In addition to geographical Europe, the pan-European concept of cinema also includes world cinema that uses the four major film festivals and their markets as the starting point for production, appearance, and competition.
However, European cinema in 2024 will still not be able to get out of the gloom due to the ongoing impact of the border war.
The obstacles of the past - the reduction of the national cultural fund, the conservative funding of film festivals, and the absorption of technical teams by streaming media have not fundamentally changed.
This makes it even more difficult to produce such pan-European films.
And the fact that European film directors have also presented their first or another English-language film is not surprising in the background.
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empire
L'Empire
Directed by Bruno Dumont
Screenwriter Bruno Dumont
Starring: Camille Cotán/Lina Kudri/Fables Ruchini/Ana Maria Watrumme
Genre: Comedy/Sci-Fi
Country: France/Germany/Italy
Star Wars in the backyard
At first glance, the name [Empire] seems to be impossible to associate with the name of Bruno Dumont.
is the director himself, who has never been framed by any movie.
After all, can you imagine that when he filmed the French [Joan of Arc], he made a modern musical film and used French rap without any scruples?
So, [Empire] will be another alternative historical film?
Or will Dumont justify Emperor Napoleon? Neither.
Dumont unexpectedly stepped into the realm of the sci-fi genre, at least on the surface.
An ordinary, quiet French seaside village with powerful alien warriors living in seclusion.
This first sentence is very much like the starting point of the festival's venture capital project.
So after that, it's a humanistic soft sci-fi? Not yet.
We see huge ships hovering over the village like [descending], and the battle is inevitable, the question is how the earthlings will survive.
So, this is going to be a [Fifth Element]-style space epic? Still not.
The relatively closed French-style countryside, Fabrice Lucini's iconic "cheap face", the inexplicable "Prince Charming".
The flustered French and body language of the celebrities is impossible without some French humor.
For us, perhaps the challenge was overcoming language and cultural barriers to understanding Dumont's humor.
The distributor's so-called "Star Wars in the backyard" may be a brilliant phrase to define the film.
As if to prove that this is definitely not just literally connected to Star Wars, in the trailer, we were also surprised to find the "blue lightsaber" dancing.
This is undoubtedly a highlight of how we pay attention to how the film uses and even deconstructs science fiction elements.
Of course, it is not impossible for Dumont to honestly play the lightsaber in the camera in the end, don't let imagination limit Dumont's honesty.
At the beginning of the film's project (2022), the new generation of French popular Adele Hanel ([Portrait of a Burning Woman]) and Mesozoic actress Vergenie Eiffera ([Madonna]) have announced their joining.
However, due to the delay of the production cycle and schedule problems, the two stars are no longer in the starring lineup.
However, Romanian actress Ana Maria Watrume, who surprised Europe in 2022 with [Happening], played an important role in the film.
The budget for the film is a whopping 6.1 million euros, which is not a small amount of money at the current scale of European cinema.
Mikros Images, France's most well-known company, will support the visual effects of the film after participating in many Marvel Universe movies and series.
The budget and technical team in place seem to prove that Dumont is serious about making sci-fi.
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Emmanuelle
Emmanuelle
Directed by Audrey Diwan
Screenwriter Emmanuel Arsan / Audrey Diwan / Rebecca Zrotowski
Starring Nomi Merlant / Naomi Watts / Jamie Campbell Bauer / Tomomori Fukuda / Huang Chacha
Genre: Drama
Country: France
再发生
There's not much we can say about Audrey Diwan's [Emmanuelle];
We can say a lot about [Emmanuelle] (director Jaster King).
This erotic classic, released in 1974, will celebrate its 50th anniversary in 2024, and at this juncture, the version made by a female director of the Palme d'Or is both the best commemoration and perhaps the biggest revolution.
Looking at this erotic film that has caused a social sensation with a contemporary perspective, gender is an unavoidable topic.
However, director Diwan successfully bypassed it when he was creating:
Because her adaptation is not from the 1974 film, but from the original 1967 novel written by Emmanuel Arsan (female).
