Cannes Critics’ Week Film ‘The Woodcutter Story’ Debuts Trailer, Totem Films Handling Sales (EXCLUSIVE)

s’il vous plaît!Over at the French film festival on the Cote d’Azur, which wraps up this weekend, it’s long been popular to give comical and undeserved standing ovations to just about anything that could be feasibly called a film. Next year the Claudes and Claudettes will be hopping to their feet for a dancing toad on TikTok (more deserving, honestly, than Lars von Trier.)The trade publications time these performative participation prizes like they’re Olympic runners.

The stars of the new movie Elvis, directed by Baz Luhrmann, stepped out for a press conference and photo call at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival.

Like mother, like daughter! Kaia Gerber channeled her mom Cindy Crawford at the Cannes Film Festival premiere of Elvis on Wednesday, May 25.

In the late 19th century, two French psychiatrists coined the term “folie à deux,” literally translated as madness for two, to describe what is now widely referred to as shared psychotic disorder, or when two — or more — people transmit delusional beliefs and occasional hallucinations to one another. The condition is most common in people closely related, who live in intimate proximity, and has been lengthily dissected by academics.

Elsa Keslassy International CorrespondentAndres Ramirez Pulido’s “La Jauria” won the Grand Prize at Critics’ Week, the Cannes Film Festival’s sidebar dedicated to first and second features. The Colombian film also won the SACD prize.

Based on her own time spent in the acting school Les Amandiers, Valeria Bruni Tedeschi’s “Forever Young” aims to recreate a very specific time and place both in her life and in France, more than it cares to inform her audience about what, exactly, was so special about this school. Funded in the 1980s by Patrice Chéreau, a successful and daring director of theatre, opera and film, Les Amandiers did not last very long but for a few years it was considered to be one of the most exciting places in France and even Europe for young actors to develop their crafts, and for directors to find new talent.

Observed in isolation, detached from the body or in extreme close-ups, organs and other vital viscera resemble moist masses of soft tissue plucked from alien landscapes in the unflinchingly immersive medical documentary “De Humani Corporis Fabrica.” Alternating between footage from cameras inserted into patients for the purpose of treating ailments and grisly shots from the operating room, directors Verena Paravel and Lucien Castaing-Taylor, the team behind the striking non-fiction film on fishing “Leviathan,” apply their fascination for uncanny imagery with relativist intent to the inner workings of French hospitals and, in turn, the human body.

Elsa Keslassy International CorrespondentREinvent International Sales has closed major territory sales on “UFO Sweden,” a science fiction movie adventure from Crazy Pictures, a Swedish film collective whose past credits includes the 2018 hit movie “The Unthinkable.”Described as a mix between “X-Files” and “Stranger Things,” “UFO Sweden” is set in a small town and follows a teenage rebel placed in foster care, who suspects that her father is not dead, but has been kidnapped by UFOs. With the help from a UFO association, she is determined to find out the truth.

The films of French filmmaker Quentin Dupieux are at their best when they combine his penchant for ludicrous but simple what-if scenarios, with his perceptive eye for humor in everyday life and banal interactions. He would probably hate his cinema to be pinned down in this way: though he has proven that he can subscribe to straightforward storytelling with “Deerskin” (which premieres at Cannes in 2019) and “Incredible But True” (Berlinale 2022), the French director and absurdist also enjoys leaving the demands of logical plot developments behind in favor of a freer style.

Anne Hathaway is channeling one of her most iconic characters. On Thursday, the 39-year-old actress stepped out for a screening of her new flick, , at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival, and gave off serious Mia Thermopolis vibes.Hathaway stunned on the red carpet in a custom, white Giorgio Armani Privé gown that included a train and oversized bow.

