French Bombshell Bestseller ‘La Maison’ Gets Erotic Film Makeover with Ana Girardot, Rossy De Palma (EXCLUSIVE)

Elsa Keslassy International CorrespondentPulsar Content has closed a raft of major deals on “La Maison,” Anissa Bonnefont’s erotic drama based on Emma Becker’s controversial bestselling novel chronicling the young author’s two-year undercover experience working as a sex worker at a Berlin brothel. The Paris-based company introduced the title to buyers at Cannes and sold it to Wild Bunch for Germany, Austria, Italy and Spain, among other deals. Wild Bunch will team with Capelight for the German release.

John Hopewell Chief International Correspondent“Goya, Carrière and the Ghost of Buñuel,” which plays Cannes Classics this Saturday, begins with French film great Jean-Claude Carrière in a train, singing an ancient song in Occitan, the language of Provence, where he came from.Visiting Goya’s birthplace, he’ spies a cauldron and comments that there was one like that in his own family home.Towards the end of the film, surveying “The Colossus,” Goya’s painting of a giant dominating tiny people in a valley below who flee in all directions, Carrière observes that the painting capture a sense of immigration. Unlike so many of his friends, and indeed his wife,  Nahal Tajadod, Carrière notes, he will have the privilege of being buried in the same place where he was born.

Leo Barraclough International Features EditorErotic love story “99 Moons,” which has its world premiere in Cannes’ ACID sidebar today, has kicked off international sales. Berlin-based M-Appeal is handling the rights to the film, which is directed by Jan Gassmann.Arthouse VOD platform Filmin has taken the rights in Spain, and arthouse distributor StraDa Films has taken the films for Greece. France and Latin America are in negotiation.

Mark Schilling Japan CorrespondentThe Japanese film industry has long been notoriously insular, a tendency the pandemic only exacerbated. As the Hollywood pipeline shut down in 2020, local audiences flocked to local films.

Leo Barraclough International Features EditorPicture Tree Intl. has acquired international sales on “A Whole Life,” which is based on the bestselling novel by Robert Seethaler, and was adapted for the screen by Ulrich Limmer, whose credits include Oscar nominee “Schtonk.”The film is directed by Hans Steinbichler, whose films include Berlin Film Festival entry “The Diary of Anne Frank,” and the third season of pay TV operator Sky’s TV series “Das Boot.” Austrian actor Stefan Gorski takes the lead role.“A Whole Life,” produced by Germany’s Tobis Film and Austria’s Epo-Film, is shooting now and is scheduled for release in the summer or fall next year.The film tells the story of Andreas Egger over eight decades of the last century, a life marked by poverty, war and violence, but also moments of bliss and love.

Tom Cruise, Miles Teller, and Jennifer Connelly gather up for a giant group photo at the premiere of Top Gun: Maverick during the 2022 Cannes Film Festival on Wednesday (May 18) in Cannes, France.

Paulina Gretzky and Dustin Johnson pulled out all the stops for their wedding.

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.

Two years in France inspired Italian director Pietro Marcello to create “Scarlet,” his French-language feature debut and the opening film of this year’s Directors’ Fortnight at the Cannes Film Festival. Freely inspired by Aleksandr Grin’s tale “The Scarlet Sails,” the film examines the quiet tenderness that permeates the relationship between a father comfortable in skepticism and a daughter driven by unshakeable belief.

Ramin Setoodeh Executive EditorA visit from the dead? How chic.The Cannes Film Festival sprung back into action on Tuesday night, as this year’s opening night movie, “Final Cut (Coupez!)” received a 5-minute standing ovation. The gory zombie line, which straddled a tone somewhere between “The Blair Witch Project” and “Call My Agent,” kicked off a festival where few patrons were wearing masks in these COVID times.To commemorate the 75th edition of Cannes, festival director Thierry Fremaux selected a French movie — not to mention a French jury president, “Titane” actor Vincent Lindon — to keep things local at the start of the celebration of movies in the French Riviera.

Cannes Film Festival chief Thierry Frémaux took part in a ‘meet the press’ session with journalists in Cannes yesterday afternoon.

