Famed French singer and actor Patrick Bruel is one of the many Europeans who had settled in the idyllic L.A. neighborhood of Pacific Palisades. Now, he has lost his home in the devastating wildfire that has been ravaging the area since last week. He bought the house eight years ago after his two sons, 21-year-old […]

Iris Knobloch, the respected former boss of Warner Bros. France and Germany who became the first female president of the Cannes Film Festival in 2022, has been re-elected by the festival’s board for another three-year mandate. The German-born, Paris-based executive will continue working alongside Cannes Film Festival’s longtime general delegate and artistic director Thierry Fremaux, […]

“Primavera,” a film about Antonio Vivaldi, the Italian Baroque composer and violinist who penned “The Four Seasons,” has been bought by a flurry of major distributors. Represented by Memento International, the movie shot in Rome and Venice, and marks the feature debut of Damiano Michieletto, a leading opera director. Warner Bros. will release the movie […]

The origin story of Jean Valjean, the iconic protagonist of Victor Hugo’s masterpiece “Les Misérables,” is being brought to the bigscreen by Éric Besnard, the French director of 18th-century set movie “Delicieux.” The movie, which just started filming on Jan. 14 amid the lush landscapes of Southern France, has been boarded by Federations Studios’ sales […]

French movies had a banner 2024 on home turf with a 44% market share at the French box office, which broke a 15-year record; meanwhile, Gallic films saw a 11% year-on-year drop in international revenues, according to figures unveiled by the National Film Board (CNC) and Unifrance during the Rendez-Vous in Paris market on Monday. […]

On the heels of a 2024 box office which saw French movies clinching a near record market share, the Gallic film and TV promotion org Unifrance is expanding its Rendez-Vous With French Cinema, a mini-market gathering local sales agents and 500 international buyers from roughly 40 countries. The 27th edition of the Paris Rendez-Vous, which […]

Bong Joon Ho‘s hotly anticipated sci-fi film “Mickey 17,” starring Robert Pattinson, will have its international premiere at the Berlin Film Festival, Variety has learned. The $118 million movie marks Bong’s first directorial effort since “Parasite,” which won Cannes’ Palme d’Or and made Oscar history, becoming the first foreign-language film to win the Academy Award for […]

Playtime, a Paris-based sales, production and equity investment company, has picked up “Chopin, a Sonata in Paris,” an ambitious biopic of famed composer and pianist Frédéric Chopin hailing from Poland’s leading production banner Akson Studio (“Katyń,” “Warsaw 44”). Budgeted at $17.5 million, the movie reteams producer-director Michał Kwieciński with the rising Polish actor of “Filip,” […]

The European Film Awards is set to make its debut in Southwestern Europe in January 2027, when its 39th edition will be hosted in Athens. The award show, which were first presented in Berlin in 1988 to promote and support the European film industry, previously took place in London, Paris, Rome, Barcelona, Warsaw, Copenhagen, Tallinn, Malta, […]

Jean-Marie Le Pen, the founder of France’s far-right party Front National, has died. He was 96. His family confirmed the news in a statement sent to the AFP and said he died “surrounded by his loved ones.” One of France’s best known and most controversial political figures, Le Pen led the Front National Party from […]

In an awards season where the race still seems to be fairly wide open, one film is gaining more traction than most as the finish line wobbles into view over the horizon. “Emilia Perez” wasn’t talked about as an Oscar hopeful after it first bowed at the Cannes Film Festival, but eight months on and Jacques […]

The anticipated sixth season of “Miraculous: Tales of Ladybug & Cat Noir,” the Paris-set blockbuster animated superhero series, is set to world premiere in the U.S. on Jan. 25. The new season will bow on Disney Channel and Disney XD with episodes airing in simulcast at 11am ET/PT, while the international rollouts will begin during the first quarter […]

After surging back from the pandemic with a 16% growth in 2023, France’s box office continued to grow in 2024 with €1.36 billion ($1.41 billion) grossed from 183.1 million admissions sold, a 0.5% year-on rise, according to Comscore and the National Film Board (CNC). While the increase may appear modest, it nevertheless solidifies France as […]

After slowly returning to production in the wake of a restructuring, EuropaCorp, the company founded by “The Professional” director Luc Besson, is now fully back in action with several French and international films in the pipeline. These include the Snoop Dogg sci-fi movie “The Last Man,” and “Disorder,” a thriller starring Dylan Sprayberry (Teen Wolf”) […]

One of France’s most critically lauded producers of the last decade with movies such as Audrey Diwan’s Golden Lion prizewinner “Happening,” Edouard Weil has sold his Paris-based production company Rectangle Productions to sales company Goodfellas after filing for bankruptcy in June. Goodfellas, the thriving sales company co-founded by Vincent Maraval, is a longtime collaborator of […]