Empress Elisabeth Latest Celebrity News & Gossip

Leo Barraclough International Features EditorIFC Films has set the U.S. release date for “Corsage,” whose star Vicky Krieps won the best performance prize in the Un Certain Regard section of the Cannes Film Festival. Marie Kreutzer’s film will have its North American premiere at the Toronto Film Festival, and the New York Film Festival has just announced that the film will screen there too.

Brent Lang Executive Editor Arianna Bocco has stepped down as president of IFC Films. She will be replaced on an interim basis by Scott Shooman, who currently serves as head of acquisitions. Bocco left the company on Thursday. IFC, which is owned by AMC Networks, will conduct a search for a permanent replacement for Bocco, a longtime executive at the company and a major force in the world of independent film, respected for her keen taste and strong relationships with top talent. Bocco took the reins at IFC in 2020 after her predecessor Lisa Schwartz stepped down. But she had been at the company for more than a decade before making that leap. “IFC Films is a vibrant and vital part of our business and we will continue to acquire, produce and distribute films across our IFC Films, Shudder and RLJE Films ecosystems,” AMC Networks said in a statement. “We have full and total confidence in Scott’s ability to run the business as interim head and know that our film team will not miss a beat as it proceeds forward with a robust slate of releases and acquisitions.”

Guy Lodge Film Critic Nearly 125 years after her assassination, the Empress Elisabeth of Austria — or Sisi to her enduring cultists — continues to inspire a veritable industry of portraiture in Europe: In the last year alone, a novel, two TV series (one of them a glossy Netflix affair) and two feature films have been dedicated to the tightly corseted royal icon. Viewers outside the Continental sphere of Sisi-mania may only have registered one of those films, Marie Kreutzer’s chic, subversive anti-biopic “Corsage,” which might make the second, German director Frauke Finsterwalder’s lush, irreverent “Sisi & I,” seem to them a too-soon spare — coincidentally repeating several tricks from Kreutzer’s anachronistic playbook with its modern feminist inflections, contemporary soundtrack cues and sensational fashions, albeit with plenty of its own panache.

EXCLUSIVE: Kristen Stewart here conducts an in-depth interview with Vicky Krieps, who shines as Empress Elisabeth in Corsage, the IFC film which has put the actress and director Marie Kreutzer in Oscar contention for a film shortlisted as Austria’s pic for Best International film. Stewart is a big fan of the film, and draws out how Krieps hatched the idea and wore down the director to take the film. They also discuss the importance of telling stories from a woman’s perspective. They also touch briefly touch on the shock of discovering that Florian Teichtmeister, who plays Krieps’ husband Emperor Franz Joseph in a supporting role, was charged with possessing child pornography. The actor, who reportedly has admitted his guilt, will go on trial February 8 after being apprehended with 58,000 files of pornographic depictions of minors as young as 14.

Patti Smith hosted a New York screening of Corsage last week, one of many showings since the Oscar-shortlisted Best International Feature contender premiered to a warm welcome in Cannes, where it won Best Performance, Un Certain Regard, for star Vicky Krieps as the Empress Elisabeth of Austria, Sisi for short. It’s fitting that Smith, royalty of the avant-garde, came out to support a film about an iconoclastic princess.

EXCLUSIVE: The Empress is returning to Netflix.

Katie Reul editor The 66th annual British Film Institute (BFI) London Film Festival announced winners Saturday evening for a competition group representing a diverse selection of stories ranging from period pieces to eerie thrillers. Writer-director Marie Kreutzer’s “Corsage,” was recognized with the festival’s highest honor — the best film award — continuing the historical drama’s festival praise after lead actress Vicky Krieps was awarded the Un Certain Regard best performance prize at Cannes. Set during Christmas in 1877, “Corsage” follows Empress Elizabeth as she attempts to find liberation from the stifling conformity of her stuffy, image-focused lifestyle as a Vienna royal. Though the film is in part based on the historical figure, who reigned for 44 years, artistic deviations are made in the former ruler’s story.

