Films Boutique Takes Sales Rights to Claire Simon’s Documentary ‘Elementary’ Ahead of World Premiere at Cannes Film Festival (EXCLUSIVE)

Richard Gere poses for a family photo while attending the 2024 Cannes Film Festival premiere of his upcoming film Oh, Canada held at Palais des Festivals on Friday (May 17) in Cannes, France.

Demi Moore is back on the red carpet in Cannes!

Hard to believe it has been 44 years since Paul Schrader and star Richard Gere last worked together on 1980’s seminal American Gigolo, a film that became not just a keystone in Gere’s celebrated career but also one for one Schrader’s as one of his earliest directorial credits. Of course he has written some of the great screenplays, particularly in his collaborations with Martin Scorsese on Raging Bull, The Last Temptation of Christ and Taxi Driver. But it is what interests him now a half century later as a writer-director that continues to fascinate.

When Adi (Ciprian Chiujdea) is beaten up outside the one dance club in the village where he grew up, his father takes up the cudgels, chivvying the local police chief into finding out who did it. It would be obvious enough to anyone but dad Dragoi (Bogdan Dumitrache) that this is a straight-up case of gay-bashing, which would seem to signal that Emanuel Parvu’s Cannes Competition title Three Kilometers to the End of the World, a slice of Romanian life, will be a worthy but familiar story of a boy’s coming out to a hostile world. Indeed, bloodied Adi with his black eyes and traumatic lesions is soon being punished, locked in his room by his parents as his desperate mother prays to the icons on the wall for guidance. We have undoubtedly been down this donkey-track before. 

Leo Barraclough International Features Editor Tennis champion Naomi Osaka’s company Hana Kuma has boarded Leonardo Van Dijl’s debut feature “Julie Keeps Quiet” ahead of its world premiere on Saturday in Cannes Critics’ Week. The film is being sold by New Europe Film Sales. Osaka and her longtime agent and business partner Stuart Duguid’s Hana Kuma, an Emmy Award-nominated creative house, will serve as executive producers on the film.

Leo Barraclough International Features Editor Sola Media has closed sales for multiple territories for “The Sloth Lane,” which will world premiere at the Annecy Intl. Animation Film Festival.

There have been countless books written about the immortal star, Elizabeth Taylor, even some credited to her as both memoir or autobiography including 1989’s “Elizabeth On Elizabeth”. But a book released on January 1, 1965 probably comes closest to a pure autobiography, and looking at the cover it simply says “Elizabeth Taylor by Elizabeth Taylor”. It is a by the numbers account of her life through her own words up until that point, but the fact is it was actually written by Richard Meryman, a journalist credited with among other things the last interview with Marilyn Monroe (published two days before her August 4, 1962 death). Meryman got Taylor to sit for some taped recorded sessions in 1964 out which he would be able to write the book as if Taylor did it herself. Now exactly 60 years later those presumed “lost” tape recordings have been found and cleared for release by Taylor’s and Meryman’s estates. They have been in fact in Meryman’s wife’s possession all these years, but now filmmaker Nanette Burstein (Hillary, The Kid Stays In The Picture) has rediscovered a treasure trove of about 40 hours of interview in order to produce the new HBO Documentary, Elizabeth Taylor: The Lost Tapes“.

Rithy Panh has dedicated the lion’s share of his career to interrogating the genocidal Khmer Rouge era in his native Cambodia, and it is no trivial obsession. Panh fled Phnom Penh when he was just 11, and after his family was devastated in the Killing Fields, he escaped to a Thai refugee camp at 15. Now 60, Panh has been committed to keeping the memory of the impact of Pol Pot’s tyrannical regime alive in documentary, narrative and animated film.

Late in the highly entertaining and enlightening new HBO Documentary Films movie on the life and career of Faye Dunaway we learn how much this iconic star just loves coming to the Cannes Film Festival. “Just about every year,” she says not only for the world’s best films but also to immerse herself in all aspects of filmmaking. In fact I have seen her many times just soaking it all up cinematically both here in Cannes and Telluride to name two fests. So it seems appropriate that the Cannes Classics section would be the place for the World Premiere Wednesday night (in the presence of Dunaway as the French like to call it) of this terrific new docu in which Dunaway pretty much tells it all straight about her life, loves, desires, ambitions, movies, co-stars, depression, controversies, family, and hopes for the future in a profession she says she can’t imagine not working in.

