France’s Film Production Levels, Investment in Movies Skyrocketed in 2021

Pietro Marcello’s Scarlet will be the opening film at the 54th Directors’ Fortnight at this year’s Cannes Film Festival.

Elsa Keslassy International CorrespondentMemento International has acquired “Sick of Myself,” a movie by L.A.-based Norwegian filmmaker Kristoffer Borgli which will world premiere at Cannes in Un Certain Regard. Borgli previously directed the short films including “Former Cult Member Hears Music For The First Time” and “Eer” which played at Sundance.

Naman Ramachandran “Beautiful Blue Eyes,” the last film starring Roy Scheider, will release worldwide on June 10, following a charity premiere in London on June 6.The two-time Oscar nominee (“Jaws,” “The French Connection,” “Marathon Man,” “Klute,” “All That Jazz”) died in 2008 while “Beautiful Blue Eyes” was being filmed. Completion of the film was put on hold until AI and CG technology was advanced enough to overcome the technical challenges faced by the filmmakers.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau ChiefLionsgate’s local-language film consortium GlobalGate Entertainment has added Japan’s Rakuten to its worldwide team of production and distribution partners.“We will acquire the adaptation and remake rights to IPs with high global value and recognition and work with talented creators in Japan to create world-class content. We will also leverage the Rakuten Ecosystem to distribute the newly created content around the world, sharing it with as many fans as possible,” said Ando Koji, Rakuten Group managing executive officer and communications and energy company senior VP.

Elsa Keslassy International CorrespondentReims Polar, a new international festival set in Northern France and dedicated to police thrillers, has awarded Wen Shipei’s “Are You Lonesome Tonight?,” Adikhan Yerzhanov’s “Assault” and Lado Kvataniya’s “The Execution.” The selection of Reims Polar is curated by Bruno Barde, who is also the artistic director of the Deauville American Film Festival. “Assault,” a dead-pan thriller set fictional village in rural Kazakhstan and revolving around a school hostage situation, won the festival’s Grand Prize Award.

EXCLUSIVE: Filmmaker Walter Hill was honored with a Tribute Ceremony in France on Tuesday evening, which marked the opening night of the International Thriller Film Festival – Reims Polar.

EXCLUSIVE: Scott Free Productions has optioned the rights to the acclaimed thriller Outside from bestselling Icelandic author Ragnar Jónasson for feature adaptation. Acclaimed commercial director Henrik Hansen from Scott’s RSA Films is in talks to direct the project. The novel will be released in the UK on April 28, 2022 and in the US in June 2022.

Squid Game actress Jung Ho-yeon is set to star in the upcoming A24 film The Governesses alongside Lily-Rose Depp and others.Jung will appear in the forthcoming film alongside Lily-Rose Depp (2018’s A Faithful Man), who is the daughter of actors Vanessa Paradis and Johnny Depp, and award-winning Norwegian actress Renate Reinsve (2021’s The Worst Person In The World). The specifics of the trio’s roles have yet to be announced.The Governesses will be the second film Joe Talbot will direct for A24, having made his directorial debut with the studio in 2019 with the critically acclaimed The Last Black Man In San Francisco.The Governesses is based on the 1992 novel of the same name by French writer Anne Seree, which was translated into English for the first time in 2018.

Emiliano De Pablos Beta Film’s high-concept spy thriller cycle “Agent Hamilton – New Missions” has scored a series of territory deals, including the U.S. and Northern Europe.The stand-alone reboot of the “Agent Hamilton” series has been sold to MHz for the U.S., TV2 in Norway, DR for Denmark, NPO for Netherlands and Syn for Island.Based on the iconic novels and characters by best-selling author Jan Guillou, as was its predecessor “Agent Hamilton,” “New Missions” is produced by Dramacorp Pampas Studios in co-production with TV4/C-More, Beta Film and ZDF.In further deals on its 2022 MipTV slate, the Munich-based international distributor has sold to France Télévision and Israel’s Hot Network the Norwegian YA series “Rod Knock,” a Fenomen and Storyline Studios production for NRK, which is back for Season 3, and was honored with seven Gullruten awards in 2021.

Cannes Film Festival says it is anticipating in-person industry attendance at its 2022 edition to be “much higher than last year”, with the vast majority of delegates set to make the trip.

Elsa Keslassy International CorrespondentTikTok, which as become the official partner of the Cannes Film Festival, has assembled the prestigious jury of its inaugural #TikTokShortFilm, a global in-app competition of vertical shorts.Rithy Panh, the BAFTA-nominated Cambodian filmmaker of “The Missing Picture,” will preside over the international jury, which comprises Basma Khalifa, the Sudanese multi-disciplinary creative, Camille Ducellier, the artist and filmmaker of “Bachi-Bouzouk,” Angele Diabang, the screenwriter and producer of “Un air de kora,” as well as Khaby Lame, the Senegalese-born TikToker and content creator. Eligible short films will be between 30 seconds and 3 minutes in length.

