Playtime (“Son of Saul”) is reteaming with celebrated French directors François Ozon (“By the Grace of God”) and sister duo Delphine and Muriel Coulin (“17 Girls”) on their respective upcoming films, “When Fall Is Coming” and “The Quiet Son.”
“When Fall is Coming” marks Ozon’s follow up to “The Crime Is Mine.” The film stars Hélène Vincent (“The Specials”), Josiane Balasko (“Back to Mom’s”), Ludivine Sagnier (“Lupin”) and Pierre Lottin (“Notre-Dame on Fire”).
The film tells the story of Michelle, who is enjoying a peaceful retirement in a charming Burgundy village near her longtime friend Marie-Claude. She eagerly anticipates her grandson Lucas spending the school vacation with her, but things don’t go as planned. Feeling lonely, Michelle loses her sense of purpose, until Marie-Claude’s son gets out of prison.
The film is self-produced by Ozon through his vehicle Foz. Diaphana Distribution will release it in France.
“When Fall is Coming” marks Ozon’s follow up to “The Crime Is Mine.” The film stars Hélène Vincent (“The Specials”), Josiane Balasko (“Back to Mom’s”), Ludivine Sagnier (“Lupin”) and Pierre Lottin (“Notre-Dame on Fire”).
The film tells the story of Michelle, who is enjoying a peaceful retirement in a charming Burgundy village near her longtime friend Marie-Claude. She eagerly anticipates her grandson Lucas spending the school vacation with her, but things don’t go as planned. Feeling lonely, Michelle loses her sense of purpose, until Marie-Claude’s son gets out of prison.
The film is self-produced by Ozon through his vehicle Foz. Diaphana Distribution will release it in France.
- 1/31/2024
- by Elsa Keslassy
- Variety Film + TV
Catatonic with a bright red swollen eye, middle-aged Rafik (Majd Mastoura) sits handcuffed inside a police station in the aftermath of a violent outburst at his soul-crushing office job. Whatever gripe eroded his sanity doesn’t matter as much now, since the incident, including a suicide attempt, unearthed a supernatural ability he possesses. An unpredictable oddity of a film, “Behind the Mountains” sees seasoned Tunisian writer-director Mohamed Ben Attia step away from the straightforward social realist drama of his previous festival standouts “Dear Son” and “Hedi,” while staying steadfast in his interest for emotionally intricate protagonists and the complications of parent-child relationships.
Four years after the breakdown that landed him in prison, Rafik kidnaps his son Yassine (Walid Bouchhioua), an impressionable grade-school kid who barely remembers his father, and drives away from the capital and into the open spaces of the mountainous countryside. In brief exchanges, we learn of Rafik...
Four years after the breakdown that landed him in prison, Rafik kidnaps his son Yassine (Walid Bouchhioua), an impressionable grade-school kid who barely remembers his father, and drives away from the capital and into the open spaces of the mountainous countryside. In brief exchanges, we learn of Rafik...
- 12/2/2023
- by Carlos Aguilar
- Variety Film + TV
The sister filmmaker tandem behind 17 filles (2011) and Voir du pays (2016) have put a bow on their latest feature film. The Cineuropa folks got the exclusive that Delphine and Muriel Coulin have lassoed Vincent Lindon and Benjamin Voisin (a breakout in Summer of 85) for À la hauteur. Felicita Films’ Marie Guillaumond and Curiosa Films’ Olivier Delbosc are producing the film with Frédéric Noirhomme (his last project Il pleut dans la maison was featured in the Critics’ Week this past May) as cinematographer. Expect this to be in the running for a Cannes showing next year as the Coulins have been there with their first two films — Critics’ Week and Un Certain Regard.…...
- 6/29/2023
- by Eric Lavallée
- IONCINEMA.com
With her forceful feature debut Playground, Laura Wandel takes an intimate, intense look at the intricacies of abuse at school from a child’s point of view. Following 7-year-old Nora and her big brother Abel, Belgium’s Oscar short-listed drama is a microcosm of the cycles of bullying and violence playing out across the world.
