Virginie Efira Latest Celebrity News & Gossip

Saint Laurent had a star-studded crowd at its Paris Fashion Week show!

Elsa Keslassy International Correspondent Despite being plagued by harsh reviews from French critics and a derisive retaliation by director Ridley Scott, “Napoleon” had a strong opening in France on Wednesday, grossing an estimated €868,000 ($946,000) from approximately 120,000 admissions. The figure, unveiled by Comscore France, includes about 8,000 tickets sold at preview screenings across France, notably in Paris where Sony Pictures held a lavish world premiere of the historical epic on Nov.

EXCLUSIVE: The Bureau creator Eric Rochant is today formally unveiling his production banner, Maui Entertainment, which has quietly launched with backing from Federation Studios.

Egypt’s El Gouna Film Festival (GFF) has unveiled a first wave of international titles due to play at its upcoming comeback sixth edition, unfolding from October 13 to 20 after a one-year hiatus.

Jessica Kiang Apparently determined to prove herself francophone cinema’s most inexhaustible precious resource, Virginie Efira once again lights up the screen prior to burning it down in a role that, after Justine Triet’s “Sibyl,” Paul Verhoeven’s “Benedetta” and Rebecca Zlotowski’s “Other People’s Children,” is of a type she has come to define: the strong-willed, smart fortysomething woman chafing against her society’s conformist expectations. Delphine Deloget’s debut “All to Play For” features one of Efira’s more straightforward incarnations of this dramatic type — fewer sly kinks, no arch winks. But she is no less riveting and lovely for it and in Deloget’s confident, gentle grip, she turns in one of her most committed performances, all the more moving for its commitment to valorizing the kind of woman seldom treated on screen with such respect and compassion. 

Ben Croll Launching out of Cannes Premiere, Valerie Donzelli’s “Just the Two of Us” is a feverish psychological thriller about a woman brought deeper and deeper into a toxic relationship. And if Donzelli had always intended to make the project ever since reading the source novel back in 2014, the lockdowns of 2020 helped push certain elements to the front of her mind.   “It’s really the story of a woman trapped under glass,” Donzelli tells Variety. “She’s confined with her husband, isolated and unable to see anyone, cut off from the world. I really wanted to explore how this hold makes you more and more disconnected from life.”

French director Justine Triet’s Anatomy Of A Fall premiered in Competition at Cannes over the weekend to a buzzy reception with its star Sandra Hüller being tipped as a front-runner for the festival’s coveted best actress prize.

France tv distribution has acquired international sales rights on French drama “All To Play For” ahead of its world premiere in the Cannes Film Festival’s Un Certain Regard section in May.

After the launch of its first original content in 2022, Disney+ France is expanding and announced a slate of new productions at the Series Mania festival in Lille Wednesday afternoon.

Elsa Keslassy International Correspondent The blockbuster French cast of Amazon Prime Video’s third season of “LOL: Qui rit, qui sort” speaks volumes about the Japanese variety format’s tremendous popularity in France. The Amazon Original series, adapted from the format “LOL: Last One Laughing,” scored its biggest launch to date on Prime Video in France since bowing on March 10. The show is one of the streamer’s first unscripted originals in France and has been a major coup as a brand exercise that’s succeeded with limited resources — certainly in comparison to scripted comedy. Adaptations of “LOL” have also thrived in Italy and Germany where they have ranked as the most watched local titles on the service, respectively. Local versions are also available in Spain, Canada, Mexico and Australia (hosted by Rebel Wilson).

Elsa Keslassy International Correspondent While the market for foreign-language cinema has shrank, the packed opening of the Rendez-Vous with French cinema in New York hosted by Film at Lincoln Center and Unifrance on March 1 underscored American audiences’ enduring love for Gallic fare. At least when it comes to New Yorkers. Some of France’s brightest writers/filmmakers, including Alice Winocour (“Paris Memories”), Rebecca Zlotowski (“Other People’s Children”), Sebastien Marnier (“The Origin of Evil”) and Cesar-winning star Virginie Efira and famous actor Melvil Poupaud traveled to New York with Unifrance, the French film promotion org. On top of presenting their movies, some talents on the ground took part in masterclasses at Film at Lincoln Center, Columbia University and Brooklyn College, as well as a creative workshop with emerging filmmakers participating in the Gotham Marcie Bloom Fellowship in Film.

