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South Korean director Kim Jee-woon’s much anticipated period comedy drama Cobweb has kicked off the Cannes market with a slew of international sales. Set to premiere in Cannes in an out-of-competition slot on May 25, Cobweb stars Song Kang-ho (Parasite) as a filmmaker frantically trying to finish the movie he believes will be his masterpiece.

International sales for the film, distributed and sold by Seoul-based Barunson E&a, so far include Japan (Happinet Phantom Studios), Taiwan (MovieCloud), Hong Kong/Macau (Edko Films), Southeast Asia (Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand – Clover Films), France and French-speaking territories (The Jokers Films, handled by Finecut), German-speaking territories and Italy (Plaion Pictures), Spain (La Aventura), Cis (Arna Media), Middle East (Phars Film), India (Impact Films), ex-Yugoslavia (Cinemania), Worldwide Inflight (Anuvu/Emphasis). The film is produced by Sll’s Anthology Studios.

Set in South Korea during the politically repressive 1970s, Cobweb centers on a director named Kim (Song...

Exclusive: Brussels-based company Best Friend Forever has acquired international rights for the zany kung-fu-themed action romantic comedy Zenithal.

Vanessa Guide stars as a woman battling to establish peace between the sexes after her longtime boyfriend falls under the thrall of a Machiavellian schemer, who has murdered and harnessed the virulent powers of a famous kung-fu master, as part of a plan to restore absolute male domination.

It is the first feature of Jean-Baptiste Saurel, who has recently been signed as one of the directors on France TV’s upcoming Zorro reboot starring Jean Dujardin, with previous credits including the Disney+ sci-fi French original Parallels.

The feature expands on his provocative 2012 Cannes Critics’ Week short The Dickslap (La Bifle). Bff has released a first-look photo hinting at one of the zany plot twists.

First look at ‘Zenithal’

“Zenithal questions the injunctions of virility through comedy, with a visual style inherited from U.

The sidebar unveiled its 55th selection under new artistic director Julien Rejl on Tuesday (April 18).

Films from Michel Gondry, Hong Sangsoo and Cédric Kahn are among the 19 features set to world premiere at the 55th Cannes Directors’ Fortnight, running May 17-26.

Scroll down for the full selection

Incoming artistic director Julien Rejl unveiled the line-up at a press conference in Paris on Tuesday (April 18) for the non-competitive Cannes parallel section run by French directors guild the Srf.

Rejl said he and his committee chose the films from nearly 4,000 submissions and travelled to more than 20 countries to meet filmmakers and professionals across the globe.

The sidebar unveiled its 55th selection under new artistic director Julien Rejl on Tuesday (April 18).

Projects from Michel Gondry, Hong Sang-Soo and Cédric Kahn are among the 19 features set to world premiere at the 55th Cannes Directors’ Fortnight, running May 17-26.

Scroll down for the full selection

Incoming artistic director Julien Rejl unveiled the line-up at a press conference in Paris on Tuesday (April 18) for the non-competitive Cannes parallel section run by French directors guild the Srf.

Rejl said he and his committee chose the films from nearly 4,000 submissions and travelled to more than 20 countries to meet filmmakers and professionals across the globe.

Cannes Critics’ Week Artistic Director Ava Cahen has unveiled the line-up for the 62nd edition of the parallel sidebar focused on first and second films, running May 17 to 25.

The compact selection will showcase 11 features, seven in Competition, and four as Special Screenings. Full details of the line-up can be found here. The short film line-up will be announced in the coming days.

This is Cahen’s second Selection as Artistic Director after a successful inaugural year in the role in 2022, topped by award-winning titles Aftersun, Alma Viva, Dalva and La Jauria.

Deadline talked to Cahen about the challenges of getting her second Selection over the line as well as some of the themes and trends to have emerged in the process.

Deadline: It’s your second Selection as Artistic Director after your well-received inaugural 2022 line-up. Did you find the process more difficult or easier this year?

Ava Cahen: It was different,...

French film executives Mathieu Robinet, former head of Bac Films, and Yohann Comte, co-founder of Charades, have joined forces to launch Drive-in Festival, a not-for-profit initiative that will take place in several cities across the country until theaters reopen.

The initiative was inspired by American drive-in cinemas and similar initiatives created in Germany, South Korea and even Lithuania, where the Vilnius International Film Festival converted airport space into a massive drive-in cinema, said Comte.

Robinet, who conceived the idea of the Drive-in Festival, enlisted Comte and other film executives and received the blessing of cities, individual exhibitors, distributors such as Le Pacte, The Jokers and Wild Bunch, and the National Film Board to put together a line-up of films that can be watched outdoors from people’s cars.

The first session kicked off May 16 in Bordeaux on the Place des Quinconces, which welcomed 200 cars for “Hippocrate,” Thomas Lilti’s film...