Guy Lodge Film CriticA decade ago, when his documentary “How to Survive a Plague” rode a wave of festival acclaim to an Oscar nomination, journalist-turned-filmmaker David France probably didn’t imagine that a similarly titled quasi-sequel was in the cards. A superb overview of the early years of HIV-AIDS activism in the face of political indifference and ineptitude — ultimately leading to game-changing medication and pharmaceutical policy change — that film has given France a solid grounding for another feature-length study of very different if somewhat comparable global health crisis, centered on the COVID-19 pandemic and the extraordinarily accelerated scientific race for a solution.Researched and assembled with his characteristic intelligence and thoroughness, “How to Survive a Pandemic” serves as both a valuable potted history of the last two years of medical tumult and relief, and a critical progress report marking work yet to be done. Hardly the first high-profile documentary on the pandemic, but the most substantial yet to focus specifically on the trajectory of the vaccine, France’s film is assured a receptive audience when it bows on HBO next week, following docfest premiere slots in Thessaloniki and Copenhagen.

Elsa Keslassy International CorrespondentUGC, the long-running French film studio whose biggest hits include “Amelie Poulain,” has successful branched into TV series by acquiring stakes in a flurry of talent-driven production companies such as Itineraire Productions (“HPI”) and Headline Pictures (“Call My Agent!’s” British remake) in the U.K.Opting for a different approach to Gaumont’s or large media groups like Mediawan, the company has been building its label UGC Series as a coalition of independently-ran production companies under the leadership of Laurence Lenica, a veteran UGC executive, and Franck Calderon, a well-known writer, producer and former boss of TF1 Productions.So far, UGC Series comprises six banners. Along with Headline Pictures and Itineraire Productions, these include Henri Debeurne’s Next Episode whose credits take in “Christmas Flow” for Netflix and “J’ai tué mon mari” for NBCU and TF1; UGC Fiction, which Calderon is leading with Karine Evrard and Sophie Exbrayat, and which has delivered the ratings hit ”Jacqueline Sauvage, It was Him or Me”, and most recently “La Traque” for TF1.

Elsa Keslassy International CorrespondentHigh-profile French creators and showrunners, David Elkaïm, Vincent Poymiro, and producer Jeremy Sahel, are joining forces with Anca, a banner which is backed by German powerhouse Beta Group, to develop and produce ambitious TV series.Anca was created in 2021 by Rose Brandford Griffith and Christophe Thoral, two former bosses of Lagardere Studios, to invest in production banners.Elkaïm, Poymiro and Sahel’s production company Perpetual Soup marks Anca’s first investment with a minority stake. Poymiro and Elkaïm are known for having written a pair of top-rated drama series ordered by Arte, “Ainsi soient-ils” and “En Thérapie,” the French adaptation of Hagai Levi’s series “BeTipul” (“In Treatment”).

Elsa Keslassy International CorrespondentAfter several hours of heated debates, Iris Knobloch, the former boss of WarnerMedia France and Germany, has been chosen by the board of the Cannes Film Festival to become its first female president, as Variety has learned . She will succeed Pierre Lescure who was re-elected for a third term in June 2020 and is planning to step down after the upcoming edition.The German-born, Paris-based executive was elected by the board of directors of the Association Française du Festival International du Film, which brings together public authorities and film industry professionals, amid much controversy in France.

The Academy Museum of Motion Pictures today announced the first round of exhibition rotations scheduled for the 2022–2023 season, which further its mission to advance the understanding, celebration, and preservation of cinema.

Elsa Keslassy International CorrespondentKino Lorber has acquired North American rights to Mathieu Amalric’s “Hold Me Tight,” an engrossing family drama starring “Phantom Thread” actor Vicky Krieps. Co-produced and sold by Gaumont, the movie world premiered at last year’s Cannes Film Festival.Adapted from Claudine Galea’s stage play, “Hold Me Tight” follows Clarisse (Krieps), a mother who has abandoned her family for mysterious reasons and is coping with great emotional upheaval.

EXCLUSIVE: Glynn Turman (Women of the Movement), Bob Balaban (The French Dispatch), Ron Funches (Undateable) and Jimmy O. Yang (Space Force) are the latest additions to the cast of the upcoming film 80 for Brady, from Paramount Pictures and Endeavor Content. They join an ensemble that includes 7-time Super Bowl Champion Tom Brady, as well as Lily Tomlin, Jane Fonda, Rita Moreno, Sally Field and Sara Gilbert, as previously announced.

EXCLUSIVE: French sales agent and producer Other Angle is leading a showcase of French comedies at the Fine Arts Theater in Beverly Hills.

EXCLUSIVE: Michael Patrick Jann has been tapped to direct the Western horror film Organ Trail for Paramount Pictures, with Olivia Applegate (Love and Death), Clé Bennett (The Man in the High Castle), Zoé De Grand Maison (Riverdale), Nicholas Logan (Dopesick), Sam Trammell (True Blood) and Jessica Frances Dukes (Ozark) signing on to star.