period drama “Corsage,” starring Vicky Krieps as 19th-century Austrian Empress Elisabeth; Lukas Dhont’s tender coming-of-age film “Close,” the Belgian selection; Jerzy Skolimowski’s nearly wordless “EO,” a road movie from the point of view of a donkey that was submitted by Poland; and South Korean director Park Chan-wook’s stylish crime story/love story hybrid, “Decision to Leave.”Other films that could be positioned to do well include the German selection, Edward Berger’s harrowing new version of the classic antiwar novel “All Quiet on the Western Front,” a Netflix release; Spain’s “Alcarras,” a drama by Carla Simon that won the Golden Bear at this year’s Berlin Film Festival; and “Our Brothers” from director Rachid Boucharev, who has represented Algeria seven previous times in the Oscar race, landing three of the country’s five nominations.As usual, the rule that allows an Academy-approved body from each country to choose that country’s Oscar submission has led to some surprises.

Krieps and director Maria Kreutzer stopped by TheWrap and Shutterstock’s Interview and Portrait Studio at the Toronto Film Festival to talk about “Corsage,” which follows the Empress (Krieps) on her 40th birthday, an age that, according to 19th century Bavarian society, made her an old woman. Feeling increasingly isolated by both royal circles and her own husband, Emperor Franz Joseph (Florian Teichtmeister), Elisabeth finds herself imprisoned by her own elite status and starts looking for any way to rebel against it, no matter how small.

Neringa Kažukauskaite The second season of the German TV series “Sisi,” which follows the life of Empress Elisabeth of Austria (also known as Sisi), is currently shooting in Lithuania, Film New Europe reports.The series is produced by Story House Pictures GmbH for RTL+ and serviced by the Lithuanian company UAB Nordic Productions. The shoot is benefiting from Lithuanian Film Center’s tax incentives.The six-part second season is directed by Sven Bohse (“Dark Woods”) and Miguel Alexandre (“Spy City”), and it is written by Elena Hell, Svenja Rasocha, Robert Krause and Andreas Gutzeit.More than 100 Lithuanians are part of the international team, including production designer Algirdas Garbačiauskas and costume designer Daiva Petrulytė.

Leo Barraclough International Features EditorWhen filmmaker Marie Kreutzer was writing “Corsage,” which chronicles a critical period in the life of Empress Elisabeth of Austria, also known as “Sissi,” she had in mind the experience of other women in the public eye, in particular Princess Diana and Meghan Markle. In recent weeks, she has been mulling the treatment of Amber Heard as well.

#Cannes pic.twitter.com/VCEz0aI3BW“Holy Spider,” which screened on Sunday, was particularly overt in its discussion of violence against women, based on the true story of a serial killer who was supported by much of the public because he murdered prostitutes in the name of religion. It was not even made by a female filmmaker, but by the Iranian-born, Denmark-based Abbasi, whose last trip to Cannes was with the startling “Border,” which became known for its scene of troll sex.

A silver spoon clunks loudly inside a bowl of beef broth. The meal — well, barely a meal — is served to Empress Elisabeth of Austria (Vicky Krieps) twice a day, her diet a strict combination of insipid soup and wafer-thin slices of lemon.

It took the Empress Elisabeth’s strongest lady’s maid an hour every morning to lace her stays. The Emperor Franz-Joseph’s wife Sisi, as she was fondly known to the subjects of the Austro-Hungarian empire, was famous for the narrowness of her waist, which reputedly measured 19 and a half inches; the slightest weight gain was a matter of seething public interest. It looks very much as if Vicky Krieps, who brings great complexity to her portrait of the empress in Marie Kreutzer’s Un Certain Regard title Corsage, shares the imperial measurements. Let’s hope that is just a trick of the camera. So much corsetry — or corsage, the word we hear much used in the royal dressing-rooms of 19th-century Vienna — doesn’t leave much room for little things like ribs.

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.