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The Oldenburg Film Festival has picked two iconoclast filmmakers to honor for its 30th anniversary edition: French actor/director Isild Le Besco and Canadian producer Jen Gatien. Both women have carved out unique paths in independent cinema, defying conventions and expectations.

Le Besco has worked in front of the camera since she was eight, and by her early 20s was already a face of French auteur cinema, with two César nominations — for her performances in Benoît Jacquot’s Sade (2000) and Cédric Kahn’s Roberto Succo (2001) and a best actress honor in Venice for Jacquot’s L’Intouchable (2006).

Her directorial debut, 2004’s Demi-Tarif (Half-Price), the story of three young siblings, Romeo (Kolia Litscher), Launa (Lila Salet), and the youngest, Leo (Cindy David), left on their own in a rundown Paris apartment, was an unmediated look into the world of childhood and drew praise from the likes of Mia Hansen-Løve, whose review,...

Guillaume Brac's film All Hands on Deck is exclusively showing on Mubi in most countries in the series The New Auteurs, as well as the retrospective Summer Light: Films by Guillaume Brac.Just over a year ago, the director of the Cnsad (Conservatoire National Supérieur d’Art Dramatique—the Higher National Conservatoire for Dramatic Art), Claire Lasne-Darcueil, asked me to write a feature-length fiction film for a dozen young actors from the class of 2020. With one proviso: I had to shoot between summer and autumn 2019, so that the film would be finished by the time they graduated.I immediately saw this as an opportunity to paint the fictional portrait of a generation, just like Pascale Ferran did twenty-five years ago with L’âge des possibles, written for a class at the Théâtre National de Strasbourg. Or the filmmakers of two collections, Tous les garçons et les filles de leur âge and Les années lycée,...

As we slowly near the end of the year, more and more films are not only vying for the attention of critics and awards voters alike, but even the smallest of pictures are hoping to find some sort of foothold with audiences, no matter how niche the group may actually be. That’s exactly the case for director Lucile Hadzihalilovic and her newest and arguably best film, Evolution.

Despite having IFC and their side brand IFC Midnight behind their release both in theaters and eventually on VOD (likely where this film will garner it’s widest audience), Evolution is an absolutely superb drama but one that is so singular it verges on the mysteriously esoteric. The film tells the story of Nicolas (Max Brebant), who lives in a seaside village whose only inhabitants are pre-teen boys and adult women. However, their modest lives are upended when a young boy washes...

French writer-director Lucile Hadžihalilović hasn’t made a feature film in more than a decade, but her third effort, the surreal and disturbing horror-mystery “Evolution,” is sure to make a large splash when it hits theaters on November 25.

Read More: Tiff Review: Lucile Hadžihalilović Transfixing, Enchanting ‘Evolution’

The movie has drawn comparisons to David Cronenberg and to Jonathan Glazer’s supremely haunting 2013 film, “Under the Skin.” Here’s the synopsis: The only residents of young Nicholas’s seaside town are women and boys. When he sees a dead body in the ocean one day, he begins to question his existence and surroundings. Why must he, and all the other boys, be hospitalized?

Produced by Sylvie Pialat, Jérôme Vidal and Benoît Quainon and executive produced by Pialat, “Evolution” stars Max Brebant, Roxane Duran and Julie-Marie Parmentier. The film was a festival favorite that premiered at the 2015 Toronto International Film Festival as...

One of the most arresting films we saw at last year’s Toronto International Film Festival was Lucile Hadzihalilovic‘s “Evolution,” and it’s one that has been buzzing in our minds ever since. Somewhere between sci-fi and horror, the picture is completely individual and filled with stunning imagery, it’s one you’ll want to see on the big screen if it plays near you.

Read More: Watch The Beautiful Jonathan Glazer-Esque Trailer For Lucile Hadzihalilovic’s ‘Evolution’

Starring Max Brebant, Roxane Duran, and Julie-Marie Parmentier, the story follows a ten year-old boy who lives near the sea in a village only populated by other males his age and older women.

Continue reading Lucile Hadzihalilovic’s ‘Evolution’ Gets An Eerie, Beautiful New U.S. Trailer at The Playlist.

