ran May 20, 2022, in conjunction with the film’s world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival.

Throughout her career, Mia Hansen-Løve has returned to a familiar milieu — the daily lives of women, drawing out a poignant beauty and humanist sense of drama in the quotidian rhythms of mothers as they go about their work, as well as their caretaking of children, parents and their own inner worlds.

There’s something fascinating, and indeed feminist, about simply watching these women, played by some of Europe’s most talented actresses, simply exist in the world, maintaining the delicate balance of day-to-day harmony despite the larger ups and downs that threaten to upend everything.

In “One Fine Morning,” Hansen-Løve’s latest, the woman in question is Sandra, played by Léa Seydoux, hair cropped into a pixie cut, clad in the jeans, sweatshirt and backpack befitting a young widowed mother caring for her daughter,...

New Release Wall

“Bergman Island” (The Criterion Collection): Writer-director Mia Hansen-Løve’s seventh feature is graceful and complex, a story about stories and the sometimes fragile connections between partners and friends. A couple travel to Fårö, Sweden, where Ingmar Bergman lived and worked, in order to work on their own respective filmmaking projects. There they discover more about themselves than they anticipated. The Blu-ray includes an essay from critic Devika Girish; a short film, “Bergman’s Ghosts,” made during production by actor Gabe Klinger; and interviews with Krieps and Hansen-Løve.

Also available:

“Black Adam” (Warner Bros): Dwayne Johnson is the DC Comics anti-hero, freed from his tomb after 5000 years, now ready to deliver his own version of justice.

“Bones and All” (Warner Bros): The latest from “Call Me By Your Name” director Luca Guadagnino is a romantic horror film about cannibals in love — it’s as divisive...

"She scares me so much," a maid says as Corsage begins and cuts to a woman submerged in bathwater. She is Empress Elisabeth of Austria and, when she rises, the two maids beside the bath give her conflicting accounts of how long exactly she was able to hold her breath. The truth doesn't matter to Elisabeth (Sissi for short), just as it doesn't matter to writer-director Marie Kreutzer. Corsage is based on the real-life Austrian empress, but beyond the characters in the film, little else seems to be based in fact, and what is blends seamlessly with what isn't in what feels like a deliberate effort to make the audience question how these kinds of stories are told. Part revisionist history, part unconventional character study, Corsage is carried by Vicky Krieps' brilliant performance and its willingness to buck genre conventions in favor of a dark and dreamy fairy tale.

Corsage...

The last time Vicky Krieps was on this podcast (episode 174), we learned about how she approaches the work through a kind of “emptying out” of herself, and a “deconstruction” of everything in her obit, even her preconceptions regarding the role. This time she’s back to talk about her astounding work in Marie Kreutzer’s film Corsage, an imaginative re-telling (or perhaps a “correcting?”) of a year in the life of Empress Elisabeth of Austria. Krieps talks about treating the work as an invitation to play, how dealing with the coldness of the character had an effect on relationships outside of […]

The post “It’s Like an Invitation To Be Human”: Corsage Star Vicky Krieps first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

The last time Vicky Krieps was on this podcast (episode 174), we learned about how she approaches the work through a kind of “emptying out” of herself, and a “deconstruction” of everything in her obit, even her preconceptions regarding the role. This time she’s back to talk about her astounding work in Marie Kreutzer’s film Corsage, an imaginative re-telling (or perhaps a “correcting?”) of a year in the life of Empress Elisabeth of Austria. Krieps talks about treating the work as an invitation to play, how dealing with the coldness of the character had an effect on relationships outside of […]

The post “It’s Like an Invitation To Be Human”: Corsage Star Vicky Krieps first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

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For France’s premiere film and television trade industry publication, it wasn’t a good look.

The cover photo of the Sept. 30 issue of Le Film Français, a must-read for Gallic filmmakers, featured seven men — Pathé President Jérome Seydoux, surrounded by actors Vincent Cassel, Pierre Niney, François Civil and Pio Marmaï, and actor-directors Guillaume Canet and Danny Boon —under the headline “Objective: Reconquest.”

The backlash was immediate.