Elsa Keslassy International Correspondent Music Box is unveiling the trailer for “Revoir Paris,” a French drama boasting a Cesar-winning performance by Virginie Efira. The movie, which bowed at Cannes’ Directors Fortnight and played at Toronto, will have its New York premiere on June 23 at Film at Lincoln Center and IFC Film Center. A meditation on healing, the film tells the story of Mia (Efira), a married translator who survived a mass shooting in a Paris restaurant, and feels haunted by the trauma, yet unable to recollect memories of the tragic attack. Determined to reconstruct the sequence of events and reestablish a sense of normalcy, Mia finds herself repeatedly returning to the bistro where the shooting happened. In the process she forms bonds with fellow survivors, including banker Thomas (Benoît Magimel) and teenager Félicia (Nastya Golubeva). Efira, who just won a Cesar Award for her role in the film, stars opposite Magimel, the Cesar-winning actor of “Pacifiction,” as well as Grégoire Colin (“Both Sides of the Blade”) and Golubeva (“Annette”).

Brad Pitt made a surprise appearance at the 2023 Cesar Awards to pay tribute to his frequent collaborator, David Fincher!

Dominik Moll’s The Night of The 12th has won best film at the 28th edition of France’s Lumière Awards in Paris on Monday evening.

Naman Ramachandran An influential panel of buyers from Asia and Europe identified multiple problems in the current, depressed post-pandemic box office landscape for arthouse films and attempted to find solutions at a Platform Busan panel on Monday. The panel included Laure Parleani of Totem Films (France), Kim Heaok of Hark & Company (Japan), Beril Heral of Filmarti (Turkey) and June Lee from Korean streamer Watcha. The panel was moderated by Variety Asia editor Patrick Frater. Parleani mentioned that France has had its worst box office September in 42 years, with only Rebecca Zlotowski’s Venice title “Other People’s Children” and Alice Winocour’s Cannes title “Revoir Paris,” both starring Virginie Efira, bringing some cheer amongst local fare.

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.

Elsa Keslassy International Correspondent Music Box Filmshas acquired U.S. distribution rights to Alice Winocour’s heartfelt drama “Paris Memories” which world premiered at Cannes’ Directors Fortnight and had a gala screening at Toronto. It’s one of the five finalists for France’s official submission to the 95th Academy Awards. The critically acclaimed film stars Virginie Efira as Mia, a survivor of the terrorist attack that hit Paris venues, including the Bataclan concert hall and several bistros, in November 2015. Three months after the tragedy, Mia still feels unable to pick her life back up so she sets off to investigate her memories to find a way back to happiness.

Blended families, where children alternate between parents and spend their lives with an assortment of half-siblings or kids from their parents’ previous relationships, are now so normal that it’s easy to overlook how painful the blending process can be. Bitter separations, disrupted households, new beds and new people appearing in them, the resentments children feel for the grown-ups’ failures and the interloping new partners pawing at the mom or dad who is rightfully theirs: none of this is easy, even in splits later described smoothly as “amicable.”

Guy Lodge Film Critic While waiting to pick up five-year-old Leila from judo practice, personable 40-ish schoolteacher Rachel introduces herself to another parent as Leila’s stepmom, before backtracking to awkwardly correct herself. Later, when a kindly stranger on a train remarks on the resemblance between the two, Rachel doesn’t bother clarifying, merely accepting the benign compliment. Her relationship to Leila is both unremarkably simple and complicated by an absence of clear language for it: She’s dating the girl’s father, and the attachment between woman and child has grown perhaps stronger than the relationship on which it depends. It’s the kind of delicate everyday situation that rarely occupies the centre of a film, and in the superb “Other People’s Children,” writer-director Rebecca Zlotowski negotiates it with warm intelligence and compassion.

