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The Count of Monte Cristo, Matthieu Delaporte and Alexandre de La Patellière’s retelling of the classic French revenge tale, is the front-runner for this year’s César Awards, scoring 14 nominations, including in the best film and best directing categories.

The period drama, starring Pierre Niney, beat out Jacques Audiard’s Oscar frontrunner Emilia Pérez, which got 12 noms, and Beating Hearts, Gilles Lellouche’s contemporary reimagining of Romeo and Juliet featuring François Civil and Adèle Exarchopoulos, which earned 13 nominations.

Matthieu Delaporte and Alexandre de la Patelliere’s lavish adaptation of Alexandre Dumas’ classic was the biggest French box office hit of last year, drawing close to 10 million viewers for a $40 million local take. Globally, the film has grossed more than $75 million.

Sean Baker’s Palme d’Or winner, and Oscar contender, Anora, is up for the Cesar for best foreign film, against Academy Award hopefuls including Coralie Fargeat’s The Substance,...

Matthieu Delaporte and Alexandre De La Patelliere’s epic literary adaptation The Count Of Monte-Cristo leads the nominations for France’s Cesar Awards with 14.

There were also strong showings from Gilles Lellouche’s Beating Hearts with 13 and Jacques Audiard’s Oscar and Bafta-nominated Emilia Perez with 12.

Scroll down for the full list of nominations

The Count Of Monte-Cristo and Emilia Perez are in the running for best film alongside Boris Lojkine’s Souleymane’s Story, Alain Guiraudie’s Misericordia and Emmanuel Courcol’s The Marching Band.

All of the films nominated for best film had their world premiere at the...

The Count of Monte Cristo has topped the nominations for France’s prestigious César awards, followed by Beating Hearts and Oscar frontrunner Emilia Pérez.

The film has made it into 14 categories in the nominations, which were announced in Paris on Wednesday morning. Beating Hearts clinched 13, followed by Emiia Pérez with 12.

Matthieu Delaporte and Alexandre de la Patelliere’s lavish and fast-paced adaptation of Alexandre Dumas’ classic novel starring Pierre Niney was one of France’s top performing movies at the local box office in 2024, drawing close to 10M spectators and its top international export.

Gilles Lellouche’s modern Romeo and Juliet tale Beating Hearts – co-starring François Civil and Adèle Exarchopoulos – has also performed well at home, drawing more than five million spectators.

The 12 nominations for Jacques Audiard’s Cannes Jury prize-winning musical film Emilia Pérez continue its buzzy awards season run which has seen it clinch four Golden Globes and...

Like his most celebrated novel “The Three Musketeers,” Alexandre Dumas’s iconic tale “The Count of Monte Cristo” has been adapted so often in so many different cultural contexts—from the silent era to the American blockbuster to the plethora of Indian interpretations—that it becomes easy to forget a critical element that defines the writer’s oeuvre: Dumas was, in fact, very French. Bringing the story back to its home country, directors Alexandre de la Patellière and Matthieu Delaporte choose to remind viewers of this essential reality by embracing the story in true French fashion, with a cheeky wit in the face of its own posh self-seriousness.

Having seen great success penning last year’s duology adapting Dumas’s most famous story, de la Patellière and Delaporte upgrade themselves to the directors’ chair for “The Count of Monte Cristo” as they relay the tragedy of Edmond Dantès, the prototypical framed man.

Fewer new openings but important ones for the indie world as the year soon to close welcomes the trio of Brady Corbet’s much-nominated The Brutalist with Adrien Brody, Pedro Almodovar’s first English outing The Room Next Door starring Julianne Moore and Tilda Swinton, and a new rendition of revenge thriller The Count Of Monte Cristo. All three are starting in limited release.

Aardman Animations’ latest, Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl, is a lighter note in a handful of theaters ahead of its Netflix debut.

The Brutalist opens in four theaters in New York and LA with 70mm and Imax special engagements including Q&a’s with Corbet, co-writer Monda Fastvold and cinematographer Lol Crawley, notable for using large format VistaVision cameras in the film, which expands in January.

Corbet’s third feature centers on László Toth (Brody) a Brutalist architect...

“Asterix and Obelix: The Big Fight” is the new CG-animated ‘Roman Empire’ comedy TV series, based on characters created by Albert Uderzo and René Goscinny, directed by Alain Chabat and Fabrice Joubert, starring Alain Chabat, Gilles Lellouche, Anaïs Demoustier, Géraldine Nakache, Laurent Lafitte, Jeanne Balibar, Thierry Lhermitte, Grégory Gadebois, Alexandre Astier, Jean-Pascal Zadi, Grégoire Ludig, Jérôme Commandeur and Fred Testot, streaming in 2025 on Netflix:

“…the ‘Druid’ named ‘Panoramix’ forgot the recipe…

“…for the magic potion after receiving a ‘menhir’ on the head…

“…while ‘Abraracourcix’, leader of the brave ‘Gauls’…

“…is challenged by one of his counterparts…

“…during a battle of the leaders.”

Click the images to enlarge…...