“No women, no diversity. Classy!” tweeted French actress Alexandra Lamy (You Choose!). Audrey Diwan, director of Venice Film Festival winner Happening, added ironically, “If we’re bothering you guys, just let us know.”

The magazine quickly apologized, but for many, the incident was illustrative of how far the French industry still has to go.

Si on vous gêne, n’hésitez pas à le dire pic.twitter.com/e0fEZwuGrb

— Audrey Diwan (@AudreyDiwan) September 30, 2022

“The Film Français...

Austrian filmmaker Marie Kreutzer clinched the best film award in the main Official Competition of the 66th London Film Festival with her latest feature Corsage, starring Vicky Krieps.

The historical drama, which is also the Austrian entry for the best international feature film Oscar race, follows the disgruntled Empress Elisabeth (Krieps), a 19th-century royal who, upon turning 40, begins to rebel against her carefully orchestrated public image.

The festival jury, headed by producer Tanya Seghatchian, actor Gwendoline Christie (Game of Thrones), filmmaker/playwright Kemp Powers (One Night in Miami), filmmaker Chaitanya Tamhane (The Disciple), and journalist Charles Gant described the film as a “mesmerizing and original interpretation of the life of the Austrian Empress Elisabeth.”

“The jury was completely seduced by Vicky Krieps’ sublime performance of a woman out of time trapped in her own iconography and her rebellious yearning for liberation,” the jury said...

Click here to read the full article.

Viggo Mortensen has lined up another stint behind the camera following his well-received directorial debut Falling.

The Lord of the Rings actor, most recently seen in David Cronenberg’s Cannes-bowing body horror movie Crimes of the Future alongside Léa Seydoux, is set to direct the Western love story The Dead Don’t Hurt, in which he’ll star alongside Vicky Krieps.

The film is a Talipot Studio, Recorded Picture and Perceval Pictures production, produced by Regina Solórzano (Los Reyes del Mundo), Jeremy Thomas (Eo) and Mortensen.

Alongside Krieps (Bergman Island, Corsage, Phantom Thread) and Mortensen (Thirteen Lives, Crimes of the Future) in the lead roles, The Dead Don’t Hurt will also star Solly McLeod (House of the Dragon), Danny Huston (Worlds Apart), Garret Dillahunt (Blonde), Tom Bateman (Death on the Nile), Lance Henriksen (Falling, Aliens) and W. Earl Brown (The Unforgivable). The...

Director Mia Hansen-Løve is revealing what it was really like filming the 2021 critically acclaimed feature “Bergman Island” with actors Tim Roth and Vicky Krieps.

Also weighing in, “Bergman Island” lead star Krieps cited a “culture clash” between frequent Quentin Tarantino collaborator Roth and Hansen-Løve in a new Vanity Fair profile.

Previously, Roth was rumored to make a crew member cry during production, according to a Filmmaker Magazine op-ed by Gabe Klinger, who had a small onscreen role in the movie.

Owen Wilson was originally attached to co-lead the film but dropped out ahead of production. Hansen-Løve met Roth only two or three times prior to him joining “Bergman Island” and the actor “didn’t know much about Bergman and Sweden.” Krieps plays Hansen-Løve’s insert, a writer/director named Chris, who is married to an older director named Tony, played by Roth, who is inspired by Hansen-Løve’s former romantic partner.

“A lion doesn’t lose sleep over the opinion of sheep.”

Vicky Krieps transforms into real-life 19th-century Austrian lioness, Empress Elisabeth aka Sisi, for “Corsage,” writer/director Marie Kreutzer’s reimagining of the historic ruler. The period piece is officially Austria’s Oscar entry for Best International Feature at the 2023 Academy Awards after lead star Krieps won the Un Certain Regard for Best Performance at this year’s Cannes Film Festival.

“Corsage” was officially selected to screen at the 2022 Toronto International Film Festival and as part of the main slate for the New York Film Festival. The film opens in theaters December 23 from IFC.

The official logline reads: “Empress Elisabeth of Austria is known for her beauty and fashion trends. But in 1877, she celebrates her 40th birthday and must fight to maintain her public image. With a future of only ceremonial duties in front of her, she rebels against her...