indieWIRE INTERVIEW | "Roman de Gare" Director Claude Lelouch

That the number of French films to find distribution here continues to dwindle is hardly news. What's less noted is that while American cinephiles are familiar with French art film -- Jacques Rivette, Olivier Assayas, Arnaud Desplechin come to mind -- they've had less exposure to France's "boulevard" crowd pleasers. (Exceptions, of course, are art crossovers "Amelie" and "La Vie en Rose"). Now along comes "Roman de Gare" from Claude Lelouch, a thriller with the pace and jolting twists of a studio film. It proudly flaunts its pop creds: roman de gare translates as "airport reading' or "potboiler" and Lelouch embraces the strong suit, as he sees it, of commercial fare.
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iW PROFILE | "My Blueberry Nights" Director Wong Kar Wai

"I don't think of this as a road movie," filmmaker Wong Kar Wai told New Yorkers last night, during a conversation about his new movie, "My Blueberry Nights," which was partially filmed in Lower Manhattan. "The original idea was to have the film just be about Norah and her relationship with the owners of this restaurant," Wong Kar Wai revealed. "But it was too expensive to shoot just in New York and the characters began to expand across the country."
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indieWIRE INTERVIEW | "Love Songs" Director Christophe Honore

Whatever it is that Americans glamorize about Paris, the films of Christophe Honore possess in spades. Stylish, irreverent, gorgeously rendered and unabashedly romantic, his features are both modern and classically Gallic and "Love Songs," a musical that IFC Films opens in the U.S. this Friday theatrically (and also on demand), may be his best yet. indieWIRE couldn't have been more enthused to talk with him about this film and on the state of French film in general during an interview during NYC's Rendezvous With French Cinema series.
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indieWIRE INTERVIEW | "City of Men" Director Paolo Morelli

In 2002, Fernando Meirelles' "City of God" became a $7.5 million foreign-language hit in North America, managing a bunch of Oscar nods with it, including best director. Six years later, longtime Meirelles collaborator Paulo Morelli is releasing a companion piece to that film, "City of Men." Largely based on characters and some storylines developed in television series loosely spawned from "God," "Men" largely uses the same cast as the series, which ran four seasons on Brazil's TV Globo (and was released on DVD in the U.S. in fall 2006). But apart from the setting, "Men" has no actual plot connections to "God," as Morelli's film follows the friendship of two favela teenagers. indieWIRE talked to Morelli about the film, which is being released in 77 locations across North America this Friday.
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indieWIRE INTERVIEW | "The Year My Parents Went On Vacation" Director Cao Hamburger

Brazil's official submission for the 2008 Academy Awards (for which it made the "longlist" of finalists but failed to receive one of the controversial nominations), Cao Hamburger's "The Year My Parents Went On Vacation" has made the rounds of over 30 worldwide film festivals, including Berlin and Toronto. Set around the 1970 World Cup, "Vacation" details a couple who leave their son Marco with his grandfather, only to have his grandfather die of a heart attack just after the parents leave. Alone and without knowing where is parents are, Marco stays with his grandfather's next door neighbor Shlomo in the Jewish community of Bom Retiro. Screening in limited release as of last Friday, Hamburger spoke with indieWIRE about his experiences on "Vacation."
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indieWIRE INTERVIEW | "The Counterfeiters" Director Stefan Ruzowitzky

No, it's not for his famous flop of an American drag film, "All the Queen's Men," that he received an Oscar nomination. Forty-six-year-old Viennese director Stefan Ruzowitzky learned something facile but important in the industry: actors carry baggage. He had no idea that he cast not Matt LeBlanc as a World War Two interloper in women's clothes trying to learn war secrets, but in fact Joey from "Friends." How should Ruzowitzky know how popular the program was? In fact, his nomination is for Best Foreign Language Film, Austria's selection "The Counterfeiters," with less exposed but better performers who are known quantities, with serious drama outweighing the bad attempts at humor, and about a topic he knows well: the fact-based story of Jews who know how to create fake bills surviving, even living and eating fairly well, in concentration camps in return for their assistance in betraying the Allies in favor of the Nazis by creating money to undermine the enemies' economies.
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IndieWIRE INTERVIEW | "In Bruges" Director Martin McDonagh

Talk to Martin McDonagh and the phrase he keeps returning to is "dark and dangerous." Certainly those words -- along with hilarious, twisted, fresh -- capture the "In-Yer-Face Theatre" of this Anglo-Irish writer. He crashed onto the scene at age twenty-three with "The Beauty Queen of Leenane" (which he claims he wrote in eight days), then knocked out a series of plays marked by violence and ghoulish glee, mostly set in Ireland in some "lonesome west" (the title of one play) of the soul. Lionized as an important new playwright, McDonagh at one point had six productions on London stages at the same time. Yet his great love, he claims, has always been film. After getting his feet wet with an Academy Award-winning short, McDonagh now makes the leap to feature length with "In Bruges."
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indieWIRE INTERVIEW | "The Band's Visit" Director "Eran Kolirin

