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Nach seiner umjubelten Weltpremiere in Cannes startet Studiocanal Gilles Lellouches am 27. März in den deutschen Kinos. Jetzt wurde der deutsche Trailer veröffentlicht.

„Beating Hearts“ (hier unsere Spot-Besprechung), die dritte Regiearbeit des Schauspielers Gilles Lellouche, verzeichnete in Frankreich bereits mehr als 3,5 Mio. Kinobesucher und feiert seine Deutschlandpremiere am 22. November im Rahmen der Französischen Filmwoche in Berlin. Studiocanal hat den Kinostart in Deutschland für den 27. März 2025 geplant.

In dem auf Neville Thompsons Roman „L’amour ouf“ basierenden, im Norden Frankreichs in den 1980er Jahren angesiedelten Film verliebt sich der von Francois Civil und Malik Frikah gespielte rebellische Clotaire, der in einem Problembezirk aufgewachsen ist, in die unerschrockene Jackie. Die Liebe der beiden Teenager wird auf eine harte Probe gestellt, als sich Clotaire einer kriminellen Bande anschließt und wegen eines Verbrechens, das er nicht begangen hat, zu einer langjährigen Gefängnisstrafe verurteilt wird. Die beiden verlieren sich aus den Augen und als sie sich Jahre später zufällig wieder begegnen,...

French sales outfit Ginger & Fed has boarded Fabien Gorgeart’s comedy drama What Is Love? (C’est Quoi l’Amour?) starring Laure Calamy and Vincent Macaigne as a long-divorced couple attempting to annul their Catholic marriage at the Vatican.

Ginger & Fed, the theatrical sales arm of French group Federation run by Sabine Chemaly, will kick off sales for the film at the American Film Market.

Lyes Salem, Melanie Thierry, Celeste Brunnquell and Saül Benchetrit round out the cast of the feature, which is shooting now and produced by Petit Film and Deuxième Lign.

Described by Chemaly as“a comedy...

"Thinking of you meant worrying about you..." Studiocanal has revealed an official trailer for a French epic romance film titled Beating Hearts, featuring English subtitles so everyone can hear what they're saying. This premiered at the end of the 2024 Cannes Film Festival earlier this year, with mostly negative and a few positive reviews. The decade-spanning love story thriller is about a boy and girl who fall for each other as teens. But he's a criminal and gets locked up – hoping to find her years later. Local rebellious teen Clotaire falls for his schoolmate Jackie, but gang violence leads him down a darker path. After years apart, the star-crossed lovers discover every path they've taken leads them back together. Does it? Adèle Exarchopoulos & François Civil star as the older versions of Jackie & Clotaire. It also stars Mallory Wanecque & Malik Frikah as teens, Jean-Pascal Zadi, Benoît Poelvoorde, Alain Chabat, Élodie Bouchez, Vincent Lacoste,...

The popular French actor working in just about every film genre has been on the Croisette on a couple of occasions but as a filmmaker got his first taste when Sink or Swim (also known as Le grand bain) — a 2018 selection slotted as an Out of Competition item. Six years later we have L’amour Ouf (Beating Hearts) which was was packaged and advertised at last year’s Cannes and moved into production with a huge ensemble of players in May. Gilles Lellouche directs François Civil, Adèle Exarchopoulos, Malik Frikah, Mallory Wanecque, Alain Chabat, Anthony Bajon, Jean-Pascal Zadi, Benoît Poelvoorde, Vincent Lacoste, Élodie Bouchez, Karim Leklou and Raphaël Quenard star.…...

Translating film titles for international markets can be a commercial necessity, but magic is often lost in the process. It’s hard to think of a more perfect name for Gilles Lelouche’s latest movie than “L’amour ouf,” which punchily captures the bruising nature of the love story at its heart. The clue is in the wordplay: If l’amour fou is an affliction of the mind, l’amour ouf tells us the force we’re dealing with is rather more physical, perhaps even painful.

Squint, though, and “Beating Hearts,” the anglophone title that seems sentimental by comparison, suggests not just life but flagellation. It befits a film that contains its fair share of bloody thrashings over the course of some 20 years in the lives of its star-crossed protagonists, whose love is battered at the peak of their relationship by a miscarriage of justice that goes on to change everything — and nothing — between them.

Gilles Lellouche arrived at the Cannes press conference for his Competition title Beating Hearts (L’amour Ouf) on Friday with one of the biggest cast delegations of the festival as its 77th edition entered its final strait.

As well as being joined on the stage by co-stars François Civil and Adèle Exarchopoulos and newcomers Mallory Wanecque and Malik Frikah, actors Jean-Pascal Zadi, Elodie Bouchez, Raphaël Quenard, Vincent Lacoste, Alain Chabat, Karim Leklou and Antony Bajon took up the front row of the press room.