Above: Alternative UK poster for Parasite. Art by Andrew Bannister.Whether or not you think it’s the best film of the year, I think by now it’s safe to say that Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite is the most significant film of last year and probably this year too. From its Palme d’Or win to its historic Oscar nominations, Parasite is to 2019 what Pulp Fiction was to 1994: an impossible-to-ignore global phenomenon and a brilliant work of art to boot. All great works of art inspire more great art and Parasite has been a gloriously fecund host for poster designers to feed off, inspiring ingenious commercial campaigns and fan art alike.The original Korean poster—the first glimpse any of us got of this soon-to-be sensation back last April—was designed by Kim Sang-man, a film director (Midnight FM), art director (Joint Security Area), and composer, who started...

Lyon, France — Manuel Chiche is riding high. Since June, his boutique distribution outlet The Jokers set admission records with Bong Joon-ho’s “Parasite,” selling nearly 1.7 million tickets in France and still going strong as the film heads into its 19th week in theaters. Indeed, “Parasite” is now the second most successful Palme d’Or winner of the 21st century at the French box office – but don’t expect Chiche or any of his outfits to scale up as a result.

“We want to remains as artisans, in a business that doesn’t always allow for that,” says the French exec, who also runs reissue outfit La Rabbia. On the occasion of this year’s Lumière Festival, Variety sat down with Chiche for a kind state of the industry on the French reissue landscape.

Is there a particular time of year most amenable to reissues?

In France, it’s always in the summer.

By Howard Hughes

(The following review is of the UK release of the film on Region 2 format.)

In Roy Ward Baker’s 1960s comedy-drama Two Left Feet, Michael Crawford plays Alan Crabbe, a clumsy and unlucky-in-love 19-year-old who begins dating ‘Eileen, the Teacup Queen’, a waitress at his local cafe. She lives in Camden Town and there are rumours that she’s married, but that doesn’t seem to alter her behavior. Alan and Eileen travel into London’s ‘Floride Club’, where the Storyville Jazzmen play trad for the groovers and shakers. Eileen turns out to be a ‘right little madam’, who is really just stringing Alan along. She’s the kind of girl who only dates to get into places and then starts chatting to randoms once inside. She takes up with ruffian Ronnie, while Alan meets a nice girl, Beth Crowley. But Eileen holds a strange hold over...

Academy awards In Memoriam section fails to include British film director despite his prolific Hollywood career

The Oscars snubbed British film director Michael Winner as – surprisingly – he failed to be acknowledged in the 85th Academy Awards' traditional In Memoriam section.

Winner, who died just over a month ago, was responsible for a major Hollywood hit, Death Wish, starring Charles Bronson, which was one of the most successful films of 1974.

But, while the Academy honoured the likes of Ernest Borgnine and Tony Scott, as well as cult talents such as Chris Marker, Tonino Guerra and Erland Josephson, no place was found for Winner.

Arguably Winner's most productive years were the string of films he made in the 60s in the UK, including The Jokers and I'll Never Forget What's'isname. The success of the war picture Hannibal Brooks saw him picked up by the Hollywood studios and a series of films with major stars,...

Some may have thought that British movie director Michael Winner died years ago. He stopped making films in the ‘90s and even wrote his own joke obituary which was picked up on by some media and taken seriously. Winner continued to live in London and found a new career as a film critic with the long-running “Winner’s Dinners” column in the Sunday UK Times newspaper. Winner is remembered in the film industry as well as the restaurant scene for his abrasive personality,

He directed Charles Bronson in six films including three, The Mechanic, Death Wish, and Death 3, that landed in my Top Ten Tuesday: The Best of Charles Bronson list from July 2010 http://wearemoviegeeks.com/2010/06/top-ten-tuesday-charles-bronson/). His other Bronson collaborations were Death Wish 2, Chato’S Land, and The Stone Killer. Death Wish was a monstrous hit for both the star and director, yet in his autobiography Winner Takes All...

Flamboyant film director, best known for Death Wish, and later an outspoken restaurant critic and bon vivant

Michael Winner, who has died aged 77, supplied interviewers with a list of more than 30 films he had directed, not always including the early travelogue This Is Belgium (1956), mostly shot in East Grinstead. But his enduring work was himself – a bravura creation of movies, television, journalism, the law courts and a catchphrase, ''Calm down, dear", from an exasperating series of television commercials.

He was born in London, the only child of George and Helen Winner, who were of Russian and Polish extraction respectively. His builder father made enough money propping up blitzed houses to invest in London property. The profits funded his wife's gambling, which, her son complained, so distracted "Mumsie" that he was never paid due attention. She left him in the bedroom with the mink coats of guests who came to his...

By Lee Pfeiffer

Director Michael Winner has died in his native England at age 77. Winner's star rose in the early to mid 1960s with a string of innovative comedies such as The Jokers and I'll Never Forget What's'isname, that perfectly tapped into the emerging London "mod scene".  His eclectic range of movies covered many genres, from Westerns to WWII to urban crime thrillers. Among his more notable titles were Lawman, Chato's Land, Scorpio, Hannibal Brooks, The Games, The Sentinel, The Nightcomers, The Mechanic and The Stone Killer. His greatest and most unexpected success was the 1974 film Death Wish starring Charles Bronson which was released at a time when societies worldwide were bristling at an explosion of urban crime and the perception that the current laws were not protecting them. The film tapped into a vigilante sentiment in its depiction of a New York liberal who takes the law into  his...