After the screening in last year's Cannes, the applause wouldn't stop, keeping the visibly moved filmmakers and cast in the theater. The film was "The Band's Visit," a first feature from Israeli director Eran Kolirin. Arriving without buzz on the Croisette, it quickly emerged as a gem of Cannes '07, and nabbed the international critic's prize for the Un Certain Regard section. "Band" is a quiet, pared-down film, which like a story by Chekhov, strips bare its characters' lives. Toplined by the great Ronit Elkabetz, leading Israeli actor Sasson Gabai, and gifted Palestinian actor Saleh Bakri, it concerns an Egyptian Police band that arrives in Israel to play at an initiation ceremony for an Arab cultural center.
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iW PROFILE | "Caramel" Director Nadine Labaki

"Caramel," the funny, sharp-eyed import about a beauty shop that opens in theaters today, set tongues a-flapping in Cannes last year as well as in 40 countries so far--by far the largest release a Lebanese film has ever received. It also is the first movie made in Beirut that doesn't reference the war. Director/writer/co-star Nadine Labaki, who was 17 when the war ended in 1990, says that omission was "a very conscious choice." During a recent whirlwind visit to NYC, she explained why to indieWIRE.
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PARK CITY '08 INTERVIEW | "Eat, For This Is My Body" Director Michelange Quay

EDITORS NOTE: This is part of a series of interviews, conducted via email, profiling first-time feature directors who have films screening at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival. Screening in the New Frontier program at Sundance '08, Michelange Quay's first feature uniquely discusses the evolution of power and the relationship between black boys and white women in the director's native Haiti. As Sundance's Shari Frilot explains, "Eat" "seductively begs the viewer to abandon the rules of traditional storytelling and instead embrace a poetic, cinematic language." Frilot finds a "muscular confidence and inspired dreamlike quality to Quay's filmmaking." He "evocatively blends gorgeous imagery with an infectious musical energy to create a story that is largely free of dialogue and entirely visceral in effect."
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PARK CITY '08 INTERVIEW | "Up The Yangtze" Director Yung Chang

EDITORS NOTE: This is part of a series of interviews, conducted via email, profiling first-time feature directors who have films screening at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival. Premiering at Sundance '08 in the Documentary Competition program, Yung Chang's "Up The Yangtze" examines the effects of the construction of the massive Three Gorges Dam on the Yangtze River. The dam is to become the largest hydroelectric power station in the world, but with this comes the displacement of millions of residents and the destruction of landmarks. Yang follows two young people effected by the project, and the result provides "a final snapshot of a rapidly disappearing cultural landscape," says Sundance's Rosie Wong. Wong notes that "juxtaposing the Yangtze's stunning panorama with the reality of Yu Shui's poignant story, Chang shows the tenuous balance between China's rich cultural past and its modernized future."
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PARK CITY '08 INTERVIEW | "Nerakhoon (The Betrayal)" Director Ellen Kuras

EDITORS NOTE: This is part of a series of interviews, conducted via email, profiling first-time feature directors who have films screening at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival. With the rise of a communist government in Laos, lillings and arrests became common among those afflicted with the former govenrment and the Americans. Families were torn apart -- some finally emigrating to the U.S. Spanning 20 years, vet D.P. Ellen Kuras debuts her first directorial effort "Nerakhoon (The Betrayal)"with Laotian co-director Thavisouk Phrasavath, who is the main subject of the film. The Sundance Film Festival's Cara Mertes comments in this year's fest catalog, "'Nerakhoon (The Betrayal)' is an exquisitely crafted tale about a country, a family, and a young man who discovers the power and resilience of the human spirit. The film is screening in SFF's documentary competition.
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PARK CITY '08 INTERVIEW | "Donkey Punch" Director Olly Blackburn

EDITORS NOTE: This is part of a series of interviews, conducted via email, profiling first-time feature directors who have films screening at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival. Sex, drugs and beautiful people on board a luxurious yacht in the Mediterranean--not your typical setting for a horror film, but "Donkey Punch" isn't your typical horror film, according to the '08 Sundance Film Festival catalog. Three beautiful women vacation in a Mediterranean beach town and meet three guys eager to show them a good time, and take them to the yachts where they serve as crew. With the owner away and the sexual tensions rising, the group heads out to sea -- and the terror begins... Says Sundance's Trevor Groth, "Blackburn's gut-wrenching, nerve-shredding 'Donkey Punch' stimulates the senses and shatters conventions." Co-writer/director Olly Blackburn's "Donkey Punch" will screen in the upcoming Sundance Film Festival's Park City at Midnight section.
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PARK CITY '08 INTERVIEW | "Anvil! The True Story of Anvil" Director Sacha Gervasi

