Michel Hazanavicius Latest Celebrity News & Gossip

“One Cut of the Dead” is one of the most inventive and fun horror films to arrive in the past decade.

The Annecy International Animation Film Festival has unveiled the line-up for its 2024 edition, running from June 9 to 15. (scroll down for full list of titles and events)

Let’s catch up on all things Cannes Film Festival. For one, if you haven’t seen it, Cannes recently revealed its 2024 poster, featuring a scene from “Rhapsody in August,” directed by the great Japanese master Akira Kurosawa, 81 at the time (see it below in full).

The Cannes Film Festival has added 13 new titles to the selection for its 77th edition, including new films by Oliver Stone, Lou Ye and Arnaud Desplechin as Special Screenings.

Thierry Frémaux is best known internationally as the long-time head of France’s Cannes Film Festival, which is organized out of its offices in Paris’s trendy Marais neighborhood.

Clayton Davis Senior Awards Editor Guess how many times cinema legends Martin Scorsese and Steven Spielberg have gone head-to-head at the Oscars? With 37 nominations between them and five decades of indelible classics, such as the gangster epic “Casino” (1995) and the shark thriller “Jaws” (1975), you might assume at least half a dozen ceremonies have seen both auteurs prominently recognized. Read: Variety’s Awards Circuit for the latest Oscars predictions in all categories. Well, guess again.

EXCLUSIVE: Robbie Fairchild, a Broadway lead and former New York City Ballet principal dancer, will star in the stage version of Michel Hazanavicius’ 2011 Oscar-winning movie The Artist, set in the 1920s when movies found their voice with the advent of talking pictures.

The American French Film Festival (TAFFF), which had been due to take place in L.A. from October 18 to 22, has been shelved due to the writers and actors strikes.

The attitudes around remakes ebb and flow depending on what audiences see coming out of Hollywood. Some people love remakes, some people hate them, and some people see them as necessary to fund a more original project.

EXCLUSIVE: Greenwich Entertainment has picked up U.S. distribution rights to the French comedy Two Tickets to Greece (aka Les Cyclades), starring César Award winner Laure Calamy (Call My Agent!), Olivia Côte (My Donkey, My Lover & I) and Academy Award nominee Kristin Scott Thomas (The English Patient). It’ll be released in theaters on July 14.

What’s there to say about French director Michel Hazanavicius? His two “OSS 117” films with Jean Dujardin are foreign cult comedies. And then the duo struck gold stateside with “The Artist,” which won Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Actor at the 2012 Oscars.

Every year, on the third Thursday of May, Ukraine celebrates the Day of Vyshyvanka. The occasion pays tribute to the country's original folk traditions and sees citizens wearing embroidered Ukrainian clothes, including the Vyshyvanka, a loose-fitting shirt, which is often in black or white and features geometric patterns stitched around the edges.  This year’s celebration was seen as a symbol of national unity against the Russian invasion.

Elsa Keslassy International Correspondent “Can you believe it took 75 years to nominate a woman as the president of the Cannes Film Festival?” Iris Knobloch asks, reflecting on her 2022 appointment as the fest’s top executive. Known for her strong will, the chic, charismatic German is used to being a rare woman in power — she essayed various roles at the top of WarnerMedia in Europe for 25 years, where she cultivated relationships with such Hollywood players as Warner Bros. Discovery consultant and former Disney chief Alan Horn, filmmakers Christopher Nolan and Todd Phillips, Amazon Studios and MGM film head Courtenay Valenti and Amazon Studios marketing chief Sue Kroll.

Elsa Keslassy International Correspondent Juliette Binoche, Laure Calamy (“Call My Agent!”), Camille Cottin (“Stillwater”) and Michel Hazanavicius (“The Artist”) are among the 300 stars who signed an open letter addressed to France President Emmanuel Macron to demand the withdrawal of the retirement bill. The letter was published in French newspaper Liberation ahead of massive and fiery protests that rallied more than a million people across the country on Thursday, according to local press. Despite the ongoing strikes, the government passed the unpopular bill last week to increase the retirement age from 62 to 64, and was allowed to bypass a vote by using a constitutional clause called 49.3. “You chose to push through a pension reform that is unfair, inefficient and one that impacts more severely the most vulnerable people and women,” said the letter, which added that the “reform has been rejected by the immense majority of the population.”