Michael Winner: Death Wish director has died Michael Winner, best remembered for directing the Charles Bronson action hit Death Wish, died earlier today at his home in Kensington, London. According to reports, Winner had been suffering from (an unspecified) liver disease. He was 77. (Photo: Michael Winner.) Born in London (on Oct. 30, 1935) to a well-to-do family of Eastern European Jews — his father was Russian, his mother was Polish — Winner studied law and economics at Cambridge University. Following a stint as a gossip columnist (reportedly at the age of 14), he proceeded to study journalism and film criticism. He began working in the field in the mid-’50s. Michael Winner movies Michael Winner’s directorial career also took off in the mid-’50s, when he began directing several documentary and live-action shorts, a couple of which featured well-known names such as A.E. Matthews and Dennis Price. Winner progressed to features in the early ’60s,...

Andrew Pulver looks back through some of the key films of director Michael Winner, who has died aged 77

Play It Cool (1962)

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After a string of short films, Winner broke into features in the early 60s, with low budget thrillers and trendy pop musicals. Quite a few of them had "cool" in the title – including the nudie pic Some Like It Cool. The Billy Fury pic Play It Cool was considerably more commercially viable, no doubt inspired by the success of Cliff Richard's Young Ones film. Fury – in a real stretch – plays an up-and coming rocker called Billy Universe; Anna Palk the heiress who he might or might not get together with, and Dennis Price (!) as her overbearing dad.

The Cool Mikado (1962)

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Frankie Howerd led the line for Winner's followup, produced by Howard Baim,...

Michael Winner, director of the Death Wish movie series and A Chorus of Disapproval, who later found fame as a restaurant critic, has died at the age of 77.

Michael Winner, bon viveur, restaurant critic and arguably one of the best known British film-makers of the 20th century has died at the age of 77. "A light has gone out of my life," his wife Geraldine Lynton-Edwards said. "Michael was a wonderful man, brilliant, funny and generous."

Winner had been in ill health for a number of years and almost died after contracting a bacterial infection while holidaying on Barbados in January 2007.

Born to a wealthy family in north London, Winner cut his teeth at the BBC before making his debut as a writer-director with the 1960 crime thriller Shoot to Kill. His freewheeling 1964 sex comedy The System established him as a key chronicler of swinging 60s London and gave rise to a...

Michael Winner, director of Death Wish, producer, and of late, Sunday Times food critic, has died. He was 77.Born in Hampstead in 1935, Winner cut his teeth as a journalist, working as a cub reporter on the Kensington Post, Showgirl Glamour Revue and the NME, before scoring a job as assistant director making BBC television programmes.By the early '60s he'd made a name for himself as a director. Shoot To Kill, a thriller about a showbiz reporter that had shades of autobiography about it, marked his feature debut. But it was his collaboration with Oliver Reed, beginning with The Jokers in 1964 and continuing with I'll Never Forget What'sisname and Hannibal Brooks, that gave his career a timely boost. He was best known as a filmmaker for 1974's tough-guy thriller Death Wish. In it, Charles Bronson played Paul Kersey, a vigilante whose violent quest to avenge the murder of his...

Two highly-anticipated second feature films from U.S. underground filmmakers will be making their World Premieres all the way over at the 64th annual Edinburgh International Film Festival, which will run for twelve days on June 16-27. The films are Rona Mark’s The Crab and Zach Clark’s Vacation!.

The Crab, which screens on June 21, is the touching story of a verbally abusive man born with two enormous, mutant-like hands; while Vacation!, which screens on June 20, tracks four urban gals let loose in a sunny seaside resort down South.

Both Mark and Clark previously screened their debut features at Eiff. Mark’s Strange Girls screened there in 2008 and Clark’s Modern Love Is Automatic screened in 2009. Both films also ended up as runners-up in Bad Lit’s annual Movie of the Year award, again Strange Girls in 2008 and Modern Love in 2009. Sadly, these two masterpieces are still unavailable on...

The notorious film director on cheating death, the awfulness of restaurants – and how he can't stand boring people

It is with a mixture of fear and exhilaration that I approach Michael Winner's large house – he likes to describe it as a mansion – in London's fashionable Holland Park. God knows how much it's worth – £25m maybe. Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin lives next door, in an even bigger house. An attractive, slightly forbidding young woman answers the door – I later discover she is a resting actress called Ruby – and she shows me into Winner's private cinema, filled with memorabilia from half a lifetime of movie-making and an entire lifetime of trouble-making.

There are seats for 30 people, a bar, a director's chair with Winner's name on it, the Winner puppet from Spitting Image, a signed photograph of Marilyn Monroe, pictures of some scantily clad starlets, and hundreds of photographs of stars...