“Wandel pulls no punches in her depiction, and both Leklou and Vanderbeque deliver performances well beyond their years. (A child’s ability to embark on roles this psychologically draining will never cease to amaze.),” Jared Mobarak said in his review. “With only 70 minutes at its disposal, Playground pushes forward with powerful intent. Not a second can be wasted. Not a single glance can be unmoored from the bigger picture. That sacrifice above is thus the catalyst for Abel’s rapid descent into abuse from those who know him and those who don’t.”
With the...
“Wandel pulls no punches in her depiction, and both Leklou and Vanderbeque deliver performances well beyond their years. (A child’s ability to embark on roles this psychologically draining will never cease to amaze.),” Jared Mobarak said in his review. “With only 70 minutes at its disposal, Playground pushes forward with powerful intent. Not a second can be wasted. Not a single glance can be unmoored from the bigger picture. That sacrifice above is thus the catalyst for Abel’s rapid descent into abuse from those who know him and those who don’t.”
With the...
- 2/16/2022
- by Jordan Raup
- The Film Stage
Walking down the narrow staircases of your school hand-in-hand with a friend, struggling to learn to tie your shoes, or worrying about where to sit at lunch are among the moments that Wandel captures with an alarming sense of authenticity, to the point where her film could almost be confused for a documentary. “Playground” nimbly zeroes in on this world, seen through the eyes of the shy seven-year-old student Nora (Maya Vanderbeque), as she warily navigates her new school, the same that her older brother Abel (Günter Duret) attends.
Despite its title, however, Wandel’s focus is not the unbridled joy and freedom of childhood, though there are some rare instances of it here. Instead, she paints a harrowing picture of the memories many of us have tried to forget, where school is a warzone rife with violence and bullying, one that children are forced to largely maneuver alone.
Wandel...
Despite its title, however, Wandel’s focus is not the unbridled joy and freedom of childhood, though there are some rare instances of it here. Instead, she paints a harrowing picture of the memories many of us have tried to forget, where school is a warzone rife with violence and bullying, one that children are forced to largely maneuver alone.
Wandel...
- 2/11/2022
- by Susannah Gruder
- Indiewire
Belgium’s Oscar-shortlisted International Feature is an intimate child’s-eye view of bullying from debut writer-director Laura Wandel. Playground is known as Un Monde in its native French language, and this is set in a world of its own: the school that two siblings must navigate to get through the day.
We meet 7-year-old Nora (Maya Vanderbeque) and her older brother Abel (Günter Duret) when they are dropped off at the school gates by their father (Karim Leklou). Nervous Nora just wants to hang out with Abel, but he’s busy trying to impress children his own age. “I’m beating up the new kids with Antoine,” he says, setting the stage for a drama that’s dominated by peer pressure, shifting loyalties and violence — some of which could be life-threatening, even if the perpetrators may not realize it.
These may be children, but their problems feel as urgent as any thriller,...
We meet 7-year-old Nora (Maya Vanderbeque) and her older brother Abel (Günter Duret) when they are dropped off at the school gates by their father (Karim Leklou). Nervous Nora just wants to hang out with Abel, but he’s busy trying to impress children his own age. “I’m beating up the new kids with Antoine,” he says, setting the stage for a drama that’s dominated by peer pressure, shifting loyalties and violence — some of which could be life-threatening, even if the perpetrators may not realize it.
These may be children, but their problems feel as urgent as any thriller,...
- 1/31/2022
- by Anna Smith
- Deadline Film + TV
Playground Trailer — Laura Wandel‘s Playground / Un monde (2021) movie trailer has been released by Film Movement. The Playground trailer stars Maya Vanderbeque, Günter Duret, Karim Leklou, Thao Maerten, Lena Girard Voss, and Laura Verlinden. Crew Laura Wandel wrote the screenplay for Playground. Frédéric Noirhomme crafted the cinematography for film. Nicolas Rumpl conducted the [...]
Continue reading: Playground (2021) Movie Trailer: A 7-year-old Girl Witnesses the Continuous Bullying of Her Brother in Laura Wandel’s Film...
Continue reading: Playground (2021) Movie Trailer: A 7-year-old Girl Witnesses the Continuous Bullying of Her Brother in Laura Wandel’s Film...