“The Count of Monte Cristo” is the new France-produced, live-action feature adaptation of the classic novel by Alexandre Dumas, directed by Alexandre de La Patellière & Matthieu Delaporte, starring Pierre Niney as ‘Edmond’, Anaïs Demoustier as ‘Mercédès’, Bastien Bouillon, Anamaria Vartolomei, Laurent Lafitte and Julien De Saint, releasing December 20, 2024 in theaters:

"...in early 19th century France, 'Edmond Dantes' is betrayed, framed and falsely jailed. But while on a prison island, he befriends a fellow inmate who educates him...

"...and tells him where to find a 'fortune'.

"Following his escape Dantes re-emerges as a wealthy man in Paris society...

"...primed to take revenge…

“…against the corrupt government law-makers who tried to destroy his life, love and freedom...”

Click the images to enlarge...

“The Count of Monte Cristo” is the new France-produced, live-action feature adaptation of the classic novel by Alexandre Dumas, directed by Alexandre de La Patellière & Matthieu Delaporte, starring Pierre Niney as ‘Edmond’, Anaïs Demoustier as ‘Mercédès’, Bastien Bouillon, Anamaria Vartolomei, Laurent Lafitte and Julien De Saint, releasing December 20, 2024 in theaters:

"...in early 19th century France, 'Edmond Dantes' is betrayed, framed and falsely jailed. But while on a prison island, he befriends a fellow inmate who educates him...

"...and tells him where to find a 'fortune'.

"Following his escape Dantes re-emerges as a wealthy man in Paris society...

"...primed to take revenge…

“…against the corrupt government law-makers who tried to destroy his life, love and freedom...”

Click the images to enlarge...

Netflix gave a sneak peek at its 2025 line-up of non-English programming yesterday with shows such as The Leopard (Italy), Last Samurai Standing (Japan), The Empress S2 (Germany), El Refugio Atómico (Spain), Senna (Brazil), Alice in Borderland S3 (Japan), and even this year’s One Hundred Years of Solitude (Colombia).

“People like the authenticity of local stories,” Netflix Chief Content Officer Bela Bajaria said.

“When you try to make something that appeals to everyone, you just end up making something that appeals to no one.” It’s why Bajaria encourages her teams to be ambitious and support the vision of creators with the “goal to make shows and films that resonate in their home country first.”

Netflix shouted out the stat that they dub in 36 languages and subtitle shows in 33 languages. Bajaria also said that 80% of Netflix subs watch Korean content.

Bajaria at Netflix’s International Showcase

Alcaraz (Spain)

Docuseries

Alcaraz...

"Will you sacrifice me for your revenge?" "It isn't revenge. It's justice." Samuel Goldwyn Films has unveiled a new official US trailer for The Count of Monte-Cristo, which first premiered at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival earlier this year. Now set for a US release in December - catch this one in theaters! It's yet another new Alexandre Dumas adaptation, written & directed by the two writers who made The Three Musketeers movies recently, though this time they're also directing. A new take on the famous novel by Dumas, about a man who gets revenge after being unfairly imprisoned. It has been adapted many times before, most notably in 2002 with Jim Caviezel & Guy Pearce; in 1975 with Richard Chamberlain & Trevor Howard; and the Og classic in 1934 with Robert Donat & Elissa Landi. Starring Pierre Niney as Edmond, Anaïs Demoustier as Mercédès, Bastien Bouillon, Anamaria Vartolomei, Laurent Lafitte, & Julien De Saint Jean. After 14 years in...

Filmmaker Quentin Dupieux has earned a reputation for crafting surreal comedies that turn expectations upside down. His movies embrace absurdity and unexpected twists. With Daaaaaalí!, Dupieux set out to create a “fake biopic” about the legendary Spanish artist Salvador Dali.

The film stars Anaïs Demoustier as journalist Judith, who’s assigned to interview the eccentric Dali. But capturing the famously shape-shifting artist proves challenging. Dali is portrayed by multiple actors throughout, with his age changing randomly.

Dupieux crafts Daaaaaalí! as more of an homage than a straightforward biopic. It celebrates Dali’s surrealist spirit rather than claiming to be the definitive telling of his life. The director draws from Dali’s fascination with dreams and the subconscious through Daaaaaalí!’s experimental storytelling.

This review will analyze how Daaaaaalí!’s narrative structure comments on traditional biopic tropes and self-mythologizing artists. It will also explore Dupieux’s surreal approach and discussion of reality,...

A popular anime empire and a beloved manga both hit screens in North America this weekend, with The Outrun starring Saoirse Ronan, five actors playing surrealist artist Salvador Dali, and a trio of thought provoking docs new on the specialty circuit this weekend.

Also noting Columbia Pictures’ Saturday Night from Jason Reitman, which rocked its opening last week, expands in NY and LA and adds ten new markets for 21 locations total before going wide Oct. 11. The film, based on the true story of what happened behind the scenes in the 90 minutes leading up to the first broadcast of Saturday Night Live in 1975, debuted to $270k at five theaters in NY/LA for a terrific $54k per theater average.

Moderate releases: Sony Pictures Classics’ Saoirse Ronan-starring and Nora Fingscheidt-directed drama The Outrun hits 508 screens. After a decade away in London, 29-year-old Rona (Ronan) returns home to the Orkney Islands. Sober but lonely,...