They arrived on the wave of an enthusiastic response from the audience at Thursday night’s world premiere in the Grand Théâtre Lumière, which gave it a 15-minute standing ovation.

The modern Romeo and Juliet tale, which took Lellouche 17 years to bring to the big screen, is the actor and director’s third feature after hit comedy Sink or Swim.

“I take great, great pleasure from directing.

Seemingly from out of nowhere, actor turned director Gilles Lellouche throws a Molotov Flanby into the Competition with only his second feature, a terrific and unexpectedly potent piece of genre filmmaking that could, to avoid spoilers, be described as a kind of mash-up of Badlands and La Haine, as if directed by Walter Hill. Throw in a little Eurocrime, from the likes of Fernando Di Leo and late-period Jean-Pierre Melville, and you’re getting close to what Lellouche has achieved here, a romantic banlieue opera that delivers all the gritty, vicarious thrills of the now-standard post-Goodfellas gangster movie but also burrows into issues of class and gender in refreshingly unpredictable ways.

It arrives as a movie seemingly made by committee, since the film is based on an Irish novel — Jackie Love Johnser Ok? by Neville Thompson — and features contributions by fellow filmmakers Ahmed Hamidi and Audrey Diwan. It quickly...

If you took Magnolia, Goodfellas, Boyz n the Hood and perhaps Claude Lelouch’s A Man and a Woman, plugged them all into the latest version of ChatGPT and asked it to spit out a brand new film, you could wind up with something like Gilles Lellouche’s (no relation to Claude) swooning French crime romance, Beating Hearts (L’Amour ouf).

A hodgepodge of movie clichés and overwrought scenes, directed with zero tact and plenty of pounding needle drops, actor-turned-director Lellouche’s third stab at the helm after his rather likeable ensemble comedy, Sink or Swim, is less a disappointment than a serious assault on the viewer’s intelligence. The fact that it premiered in Cannes’ competition, rather than in a sidebar “Première” slot, speaks to the general level of one of the festival’s weakest main slates in recent memory.

Sink or Swim was a major hit in France that grossed $40 million,...

Cannes film festival

Gilles Lelouche’s new movie aims for a Springsteenesque blue-collar energy but buckles under the weight of its own naivety

Gilles Lelouche’s new film is a giant operatic crime drama of star-crossed lovers and hurt feelings; it’s very French, but aiming for some blue-collar Springsteen energy. There are some good performances, and a very serviceable armed robbery scene. But Beating Hearts suffers from a lack of subtlety and bloat, with an increasingly insistent cry-bully sensitive-macho ethic, and a colossally inflated final section belatedly reassuring us of the film’s belief in the power and importance of love. In the end it is sentimental and naive, particularly about the legal consequences of beating your husband half to death in a phone box, however abusive he has been. And I had a strange taste in my mouth after a late scene in which the heroine, working on...

Love, as everyone has long agreed, makes you do crazy things. Silly things, too, and vastly indulgent things, and occasionally even beautiful ones. Gilles Lellouche does all of these, in significant quantities, in his supersized gangster melodrama “Beating Hearts,” which takes the slender plot of innumerable B-movies of the past — as time and crime collaborate to derail the pure-hearted romance between two pretty young things — and blows it up to a dizzily grand scale, complete with widescreen camera gymnastics, daydreamy reality breaks and sporadic swirls of Old Hollywood musical choreography. It’s a mad indulgence, but also one fully attuned to the mindset of its two besotted lead characters: When you fall completely in love for the first (and maybe last) time, doesn’t your life become its own Technicolor epic?

That air of big-swinging, love-drunk bravado will buy Lellouche’s film a lot of goodwill from audiences — particularly those at home in France,...

Mallory Wanecque, the breakout actor of “The Worst Ones” who headlines Cannes competition title “Beating Hearts,” is starring alongside Sami Bouajila (“Through the Fire”) in “Vultures,” a thriller directed by Peter Dourountzis (“Rascal”).

Produced by Mediawan-owned 24-25 Films (“Black Box”), “Vultures” is represented internationally by Ginger & Fed, the new international film sales arm of Federation Studios headed by former TF1 Studio boss Sabine Chemaly. The cast is completed by Sami Bouajila (“Through the Fire”), Jean-Pierre Darroussin (“All Your Faces”), Pierre Lottin (“The Night of the 12th”) and Valerie Donzelli (“Declaration of War”).

