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Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.NEWSThe winners of this year's socially distanced Academy Awards ceremony include Daniel Kaluuya, Youn Yuh Jung, and Chloé Zhao. Find our full list of winners and nominees here.The legendary layout artist Roy Naisbitt has died at 90. Best known for his intricate and interweaving visions, Naisbitt worked on films like Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Space Jam, Balto and 2001: A Space Odyssey. Recommended VIEWINGAn extension of This Long Century, Ecstatic Static is a database of films and information from a broad community of artists. The site is currently screening films like Simon Liu's Signal 8, and also has an extensive library featuring new notes on filmmaking by Jodie Mack, Helena Wittmann, and more. Anthology Film Archives has announced a new online festival, presented in partnership with production company Vanda. Entitled Vanda Duarte: Dissident Films by Latin American Women Directors,...

Jean-Luc Godard quipped that his criticism represented a kind of cinematic terrorism. Serge Daney said his writing taught him not to be afraid to see. The Parisian publishing house Post-Éditions has made available a long overdue collection of his articles in French to decide for ourselves. Jacques Rivette became a filmmaker even before he became a critic. When he came to Paris from Rouen in 1950, he had already completed a short film, unlike Truffaut, Godard, Rohmer or Chabrol, his colleagues-to-be at Cahiers du cinéma and later fellow New Wave directors. By his own admission, he never wanted to be a film critic, not in the traditional sense of the term. But, considering his own dictum that “a true critique of a film can only be another film,” he never ceased to be one. Textes Critiques as an object has the appearance of a cinephilic totem: half-a foot in size, portable,...

Following its premiere at the Cannes Film Festival in the Un Certain Regard competition, the Marion Cotillard-starring Angel Face, which marked the feature directorial debut for French director Vaness Filho (Love Punch) was just picked up for North American distribution by Cinema Libre Studio.

Angel Face, based on an original screenplay developed by Filho with Alain Dias, will open later this year in the states via Cinema Libre after it already premiered in theaters in France last month.

The film stars Oscar-winner Cotillard as Marlene, a single mother who lives with her 8-year-old daughter, Elli, on the French Riviera. Marlene is more interested in partying and reality TV shows than taking care of her child, although she loves her dearly. Elli, with her mother as her only role model, starts to mirror behaviors, including wearing makeup and drinking alcohol. One day Marlene suddenly...

Cinema Libre Studio has acquired North American rights to “Angel Face” (Gueule d’Ange), starring Marion Cotillard, Variety has learned exclusively.

The drama marks the first feature-length film for French director Vanessa Filho (“Love Punch”), based on an original screenplay developed by Filho with Alain Dias. The movie was produced by Moana Films’ Marc Missonnier (“Marguerite”) and Carole Lambert (“Free Angela and All Political Prisoners”) via Windy Production with Mars Films co-producing and distributing in France, where it premiered in theaters on May 23.

The pic, which debuted at the Cannes Film Festival in Un Certain Regard, stars Cotillard as a single mother who lives with her 8-year-old daughter on the French Riviera, where she is more interested in partying and reality TV shows than taking care of her child. The daughter starts to wear makeup and drink alcohol, and the mother suddenly abandons her for a man she has just...

As the final credits roll at this year’s film festival, a contentious lineup has left audiences with more questions than answers

At the closing stages of this year’s Cannes film festival the guests gather to watch Under the Silver Lake, a shaggy-dog tale that sends Andrew Garfield reeling across an La suburb in thrall to cults and comic books and movie-star memorabilia. He has some urgent questions relating to a missing girl, the subliminal messages on his records, and some parrot-related mystery the exact details of which I’ve already forgotten. “But what does it all mean?” he wails at one point, and the line sends ripples of laughter through the cinema.

Ostensibly the audience is laughing at Under the Silver Lake (David Robert Mitchell’s follow-up to his excellent It Follows), which finally doesn’t amount to a hill of beans. But they’re also giggling at themselves and at the great,...