In a scene near the end of Quentin Dupieux’s Daaaaaalí!, Judith (Anaïs Demoustier), a French journalist assigned to interview Salvador Dalí, is riding the bus, in the doldrums after the latest failure to capture her mercurial subject on film. The facial hair of the man seated across from her reminds her of Dalí’s iconic mustache, and after Judith aks him if it’s an intentional homage, he retreats behind his newspaper. The front-page headline reads, “Barista Lets Off Steam on Paris Bus”—a reference to the insult that Judith’s producer (Romain Duris) calls her—with a photograph of Judith below. Dupieux then cuts to a reverse shot of her that begins as a perfect match of the photo, one of countless flourishes of dream logic in the film that subvert conventional cinematic handling of time and space.

That there are almost as many actors portraying Dalí as...

“The Count of Monte Cristo,” one of four films on France’s shortlist for the country’s official submission to the Academy Awards, will open on Dec. 20 in U.S. theaters. Samuel Goldwyn Films plans to campaign the three-hour adventure drama in all categories including best picture, with the release to roll out nationwide after its bow.

In the classic Alexandre Dumas story, Pierre Niney stars as young Edmond Dantès, who is arrested on his wedding day for a crime he did not commit. After 14 years in the island prison of Château d’If, he makes a daring escape and assumes the identity of the Count of Monte Cristo, taking revenge on the three men who betrayed him.

Alexandre de La Patellière and Matthieu Delaporte wrote and directed the film, which co-stars Anaïs Demoustier and Anamaria Vartolemei.

“The Count of Monte Cristo” premiered at this year’s Cannes Film Festival,...

"Now it's sublime." Music Box Films has unveiled the official US trailer for the acclaimed film Daaaaaali! from wacky filmmaker Quentin Dupieux (who also premiered his latest film The Second Act in Cannes earlier this year). Quite simple, this brilliantly hilarious comedy is a wild and weird take on the iconic artist Salvador Dalí. It premiered a the 2023 Venice Film Festival last year to uproarious laughter - it was one of my favorite films of the festival. Dupieux's film is sort of about a young journalist who attempts to meet with the iconic surrealist artist Salvador Dalí on several occasions for a documentary. But it never seems to work out. To add to the confusion, multiple actors portray Dali during different scenes in the film. Starring Anaïs Demoustier, Romain Duris, Gilles Lellouche, Edouard Baer, Pio Marmaï, Didier Flamand, and Jonathan Cohen.

The American French Film Festival (previously called Colcoa) is back with a bang after being canceled last year due to the WGA and SAG/AFTRA strikes.

The 28th edition of the festival will play two of the year’s most buzzed-about French movies, Jacques Audiard’s redemption thriller “Emilia Pérez” and epic adventure film “The Count of Monte Cristo.” They’re also two of the four films submitted by France’s Oscars committee for the international feature film race.

“Emilia Pérez,” which won two prizes at Cannes and played at both Telluride and Toronto, will kick off festivities on opening night, as part of a red-carpet event presented in association with Netflix on Oct. 29; and “The Count of Monte Cristo,” a sweeping three-hour period film starring Pierre Niney in the titular role, be play on closing night on Nov. 3.

A genre-defying musical thriller, “Emilia Perez” won the jury prize at...

From “Rubber” to “Wrong” to “Smoking Causes Coughing” and “The Second Act,” eccentric French auteur Quentin Dupieux is quickly becoming one of Europe’s most prolific filmmakers akin to a Rainer Werner Fassbinder. Albeit with eccentric, often fourth-wall-breaking comedies. He had two films debut at festivals in 2023, including the heckler hostage comedy “Yannick” at Locarno and the Salvador Dalí “real fake biopic” “Daaaaaalí!” out of competition at the 2024 Venice Film Festival. A movie where five actors play the surrealist icon, “Daaaaaalí!” is now making its way to U.S. theaters courtesy of Music Box Films, and IndieWire shares the exclusive trailer below.

Here’s the official synopsis: “For journalist Judith Rochant (Anaïs Demoustier), the assignment to interview renowned artist Salvador Dalí is a great career opportunity–if only he would agree to sit still and answer a single question. What begins as a 15-minute conversation blows up into a bonafide cinematographic documentary portrait,...

France has unveiled the four titles in the running to represent it in the Best International Feature Film category at the 97th Academy Awards.

They are:

All We Imagine as Light by Payal Kapadia The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre de La Patellière, Matthieu Delaporte Emilia Pérez by Jacques Audiard Misericordia by Alain Guiraudie

This year’s candidate is being decided by a restructured selection committee – featuring Venice Golden Lion winner Audrey Diwan and Oscar winners, writer, director and producer Florian Zeller and producer Patrick Wachsberger – as...

The Count of Monte Cristo, directed by Matthieu Delaporte and Alexandre de La Patellière, made its world premiere at the 77th Cannes Film Festival, where it received a resounding 11-minute standing ovation.

Produced by Pathé Films, the same company behind the acclaimed The Three Musketeers: D’Artagnan (2023), this film continues the studio’s tradition of bringing classic French literature to life with grandiosity and meticulous attention to detail. In France, the film has been both a box office success and a cultural event, celebrated for its faithful adaptation of a beloved classic.

The film follows the tragic tale of Edmond Dantès (played by Pierre Niney), a young and promising sailor who is falsely accused of treason and imprisoned in the dreaded Château d’If. After years of enduring unimaginable hardship, he escapes and reinvents himself as the mysterious and wealthy Count of Monte Cristo, bent on exacting revenge against those who betrayed him.