EDITORS NOTE: This is the first in a series of interviews, conducted via email, profiling first-time feature directors who have films screening at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival. At 14, Toronto school friends Steve "Lips" Kudlow and Robb Reiner made a pact to rock together forever. Their band, Anvil, went on to become the "demigods of Canadian metal," releasing one of the heaviest albums in metal history, 1982's Metal on Metal. The album influenced a musical generation, including Metallica, Slayer, and Anthrax, and went on to sell millions of records. But Anvil's career took a different path--straight to obscurity. Director Sacha Gervasi, according to the Sundance Film Festival's John Cooper, has "concocted a wonderful and often hilarious account of Anvil's last-ditch quest for elusive fame and fortune. His ingenious filmmaking may first lead you to think this a mockumentary, but it isn't...'Anvil! The True Story of Anvil' is a timeless tale of survival and the unadulterated passion it takes to follow your dream, year after year." The film will screen in Sundance's Spectrum section.
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indieWIRE INTERVIEW | "Persepolis" Co-directors Marjane Satrapi and Vincent Paronnaud

When "Persepolis" screened in competition in Cannes this past May, Iran raised a ruckus, protesting to the French government about the film's negative take on Islam. But it will take more than Iran's ire to stop this baby, an adaptation of Marjane Satrapi's acclaimed graphic novels. Not only did France wave off the protests from Teheran, "Persepolis" -- co-directed by Satrapi and Vincent Paronnaud -- has continued to reap honors, including the Cannes Jury Prize, Oscar contender for Best Foreign Picture (France), winner for Best Animated Feature from the New York Film Critics Circle and the Los Angeles Film Critics Association, a Golden Globe nominee for Best Foreign Film, and the list goes on and on.
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indieWIRE INTERVIEW | "The Bubble" Director Eytan Fox

Isreali director Eytan Fox has followed up 2004's "Walk On Water" with "The Bubble," a film that earned a warm reception at last year's Toronto International Film Festival. The film explores the Tel Aviv's isolated relationship to the rest of its conflicted country through the eyes of a group of friends with varying genders, religions and sexual orientations. The film opens this week in limited release.
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indieWIRE INTERVIEW | "Vanaja" Director Rajnesh Domalpalli

Indian director Rajnesh Domalpalli's "Vanaja" centers on the 15 year-old daughter of a financially troubled fisherman. The girl goes to work in the local landlady's house hoping to learn Kuchipudi dance and does well. But, the landlady's son returns from the U.S. and what begins as an innocent sexual chemistry turns ugly, resulting in rape. Set in rural South India, a place where social barriers are built stronger than ancient fort walls, the film explores the chasm that divides classes as a young girl struggles to come of age. The fim screened last year in the Discovery section at the Toronto International Film Festival and also won Best Feature Debut at the 2007 Berlin International Film Festival. "Vanaja" opens Friday, August 31 at New York's Cinema Village and September 14 in Los Angeles and Chicago with other cities to follow.
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indieWIRE INTERVIEW | "2 Days in Paris" Director Julie Delpy

Julie Delpy is the thinking man's ideal Frenchwoman--at least in her screen persona of Celine, the enchantress she created in Richard Linklater's cult films, "Before Sunrise" and "Before Sunset." An etherial porcelain blonde, Celine is sexually knowing yet unthreatening; independent but vulnerable; articulate, principled and a bit flaky. Better yet, she has a way with a Nina Simone song (see final scene of "Before Sunset") that would have kept even a steadier husband than Jesse from flying home to his wife. Now with "2 Days in Paris" (opening August 10th by Samuel Goldwyn Films and Red Envelope) multi-hyphenate Delpy makes her bow as a filmmaker.
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The Start of a Journey: An Appreciation of Ingmar Bergman

I firmly believe that I can credit Ingmar Bergman with my understanding and appreciation of cinema as an art form. Looking back on my life, there have been distinct stages to my growing awareness of film as something more than entertainment, more than narrative, more than itself--in childhood, "Fantasia" clued me in to the essentials: sound plus image; in preadolescence, "2001: A Space Odyssey" forced me to acknowledge that storytelling needn't be cinema's ultimate goal, and that the unknown is far more pleasurable than what's understood; and in adolescence, when I began to crave even stronger stuff, there was Ingmar Bergman, whose provocatively titled, in-every-way foreign films lined the shelves of my local public library. Growing up suburban, I had no choice but to first witness all classic films in full-framed videotape, with resolutely unrestored transfer and sound, yet this hardly demystified the experience of discovering these new forms of cinema (that were sometimes as "new" as forty years old). Askew images stared back from the boxes, and in the case of "The Seventh Seal"'s death figure, literally beckoned me.
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indieWIRE INTERVIEW | "Moliere" Director Laurent Tirard

With the ascent of President Nicholas Sarkozy -- who jogs, plays at French cowboy, and has a jones for things American -- the Gauls and the Yanks have entered a cautious entente cordiale. The coziness in the political arena is echoed on the cultural front this summer by Americans' love affair with French cinema. This holds true especially for the mainstream entertainments that find distribution here. Viewers can get their French fix without getting lost in arthouse longueurs, or pistol-whipped by such Cannes faves as Bruno Dumont's "Flandres," with its rutting couples and atrocities of war. Now from Sony Pictures Classics comes Laurent Tirard's "Moliere," the latest contender in the specialty market to hit these shores.
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