"I'm going to count to ten... and then it'll be over." IFC Midnight has released a new trailer for the film Evolution, a mysterious sci-fi meets body horror film from France that first premiered at film festivals last year. In the film, Max Brebant stars as Nicholas, a boy living in a mysterious, isolated seaside clinic who uncovers the sinister purposes of his keepers. We first featured a teaser trailer for this film in late 2015, and it's finally going to be released later this year for those interesed. The full cast includes Roxane Duran, Julie-Marie Parmentier, and Mathieu Goldfeld. This definitely looks weird and freaky and confusing, but still mesmerizing to watch, with plenty of "haunting, otherworldly images of a nightmare." Take a look. Here's the second official trailer for Lucile Hadzihalilovic's Evolution, direct from IFC's YouTube: The only residents of young Nicholas's seaside town are women and boys.

2Nd Update (9/23, 3:23 Pdt): An earlier version of this article listed Elle Evans as the actress who plays the title role in The Love Witch. That distinction in fact goes to Samantha Robinson. We regret the error. Update (9/22, 11:37 Pm Pdt): The same day this article was published, Paramount pushed back the release date for Rings from October 28 to February 3, 2017. Original Article: Fall has traditionally been viewed as the prime time of year for the horror film, but this summer was actually a pretty good one for the genre, with movies like The Conjuring 2, Lights Out, and the surprise smash Don't Breathe doing gangbusters business in the midst of blockbuster season. But the year's not over yet! With September in full swing, there are a number of worthwhile (and, yes, questionable) titles looming on the release calendar over the next three months. Below, you can find a rundown of 12 upcoming horror films,...

★★★★☆From Innocence director Lucile Hadžihalilović, Evolution is another one word title that provokes as much as it suggests. An enigmatic stone of a film, it's a glowing entry in the sub-genre of fabulist science fiction of Never Let Me Go and Under the Skin. We first meet young Nicolas (Max Brebant) underwater. He floats above us, an alien presence visiting a strange and magical underwater world. Nicolas lives with his mother (Julie-Marie Parmentier) in a small rustic village of white houses on a black sanded volcanic island. There doesn’t appear to be any technology - no cars, telephones, or televisions - and Nicolas' bedroom is as beautifully spare as a Flemish painting of an empty room.

The trailer for Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala's great Austrian horror film Goodnight Mommy went viral last year after it was deemed by several outlets to be one of the scariest of all time (my own reaction was a tad more measured), a designation the movie itself couldn't possibly live up to but which nevertheless goosed its North American box office take to $1.1 million -- an impressive total for a foreign art house film directed by unknown filmmakers. I found Mommy to be an insightful, provocative, disturbing and ultimately devastating portrait of grief, and I couldn't help but think of it while viewing the new trailer for another European horror film, Lucile Hadžihalilovi?'s intriguing Evolution. First off, what a trailer. Unlike the advertising for so many American horror films (including this one that just dropped today), it gets under your skin by leaving much to the imagination, creating a sensuous,...

Évolution Movie Trailer. Lucile Hadzihalilovic‘s Évolution (2016) movie trailer stars Max Brebant, Roxane Duran and Julie-Marie Parmentier. Évolution‘s plot synopsis: “The only residents of young Nicholas’s seaside town are women and boys. When he sees a dead body in the ocean one day, he begins to question his existence and surroundings. Why must he, and all the other boys, be […]...

Sometimes anticipation pays off. Way back in January, Lucile Hadzihalilovic's "Evolution" landed on our 20 Most Anticipated Foreign Films Of 2015 list, and when Nikola Grozdanovic saw it nine months later at Tiff, he was knocked over. "Hadzihalilovic creates a nightmarish lullaby that nestles itself into the unsuspecting viewer like some alien organism, engendered to haunt one's mind with a phantasmagorical presence," he said about the film in his review. And now, you can experience the sensation the film conjures with the first international trailer. Starring Max Brebant, Roxane Duran, and Julie-Marie Parmentier, the film mixes body horror and fantasy in a story about the relationship between a young boy and his mother, both of whom live in a mysterious remote community. Here's the synopsis:  Ten-year old Nicolas (Max Brebant) lives an austere and isolated life with his mother in a remote seaside community populated by...

Evolution

Directed by Lucile Hadzihalilovic

Canada, 2015

Philadelphia Film Festival

Evolution is an odd bird. It has the mood of a David Cronenberg film, some of the peculiarities of City of Lost Children, and the child’s fascination of Tideland.