Pierre Niney plays the man behind the multiple masks in this fast-moving adaptation that needs a touch more finesse

There have been dozens of (mostly inadequate) attempts to adapt Alexandre Dumas’ behemoth payback yarn on film and TV, but it doesn’t stop people trying; this time, it’s the team behind the recent two-part Three Musketeers adaptation. Compared to the saturnine Gérard Depardieu in the well-regarded 1998 TV miniseries, lead actor Pierre Niney is a lightweight proposition as the count, playing his second major French icon after Yves Saint Laurent in 2014. But Niney’s physical slightness and poise lend something distinctive here, a hint of vulnerability underneath the multiple masks, a mortal psychological wound that can never be healed.

There’s no improving on Dumas’ timeless setup: young mariner Edmond Dantès (Niney) is imprisoned ad eternum in the Chateau d’If, Marseille’s own Devil’s Island, after being framed...

While watching the latest take on Alexandre Dumas’ literary classic, this time by directors Alexandre de La Patellière and Matthieu Delaporte (who just adapted Dumas’ The Three Musketeers in 2023), I wondered if I was enjoying myself for the wrong reasons. With a high budget (making it the most-expensive French film of 2024), a starry cast, and all the grandeur of a full-blown cinematic epic, The Count of Monte Cristo is big, blockbuster filmmaking of the French kind. And while these large-scale productions typically get the life taken from them by committee in Hollywood, this film’s stone-faced commitment to executing such silly spectacle makes for an uneven, mostly good time.

Directors de La Patellière and Delaporte, who also wrote the screenplay, keep the general story largely the same, with various tweaks to characters and subplots that streamline the narrative (even its nearly three-hour runtime wouldn’t be enough to cover the...

Disaster Documentaries

Content creation and distribution company BossaNova has sold two documentaries to Channel 4 in the U.K. The deals, brokered by Channel 4 acquisitions executive Felix Jones and BossaNova head of sales Holly Cowdery, feature shows from ITN Productions and BriteSpark Films.

ITN’s “MH17: The Plane Crash that Shook the World” marks the 10th anniversary of the Malaysian Airlines tragedy. The one-hour special includes interviews with victims’ families, journalist Matt Frei, and prosecutor Digna van Boetzelaer. It explores the incident’s impact on Ukraine’s war readiness and international relations. BriteSpark’s two-part series “Tsunami, The Day The Wave Hit” chronicles the 2004 Indian Ocean disaster. Using firsthand accounts and archival footage, it details the immediate aftermath and long-term consequences of the event that claimed nearly 230,000 lives.

BBC Breadth

The Beeb’s international audience remains robust, hitting 450 million weekly viewers in 2024, according to its latest Global Audience Measurement.

While Hollywood has been exploiting comic books and YA novels as intellectual property for a long time, French cinema has only recently begun to feed its wealth of 19th century novels into the content machine, churning big-budget epics out of classic books in the public domain.

Last year, a two-part version of Alexandre Dumas’ The Three Musketeers hit local screens, raking in $45 million off a combined $80 million budget for both films. Directed by Martin Bourboulon and featuring a who’s who of Gallic stars, including Vincent Cassel, Eva Green, Romain Duris and Louis Garrel, the Musketeers movies were marked by nonstop action and relentless storytelling tailor-made for the streaming age.

Both films were written by the duo of Matthieu Delaporte and Alexandre de la Patellière, who previously helmed a series of hit comedies (Daddy or Mommy, Divorce French Style, What’s in a Name?) with a fast-paced Hollywood edge to them.

Let us start by lauding the hair and make-up artist, the costume and set designer, and the cinematographer before anything else. We’re discussing The Beast in the Jungle, Austrian director Patric Chiha’s latest adaptation of the Henry James novella (of the same name) from 1903. Very recently, we’ve had another adaptation (although not a direct one) of the same novella in the much superior The Beast. Chiha’s film, however, is mostly frustrating and occasionally fascinating. The nightclub setting adds a zing to it, but the screenplay falters quite a bit. The one hour and forty-five minutes runtime feels like an eternity, and not in a good way. Anais Demoustier’s magnetic screen presence is what keeps you going. Anyway, let us now try deconstructing The Beast in the Jungle, especially its ending.

Spoilers Ahead

What Happens in the Movie?

It takes a while to get settled into the weirdness of this tale.

Last year, in bold defiance of post-pandemic doomsayers, French distributor Pathé doubled down on its commitment to the big-screen experience with its extravagant, no-expense-spared adaptation of Alexandre Dumas’ “The Three Musketeers” — a starry two-part tentpole that featured dynamic single-take swashbuckling sequences and a delectably wicked turn from Eva Green. As theatrical events go, it was fun, if not especially faithful to the book, demonstrating that the French could rival the Americans in showmanship.

This year, by way of an encore, Pathé delivered a sweeping three-hour retelling of Dumas’ crowning achievement, “The Count of Monte Cristo,” at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival. Whereas “Megalopolis” and “Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga” swallowed up much of the oxygen at Cannes, “Count” premiered with far less fanfare but felt like a genuine triumph: a stunning, emotionally satisfying adventure tale, built on rock-solid source material. Compared to earlier adaptations (including an overlong miniseries with Gérard Depardieu...

