Canal+ Group Hires Former Salto Director General In Transformation Officer Role

The ladies of Aespa just made their Cannes Film Festival debut!

French director Justine Triet’s Anatomy Of A Fall premiered in Competition at Cannes over the weekend to a buzzy reception with its star Sandra Hüller being tipped as a front-runner for the festival’s coveted best actress prize.

French film producer Juliette Favreul Renaud, a former committee member of France’s Collectif 50/50 gender equality group, was acquitted by a Paris court on Tuesday of charges of sexually assaulting an actress.

Leo Barraclough International Features Editor In one scene in Mona Achache’s “Little Girl Blue,” which world premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in the Special Screenings section, the director is seen insisting that lead actor Marion Cotillard stays in character even on her tea break, to the extent that she must drink tea noisily as her character, Carole – based on the French filmmaker’s own mother – used to do. Does this suggest a manipulative relationship between director and actor? Cotillard disagrees. “I don’t see a director and an actor as being in relationships of manipulation. It’s more a collaboration,” she tells Variety. “It happened to me only once where I felt that I was being manipulated by a director, and I really didn’t like that.”

The Cannes Film Festival red carpet is usually accustomed to protests and demonstrations. Last year there were multiple.

After making a name for herself on season 5 of the hit ITV show Love Island , model and surfer Lucie Donlan became known for her long blonde waves and beachy aesthetic. Now it seems she’s paid tribute to another beach icon, as her latest Instagram post is giving some serious Pamela Anderson vibes.

, host asked the to name a man in Hollywood who “tried to pick you up once who you turned down.” Fonda, who appeared on the show to promote her new film quickly recalled an experience with Clément, who directed her in the 1964 thriller Joy House. “He wanted to go to bed with me because he said the character had to have an orgasm in the movie and he needed to see what my orgasms were like,” Fonda explained while seated next to her Book Club costars Candice Bergen and Mary Steenburgen.“Are you kidding me?” Cohen responded in shock.Fonda replied, “He said it in French and I pretended I didn’t understand.” According to , Jane Fonda was just 27 years old at the time of Joy House's production, while René Clément was a 51-year-old filmmaker with multiple Cannes Film Festival and BAFTA awards to his name. Of course, Fonda would later go on to win multiple prestigious awards of her own, including two Academy Awards for best actress for Klute in 1971 and Coming Home in 1978.

Elsa Keslassy International Correspondent Kaouther Ben Hania, the Oscar-nominated director of “The Man Who Sold His Skin” whose latest film “Four Daughters” is competing at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, will next direct “Mimesis,” an epic love story set in Tunisia. While the plot is under wraps, the story is set in two different periods, the 1990s and the 1940s, paying tribute to cinema and Arab-Muslim cultural heritage. It’s being produced by Nadim Cheikhrouha at Tanit Films, who produced Ben Hania’s “Four Daughters” and her previous film “The Man Who Sold His Skin” which world premiered at Venice where it won best actor for Yahya Mahayni and was nominated for best international film at the Oscars in 2021.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Italy’s Intramovies has acquired global rights outside of Israel and France on Israeli director Dani Rosenberg’s Gaza-Strip conflict drama “The Vanishing Soldier.”  “Vanishing Soldier” is Rosenberg’s second feature after “The Death of Cinema and My Father Too,” which was in the official selection in Cannes 202O and won the Jerusalem Film Festival’s top prize. The film is about an 18-year-old Israeli soldier who flees the Gaza battlefield and heads back to his girlfriend in Tel Aviv only to discover that the military elite is convinced he was kidnapped in the fog of war. What ensues is a tragicomic journey and takes place over a period of 24 hours on the streets of Tel Aviv.

Senegalese and French director Ramata-Toulaye Sy is only the second Black woman to make it into Competition in Cannes. Her debut feature, Banel & Adama, which had its debut Saturday, follows in the footsteps of Mati Diop’s 2019 Atlantics.

Christopher Vourlias Debutante director Ramata-Toulaye Sy will join one of world cinema’s most select clubs when she climbs the stairs of the Grand Theatre Lumière on May 20 for the premiere of “Banel & Adama,” which unspools in the main competition at the Cannes Film Festival. It marks just the second time in the French fest’s 76-year history that a Black woman will compete for the Palme d’Or, a glass ceiling that was shattered only four years ago by Sy’s French Senegalese compatriot, Mati Diop (“Atlantics”). While acknowledging the honor, it is a club, Sy admits, about which she has some ambivalence. “I really hope that soon all this will be taken for granted — that we won’t be counting the Black directors, that we won’t be counting women,” the helmer tells Variety. “It means that there’s still something wrong, that there’s still something that hasn’t become completely normal and natural.”

The battle for gender equality in the cinema industry is gaining ground but victory is a long way off, representatives of Time’s Up! UK, L.A.-based org ReFrame, France’s Collectif 50/50 and Brazil’s Mulheres group told a panel in Cannes on Friday.