“Vultures” will be delivered during the second quarter of 2025. Bouajila stars as Samuel, a journalist who partners with his intern daughter Ava to cover the brutal murder of a young girl that lead them to a male supremacist group headed by the enigmatic Nemesis. The movie marks Dourountzis’ follow-up to “Rascal,” an edgy film starring Pierre Deladonchamps as an outsider-turned-killer.

“Beating Hearts” (“L’amour ouf”), an epic crime romance directed by Gilles Lellouche and slated to compete at the Cannes Film Festival, has lured major distributors in key markets ahead of its world premiere.

The sprawling movie, which is budgeted in the $30 million range, is financed, co-produced represented in international markets by Studiocanal. One of the most anticipated and ambitious French movies set for a theatrical release in 2024, “Beating Hearts” was produced by Hugo Selignac at Chi-Fou-Mi, a Mediawan company, and Alain Attal’s Les Films du Tresor.

Studiocanal will distribute the film in Germany and Australia, as well as France, with a release set for Oct. 16. The company has sold it to Cineart in Benelux, Filmcoopi in Switzerland, Feelgood in Greece, Lucky Red in Italy, Lusomundo in Portugal, Kinoswiat in Poland, Greenlight Films in Ukraine, Capella in Russia and Pinema in Turkey. Studiocanal will be closing more deals at the Cannes Film Festival.

Already one of France’s most beloved and bankable actors (“The Stronghold”), Gilles Lellouche is about to graduate as a big-shot filmmaker five years after delivering his sophomore outing, “Sink or Swim,” a B.O. hit which lured more than four million moviegoers (over $35 million) in theaters.

His next movie, “Beating Hearts” (“L’amour Ouf”), budgeted in the €30 million range, is epic in many ways. And not just because of its breadth and running time exceeding three hours. A crime romance loosely based on Neville Thompson’s 1997 novel “Jackie Loves Johnser Ok,” the movie is an emotional rollercoaster spanning over 15 years in the lives of star-crossed lovers. It took Lellouche over a decade to write (alongside Audrey Diwan and Ahmed Hamidi) and four months to shoot with a cast mixing rising and famous actors, a pulsating soundtrack of cult 1980s and 1990s songs, topnotch key crew and dream-like musical interludes created by (La) Horde.

Studiocanal rolled out the red carpet at the Unifrance Paris Rendez-vous this week for actor Gilles Lellouche’s upcoming feature film Beating Hearts (L’Amour Ouf).

First images for the unconventional romance played on the big screen to two packed-out screenings at the swanky Royal Monceau hotel off the Champs-Elysées on Thursday evening.

The modern Romeo and Juliet tale co-stars François Civil, who is currently riding high on the back of his D’Artagnan role in Pathé’s Three Musketeers reboot, and Adèle Exarchopoulos as former childhood sweethearts from different sides of the tracks.

Having gone their separate ways when the boy gets caught up in gang violence and lands in jail on trumped-up murder charges, the pair reconnect against the odds years later.

The picture is adapted from Irish writer Neville Thompson’s 1997 novel Jackie Loves Johnser Ok? unfolding against the backdrop of Dublin’s tough suburb of Ballyfermot in the...

Ben Aldridge (“Knock at the Cabin”) and Martina Garcia (“The Hidden Face”) have joined the cast of “Dear Paris,” Marjane Satrapi’s (“Persepolis”) ensemble drama which is one Studiocanal’s highlights at this week’s Unifrance Rendez-Vous showcase, along with Gilles Lellouche’s sprawling romance thriller “Beating Hearts.”

“Dear Paris” (“Paris Paradis”), produced by Vito Films, is a dark comedy set in the French capital where a flurry of charming characters confront death only to embrace life once again. The film also stars Monica Bellucci as a narcissistic Italian opera singer and Rossy De Palma as an eccentric elderly Colombian woman, as well as Eduardo Noriega, André Dussollier, Alex Lutz, Roschdy Zem and singer-turned-actor Gwendal Marimoutou (“Sam”).

The biggest title on Studiocanal’s roster is “Beating Hearts” (“L’amour ouf”), the highly anticipated epic love story starring François Civil, Adèle Exarchopoulos, Mallory Wanecque and Malik Frikah. The unconventional movie, now in post production,...

AFM slate also includes a blend of local drama, comedy and thriller titles.

Orange Studio will kick off sales at AFM for Like A Prince, the debut feature from actor Ali Marhyar about a star boxer attempting a career comeback in a French chateau after a bar fight gone wrong.

Like A Prince stars Ahmed Sylla as the titular athlete who is sentenced to community service at the prestigious Château de Chambord following a bar fight that injures him and threatens his career. There, amidst horses, strange bosses and knight-inspired stunts, he meets a foster child with a knack for...