The Fantasia International Film Festival returns with its 28th edition from July 18 through August 4, 2024, returning to the Concordia Hall and J.A. de Sève cinemas, with additional screens and events at Montreal’s Cinémathèque québécoise and Cinéma du Musée. The second wave of programming has been unveiled, adding even more genre premieres to an already packed slate.

Come To Daddy director Ant Timpson‘s Bookworm (starring Elijah Wood and Evil Dead Rise‘s Nell Fisher) is the fest’s 2024 Opening Film. Fantasia is also hosting the World Premieres of the dark fantasy The Beast Within, starring “Game of Thrones” actor Kit Harington, Cannes’ hit The Count of Monte-Cristo, and more. The festival is also giving their Canadian Trailblazer Award to Vincenzo Natali, to be presented before the premiere of the new 4K restoration of his 1997 classic Cube.

The second wave of titles, from the press release:

Bookworm

Fantasia’s 28th...

Bertrand Bonello’s head-spinning Henry James adaptation set in 1910 Paris, 2014 LA and an AI-controlled 2044 casts a dreamlike spell

The choking grip of artificial intelligence on humanity is the starting point for Bertrand Bonello’s wildly ambitious, century-spanning, French and English-language story of doomed romance, subconscious fears and pigeon-based symbolism. It’s a theme – AI, that is, not the pigeons – that has been thoroughly mined in cinema of late, perhaps not surprisingly. After all, AI poses one of the more significant threats to the future of humankind. It’s the dystopian sci-fi premise that – literally – writes itself, given half the chance. But the eponymous beast in this story is not AI, and Bonello’s approach to the subject is rather more eccentric and original. It’s certainly the most ambitious of his films, which include the fashion biopic Saint Laurent and The House of Tolerance, about a turn-of-the-century Parisian brothel.

Elliptical,...

Bertrand Bonello with Anne-Katrin Titze on Romy Schneider’s face in Coma, the camera test by Henri-Georges Clouzot for his unfinished film L’enfer (Inferno): “I was trying to find an image that you could dream of when you’re a young girl.”

Bertrand Bonello’s prophetic Coma (with a haunting score by the director/screenwriter), starring Louise Labèque (of Zombi Child) as the adolescent and Julia Faure as the title character Patricia Coma, was filmed in France during the Covid pandemic lockdown. We hear the voices of Gaspard Ulliel (Yves Saint Laurent in Bonello’s Saint Laurent), Anaïs Demoustier, Laetitia Casta, Louis Garrel, and Vincent Lacoste as the dollhouse figures. We see Romy Schneider’s face in a camera test for Henri-Georges Clouzot’s unfinished Inferno (L’Enfer) and meet a woman in the forest portrayed by Bonnie Banane.

Young girl (Louise Labèque) with Sharon doll in Coma

Theorists Gilles Deleuze,...

French producer Dimitri Rassam is enjoying a high-profile Cannes Film Festival as producer of Competition title Limonov: The Ballad and The Count Of Monte Cristo, which scored a rousing 12-minute ovation at its Out of Competition debut.

“It’s my first film in Competition, it has been a tremendous ride,” says Rassam, who is a producer on Limonov under his Paris-based Chapter 2 banner, alongside Italy’s Lorenzo Gangarossa and Mario Gianani as well as director Kirill Serebrennikov’s long-time collaborator Ilya Stewart.

Rassam is no stranger to the Cannes red carpet having regularly accompanied his actress mother Carole Bouquet in his early 20s, before mounting the festival’s famed steps in his own right as the producer of The Little Prince and co-producer of L’Immensità.

Cinema is also in his blood on his paternal side through late producer father Jean-Pierre Rassam, and uncle Paul Rassam, the long-time friend and collaborator...

Take your pick. There have been countless film and TV productions adapting Alexandre Dumas’ classic 19th century tale of revenge and deception, The Count of Monte Cristo. We have seen it in different versions in 1934, 1954, 1975, 2002 and probably up to 15 more iterations. Now we have the latest, the lavish widescreen French production Le Comte de Monte-Cristo, which had its world premiere Wednesday night Out of Competition to a wildly approving full audience at the Grand Lumiere — an appropriate place to launch this film as the screen might be the best in the world, and this movie is big.

In addition to all those past film versions on the book, there are countless other movies that have stolen from this complexly plotted tale. For some reason I kept thinking of the Ocean’s movies as, like this, they involve lots of complicated plotting, and once our title character begins planning his revenge...

Laurent Lafitte who stars in the latest version of France’s feature take of Alexandre Dumas’ The Count of Monte Cristo thinks there’s twentysomething adaptations of the classic, but each one offers something different on the 1,400 page novel.

“You have to make certain choices,” said the pic’s co-director and co-scribe Matthieu Delaporte who sprung to the project with collaborator Alexandre de La Patelliere after their work on the two-part feature version of Dumas’ The Three Musketeers.

“We had a conversation with (our producer) Dimitri (Rassam). He asked ‘What’s your dream? It wasn’t deliberate and dreamt but we walked about The Count of Monte Cristo, and then it took off like a rocket,” says de La Patellliere.

The Count of Monte Cristo tells the story of a young man, Edmond Dantes (Pierre Niney), who becomes the target of a sinister plot and is arrested on his wedding...