Elsa Keslassy International CorrespondentAlain Attal, the French producer behind the upcoming $73 million movie “Asterix and Obelix: The Middle Kingdom,” is teaming with Studiocanal on Thomas Bidegain’s survival drama “Suddenly,” which will star Gilles Lellouche (“The Stronghold”) and Melanie Thierry (“En Therapie”).Currently in pre-production, “Suddenly” will mark the sophomore directing outing of Bidegain, whose co-screenwriting credits include “Stillwater,” “The Sisters Brothers” and “A Prophet.”The project was previously set up as an English-language project with Jake Gyllenhaal and Vanessa Kirby set to star. Gyllenhaal’s Nine Stories was also a co-producer on the project and is no longer attached.Attal told Variety that Bidegain re-worked the script with Valentine Monteil to make the €14 million ($14.7 million) film with a French cast and produce it entirely out of France with Attal’s Tresor Films and Studiocanal, which is financing, handling international sales and French distribution rights.

Lise Pedersen “The Little Nicholas: Happy as Can Be” by Benjamin Massoubre and Amandine Fredon is having its world premiere at a Special Screening at the Cannes Film Festival on May 20.Several years in the making, the film brings together the world-famous French schoolboy and his creators, author René Goscinny and cartoonist Jean-Jacques Sempé, as it goes back and forth between their world and his imaginary world.Translated into more than 30 languages, the Little Nicholas short stories have been adapted to fiction but never to animation until now. For the creative team, it was essential to stay true both to Goscinny’s short stories and to Sempé’s drawings.“The main challenge was to create the Little Nicholas’ world in animation and, at the same time, remain faithful to Sempé’s style – his drawings are very small, they’re made in ink, which gives them a sort of awkward but very lively energy, full of emotion.

Elsa Keslassy International CorrespondentFrancois Ozon, whose latest film, “Peter von Kant,” opened the Berlinale, is already shooting his next movie, “Madeleine,” with a flurry of stars including Isabelle Huppert, Dany Boon and Fabrice Luchini.The project, which is believed to be his most ambitious since “8 Women,” is being introduced to buyers at Cannes by Playtime and has already sparked strong interest. The plot is being kept under wraps, but Playtime is presenting the script to select buyers.Ozon is one of the few bankable European directors whose films have opened at major festivals and traditionally sell around the world, including in the U.S.“Madeleine” reteams Ozon with his regular producers, Eric and Nicolas Altmayer at Mandarin Cinema.

cast landed on the red carpet in style at the 75th Annual Cannes Film Festival on Wednesday. The spectacle began with the celebrated arrival of superstar Tom Cruise, who greeted cheering fans at the Palais before walking down the red carpet with co-star Jennifer Connelly. Cruise and Connelly were also joined by fellow co-stars Jon Hamm, Miles Teller, Glen Powell and Jay Ellis. The cast's arrival was made even more memorable when an eight-jet flyover released smoke in the colors of the French flag over the event.

Adriana Lima always turns heads on the red carpet, and thepremiere during the 75th annual Cannes Film Festival was no different.On Wednesday at the Palais des Festivals in Cannes, France, the 40-year-old pregnant supermodel stepped out in a floor-length, long-sleeve black gown that had a cut-out to showcase her growing baby bump. She paired the eye-catching gown with strappy high heels.By her side was her boyfriend and father of her child, film producer Andre Lemmers, who cradled Lima's bump while posing for photos. This will be Lima's third child, as she is also mom to daughters Valentina, 12, and Sienna, 9, whom she shares with ex-husband Marko Jarić.Last month, Lima and Lemmers announced the sex of their first child in a video posted to TikTok.

Elsa Keslassy International CorrespondentKinology has dropped the trailer for “Alma Viva,” the feature debut of French-Portuguese actor-turned-filmmaker Cristèle Alves Meira which is world premiered today Cannes’ Critics Week. The Paris-based sales banner already hosted a press and industry screening for the film today and earned some strong reviews. “Alma Viva” follows Salomé, a little girl who returns to her family village nestled in the Portuguese mountains for the holidays.