Nicolas (Max Brebant) lives with his mother (Julie-Marie Parmentier) in a small seaside town. Strange things start to happen when Nicolas sees a dead boy floating underwater. Soon, he and all of the other young boys in the town are taken to the hospital for an unknown procedure. Nicholas starts to question the workings of the town and his mother’s intentions.

Everything in Evolution is sparse. The walls are bare. The furniture is nearly nonexistent. The population is small. The hospital looks more like a seedy motel. Even the score (slow and dissonant) and the pacing (deliberate) are sparse. This all adds up to a methodical sort of fantasy, where the dread truly creeps.

Evolution

Written by Lucile Hadzihalilovic and Alanté Kavaïté

Directed by Lucile Hadzihalilovic

France, 2014

It is difficult to discuss Evolution without giving away a lot of its surprises. Needless-to-say, Lucile Hadzihalilovic’s masterful film (only her second in a decade) is disturbing, beautiful and restrained. Mysterious from beginning to end, the film challenges and intrigues, reaching down inside to grab hold of something within us all that is ancient and primordial, engaging on a level that exists within not only a collective imagination but our collective biology. As the tide of revelation comes in, new details are revealed, yet when it recedes it takes something else with it. So the audience is left to keep afloat in a cloudy brine of opaque truths making for a claustrophobic experience with no easy way out.

On a strange island, Nicolas (Max Brebant) lives with a group of other young boys overseen by a watchful group of androgynous women.

A pair of sections that we’ve been covering almost since its inception, the American Film Institute (AFI) announced their selections for the New Auteurs and American Independents line-ups and we’ve got a noteworthy, eyebrow-raising sampling of award-winning items from the Cannes played hellish immigration drama Mediterranea from Jonas Carpignano to Sundance (Josh Mond’s James White) to SXSW (Trey Edward Shults’ Krisha) winners. Since Park City days, our Nicholas Bell has reviewed a good chunk of these titles, but we’ll still likely have a couple of more reviews once the festival begins. Here are the selections and jury members.

New Auteurs Selections (11 Titles)

From Afar – When a middle-aged man is assaulted and robbed by a young criminal, an unlikely relationship develops. Dir Lorenzo Vigas. Scr Lorenzo Vigas. Cast Alfredo Castro and Luis Silva. Venezuela/Mexico. U.S. Premiere

Disorder – Matthias Schoenaerts plays an ex-soldier who becomes locked...

Gaspar Noé’s partner Lucile Hadžihalilović delivers shocks of her own in this surreal, otherwordly headscrambler

Lucile Hadžihalilović’s strong second feature is set in a closed-off world of medical horrors and unspoken social and sexual secrets: maybe the distant future, maybe another planet, maybe a dream, maybe just a metaphor, but one with its own logic that’s always one step ahead. It’s a quiet, deliberately paced film, but exquisitely shot, with nuanced performances and visual invention. Its post-human aspects are reminiscent of Under the Skin, its slowly teased mysteries recall Upstream Colour, and its bold surprises are pure mindscrambling sci-fi.

Ok, so what the hell’s this picture about? We open in a small, beachside community. White stone houses, black sand, volcanic rock. Everyone’s speaking French, but it doesn’t look like France. (Filming took place on Lanzarote.) Nicolas (Max Brebant) is an observant boy who...

Gaspar Noé’s partner Lucile Hadžihalilović delivers shocks of her own in this surreal, otherwordly headscrambler

Lucile Hadžihalilović’s strong second feature is set in a closed-off world of medical horrors and unspoken social and sexual secrets: maybe the distant future, maybe another planet, maybe a dream, maybe just a metaphor, but one with its own logic that’s always one step ahead. It’s a quiet, deliberately paced film, but exquisitely shot, with nuanced performances and visual invention. Its post-human aspects are reminiscent of Under the Skin, its slowly teased mysteries recall Upstream Colour, and its bold surprises are pure mindscrambling sci-fi.

Ok, so what the hell’s this picture about? We open in a small, beachside community. White stone houses, black sand, volcanic rock. Everyone’s speaking French, but it doesn’t look like France. (Filming took place on Lanzarote.) Nicolas (Max Brebant) is an observant boy who...

The distributor has acquired North American rights from Wild Bunch to Lucile Hadzihalilovic’s French horror film ahead of its world premiere in Toronto’s Vanguard strand.

Evolution (France-Spain-Belgium) takes place on an island where a 10-year-old boy discovers the secret behind the settlement, which comprises only women and young boys.