Matthieu Delaporte and Alexandre de la Patellière’s three-hour French epic The Count Of Monte-Cristo had its world premiere screening Out of Competition at the Cannes Film Festival on Wednesday night, eliciting an enthusiastic nearly 12 minutes of applause.

This latest adaptation based on the classic adventure novel by Alexandre Dumas stars Pierre Niney, Anaïs Demoustier, Laurent Lafitte, Pierfrancesco Favino (also a member of the Cannes jury this year), Anamaria Vartolomei and Bastien Bouillon — all of whom were in attendance for the premiere.

Star of ‘Le Comte De Monte-Cristo’ Pierre Niney blows the audience a kiss during an enthusiastic applause after the world premiere of the film #Cannes2024 pic.twitter.com/CpHOIGXrmz

— Deadline Hollywood (@Deadline) May 22, 2024

The film tells the story of Edmond Dantes (Niney), a young man who becomes the target of a sinister plot and is arrested on his wedding day for a crime he did not commit. After...

The first time Donna Langley came to the Cannes Film Festival she was a junior executive working on 1999’s “Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me.”

“I had just been promoted and I was fortunate enough to get picked to come on this trip to be part of the support team, and it was great! It was very different to this experience, I will say,” Langley said, eliciting a laugh from the well-heeled crowd at the Kering Women in Motion dinner, held at the Place de la Castre high above the Croisette. “[But] we had the time of our lives. We were just in so much awe to be in the cinema capital of the world.”

Indeed, the chairman of NBC Universal Studio Group no longer needs to share an apartment with four other young women — especially not one situated behind the fancy hotels. After all — and as Cannes president Iris Knobloch...

Exclusive: Ahead of its premiere out of competition at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival, Samuel Goldwyn Films has acquired U.S. rights to The Count of Monte Cristo, a new French film based on the classic adventure novel by Alexandre Dumas, which it will release later this year.

Pic is directed Matthieu Delaporte and Alexandre de la Patellière, who previously scripted two-part Dumas adaptation The Three Musketeers. Samuel Goldwyn Films released both installments, with Part I: D’Atagnan unspooling to critical acclaim in December 2023 before continuing to success on home entertainment and Part II: Milady releasing this past April.

Produced by Dimitri Rassam, who also produced The Three Musketeers, the film tells the story of a young man, Edmond Dantes (Pierre Niney), who becomes the target of a sinister plot and is arrested on his wedding day for a crime he did not commit. After 14 years in the island prison of Château d’If,...

Langley Is Woman in Motion in Cannes

Kering’s Women in Motion has unveiled the details for its 2024 program, headlined by a series of A-listers and Universal chairman Donna Langley who will sit for conversations about representation in cinema. The schedule for the invitation-only talks features singer, songwriter and composer Yseult (May 15), actress and filmmaker Judith Godrèche (May 17), Langley ahead of her Women in Motion Award ceremony (May 18), Cannes veteran Julianne Moore (May 19), Cate Blanchett, producer Coco Francini and Dr. Stacy L. Smith (May 20), Emilia Perez star Zoe Saldana (May 20), and Anaïs Demoustier (May 21).

Donna Langley at the 96th Oscars on March 10, 2024. Cannes Vet Kruger Joins “Transcending Borders”

Breaking Through The Lens has booked an afternoon rendezvous in the Campari Lounge at the Palais on May 19, a session that will feature Diane Kruger and the distribution of a special grant that supports directors of marginalized gender.

The event, “Transcending Borders,...

"Will you do good or will hate fill your heart?" Pathe in France has revealed the main official trailer for The Count of Monte-Cristo, which is premiering at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival next week. It's yet another new Alexandre Dumas adaptation, written & directed by the two writers who made The Three Musketeers movies recently, though this time they're also directing. A new take on the famous novel by Dumas, about a man who gets revenge after being unfairly imprisoned. It has been adapted many times before, most notably in 2002 with Jim Caviezel & Guy Pearce; in 1975 with Richard Chamberlain & Trevor Howard; and the original classic in 1934 with Robert Donat & Elissa Landi. There's also another new Italian-French TV series version of Monte Cristo in the works. Starring Pierre Niney as Edmond, Anaïs Demoustier as Mercédès, Bastien Bouillon, Anamaria Vartolomei, with Laurent Lafitte, & Julien De Saint Jean. After 14 years in the island prison of Château d'If,...

Music Box Films has acquired U.S. distribution rights to “Daaaaaalí!,” the latest film by Quentin Dupieux whose upcoming movie “The Second Act” will world premiere on opening night at this year’s Cannes Film Festival.

A comedic and unpredictable tribute to Salvador Dalí, “Daaaaaalí!” premiered out of competition at the Venice Film Festival, followed by screenings at the BFI London Film Festival and Rotterdam.

In “Daaaaaalí!,” a French journalist repeatedly meets Dalí to begin an interview for a documentary film project that never starts shooting. Anaïs Demoustier stars as a journalist attempting to pin down the eccentric and elusive Salvador Dalí, who is played by five different actors, Edouard Baer, Jonathan Cohen, Gilles Lellouche, Pio Marmaï, and Didier Flamand.

Music Box Films will release “Daaaaaalí!” theatrically later this year with a home entertainment release to follow.

“We were thoroughly charmed by the playful, antic spirit of Quentin Dupieux’s film,...