More than 300 leading figures from the French film and TV world have got behind a petition decrying controversial pension reforms spearheaded by the government of President Emmanuel Macron.

EXCLUSIVE: Choreographer and director Drew McOnie (Greatest Days) is developing a stage version of Michel Hazanavicius’s 2011 Oscar-winning film The Artist about a Hollywood silent screen star whose career is upended with the advent of talking pictures.

Elsa Keslassy International Correspondent Award-winning filmmakers Alice Diop (“Saint Omer”), Audrey Diwan (“Happening”), Julia Ducournau (“Titane”), Michel Hazanavicius (“The Artist”), Jacques Audiard (“Dheepan”), and actors Juliette Binoche, Marion Cotillard, Isabelle Huppert, Lea Seydoux are among nearly 1,000 prominent French film figures who have signed an open letter to support Iranian women and civil rights activists in their revolt over the death of 22 year-old Mahsa Amini, as well as denounce the “murderous violence” of the Iranian regime. Amini, a Kurdish woman, died in custody on Sept. 16, three days after being arrested in Tehran because she allegedly breached the Islamic republic’s strict dress code for women. Her death has sparked protests across Iran, including in Tehran, Isfahan and Yazd, and in cities around the world, including in Paris, Istanbul and Los Angeles. Amnesty International said Iranian authorities have been “intentionally using lethal force against the protesters,” causing more than more 52 deaths (as of Sept. 30). The organization has urged international action “beyond statements of condemnation” to prevent more people from being killed.

Pat Saperstein Deputy Editor The American French Film Festival, formerly known as COLCOA, will kick off Oct. 10 with the North American premiere of docudrama “Notre-Dame on Fire,” from “Quest for Fire” director Jean-Jacques Annaud. The weeklong festival at the DGA Theater Complex in Los Angeles closes with Dominik Moll’s thriller “The Night of the 12th,” about a cold case where the only certainty is the night it occurred. Moll will also be the focus of the festival’s annual “Focus on a Filmmaker.” “Every year, The American French Film Festival presents the very best of French cinema and television, and this year is no exception. I am personally excited about the opening night selection of Jean-Jacques Annaud’s ‘Notre-Dame on Fire’ as I think it perfectly embodies the Franco-American Cultural Fund’s mission,” said Andrea Berloff, writer and board member of the Franco-American Cultural Fund.

K.J. Yossman The line-up for Grimmfest’s International Festival of Fantastic Film 2022 edition has been unveiled.“The Loneliest Boy In The World” (U.K.) is set to open the U.K.

EXCLUSIVE: French film sales powerhouse Wild Bunch International (WBI) has unveiled a slew of deals on key titles on its 15-title Cannes 2022 slate.

Lise Pedersen Oscar-winning director Michel Hazanavicius (“The Artist”) has unveiled his first-ever animation film project at the Annecy Intl. Animation Film Festival.Entitled “The Most Precious of Cargos,” it is an adaptation of the eponymous best-selling book by acclaimed French playwright and children’s books author Jean-Claude Grumberg, who is co-writing the film with Hazanavicius.Told in the form of a classic fairy tale in 2D animation, it is set during World War II, and tells the story of a poor woodcutter and his wife who live deep in the Polish forest.

To celebrate its 75th anniversary, the Cannes Film Festival gathered dozens upon dozens of previous laureates and special guests at the Palais des Festival this evening. Inside the Lumière Theatre, the fest’s artistic chief and general delegate, Thierry Frémaux, and outgoing Cannes President, Pierre Lescure, did a roll call of star actors and directors who left their seats and made their way to the stage .

Two-time Oscar winner and former Un Certain Regard Jury President Guillermo del Toro kicked off a filmmaker symposium at Cannes today, discussing the future of cinema, particularly as it’s been rattled by the pandemic.

Hello and welcome back to Deadline’s International Insider. If you’re not in Cannes enjoying the sun-soaked days and balmy evenings along the Croisette, allow us to provide you with everything you need to know, plus provide the lowdown on another big week in international entertainment.