Since their beginnings in 1979, George Miller‘s hyper-jacked Mad Max movies with Mel Gibson had not received a single Oscar nomination, not even for Tina Turner’s great signature song “We Don’t Need Another Hero” in 1985’s Beyond Thunderdome. But then, 30 years later, when finally the fourth and Gibson-less edition appeared, the snooty Academy got on board and gave the newly regenerated Mad Max: Fury Road 10 nominations including for Best Picture and Director. It won six of them, virtually sweeping the crafts categories.

“Mommie Dearest” actress walked the red carpet at the premiere of the action film “Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga” starring Chris Hemsworth and Anya Taylor-Joy. She was joined by Laurent Bouzereau, 62, who is the director of her new documentary that is premiering at Cannes, and her son Liam Dunaway O’Neill, 43, who appears in the HBO doc.The Hollywood icon wore a black blazer over a white shirt with black pants.

The official teaser trailer for the upcoming movie Megalopolis has been revealed and Francis Ford Coppola is teasing the film as his “best work ever.”

As a #MeToo wave looked to rock the 77th Cannes Film Festival with rumors swirling that filmmakers with films at the event would be tagged, Thierry Frémaux emphasized his event isn’t about polemics, rather the picture that’s on the screen. If there are controversies during Cannes “we try to avoid them” he said today during an afternoon presser.

Angelique Jackson The Olympic flame is coming to the Cannes Film Festival red carpet. The 77th edition of the Festival de Cannes will serve as a preview for the Paris 2024 Olympic Games with the premiere screening of Mickaël Gamrasni’s documentary “Olympiques! La France des Jeux” on May 21.

If cinema is somehow retracting, contracting, or diminishing, don’t tell the organizers of the Cannes Film Festival and all its many sidebars. Thank god for them because when you look at the Cannes 2024 line-up, cinema seems to be in great health and shape.

With less than a week to go until the kick-off of the 81st Cannes Film Festival, speculation is mounting in the French media and local film industry over rumors that a bombshell #MeToo exposé will drop on the day of the opening.

K.J. Yossman Kaleidoscope Film Distribution has unveiled its Cannes slate, including George Michael documentary “Portrait of an Artist.” The company is also repping global sales rights for Lucy Lawless’ directorial debut “Never Look Away,” a documentary about photojournalist Margaret Moth, and “Forked,” a documentary about celebrity chef Susan Feniger. “George Michael: Portrait of an Artist” features copious archive footage as well as interviews with Michael’s close friends and colleagues including Stephen Fry and Stevie Wonder.

Robert De Niro.The off-shoot, appropriately titled De Niro Con promises to be a fitting tribute to the Oscar winner. “I can’t think of a better way to celebrate 80 years of Robert De Niro, my dear friend and co-conspirator for the past 35 years, than by throwing a big bash for his fellow New Yorkers,” Tribeca co-founder and CEO Jane Rosenthal said in a statement.The extravaganza, which takes place from June 14-16, is a De Niro delight.And many famous co-stars and directors will be joining in.Film screenings include “A Bronx Tale” with an introduction by co-star Chazz Palminteri.“Jackie Brown” will be followed by a conversation between Quentin Tarantino and De Niro.Billy Crystal will be chatting with De Niro after a screening of “Analyze This.”“Silver Linings Playbook” will include a convo with director David O.

Alex Ritman Mubi has kicked off its 2024 Cannes Film Festival early and in style, acquiring worldwide rights to one of the buzziest films set to premiere in competition. The arthouse distributor, production banner and streamer has landed Coralie Fargeat’s body horror “The Substance,” starring Demi Moore, Margaret Qualley and Denis Quaid, picking up all rights for North America, U.K., Ireland, Germany, Austria, Latin America and Benelux, where it will release theatrically this year. Mubi has also acquired the rights for Turkey and India.

Actress and filmmaker Judith Godrèche, who has been at the forefront of a fresh #MeToo wave in France this year, has been invited by the Cannes Film Festival to world premiere short film Moi Aussi in Official Selection.