French director Bertrand Bonello is rightly back in the imaginations of U.S. cinephiles, as his new film “The Beast” is now playing stateside. The time-hopping sci-fi romantic drama starring Léa Seydoux and George MacKay as would-be lovers across centuries had the biggest opening weekend yet for distributor Sideshow/Janus Films earlier this month. Now, Bertrand Bonello’s previously undistributed 2022 film “Coma” is finally joining “The Beast” at theaters beginning in May from Film Movement. Watch the trailer for “Coma,” an IndieWire exclusive, below.

Combining live-action and animation, “Coma” centers on a teenage girl in lockdown amid a global health crisis (cough cough) who develops a disturbing relationship with a YouTuber. The cast features Louise Labèque, Julia Faure, Gaspard Ulliel, Laetitia Casta, Vincent Lacoste, Louis Garrel, and Anaïs Demoustier. This was the last film Ulliel worked on before he died in January 2022 after a skiing accident. Ulliel was meant to...

Baloji and Emmanuelle Béart will oversee this year’s Golden Camera jury at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, organizers said on Tuesday.

Organizers said French actress Béart and director and songwriter Baloji will serve as president of the jury that selects the best first film from across the official selections of the film festival.

“Being a self-taught filmmaker and a filmmaker from the Congolese diaspora, it’s a great honor to be able to witness the vitality of first-time directors, to discover their strong singularities and their inaugural work, which will have a lasting impact on the identity of their filmography,” Baloji said in a statement.

Béart added in her own statement: “A first film is about the impossibility of doing anything other than delving into the depths of one’s being to find out what we can’t keep quiet about. A deeply moving and terribly free birth:...

French actress Emmanuelle Béart and Belgian-Congolese director/songwriter Baloji will co-preside over the Caméra d’Or jury of the 2024 Cannes Film Festival.

The Caméra d’Or is awarded to the best first feature film in Cannes’ Official Selection, or in the parallel Critics Week or Directors’ Fortnight sections.

Béart’s long list of credits include 8 Women (2002), Mission: Impossible (1996), Nelly & Monsieur Arnaud (1995), Heart In Winter (1992), La Belle Noiseuse (1991) and Manon Des Sources (1986).

Baloji won the New Voice Prize in Un Certain Regard last year for his debut feature Omen.

This year’s Caméra d’Or jury includes director of photography Gilles Porte,...

Belgian rapper and filmmaker Baloji and French film actress Emmanuelle Béart have been announced as co-presidents of the Cannes Film Festival’s Caméra d’Or jury for the upcoming 77th edition, running from May 14 to 25.

The award for the best first film is open to all the debut feature films presented in Official Selection and the parallel sections of Directors’ Fortnight and Critics’ Week.

The Caméra d’Or Jury has been co-chaired three times before: by actress Françoise Fabian and director Daniel Schmid in 1996, by Marthe Keller and Géraldine Chaplin in 2002, and by brothers Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne in 2006.

Announcing the pair today, the festival described Baloji and Béart as “free spirits with no limits, who rely on their art to achieve creative freedom.” Baloji is best known for his directorial debut Omen, which debuted at last year’s Cannes Film Festival, where it picked up the New Voice Prize in Un Certain Regard.

Quentin Dupieux's Yannick is now showing exclusively on Mubi from April 5, 2024.Yannick.Ever since he dogged a sentient tire on a killing spree in Rubber (2010), musician-turned-filmmaker Quentin Dupieux has been distilling a singular form of gonzo. The films he’s crafted—a body of work swelling at the speed of Hong Sang-soo, with six features released since 2019—all belie their modest means. Rarely stretching longer than eighty minutes, they’ve followed a number of deranged characters, which have recently included a man reprogrammed as a killing machine by his leather jacket; a pig-sized fly and the two bums who try to make a pet out of it; a gang of Power Rangers–type avengers armed with tobacco smoke’s chemical constituents, and a middle-aged couple who discovers a time-travel portal in their basement. Dupieux—who routinely writes, shoots, directs, and edits his own films—likes to work with a...

The 77th edition of the Cannes Film Festival will kick off with Quentin Dupieux’s “The Second Act,” a star-studded surreal French comedy headlined by Léa Seydoux, Vincent Lindon, Louis Garrel and Raphaël Quenard, Variety has learned.

The anticipated movie is produced by Hugo Selignac at Chi-Fou-Mi, a Mediawan company, and is represented in international markets by Kinology. The film will play out of competition on May 14 and will be released on the same day in French theaters.

Laced with absurdist humor, the meta movie follows actors starring in a doomed film production. Dupieux is one of France’s most popular and prolific filmmakers. He delivered two films in 2023: “Daaaaaalí,” which played out-of-competition at Venice, and “Yannick,” a French box office hit that sold around the world.

In confirming the film’s selection at Cannes, the festival described Quentin as a “filmmaker who embraces freedom – in tone, form and...

"It isn't vengeance, it's justice." Pathe in France has revealed a first look teaser trailer for yet another new Alexandre Dumas adaptation, following the immensely successful The Three Musketeers - Part I & Part II movies recently. Their new take on The Count of Monte-Cristo is written & directed by the two writers who just adapted The Three Musketeers recently, though this time they're also directing. A new adaptation of the famous novel by Dumas, about a man who gets revenge after being unfairly imprisoned. It has been adapted many times before, most notably in 2002 with Jim Caviezel & Guy Pearce; in 1975 with Richard Chamberlain & Trevor Howard; and the original classic in 1934 with Robert Donat & Elissa Landi. There's also another new Italian-French TV series version of Monte Cristo in the works, but it looks like this film will be out before that is. A film by Matthieu Delaporte and Alexandre de La Patellière,...