The Supreme Court rejected an effort to hold Twitter and other platforms responsible for “aiding and abetting” terrorism because the extremist groups posted fund-raising and recruiting content on their platforms.

Jane Fonda is namedropping French director René Clément as the one who tried to sleep with her but who she ultimately turned down.

Zack Sharf Digital News Director Jane Fonda revealed on a recent episode of “Watch What Happens Live” that French director René Clément asked to sleep with her during the making of their 1964 thriller “Joy House.” Fonda starred in the film opposite Alain Delon and Lola Albright. “Watch What Happens Live” host Andy Cohen asked Fonda to name “one man in Hollywood that tried to pick you up once that you turned down.” The Oscar-winning actor replied: “The French director René Clément.” Fonda elaborated, “Well, he wanted to go to bed with me because he said the character had to have an orgasm in the movie and he needed to see what my orgasms were like. He said it in French and I pretended I didn’t understand.”

speaking to Variety in his first interview since the incident. “We could see a sort of pride that echoed that world.”Planel was referring to Maïwenn’s comments in Paris Match in 2020 saying that “It’s crazy how many stupidities they say these days! These women don’t like men, that’s clear, and they’re causing very serious collateral damage.” In that same interview she noted “When I hear women complaining that men are only interested in their bottom, I tell them, ‘Enjoy it because it won’t last!’”Last week, during a television interview on a French talk show, Maïwenn confessed to spitting on Plenel. “Do I confirm that I assaulted him? Yes,” Maïwenn said on TV.

“Plead the Fifth,” host Andy Cohen asked the “Monster-in-Law” star who “tried to pick you up once that you turned down.”She recalled exactly who that was: “The French director René Clément.”Clément — who died in 1996 — helmed the 1964 thriller “Joy House,” starring Fonda.“Was it a sloppy pass?” Cohen, 54, wondered.“Well, he wanted to go to bed with me because he said that the character had to have an orgasm in the movie and he needed to see what my orgasms were like,” the Golden Globe winner explained. “But he said it in French and I pretended like I didn’t understand.” The Bravo celebrity rated her experience on the show as “amazing, perfect.”“I have stories for you kid, we don’t have time,” Fonda winked, concluding her coy confession.Elsewhere on the late-night talk show, Fonda admitted that she once went skinny dipping with the late Michael Jackson, noting how “skinny” the “Thriller” singer appeared.

Peter Debruge Chief Film Critic They instructed her no one must turn their back to the king, but she did so anyway. They warned that she was not to look Louis XV directly in the eyes, lest others take it as “an invitation,” but she ignored Versailles’ advisers on this point as well, defiantly meeting the king’s gaze. Jeanne Bécu was not the type of woman to do as she was told. In this respect, divisive French actor-director Maïwenn can relate, casting herself as the courtesan-turned-comtess in “Jeanne du Barry,” a sensitive and surprisingly low-key portrait of the French monarch’s last mistress. That Maïwenn saw fit to engage tabloid-embattled Johnny Depp as “her king” is just one of the many hurdles she set for herself — but then, no one embarks on such a project with the intention of pleasing her critics.

Elsa Keslassy International Correspondent Catherine Corsini, an outspoken queer activist and co-founder of France’s feminist organization 50:50, should have been celebrating her new film’s inclusion in the competition lineup of the Cannes Film Festival. Instead, she found herself in the middle of a firestorm after “Homecoming,” her coming-of-age story, failed to get the proper government approvals for a scene of a sexual nature involving two minors.   Corsini admits that mistakes were made. But she says that she took every effort to protect her young actors from being exploited.   That scene, which was eventually cut from the movie, became the object of wild rumors, which Corsini said are false, “crazy, completely out of control.” “I’m hallucinating at things I’m reading, accusing me of having forced Esther to do a blowjob or masturbate herself,” she said. 

Elsa Keslassy International Correspondent If you thought Johnny Depp starring in a film might be a lightning rod of controversy, imagine the movie’s director spitting on a journalist. “Jeanne du Barry” will open the Cannes Film Festival on Tuesday night, marking Depp’s return to the red carpet, following legal battles that have largely defined the actor for the past few years. Ahead of the film’s premiere, the director, French actor and filmmaker Maiwenn, admitted to assaulting a journalist by spitting on him. “She’s outspokenly anti-#MeToo and she made a gesture to please her world, and that’s why she bragged about it on TV. We could see a sort of pride that echoed that world,” journalist Edwy Plenel tells Variety in his first interview since the spitting incident. Plenel was referring to Maiwenn’s comments published by Paris Match in 2020, saying “It’s crazy how many stupidities they say these days! These women don’t like men, that’s clear, and they’re causing very serious collateral damages.” In that same interview she said “When I hear women complaining that men are only interested in their bottom, I tell them, ‘Enjoy it because it won’t last!'”