Director Ali Abbasi’s “Border” (“Grans”) has been named the best film in the Cannes Film Festival’s Un Certain Regard section, a sidebar to the main competition that is largely devoted to younger directors and more experimental films.

The film, whose U.S. rights were acquired by Neon during the festival, is part horror film about maggot-eating trolls, part timely allegory about how we treat outsiders. “Either way, it’s creepy and disturbing and freaky, with enough room to find whatever subtext you’re looking for,” wrote TheWrap in its review.

It also includes a jaw-dropping scene of...

by Nathaniel R

Fan Bingbing, Lupita Nyong'o, Amber Heard, and Marion Cotillard

The Cannes red carpet waits for no man. So we'll keep trying to bring you 16 key looks each couple of days -- wish us luck! If you missed part one that's here. Outside of movies, which we'll get to on Monday, the weeked at Cannes was filled with the 82 woman protest and of course more and more gowns. Above we have Fan Bingbing in an amazing assymetrical dress from Alexis Mabille Haute Couture with sharp black ribbon details. In the past five years of fame Lupita Nyong'o has, we believe, now worn every single color that exists. Prada peach perfect, this time. Amber Heard is making quite a statement (though what is it?) in a puffy black and white floral number from Giambattista Valli Haute Couture. And Marion Cotillard looks fresh and fun in this Adam Selman gingham...

Cannes – I couldn’t tell you if Mother’s Day is celebrated in France, but there is some irony somewhere of having Vanessa Filho’s directorial debut, “Angel Face,” debut at the 2018 Cannes Film Festival the day before it does elsewhere in the world. Despite the best efforts of Marion Cotillard, this is one pointless melodrama about a very delinquent mother, Marlene, and her unbelievably self-reliant daughter Elli (Ayline Aksoy-Etaix).

If you’re going to shoot 80 percent of a film in extreme close-up, strictly training the camera on an actor’s face at the expense of everything around her, you better make damn well sure you give us an interesting character to consider. Marlene, a flailing single mother played by a wobbly, one-note Marion Cotillard, is not an interesting character. She’s Halley from “The Florida Project” minus any sort of humor or humanity, a self-destructive bore who never does anything to deserve our attention. “Angel Face,” by extension, is not an interesting movie. The debut feature from writer-director Vanessa Filho is a trite story about a walking disaster and the daughter caught her in path, the tedious melodrama only finding a heartbeat when it abandons the lead character and searches for change.

Marlene is drunk the first time we meet her — so drunk we can almost smell it on her breath.

You can bet that every scheming lowlife who populates the kitsch landscape of “The World Is Yours” knows and recognizes that title’s allusion to Brian De Palma’s “Scarface.” And you can be be just as sure that not one of them has ever been able to sit still and concentrate long enough to make it through that — or any — three-hour film.

Music video director Romain Gavras’ breezy pop comedy, however, might be more their speed — but then, the film is designed to be everyone’s speed.

With his latest feature, the Kanye West, Jay-z and M.I.A. collaborator has set out to conquer the world, or at least the French box office. With “The World Is Yours,” he delivered a crowd-pleasing caper that drew hurls of laughter and sustained applause at its world premiere as part of the Cannes Film Festival’s Directors’ Fortnight sidebar on Saturday.

Also Read: Marion Cotillard's Careless Motherhood Hurts in 'Angel Face'

As if the John Landis cameo didn’t give it away, the film tries to be a “Blues Brothers”-like jaunt for a generation raised on Adderall and French hip hop, but its sharp edge and endearing cast will have little difficulty winning over audiences unfamiliar with acts like Mc Solaar, as well.

Doughy mama’s boy François (Karim Leklou) has one dream in life: to buy the North African distribution rights to the Mr. Freeze brand of ice pops and work his way out of the projects, one summery treat at a time. Things are going his way until his con-artist mom Danny (Isabelle Adjani) gambles away the entire nest egg, forcing the good-hearted if otherwise inept crook to accept an ill-conceived drug-buying mission in Spain.

Already saddled with a harebrained scheme, Francois certainly doesn’t help matters by assembling a motley band of knuckleheads, all of them more inept and significantly less trustworthy than he.