Winner of the Un Certain Regard at last year’s Cannes Film Festival, Lise Akoka and Romane Gueret’s The Worst Ones arrives in the U.S. with a certain amount of clout. A knotty meta-narrative about the ethics of filmmaking, it takes its title from the non-professional actors who are cast in an independent film shot in the working-class town of Boulogne-sur-Mer. Tracking the production of the film-within-a-film, Akoka and Gueret spotlight the ambiguities and exploitation that propel one’s search for realism in art.

That someone is the film’s director, Gabriel (Johan Heldenbergh), who is belatedly making his debut with Pissing in the North Wind, a seeming social-realist depiction of teenagers coping with tragedy and, of course, teen pregnancy. Perhaps invoking Truffaut and the Dardenne brothers, Gabriel’s insistence on casting non-professionals highlights The Worst Ones‘ most obvious satirical target: openly questioning if Gabriel is exploiting these...

The 46th César Awards, France’s top film honors, have been handed out in Paris, with Dominik Moll’s crime thriller The Night of the 12th winning the best picture trophy.

Moll’s The Night of the 12th, which premiered in Cannes last year, scored 10 César noms coming into the awards show, just behind Louis Garrel’s The Innocent, which picked up 11 nominations. Moll also won for best director, and Bouli Lanners earned the best supporting actor trophy for his performance in The Night of the 12th.

Cédric Klapisch’s Rise, about a ballet dancer (Marion Barbeau) who, after an injury, seeks a new future in contemporary dance, was up for 9 Césars, as was Albert Serra’s Pacifiction, a thriller featuring Benoît Magimel as a morally-challenged Haut-Commissaire on an island in French Polynesia.

Valeria Bruni Tedeschi’s dramedy Forever Young, Cedric Jimenez’s terrorism drama November, Eric Gravel’s family...

Selected actors will vie for five coveted spots in each of the most promising actor and actress categories.

France’s Academy of Cinema Arts and Techniques, which runs the prestigious César awards, has unveiled its annual Revelations shortlist of local rising stars. They will vie for five coveted spots in each of the most promising actor and actress categories that will make the official nominees selection ahead of the 48th annual Cesars ceremony in Paris on February 24.

Among this year’s breakout stars are Saint Omer actresses Guslagie Malanda and Kayije Kagame, Cannes’ title Forever Young stars Nadia Tereszkiewicz, Clara Bretheau and Sofiane Bennacer,...

Kino Lorber has acquired the French-language Cannes award winner “The Worst Ones” for a U.S. and Canada theatrical release following its North American premiere at the Toronto film festival in September.

The French drama marks the feature debut of Lise Akoka and Romane Gueret, the directing duo behind the 2016 short film “Chasse Royale.” It premired earlier this year at Cannes, where it took top honors in the Un Certain Regard category.

“The Worst Ones” follows the production of a feature film whose director seeks to cast actors from a housing project in the suburbs of Boulogne-Sur-Mer in northern France. Four working class teenagers, considered “the worst ones” by the locals,” are chosen to star in the project. Throughout the process of auditioning, rehearsing and shooting, “jealousies are stoked, lines are crossed, and ethical questions arise, with thought-provoking and at times darkly funny results,” the official description puts reads.

Also...

Pyramide Films handles sales.

Kino Lorber has acquired all US and anglophone Canadian rights to Cannes Un Certain Regard winner and upcoming TIFF selection The Worst Ones.

‘The Worst Ones’: Cannes Review

Lise Akoka and Romane Gueret make their feature directorial debuts on the drama about the director of a film production in northern France who ruffles feathers over the casting of four local working class teenagers.

Mallory Wanecque, Timéo Mahaut, Johan Heldenbergh, Loic Pech, Mélina Vanderplancke, Esther Archambault, and Matthias Jacquin star. Akoka, Gueret, and Eleonore Gurrey co-wrote the feature and Marine Alaric and Frédéric Jouve produced for Les Films Velvet.

Exclusive: Kino Lorber has acquired all rights in U.S. and anglophone Canada to Lise Akoka and Romane Gueret’s drama The Worst Ones, which was awarded the top prize in Cannes’ Un Certain Regard section and will make its North American premiere at TIFF.

Set in the suburbs of Boulogne-Sur-Mer in northern France, the feature captures a film within a film as it follows the production of a movie whose director turns to the local housing project for casting. Eager to capture performances of gritty authenticity, the director selects four working class teenagers to act in the film to the surprise and consternation of the local community, who question the director’s choice of “the worst ones”. As the director and crew audition, rehearse, film, and interact with their hand-picked cast, jealousies are stoked, lines are crossed, and ethical questions arise.

Written by Akoka, Gueret, and Eleonore Gurrey, pic...