Cannes Buyers Flock to Leonor Serraille’s Competition Film ‘Mother and Son’ (EXCLUSIVE)

Leo Barraclough International Features EditorDark Star Pictures has acquired distribution rights in North America for Australian gay love story “Lonesome,” directed by Craig Boreham. Following its world premiere at the Seattle Intl.

Following its Venice Film Festival bow and seven César Awards including for Best Film, Lost Illusions was the top weekend title at two core NYC arthouses — taking $10,850 of its estimated $13,579 three-day gross from Film Forum and Film at Lincoln Center.

Shirley Halperin Executive Editor, MusicSpotify has revealed its performance and panel lineup for this year’s Cannes Lions Festival, taking place Monday, June 20 to Thursday, June 23.Back for an encore is Spotify Beach, which will make its home on the Croisette daily from dusk till dawn.Performances take place each night and will feature Kendrick Lamar, DJ Pee .Wee, aka Anderson .Paak, Kaytranada, the Black Keys and Post Malone, plus an as-yet-unannounced artist.DJ Henrie, the co-host of the Spotify Original Who We Be podcast, will be spinning as Spotify’s ‘House DJ’ throughout the week.Elsewhere on Spotify’s Lions agenda, founder and CEO Daniel Ek will sit for a talk on the future of media, creators and fandom, moderated by Sara Fischer of Axios.

Elsa Keslassy International CorrespondentParis-based sales company Charades has closed a raft of deals on “Forever Young,” Valeria Bruni Tedeschi’s film which competed at Cannes and earned a warm critical welcome. “Forever Young” opens at the end of the 1980s in Paris and follows a young troupe of comedians who have just have been admitted to Les Amandiers, the prestigious theater school headed by Patrice Chéreau. Bruni Tedeschi wrote the script alongside Agnès De Sacy and regular collaborator Noémie Lvovsky.

Cameron Diaz is among the group of females embracing the term “older mom.”During a conversation with her friend Gwyneth Paltrow for the GOOP’s podcast, Diaz shared details of her life as a mother at the age of 49. “The whole concept of aging has just changed completely, even in the last ten years,” Diaz said.“It’s totally opened up.

Here’s a fun bit of symmetry: Of the four French titles competing for this year’s Palme d’Or, the first to screen was “Brother and Sister” and the last was “Mother and Son.” (Presumably daughters and grandparents will get their due next year.) Of the two, “Mother and Son” director Léonor Serraille bests her colleague Arnaud Desplechin in the family-saga sweepstakes, delivering a decade-spanning immigration drama that plays on the most intimate of registers.The film closed out the Cannes competition on Friday, providing it an auspicious berth. This year’s jury will go into deliberations with actress Annabelle Lengronne fresh in mind; should the actress win, she won’t have far to travel.She isn’t entirely the lead, as the triptych follows a Franco-Ivorian family in chapters dedicated to each member.

The mother of the 18-year-old who killed 19 kids and two teachers at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas is speaking out.

Guy Lodge Film CriticNobody who has lived their entire life in one country can fully understand the strange, intimate disruption of emigrating as a family. For a time, parents and children are united and equal in disorientation, the adults’ authority on hold as all parties mutually wander and fumble their way through new cultures, geographies and social circles — a shared rite of passage, cutting through separating decades.

When his mother spoke, Ernest remembers, everything sounded important. “I cling to her light,” he tells us in voiceover, an adult remembering how that felt. The Ernest he is recalling is just a little boy (Milan Doucansi), snuggled against Rose (Annabelle Lengronne, a wonderfully vivid presence), with his grave and clever older brother Jean (Sidy Fofana) sitting opposite on a train taking them from Cote d’Ivoire to a new French life.

San Francisco Pride organisers have been told by the city’s Democratic Mayor London Breed that she will boycott the annual Pride parade, if police officers are not allowed to march  in uniform. Police presence in pride marches have been a contentious issue across the world, including in Australia. In 2020, in the wake of protests over the murder of George Floyd, SF Pride organisers had banned the police from marching in the parade in uniform.

Clayton Davis The 2022 Cannes Film Festival is nearing its conclusion, and soon the jury will be selecting awards for this year’s impressive, albeit quieter, slate of films. After last year’s “Titane” from Julia Ducournau made history as the first female-directed film to fully win the Palme d’Or (Jane Campion’s “The Piano” tied with “Farewell My Concubine” in 1993), at this point in the festival, it doesn’t seem likely that a woman-directed project will walk away with it this year.“Forever Young” by French-Italian director Valeria Bruni Tedeschi seems to be the only film directed by a woman that has so far invoked any passion for bringing it to the finish line.

Marta Balaga Italy’s Valerio Ferrara was named the winner of the 25th edition La Cinef for his warm take on a hapless barber who believes in conspiracy theories in “A Conspiracy Man” (“Il Barbiere Complottista”). Laughing stock of his family, nobody takes him seriously. Until he is arrested by the police.“Personally, I have a special affection for the cinema of this country,” said Canadian actor Monia Chokri, praising the director’s sense of humor.

Nick Vivarelli International CorrespondentVeteran Hollywood multi-hyphenate George Gallo (“Bad Boys,” “The Comeback Trail”) is attached to direct “Gambino,” a high-end biopic about organized crime boss Carlo Gambino that Gallo is co-writing with two-time Oscar winner Nick Vallelonga (“Green Book”).The ambitious project, announced in Cannes, is being lead produced by Julius R. Nasso, also a Hollywood veteran, best known for his production partnership with Steven Seagal that went sour.

Tom Hollander Starring In Billie August Post-WWII Drama ‘Me, You’

Cannes has had another protest on the red-carpet, a couple of days after a naked woman demonstrated against violence towards women in Ukraine.

Cannes Film Festival is making efforts to diversify beyond the cavalcade of many of the same male auteurs. Instead, there will be a record number of women directors in competition.Now the bad news.

Leo Barraclough International Features EditorErotic love story “99 Moons,” which has its world premiere in Cannes’ ACID sidebar today, has kicked off international sales. Berlin-based M-Appeal is handling the rights to the film, which is directed by Jan Gassmann.Arthouse VOD platform Filmin has taken the rights in Spain, and arthouse distributor StraDa Films has taken the films for Greece. France and Latin America are in negotiation.

For his most subdued film yet, Belgian director Felix van Groeningen, along with co-directing partner Charlotte Vandermeersch take to the Italian Alps for a decades-spanning story of friendship. Following Groeningen’s solo effort, 2018’s “Beautiful Boy,” “The Eight Mountains” is a quiet return to form with its stunning mountain scenery and strong performances from Luca Marinelli and Alessandro Borghi, but this elegiac personal epic is far too languid for its length.