Diwan, who was born in 1980, said she hadn't seen the movie of the same name.
Honestly, this isn't surprising, and the soft erotica trend that emerged throughout the 1970s or so had a clear, unambiguous audience — and of course, this is from a production standpoint, and doesn't mean there aren't women watching these films.
Diwan was reading the novel on an airplane, and it raised some subtle concerns at the time.
Perhaps that's why she once again uses the boarding scene as the opening shot, which is also the same as the 74 version of the movie (the heroine is going to Thailand to meet her husband).
Although Di Wan is very secretive about the plot, he still has a relatively clear expression of some entry points.
The main thing is that we can't see Emmanuel from her lens with Jack King and Sylvia Christie.
She quotes a line written by Bergman in [Married Life], where the heroine, Marianne, says that her sense of the world is drying up.
Devan disagrees with this description and tries to prove through [Emmanuelle] that the world cannot be exhausted by someone (husband, boyfriend).
This is undoubtedly a pun on the description, and like all relatively elaborate and brilliant erotic films, it is about both physical and psychological aspects.
In line with this change, the epochality has also been injected.
Emmanuelle is no longer a boudoir who doesn't work, but a working woman who works in a hotel.
The film is set to be filmed in Paris and Hong Kong.
Nomi Merlant of [Portrait of a Burning Woman] will continue to burn herself.
Among the other known actors, Naomi Watts and Jamie Campbell Ball are two of the most talked-about.
Although Diwan doesn't feel like he's dealing with erotica, as a form of expression, intimate shots are not absent.
The film has been filmed under secrecy, and if the post-production goes well, it is likely to participate in Cannes in 2024.
In 2021, Diwan won his first Palme d'Or with [Happening].
Considering that this is another English-language film (like many European directors), a slightly later Venice Film Festival is also a good choice, which will open the way for next year's awards season.
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Escape
The Outrun
Directed by Nora Finscheid
Screenwriter Nora Finscheid/Amy Liptroth/Daisy Lewis
Starring Saoirse Ronan/Papa Urshido/Stephen Dylan/Lauren Lyle/Izuka Hoyle
Genre: Drama
Country: United Kingdom
The long escape
The director of [Escape], Nora Finscheid, is a German director (who made her first English-language film [Unforgiven] in 2021).
The source of the story, memoirist Amy Liptrot is a native of Scotland, and the Orkney Islands are set in the background of the film.
Ronan, who plays the heroine, although she was born in the United States, is of authentic Irish descent.
According to their pronunciation, her name "Saoirsa" should be pronounced "Saosa".
The film's other actors, such as Papa Urshido, are also familiar faces in British film and television productions.
Matched by a complex of investments from Germany, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, and Scotland, this film is a good example of how a low-budget European film can be financed.
[Escape] was also one of the first films to make it to the Sundance Film Festival screening list, which gave the film a better chance of finding a distributor in North America to cover the production costs.
Relying on a star actor like Ronan, it can still go the competition route, which is a huge opportunity and challenge for many non-North American films that have come to Sundance.
In contrast, English has been a competitive advantage for this type of small-budget film for a long time.
Stories also contribute to this competition.
The original author, Amy's memoir of the same name, has been on the Times bestseller list and has been translated into 15 languages.
It mainly tells the story of a drug addict woman who returns to her hometown of Orkney Islands after a long life in a drug rehabilitation center.
In this beautiful place, the heroine's healing is intertwined with her past life.
This look is a standard Sundance movie.
Like many big productions, this is a delayed film.
As early as January 2022, there was news that Ronan would star, and after nearly two years of waiting, the film was finally able to make its global debut.
In addition to the crazy hair color, what else Ronan will bring is worth looking forward to.
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blitzkrieg
Blitz
Directed by Steve McQueen
Screenwriter Steve McQueen
Starring Saoirse Ronan/Harris Dickinson/Erin Kellyman/Stephen Graham/Kathy Burke
Genre: Drama/War
Country: United Kingdom
Under the bomb
Steve McQueen has always been a historically conscious director.