CANNES, France -- After a canceled 2020 edition and a scaled back gathering last year, the Cannes Film Festival on Tuesday rolled out the red carpet for what organizers hope will be a f ully resuscitated French Riviera spectacular.The 75th Cannes Film Festival is set to open Tuesday night with the premiere of Michel Hazanavicius' zombie comedy “Final Cut.” Over the next 12 days, 21 films will vie for the festival's prestigious top award, the Palme d'Or, while a handful of high-profile Hollywood titles — including “Top Gun: Maverick,” “Elvis” and “Three Thousand Years of Longing” — will also launch in Cannes.“This year, everyone wanted to come to Cannes,” said Thierry Frémaux, artistic director of the festival, ahead of the opening. “Everyone wanted to meet again.”This year's Cannes will officially begin Tuesday evening with an opening ceremony preceding the premier of “Final Cut," which was renamed from its original title, “Z,” after Ukrainian protesters noted that the letter Z to some symbolizes support for Russia’s war in Ukraine.The war in Ukraine is expected to be a regular presence in Cannes.

Leo Barraclough International Features EditorMarie Kreutzer’s “Corsage,” which premieres in the Un Certain Regard section of the Cannes Film Festival, has debuted its first clip exclusively with Variety (below). MK2 Films is handling international sales.

Ellise Shafer Cannes Film Festival has responded to complaints over the online press ticketing system, saying that the fest is currently working to resolve the issue.“The technical difficulties met this morning on the online ticketing service are very likely due to acts aimed at saturating the site with ticket requests, thus preventing festival-goers from accessing it,” Cannes’ official statement reads. “We are currently working on fixing the problem.”Many journalists and critics took to Twitter this morning to express their frustration at the ticketing site, which was not allowing them to access badges or book tickets for screenings.“It’s fair to say the Cannes online ticketing system is a shambles wrapped inside a clusterfuck wrapped inside an enigma,” critic Martyn Conterio wrote on Twitter.

Elsa Keslassy International CorrespondentCannes Film Festival’s chief Thierry Fremaux didn’t just have to field questions about Russia and the dearth of female directors at the fest during his meeting with journalists on Monday afternoon. He also had to address a claim that the festival is attempting to censor the press — and confirmed that he has asked publications to revise his quotes.Reading his quotes before publication is just a “French tradition” and “not a big deal,” he told journalists.But Fremaux denies that he has asked to change what journalists have written or to remove certain questions.

CANNES, France -- After two years of pandemic, the 75th Cannes Film Festival is getting going with a familiar dose of controversy and some new snafus as it readies for its largest gathering on the French Riviera since the 2019 edition.Preparations were in full swing up and down the Croisette on Monday ahead of the festival's opening. The festival is set to open Tuesday with “The Artist” director Michel Hazanavicius' zombie film “Z."But before things even kicked off, the festival had already found plenty of commotion.

Long a bastion of artistic freedom, the Cannes Film Festival has a secret: it censors interviews with festival head Thierry Frémaux.

Leo Barraclough International Features EditorErotic love story “99 Moons,” which will have its world premiere in Cannes’ ACID sidebar, has debuted its trailer (below). Berlin-based sales outfit M-Appeal has acquired the world sales rights to the film, which is directed by Jan Gassmann. The film centers on Bigna, a 28-year-old scientist, and 33-year-old Frank.

Cannes Film Festival almost 35 years ago, I was still green and naïve enough to ask long-time Cannes attendees why the famed French fest held such a powerful place in the pecking order of international film gatherings. The late Richard Corliss, Time magazine’s peerless and beloved film critic, answered warmly and succinctly, with his own more worldly query: “Would you rather be in Germany in the winter or the South of France in the spring?”Corliss had a point, but in the decades since I’ve tucked my own couple of dozen Cannes fests under my belt, I’ve compiled my own list of reasons why Cannes remains the one film festival that people who’ve never been to a film festival have heard about and wish they could go to, and know that if a film has scored there, it must be worth their time.

Elsa Keslassy International CorrespondentFilms Boutique (“Lunana, a Yak in the Classroom”) has acquired four films set to world premiere at Cannes, including Albert Serra (“The Death of Louis XIV”)’s “Pacifiction” which will compete in the 75th edition’s Official Selection. The Berlin-based international sales banner has also acquired rising Morrocan helmer Maryam Touzani (“Adam”)’s “The Blue Caftan” and Costa Rican director Ariel Escalante Meza’s “Domingo and the Mist” which will both play in Un Certain Regard; as well as Portuguese filmmaker João Pedro Rodrigues (“The Ornithologist”)’s “Will-O’-The-Wisp,” set for Directors’ Fortnight.“Pacifiction” stars Cesar-winning French actor Benoit Magimel (“Peaceful”) as a calculating French government official working in the French Polynesian island of Tahiti.