Max Brebant, Roxane Duran, and Julie-Marie Parmentier star. Hadzihalilovic co-wrote the screenplay with Alanté Kavaïté and Geoff Cox.

Les Films du Worso’s Sylvie Pialat and Benoît Quainon produced with Noodles Production’s Jérôme Vidal, Volcano Films’ Sebastian Alvarez, Scope Pictures’ Geneviève Lemal and Left Field Ventures’ John Engel. The project shot in Lanzarote and Barcelona.

Evolution will also screen at the San Sebastián International Film Festival.

Evolution

Director: Lucile Hadzihalilovic // Writers: Alanté Kavaïté, Lucile Hadzihalilovic

While she’s mostly known for having co-written Gaspar Noe’s infamous 2009 film, Enter the Void, Lucile Hadzihalilovic is an accomplished director of her own right, having made the underappreciated 2004 film Innocence (trailer below), which is a strange, meditative, and very creepy film about a boarding school for young girls and starred Marion Cotillard. Now, she’s back over a decade later with her sophomore film, Evolution. The story revolves around 11-year-old Nicolas, who lives with his mother in a seaside housing estate. The only place that ever sees any activity is the hospital. It is there that all the boys from the village are forced to undergo strange medical trials that attempt to disrupt the phases of evolution. Hadzihalilovic cites The Island of Dr. Moreau as inspiration, and the film stars Roxane Duran (supporting player from The White Ribbon, 17 Girls,...

Sneak Peek footage and images from the R-rated 'Marie Antoinette' romantic feature "Farewell, My Queen ("Les Adieux à la reine") directed by Benoît Jacquot, based on the novel of the same name by author Chantal Thomas.

The film is an eyewitness account of France's doomed Queen 'Marie Antoinette' (Diane Kruger), as seen through the eyes of an infatuated, female servant, 'Sidonie Laborde' (Léa Seydoux) :

"...in 1789, on the eve of the 'French Revolution', the court at the 'Palace of Versailles' still live their routines, relatively unconcerned by the increasing turmoil in Paris a distance away. 

"When news about the storming of the 'Bastille' reaches the Court, most aristocrats and servants desert the Palace, fearing that the government is falling. 

"They abandon the Royal Family. But 'Sidonie Laborde', a young servant who is the Queen's reader, has a crush on the monarch and refuses to flee.

"She...

Chicago – Benoît Jacquot is a director clearly enraptured by the beauty of young women. This was eminently clear in his early ’90s-era vehicles for Virginie Ledoyen (“A Single Girl,” “Marianne”), an actress who turned up in his latest picture, “Farewell, My Queen,” still looking startlingly youthful. Yet she is no longer the center of Jacquot’s universe.

Taking Ledoyen’s place is 27-year-old Léa Seydoux, a smoldering French starlet harboring the remarkable ability to simultaneously appear achingly vulnerable and coldly calculating within the same take. She has such a potent presence that it earned her the role of a cardboard villain in “Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol.” Thankfully, Jacquot realized that she was far more than a broodingly pretty face, and offered her what is truly her finest and most complex role to date.

DVD Rating: 4.0/5.0

Every frame of “Farewell, My Queen” is viewed through the eyes of Sidonie (Seydoux), a...

Sneak Peek new images from the dramatic period feature "Farewell, My Queen ("Les Adieux à la reine") directed by Benoît Jacquot, based on the novel of the same name by author Chantal Thomas.

The film is an eyewitness account of France's doomed Queen 'Marie Antoinette' (Diane Kruger), as seen through the eyes of an infatuated, female servant, 'Sidonie Laborde' (Léa Seydoux) :

"...in 1789, on the eve of the 'French Revolution', the court at the 'Palace of Versailles' still live their routines, relatively unconcerned by the increasing turmoil in Paris a distance away. 

"When news about the storming of the 'Bastille' reaches the Court, most aristocrats and servants desert the Palace, fearing that the government is falling. 

"They abandon the Royal Family. But 'Sidonie Laborde', a young servant who is the Queen's reader, has a crush on the monarch and refuses to flee.

"She feels secure under the protection...

Sneak Peek actress Diane Kruger in the new dramatic feature "Farewell, My Queen ("Les Adieux à la reine") directed by Benoît Jacquot, based on the novel of the same name by author Chantal Thomas.