At the same time, this sense of history also motivates him to constantly go back in time and find answers on his own.
His debut work, "Hunger," explores the suicide of Bobby Sands, the leader of the Northern Ireland Republican Army;
Oscar's work "12 Years a Slave" is more famous, unfolding his critique of skin color and the historical significance behind it;
The episode "Little Axe" depicts life in London's black community in the mid-to-late last century.
Some people will turn these studies into a book, and McQueen will try to turn them into images.
McQueen, who hasn't made a feature film in five years since 2018's "Outnumbered," will once again respond to this sense of history.
That's [Blitzkrieg].
Through the title, we can easily associate World War II, Germany, and the Great War.
The film is indeed set in World War II, but it is not directly related to the battlefield, its image center is London, and the people in the lens are ordinary people in London.
We need to fill in the historical context.
The Germans never achieved their strategic goal of occupying LinkedIn, but for a long time, they carried out a frenzied bombing of England, especially London, and after the Allied counteroffensive, the same methods were used for many German cities, which was war.
In addition to the heroic Royal Air Force, the forbearance, determination, fear, and help of a large number of ordinary Britons were the key force in the fight against the Nazis.
In this sense, [Blitzkrieg] is like a common people's version of [Darkest Hour] (the story of Churchill in the same historical context).
McQueen has already completed filming the entire film and has a secret preview screening at the end of the year to help him with further post-editing.
He declined to reveal too many details about the film.
All we know is that Saoirse Ronan and Harris Dickinson will star.
The film is also part of Apple+'s streaming film strategy, and like previous titles, it will go through both the big screen and streaming channels, with the timing of the latter depending on the market response [of the Blitz].
Another big hit by Apple+ [Napoleon] sparked a backlash from the French, and choosing the British to shoot the British story seems to reduce some of the noise.
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In 2024, this group of European directors ......
01 Ruben Ostlund
The Swedish double Palme d'Or director's main job for 2024 is fundraising.
He's already had some ideas in mind:
The entertainment equipment on a plane almost failed, an iPad became the hope of the whole plane, and a child wanted to play, but needed to wait for 5 minutes.
The director said that if we filmed this waiting process in real time......
02 Albert Serra
The talented Spanish director (Torment on the Islands) already has plans for a new film.
这部名为[世外桃源](Out of This World，暂译)的作品将以俄乌战争为背景。
If the financing goes well, the film can be filmed in 2024 and is expected to be unveiled in 2025.
In addition, this will be the director's first work in English.
03 Pedro Almodóvar
Serra's predecessor, Almodóvar, will also shoot his first English-language feature film [Next Room] in March 2024.
He said the lineup will be two British actors and one American actor.
The British actor we know is Tilda Swinton, who previously collaborated on the short film [The Voice of People].
And the American actor is Julianne Moore.
Almodóvar has a star effect in terms of financing and distribution, and if it is fast enough, maybe we will see the film in next year's academy competition.
04 Mike Lee
Like Ken Lodge, 80-year-old Mike Lee also made one less film.
Before the new crown, he had plans for new films, but it was ultimately delayed due to the epidemic and funding.
Now, with his new enigmatic film in London, the theme has changed to explore family relationships in the wake of the pandemic.
Although it is not explicitly stated, competing for the film festival is undoubtedly a marketing tactic for the film.
05 Leo Carax
Carax, who was born in 1960, is also at the age of "autobiography".
But don't expect him to shoot [this is not me] according to what you understand as a "biography], just look at the title.
But it does draw on several fragments of the director's film career, so his old partner, Denis Lavan, is indispensable.
06 Jacques Odia
[Emilia Perez] was inspired by a chapter of a French novel about a Mexican drug lord who undergoes sex reassignment surgery to get away with it.
It was filmed by a group of actors with an American background (Selena Gomez, Zoe Saldana) and was filmed primarily in Spanish.
Who doesn't want to see this!