Hot on the heels of their success with ‘The Three Musketeers’, Pathé and Chapter 2 are bringing us a thrilling new adventure with ‘The Count of Monte-Cristo’. Starring the talented Pierre Niney, this film dives into the classic tale of Edmond Dantes, a man wrongly imprisoned who emerges to seek revenge as the wealthy Count of Monte-Cristo.

The story unfolds with Dantes arrested on his wedding day, a victim of a cruel plot. After enduring 14 years in the grim Château d’If, he escapes and discovers a fortune that fuels his transformation into the avenging Count. Set to hit French theaters on June 28, this movie promises a mix of adventure, love, and vengeance, making it a must-watch.

According to Variety, the directors Matthieu Delaporte and Alexandre de la Patellière describe the film as a blend of genres, with a strong romantic thread. They see Edmond Dantes as a superhero of sorts,...

French filmmaker Quentin Dupieux has been creating some pretty surreal masterpieces over the years, including Deerskin, in which Jean Dujardin’s Georges is obsessed with the tasselled loveliness of a suede jacket, and the utterly bonkers and highly entertaining Mandibles, in which two jokers find a giant fly which they hope will make them their fortune. So it was just a matter of time before this master of madness should focus his attention on the grand master of Surrealism, Salvador Dalí, the two coming together in the perfect storm that is Daaaaaali!

The film takes place in the 1980s and follows journalist Judith (Anaïs Demoustier) as she tries to pin down the artist and get an interview out of him for her documentary. Much of the film takes place in the hotel where said interview is to take place and the scenes in the hotel corridor are a joy to behold.

Bertrand Bonello’s “Coma,” which won a prize at the Berlin Film Festival in 2022, has been acquired by Film Movement for North American distribution.

The film follows a teenager who is stuck at home during once of France’s strict early-pandemic lockdowns. Cut off from the outside world, she begins to go back and forth between dreams and reality, guided by a disturbing and mysterious youtuber, Patricia Coma. Represented internationally by Best Friend Forever, the movie weaves genre, animation and live action to explore online behavior and content consumption.

“Coma” stars Louise Labeque (“Zombi Child”) and Julia Faure (“Camille Rewinds”), with voice acting from beloved late actor Gaspard Ulliel as well as Louis Garrel, Laetitia Casta, Anaïs Demoustier and Vincent Lacoste.

Along with winning the Fipresci prize at Berlin, the movie won best picture and best production design at the International Cinephile Society Awards. Film Movement previously worked with Bonello...

Time to meet Dali! Diaphana Distribution in France has revealed a teaser trailer for the acclaimed new film from France's wacky Quentin Dupieux titled Daaaaaali!. Quite simple, this brilliantly hilarious comedy is a wild and kooky take on the artist Salvador Dalí. It premiered a the 2023 Venice Film Festival this fall to uproarious laughter and great reviews - it was one of my favorite films of the festival. Dupieux's film is sort of about a young journalist who attempts to meet with the iconic surrealist artist Salvador Dalí on several occasions for a documentary project. But it never seems to work out. This teaser gives an early look at some of the various actors playing Dali. Starring Anaïs Demoustier, Gilles Lellouche, Edouard Baer, Pio Marmaï, Romain Duris, and Jonathan Cohen. "As Dalí himself said, his personality was probably his greatest masterpiece. My film modestly tells that story," Dupieux explains. I loooove this film,...

At the time of year where every other film is a biopic chasing prestige respectability, we are lucky to have Quentin Dupieux, the prolific, serious-minded, silly filmmaker perfectly positioned to take a sledgehammer to the genre. His second 2023 feature has been described as a “real fake biopic” of Salvador Dalí but is best understood as a return to the heightened analysis of cinematic storytelling à la 2010 breakthrough Rubber––a movie which increasingly looks like the rare weak spot in a filmography equal-parts playful and thoughtful.

And don’t be mistaken: despite casting several of France’s finest character actors as the famed Spaniard, this isn’t an I’m Not There-style tribute to the artist’s spirit attempting an unconventional work in vein like theirs. Dupieux clearly has no interest in those sub-genres of the biopic, either, even if he does have a clear reverence for his subject. Instead his...

Salvador Dalí is walking down a hotel corridor. A hotel corridor is being walked down by Salvador Dalí. In a hotel, there is a corridor down which Salvador Dalí walks. So begins — and begins and begins – Quentin Dupieux’s giddy, glitchy altogether delightful “Daaaaaali!” (imagine the title delivered by a practiced yodeler in the middle of a morning gargle). It’s the oldest and lo-fi-est of cinematic tricks: a few simple cuts make it seem like a hotel hallway’s finite, solid space is elastic, stretching from the lift doors into carpeted absurdity. Like the film as a whole, the gag gets funnier as it gets sillier, and becomes more of a homage to the surrealist painter’s ability to warp the reality around him, the more drunken its time-loop chronology.

“A story should have a beginning, a middle and an end, but not necessarily in that order,” said Godard,...