Also Read: Cannes Report, Day 4: Sales Market Heats Up, '355' Sparks Bidding War, Jean-Luc Godard Is Back

While Lamya (Oulaya Amamra, star of the 2016 Caméra d’Or winner “Divines”) takes the money and runs every chance she gets, Henry (Vincent Cassel, hilariously playing against type as a potbellied goon) is really only good for conspiracy theories and little else. Throw in a pair of dimwitted thugs and a louche Belgian snowbird and you have all the makings for disaster — which is exactly what happens when Francois’ drug supplier stiffs them and Danny sweeps in to kidnap the man’s daughter.

Gavras keeps these many plates spinning with admirable dexterity, relying on his polished commercial background to keep things moving at an appealingly propulsive clip. Many sequences play like full-on music videos, like a tense hotel room break-in set to the song “Atlas” by the group Battles, or a kitschtastic karaoke rendition of Toto’s “Africa” at a tense, pivotal moment.

The director and his crew have an absolute blast detailing the garish neon wonderland of the seaside resort town where most of the action takes place.

That the cast is predominantly Arab-French and of a not-particularly-affluent social class is neither the main focus of the film nor wholly elided. Instead, Gavras and co-screenwriters Karim Boukercha and Noé Debré treat their characters’ backgrounds as a simply fact of life, letting their anxieties and experiences affect the madcap action onscreen, but not guide it.

In that sense, the broad comedy treats class and culture with an impressive sophistication. Think of it as “Pain & Gain” meets “La Haine,” played for laughs and box office.

Read original story ‘The World Is Yours’ Film Review: Romain Gavras’ Pop Comedy Is an Absolute Blast At TheWrap...

Acting is pretending. Great acting is doing it in such a way that audiences forget the artifice and buy into the reality of the character completely. Not many are likely to mistake what Marion Cotillard does in “Angel Face” for great acting, as the glamorous French star gives a performance so phony it feels like a “Saturday Night Live” parody of a white-trash trainwreck, downright pathetic in its attempt to achieve what came so naturally to relative amateur Bria Vinaite in last year’s “The Florida Project.”

Buried under garish makeup and a ton of glitter, this Côte d’Azur project looks suspiciously as if first-time director Vanessa Filho caught Sean Baker’s ebullient unfit-mother movie last year at Cannes and tried to do the same thing, with markedly less convincing results. In France, Cotillard isn’t taken all that seriously to begin with, which won’t help the film’s domestic chances,...

The title character in Angel Face (Gueule d’ange) could be either the thirtysomething, nearly always broke wild child who’s into reckless partying, heavy drinking and careless hook-ups, or her cute-as-a-button eight-year-old daughter, who is also not afraid of a good time — or even a stiff drink. In more ways than one, this good-looking first film from French director Vanessa Filho, set on the sunny French Riviera, recalls last year’s equally sunny-yet-dark The Florida Project as it charts the relationship of an irresponsible mother and her young offspring living on the fringes of society in a haze of intoxicants and irresponsibility.

There are...

The #MeToo movement took center stage at the Cannes Film Festival on Saturday, as Cate Blanchett, Marion Cotillard, Patty Jenkins and other female filmmakers and artists gathered together to agitate for better treatment of women in the movie business.

There were 82 women in total, a reference to the number of female directors who have climbed the steps of the Palais, the festival’s central theater, since Cannes began celebrating celluloid in 1942. In the same period, 1,866 male directors ascended the same stairs, Blanchett said in a statement, as the women linked their arms in solidarity. The Oscar-winning actress and Cannes jury head was flanked by Kristen Stewart, Marion Cotillard, Ava DuVernay, Léa Seydoux, and Salma Hayek.

“Women are not a minority in the world, yet the current state of the industry says otherwise,” Blanchett said. “As women, we all face our own unique challenges, but we stand together on these stairs...

UniFrance hosts talks 9:30 a.m. May 13 with New Faces of French Cinema at the UniFrance Terrace.