French director Rebecca Zlotowski makes her Venice Film Festival competition debut on Sunday with drama Other People’s Children, casting the often neglected, sometimes maligned figure of the stepmother in a fresh light.

Elsa Keslassy International Correspondent Disney+ has ordered “Tout va bien,” a new French original series which will be co-directed and co-produced by ‘The Bureau’ creator and showrunner Eric Rochant. The anticipated series will also be directed by Xavier Legrand (“Custody”), Cathy Verney (“Vernon Subutex”) and Audrey Estrougo (“Supremes”). Slated to start shooting in Paris soon, “Tout va bien” is created by Camille de Castelnau, a rising talent whose screenwriting credits include episodes of “The Bureau,” “Call My Agent” and “Standing Up.” “Tout va bien” will be headlined by Virginie Efira (pictured) who stars in Rebecca Zlotowski’s upcoming Venice competition title “Les enfants des autres,” and Nicole Garcia (“Lupin”), among others.

EXCLUSIVE: Here’s your first English-language trailer for Rebecca Zlotowski’s Venice Film Festival world premiere Other People’s Children (Les Enfants Des Autres).

EXCLUSIVE: Coda producer Pathé has concluded a raft of sales on its Cannes slate including for starry French drama Masquerade, Directors’ Fortnight entry Paris Memories and Penelope Cruz title L’Immensita.

Peter Debruge Chief Film CriticCANNES — The awards show for the 75th anniversary Cannes Film Festival is underway, bringing 12 days of competition between 21 international features to a close. “Benedetta” star Virginie Efira is hosting, while several directors can be spotted in the audience waiting to receive their awards, including Claire Denis (“Stars at Noon”), Park Chan-wook (“Decision to Leave”) and Belgian brothers Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne (“Tori & Lokita”).Guillaume Canet presented best actress honors to Zar Amir-Ebrahimi, who plays the reporter who risks her own life to catch a serial killer in “Holy Spider.” The tense true-crime thriller exposes the crimes and aftermath of a man who targeted prostitutes, and that portion of society which accepted his religious justifications he claimed for cleaning the streets.

Guy Lodge Film CriticIt’s over six years since the November 2015 terrorist attacks in Paris that ruptured the country’s national consciousness and political agenda, but the events are only gaining currency for European filmmakers. This year’s Berlin festival brought us Isaki Lacesta’s “One Year, One Night,” an impressionistic reflection on survivor’s guilt in the long-term wake of the Bataclan nightclub massacre; at Cannes this year, Cedric Jimenez’s thriller “November” takes a more procedural approach to the aftermath.

Naman Ramachandran Red hot French stars Tahar Rahim and Virginie Efira star in director Serge Bozon’s latest film “Don Juan.” The film premieres at the Cannes Film Festival’s Cannes Premiere strand. Jilted on his wedding day, Laurent, a stage actor playing the role of the famous seducer Don Juan, cannot help but see his ex-fiancée in every women he meets. In an attempt to mend his broken heart and ego, he tries to seduce them all but none are receptive to his elaborate (and musical) advances.

Ben Croll To the degree that a global sales division can shape its own image, Pathé’s international arm has built and bolstered its current brand around strong IP, recognizable faces and unbelievable but true stories.To see those elements in play, one need only look to last year, when projects including Paul Verhoeven’s “Benedetta” and Martin Bourboulon’s “Eiffel” lifted from world and film history as they showcased stars such as Virginie Efira, Romain Duris and Emma Mackey, while collectively finding homes in more than a hundred international territories. (In the U.S., for example, “Benedetta” sold to IFC Films, while “Eiffel” went to Blue Fox Entertainment.)To witness those same imperatives, but supercharged, one need only glimpse Pathé’s 2022 slate, which goes long on hometown IP and star power.