- 12/29/2021
- by Rollo Tomasi
- Film-Book
It has been claimed that women who forget the worst of the pain of childbirth are programmed to do so by evolutionary necessity: The selective editing of the body’s memory of trauma helps ensure the species continues to propagate itself. However true that is, a similar theory might account for why so many of us remember our school days in only the vaguest and fuzziest of terms: If we precisely recalled all those terrors, would we really force our own children to run the same gantlet? Laura Wandel’s janglingly visceral “Playground” is here to shatter that willful forgetfulness by .
Seven-year-old Nora (an extraordinary Maya Vanderbeque) is crying, clinging to her father (Karim Leklou) at the school gates. Now, and for the rest of the film, we are at her eye level: Frédéric Noirhomme’s dogged shallow-focus camerawork immediately creates a world where doorknobs and banisters are mounted dauntingly high,...
Seven-year-old Nora (an extraordinary Maya Vanderbeque) is crying, clinging to her father (Karim Leklou) at the school gates. Now, and for the rest of the film, we are at her eye level: Frédéric Noirhomme’s dogged shallow-focus camerawork immediately creates a world where doorknobs and banisters are mounted dauntingly high,...
- 11/1/2021
- by Jessica Kiang
- Variety Film + TV
We do not live in subtle times, and of all nuance-annihilating topics, few are as dramatically divisive as jihadism. Which makes Mohammed Ben Attia’s delicate portrait of devastation, “Dear Son,” remarkable for the quietness of its approach, its rich, calm, generous characterizations, and the compassion it evokes for extremism’s more indirect victims. After his award-winning 2016 debut “Hedi,” which was, like “Dear Son,” co-produced by the Dardenne brothers, Ben Attia has confirmed himself as an unassuming auteur of ordinary life in Tunisia, in which global, block-capital concerns are writ in intimate, personal cursive.
The film is both anchored and elevated by a performance of simple, radiant decency from Mohamed Dhrif, an actor whose few credits mostly date back to the 1980s. He plays Riadh, a Tunisian dock worker married to Nazli who is the pragmatic foil to Riadh’s slightly impractical optimism. Their son, Sami (Zakaria Ben Ayed) is...
The film is both anchored and elevated by a performance of simple, radiant decency from Mohamed Dhrif, an actor whose few credits mostly date back to the 1980s. He plays Riadh, a Tunisian dock worker married to Nazli who is the pragmatic foil to Riadh’s slightly impractical optimism. Their son, Sami (Zakaria Ben Ayed) is...
- 5/22/2018
- by Jessica Kiang
- Variety Film + TV
Kill Me Please
Written by Olias Barco, Virgile Bramly and Stéphane Malandrin
Directed by Olias Barco
France / Belgium, 2010
Other than abortion, no issue provokes as much passionate debate as euthanasia. Of all possible liberties, the “right to die,” as a base concept, stokes personal insecurities and misgivings in a way that can be difficult to quantify. That makes the subject an ideal one for a black comedy, and – at least for its first hour – Kill Me Please seems to offer a take on the subject that is equal parts lampoon and earnest inquiry. That co-writer/directer Olias Barco opts for a broader form of resolution is disappointing, but doesn’t completely rob the movie of its peculiar lyricism.
Aurélien Recoing stars as Dr. Kruger, a calm, reassuring figure who operates a high-end assisted-suicide clinic (palace, really) wherein the wealthy can be given an ideal termination experience – for a considerable fee.
Written by Olias Barco, Virgile Bramly and Stéphane Malandrin
Directed by Olias Barco
France / Belgium, 2010
Other than abortion, no issue provokes as much passionate debate as euthanasia. Of all possible liberties, the “right to die,” as a base concept, stokes personal insecurities and misgivings in a way that can be difficult to quantify. That makes the subject an ideal one for a black comedy, and – at least for its first hour – Kill Me Please seems to offer a take on the subject that is equal parts lampoon and earnest inquiry. That co-writer/directer Olias Barco opts for a broader form of resolution is disappointing, but doesn’t completely rob the movie of its peculiar lyricism.
Aurélien Recoing stars as Dr. Kruger, a calm, reassuring figure who operates a high-end assisted-suicide clinic (palace, really) wherein the wealthy can be given an ideal termination experience – for a considerable fee.
- 7/13/2011
- by Simon Howell
- SoundOnSight
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