The film is an eyewitness account of France's Queen 'Marie Antoinette' (Kruger), before she falls under the guillotine, as seen through the eyes of a young female servant, 'Sidonie Laborde' (Léa Seydoux) :

"...in 1789, on the eve of the 'French Revolution', the court at the 'Palace of Versailles' still live their routines, relatively unconcerned by the increasing turmoil in Paris a distance away. When news about the storming of the 'Bastille' reaches the Court, most aristocrats and servants desert the Palace, fearing that the government is falling. They abandon the Royal Family.

But 'Sidonie Laborde', a young servant who is the Queen's reader, has a crush on her and refuses to flee.

"She feels...

Chicago – Is there any actress in the world today with more seductive and transfixing eyes than Léa Seydoux? She often tilts her head in a direction that allows her to peer up from beneath lowered brows. Stanley Kubrick would loved to photograph her. Yet her radiant orbs are capable of conveying more than mere menace. She can appear frighteningly vulnerable and coldly calculating within the same take.

Rating: 4.0/5.0

In Benoît Jacquot’s quietly entrancing picture, “Farewell, My Queen,” Seydoux’s eyes smolder with desire, even as budding tears threaten to disrupt her unwavering gaze. Based on Chantal Thomas’s book of the same name, “Queen” revolves around a fictitious love triangle in Versailles that was dismantled during the last crucial days of the French Revolution. Though it often plays like the final episode of an epic miniseries, Jacquot and his cast makes the most of every moment.

Read Matt Fagerholm’s full review of “Farewell,...

This is probably the most difficult Top 10 rankings I ever did - more difficult than the updated Top 10 for the actors. I have to find a balance wherein I give proper credit to certain actresses who have already established themselves and are already well-known by fans and ordinary moviegoers vis-a-vis those who have yet to boast of a growing list of followers, but has shown such unforgettable and powerful acting in some very impressive recently released films. At the end of the day, what really matters is that - at this moment - it was her name and her performances that moviegoers and critics alike are talking and raving about. - - -

# 10 - Isild Le Besco: France’s multi-award winning and multi-talented actress Isild le Besco is hot on the heels of Romola Garai in our Top 50 hottest young actresses at #10. Says film critic Marcy Dermansky:

- -...

This is probably the most difficult Top 10 rankings I ever did - more difficult than the updated Top 10 for the actors. I have to find a balance wherein I give proper credit to certain actresses who have already established themselves and are already well-known by fans and ordinary moviegoers vis-a-vis those who have yet to boast of a growing list of followers, but has shown such unforgettable and powerful acting in some very impressive recently released films. At the end of the day, what really matters is that - at this moment - it was her name and her performances that moviegoers and critics alike are talking and raving about. - - -

# 10 - Isild Le Besco: France’s multi-award winning and multi-talented actress Isild le Besco is hot on the heels of Romola Garai in our Top 50 hottest young actresses at #10. Says film critic Marcy Dermansky:

- -...

This is probably the most difficult Top 10 rankings I ever did - more difficult than the updated Top 10 for the actors. I have to find a balance wherein I give proper credit to certain actresses who have already established themselves and are already well-known by fans and ordinary moviegoers vis-a-vis those who have yet to boast of a growing list of followers, but has shown such unforgettable and powerful acting in some very impressive recently released films. At the end of the day, what really matters is that - at this moment - it was her name and her performances that moviegoers and critics alike are talking and raving about. - - -

# 10 - Isild Le Besco: France’s multi-award winning and multi-talented actress Isild le Besco is hot on the heels of Romola Garai in our Top 50 hottest young actresses at #10. Says film critic Marcy Dermansky:

- -...

Having examined the American fright features populating the 2006 Tribeca Film Festival’s Midnight collection, it’s high time to look at a pair of European genre movies playing the event. One of them is actually part of the Spotlight section instead, as Lunacy's Czech writer/director Jan Svankmajer, at age 71, now qualifies as a Grand Old Man of oddball cinema as opposed to the young turks populating the Midnight realm. And despite its title, Lunacy may be the least “mad” of Svankmajer’s features, committing (pardon the pun) to a straightforward story interspersed with the filmmaker’s traditional surreal stop-motion animation. In an onscreen introduction, the filmmaker describes his latest work as “a horror film, with all the degeneracy of the genre,” and is interrupted by a fleshy animated tongue skittering past his feet. That’s a sign of things to come, as the stop-motion isn’t nearly as...