William Earl The Cannes Film Festival is underway, and as the stars climb the red carpet steps of the Palais, Variety is busy bringing you all the behind-the-scene details. Tom Cruise’s fans flooded the streets for the first festival showing of “Top Gun: Maverick” while the cast received a 5-minute standing ovation from crowds inside the theater.

Ever since Michel Hazanavicius’ Oscar-winning tribute to silent cinema “The Artist,” the French filmmaker has continued to focus his work on the process of filmmaking itself, for better and, mostly, for worse. After “Redoutable,” centered on the relationship between Jean-Luc Godard and Anne Wiazemsky during the filming of “La Chinoise,” he again explored la magie du cinéma in “The Lost Prince,” where Omar Sy (the biggest star on French Netflix and, maybe, in French cinema tout court) saw the rich fantasy film-set world he had created for his daughter begin to crumble as she started to outgrow his fairytales.

Manori Ravindran International EditorBérénice Bejo was thrilled to be asked how she came to be involved in Michel Hazanavicius’ “Final Cut.”The French-Argentine actor — who plays a mad make-up artist in the zombie romp that opened Cannes on Tuesday — revealed that it wasn’t easy convincing director Hazanavicius, who is also her husband, to let her have a role.“He said, ‘I’m really sorry but this time I don’t think we’ll be working together.’ He said I was ‘too pretty’ and I said, ‘What is that?’ I got a bit upset,” said Bejo.“Final Cut,” Hazanavicius’ eighth feature, is a remake of Japanese zombie comedy “One Cut of the Dead” (2017), which became a cult sensation. The film begins as a French zombie comedy, but soon lifts the lid on how the film was made and becomes more a commentary on — in Variety critic Owen Gleiberman’s words — the “creative innocence of terrible filmmaking.” Bejo seemingly took great pleasure in explaining how it was only when Hazanavicius caught COVID-19 at the start of the pandemic in 2020 and she took care of him morning, noon and night that he finally relented.“After a week of agony, he said, ‘Can you please read my screenplay?’ and I said, ‘Well, I’m too busy and I’m not even going to be in the film,'” said Bejo.

EXCLUSIVE: Berenice Bejo (The Artist) agreed that making Cannes opening-night film  Final Cut (Coupez!) with filmmaker husband Michel Hazanavicius (The Players) had been a family affair.

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.

Originally planned to open the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year before the worsening Covid situation forced the festival to again go virtual, Oscar-winning writer-director Michel Hazanavicius made the right decision in insisting his comedy Final Cut (Coupez!), about the making of a low-budget bad zombie movie, should be presented with a full house in a theatre, thankfully not to be watched on your computer at a prestigious film festival. In holding out for the real thing he scored big as it was chosen as the opening-night out-of-competition film of the 75th Cannes Film Festival.

Owen Gleiberman Chief Film CriticThe last time the Cannes Film Festival dropped a zombie comedy into its coveted opening-night slot, it was 2019, and the movie ­— Jim Jarmusch’s “The Dead Don’t Die” ­— was no big whoop, but it served its purpose. It got this most highfalutin’ of festivals rolling on an agreeable note of macabre cheekiness. Since that was only three years ago, you may wonder why the Cannes programmers decided to open this year’s festival — the hallowed 75th edition — with another rib-nudging absurdist zombie comedy.

After a canceled 2020 edition and a scaled back gathering last year, the Cannes Film Festival kicked off Tuesday with an eye turned to Russia’s war in Ukraine and a video message from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

Final Cut,” directed by Michel Hazanavicius on opening night. This year’s Cannes is also the biggest film event to be hosted since the start of the pandemic, bringing together the festival and market crowds.

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.

Brent Lang Executive Editor of Film and MediaWith “Final Cut,” Oscar-winning filmmaker Michel Hazanavicius has to convince audiences that he’s a very bad director. At least for the first 20 minutes or so of the movie within a movie. You see, “Final Cut,” a remake of the 2017 Japanese cult favorite, “One Cut of the Dead,” initially unspools as a low-budget zombie film, one produced with few frills and even less talent.

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.