The awards ceremony for the 74th Berlin International Film Festival kicks off Saturday night, where this year’s jury, headed by 12 Years a Slave and Black Panther actress Lupita Nyong’o, will hand out the coveted Gold and Silver Bears.
Maryam Moghaddam and Behtash Sanaeeha’s Iranian drama My Favourite Cake is being given good odds for an award this year. The drama, about a 70-year-old widow and her tentative attempts at romance with an age-appropriate taxi driver, was a critical fave. A win for the film would also send a political message after the Iranian government banned the directors from attending Berlin. If the jury picks out Cake for the Golden Bear it would be the third time in 10 years —following Jafar Panahi’s Taxi (2015) and There Is No Evil (2020) from Mohammad Rasoulof —that Berlin has given its top honor to Iranian directors in absentia. World sales for My...
Maryam Moghaddam and Behtash Sanaeeha’s Iranian drama My Favourite Cake is being given good odds for an award this year. The drama, about a 70-year-old widow and her tentative attempts at romance with an age-appropriate taxi driver, was a critical fave. A win for the film would also send a political message after the Iranian government banned the directors from attending Berlin. If the jury picks out Cake for the Golden Bear it would be the third time in 10 years —following Jafar Panahi’s Taxi (2015) and There Is No Evil (2020) from Mohammad Rasoulof —that Berlin has given its top honor to Iranian directors in absentia. World sales for My...
- 2/23/2024
- by Scott Roxborough
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Anatomy of a Fall French producer Marie-Ange Luciani put in a flying appearance at the Berlinale this week with Claire Burger’s coming-of-age drama Langue Étrangère which received a warm reception in competition.
With the Berlin premiere taking place the day after the Baftas in London (where Anatomy of a Fall won Best Screenplay) and eight days before the January 27 voting deadline for this year’s Academy Awards, Luciani was also in the thick of the awards campaign.
She co-produced the Oscar hopeful with David Thion at Les Films Pelléas under the banner of her Paris-based banner Les Films de Pierre, the company created by Yves Saint Laurent’s long-time business and life partner Pierre Bergé which she acquired on his death in 2018.
New production Langue Étrangère is a bittersweet coming-of-age tale starring Lilith Grasmug as French teenager Fanny who travels to Germany on language exchange trip. Her German counterpart...
With the Berlin premiere taking place the day after the Baftas in London (where Anatomy of a Fall won Best Screenplay) and eight days before the January 27 voting deadline for this year’s Academy Awards, Luciani was also in the thick of the awards campaign.
She co-produced the Oscar hopeful with David Thion at Les Films Pelléas under the banner of her Paris-based banner Les Films de Pierre, the company created by Yves Saint Laurent’s long-time business and life partner Pierre Bergé which she acquired on his death in 2018.
New production Langue Étrangère is a bittersweet coming-of-age tale starring Lilith Grasmug as French teenager Fanny who travels to Germany on language exchange trip. Her German counterpart...
- 2/23/2024
- by Melanie Goodfellow
- Deadline Film + TV
Claire Burger has used the troubled lives of the non-bourgeois to measure the pulse of culture since at least her 2009 César-winning short film It’s Free for Girls, which she co-directed with Marie Amachoukeli (Àma Gloria). That film addressed revenge porn before the phenomenon became such a common one, through the story of a working-class girl whose dream of getting her hairdressing diploma is derailed by a filmed sexual act.
In Burger’s tender and surprisingly funny third feature, Langue Étrangère, the issue du jour is the multiplicity of simultaneous crises that young people in Europe and beyond have to contend with today: from fascism to climate change, from structural racism to police brutality. Most significantly, and one of the reasons why this is such a necessary film, Burger links contemporary Europe’s political chaos to its psychic disarray. Might young people’s urge to protest collectively not also function...
In Burger’s tender and surprisingly funny third feature, Langue Étrangère, the issue du jour is the multiplicity of simultaneous crises that young people in Europe and beyond have to contend with today: from fascism to climate change, from structural racism to police brutality. Most significantly, and one of the reasons why this is such a necessary film, Burger links contemporary Europe’s political chaos to its psychic disarray. Might young people’s urge to protest collectively not also function...
- 2/20/2024
- by Diego Semerene
- Slant Magazine
Crossing several borders at once, the coming-of-age romance Langue Étrangère leaps over state lines, overcomes language barriers and defies heteronormative boundaries to tell the story of two 17-year-old pen pals who fall for one another while visiting their mutual homes to brush up on their German and French.
Directed by Claire Burger — herself a native of the Franco-German frontier city of Forbach — this tender and at times tense drama is carried by superb young leads Lilith Grasmug and Josefa Heinsius, the latter making her screen debut. They play a pair of teenage girls whose cross-cultural exchange induces sexual and political awakenings they can’t always control, bringing them together but also tearing them away from their families. Premiering in Berlin’s main competition, Burger’s touching third feature is a small film with a big heart that could cross outside of Europe’s borders as well.
What’s fascinating about...
Directed by Claire Burger — herself a native of the Franco-German frontier city of Forbach — this tender and at times tense drama is carried by superb young leads Lilith Grasmug and Josefa Heinsius, the latter making her screen debut. They play a pair of teenage girls whose cross-cultural exchange induces sexual and political awakenings they can’t always control, bringing them together but also tearing them away from their families. Premiering in Berlin’s main competition, Burger’s touching third feature is a small film with a big heart that could cross outside of Europe’s borders as well.
What’s fascinating about...
- 2/20/2024
- by Jordan Mintzer
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
‘Langue Étrangère’ Review: Two Foreign Exchange Students Fall for One Another in Volatile Teen Drama
At age 17, there are only so many ways a high school student can flee a suffocating life. Bullied by her fellow students, Fanny (Lilith Grasmug) tried to commit suicide — or so she says — but fortunately, that didn’t work. Now, this shy, self-questioning and clearly troubled teen is counting on a foreign exchange program to make a fresh start, escaping to Leipzig, Germany, to get away from the mean girls back home in Strasbourg, France.
“Party Girl” co-director Claire Burger’s third feature, “Langue Étrangère,” splits its time between the two cities. The first half takes place in Leipzig, where Fanny forms an intense intellectual and erotic connection with her German pen pal, Lena (Josefa Heinsius). Fanny’s host is practically hostile when this uninvited foreigner first shows up, but that’s before a disarmingly candid (and frequently dishonest) Fanny starts to share stories invented to earn sympathy. By the second half,...
“Party Girl” co-director Claire Burger’s third feature, “Langue Étrangère,” splits its time between the two cities. The first half takes place in Leipzig, where Fanny forms an intense intellectual and erotic connection with her German pen pal, Lena (Josefa Heinsius). Fanny’s host is practically hostile when this uninvited foreigner first shows up, but that’s before a disarmingly candid (and frequently dishonest) Fanny starts to share stories invented to earn sympathy. By the second half,...
- 2/19/2024
- by Peter Debruge
- Variety Film + TV
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