Leïla Bekhti

“Sink or Swim”

After debuting with supporting roles in such films as the gonzo-horror pic “Sheitan” and offering the sole female presence in macho juggernaut “A Prophet,” actress Bekhti became movie star Bekhti with the release of her 2010 comedy “All That Glitters.” Though that breakthrough role landed her a César and increased her box-office clout, the Parisian has not allowed herself to get too comfortable in any one gear.

“All my roles have to scare me,” she says. “Fear is reassuring; if one day I arrived on set and didn’t feel a bit afraid, that would be the end. Being afraid doesn’t stop me, it pushes me forward.”

So she has continually sought out first-time filmmakers, and is trying her hand at producing, developing a feature with theater director Julie Duclos.

Carole Lambert’s recently launched Windy Prods., which has the Marion Cotillard-starrer “Angel Face” playing in Un Certain Regard, is set to produce Joséphine Derobe’s fantasy feature “Vv,” Eric Capitaine’s “Les bonnes actions” and Manuel Schapira’s “Tropique de la violence.”

Derobe’s “Vv” follows Anna, a woman who wakes up in a hospital room after surviving a deadly car accident. Although she tries to remain optimistic, her return to normal life turns nightmarish as she undergoes rehabilitation therapy using virtual reality. The movie will mark the feature debut of Derobe, who is a well-known French 3D and Vr artist.

Shapira’s “Tropique de la Violence” is co-written with French novelist Delphine de Vigan, whose “Based on a True Story” was adapted into a film by Roman Polanski.

“Tropique” centers on Moïse, a boy who was abandoned at birth and adopted by a nurse in Mayotte who...

Girl Talk is a weekly look at women in film — past, present, and future.

While the Cannes Film Festival has long struggled to put together a Competition slate that includes more than a fraction of female filmmakers, there are major signs of diverse life throughout the rest of this year’s slate, which includes 20 female filmmakers set to debut new films at the lauded festival. At least said Competition includes a trio of intriguing (and very different-sounding) offerings, including films from both Cannes regulars and a newbie. Elsewhere, there’s still more exciting new work to be found from filmmakers both established and emerging.

The Un Certain Regard section — which often touts high numbers of female filmmakers — nearly reached parity with its slate, as six of its 13 films were directed by women. In the International Critics’ Week (Aka Semaine de la Critique) sidebar, they’re actually leading the way. In...

TV festival Series Mania, staged in France, is assembling a heavyweight lineup of speakers including Netflix CEO Reed Hastings, Endemol Shine Group’s Sophie Turner Laing and TF1 Group’s Gilles Pelisson. Hastings will be the subject of a Q&A session. Other panelists are set to include BBC director of policy Claire Sumer and Antony Root, VP, programming and production, HBO Europe. French minister of culture Françoise Nyssen and European Commission VP Andrus Ansip will close discussions. The Lille-based event runs April 27 – May 5.

French sales outfit Playtime has picked up international sales rights to Vanessa Filho’s feature debut Angel Face, which will get its world premiere in Un Certain Regard at Cannes. In what we hear is a special performance, Marion Cotillard plays a single mother who lives with her 8-year-old daughter in a small town in the south of France. One day, she suddenly chooses to abandon...

Playtime has acquired international sales to Vanessa Filho’s feature debut “Angel Face,” which will world premiere in Un Certain Regard at the Cannes Film Festival.

The film stars Oscar-winning actress Marion Cotillard as Marlene, a single mother who lives with her 8-year-old daughter, Elli, in a small town near the French Riviera. One day, Marlene suddenly chooses to abandon her daughter for a man she has just met during yet another night of excess. Elli must confront her mother’s demons to get her back.

Shot by star cinematographer Guillaume Schiffman (“The Artist”), “Angel Face” is produced by well-established producer Marc Missonnier (“Marguerite”) via his banner, Moana Films, and Carole Lambert (“Free Angela and All Political Prisoners”) through her new company, Windy Production. Stephane Celerier’s Mars Films is co-producing and will distribute it in France on May 23.

“Angel Face” was written by Filho, in collaboration with Alain Dias,...