Near the end of the political drama “Les Indésirables,” a precisely angled wide shot of a run-down apartment complex depicts the immigrant families that have inhabited it for many years throwing their most precious belongings over their balconies in a last-ditch effort to save them. Scores of virulent riot police have shown up to evict them without prior notice. Amid such extreme circumstances, it’s the unconditional solidarity between all of those surviving in this constantly dehumanized Parisian neighborhood that defines the chaotic scene.
It’s the rare instance when French director Ladj Ly allows the images to speak for themselves, rather than having one of his many characters instructively proclaim why we must care, in the second feature from the Oscar-nominated director of “Les Misérables.” Another impassioned statement against social and racial inequality, “Les Indésirables” feels no less urgent, and yet, the film stumbled at the French box office...
It’s the rare instance when French director Ladj Ly allows the images to speak for themselves, rather than having one of his many characters instructively proclaim why we must care, in the second feature from the Oscar-nominated director of “Les Misérables.” Another impassioned statement against social and racial inequality, “Les Indésirables” feels no less urgent, and yet, the film stumbled at the French box office...
- 1/29/2024
- by Carlos Aguilar
- Variety Film + TV
The elevator hasn’t worked in years, so the men carry the casket down several flights of stairs. The hallway lights flicker at unpredictable intervals. The descent to the street, where the men will meet a hearse, is a treacherous one. At the sight of their hunched backs and the sound of barked instructions, a grieving woman asks: “How can we live and die in a place like this?” Welcome to Batiment 5, the setting of French Malian director Ladj Ly’s blistering feature Les Indésirables.
Ly knows how to stage scenes of visceral power, deftly moving between full-hearted flashes of community and taut, antagonistic ones laced with a dreadful foreboding. In Les Misérables, his 2019 Cannes Jury Prize-winning and Oscar-nominated film, the helmer examined tensions between working-class residents and a French anti-crime unit. He harnessed the propulsive energy of thrillers and blended it with the insistent morals of a political drama.
Ly knows how to stage scenes of visceral power, deftly moving between full-hearted flashes of community and taut, antagonistic ones laced with a dreadful foreboding. In Les Misérables, his 2019 Cannes Jury Prize-winning and Oscar-nominated film, the helmer examined tensions between working-class residents and a French anti-crime unit. He harnessed the propulsive energy of thrillers and blended it with the insistent morals of a political drama.
- 9/8/2023
- by Lovia Gyarkye
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Ladj Ly, the French filmmaker whose feature debut “Les Miserables” won Cannes’ Jury Prize and earned Oscar and BAFTA nominations, has just started shooting his next film, “Les Indesirables” (Undesirables).
The movie reteams Ly and “Les Miserables” producers Toufik Ayadi and Christophe Barral at Srab Films, the Paris-based banner whose recent credits include Alice Diop’s buzzed-about French Oscar entry “Saint Omer.”
“Les Indesirables” brings back the entire team behind “Les Miserables”: Wild Bunch International for world sales and Le Pacte for French distribution, as well as the pay TV channel Canal+ and Cine+ which pre-bought the film. The local public broadcaster France Televisions also scooped French free-to-air rights to the movie which will be headlined by a promising newcomer, Anta Diaw, and Alexis Manenti, whose gripping performance in “Les Miserables” earned him a Cesar Award for best male newcomer.
Penned by Ly and Giordano Gederlini (“Les Miserables”), “Les...
The movie reteams Ly and “Les Miserables” producers Toufik Ayadi and Christophe Barral at Srab Films, the Paris-based banner whose recent credits include Alice Diop’s buzzed-about French Oscar entry “Saint Omer.”
“Les Indesirables” brings back the entire team behind “Les Miserables”: Wild Bunch International for world sales and Le Pacte for French distribution, as well as the pay TV channel Canal+ and Cine+ which pre-bought the film. The local public broadcaster France Televisions also scooped French free-to-air rights to the movie which will be headlined by a promising newcomer, Anta Diaw, and Alexis Manenti, whose gripping performance in “Les Miserables” earned him a Cesar Award for best male newcomer.
Penned by Ly and Giordano Gederlini (“Les Miserables”), “Les...
- 12/19/2022
- by Elsa Keslassy
- Variety Film + TV
Of all the immediate familial relationships agonized over in the movies, it’s probably the bonds of siblinghood that remain the least explored. In his sixth film as director, French multihyphenate Roschdy Zem redresses that imbalance just a little, with the charming, unassuming but hardly inconsequential “Our Ties”: a heartfelt and beautifully played burst of bright chatter that doesn’t reinvent the wheel of the domestic drama, but does watch it turn with an unusually compassionate, affectionate eye.
As it opens, Moussa is in the middle of a crisis, not that you’d necessarily know it from the gently perplexed way he is handling his wife Nora’s sudden decision to end their relationship. Nora is in Morocco, where she spends a lot of her time for work, and Moussa, getting nothing but her voicemail, has finally come to the realization that she is serious about their split. Less angry than he is dazed,...
As it opens, Moussa is in the middle of a crisis, not that you’d necessarily know it from the gently perplexed way he is handling his wife Nora’s sudden decision to end their relationship. Nora is in Morocco, where she spends a lot of her time for work, and Moussa, getting nothing but her voicemail, has finally come to the realization that she is serious about their split. Less angry than he is dazed,...
- 9/9/2022
- by Jessica Kiang
- Variety Film + TV
IndieWire reached out to the directors of photography whose feature films are premiering at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival to find out which cameras and lenses they used and, more importantly, why these were the right tools to create the look and visual language of these highly anticipated films.
Page 1: Competition (Palme d’Or Contenders)
Page 2: Out of Competition, Premieres, and Special Screenings
Page 3: Un Certain Regard, Critics’ Week, and Acid
Page 4: Directors’ Fortnight and Marché du Film
(Films are in alphabetical order by title.)
Competition (Palme d’Or Contenders)
“Boy from Heaven”
Dir: Tarik Saleh, DoP: Pierre Aim
Format: 4K Arriraw
Camera: Arri Lf
Lens: Scorpio 40mm
Aim: “Boy from Heaven” is the third film I made with Tarik after “The Nile Hilton Incident” and “The Contractor.” To shoot Tarik’s latest film, we only used one lens: the 40mm scope Scorpio. The general idea of...
Page 1: Competition (Palme d’Or Contenders)
Page 2: Out of Competition, Premieres, and Special Screenings
Page 3: Un Certain Regard, Critics’ Week, and Acid
Page 4: Directors’ Fortnight and Marché du Film
(Films are in alphabetical order by title.)
Competition (Palme d’Or Contenders)
“Boy from Heaven”
Dir: Tarik Saleh, DoP: Pierre Aim
Format: 4K Arriraw
Camera: Arri Lf
Lens: Scorpio 40mm
Aim: “Boy from Heaven” is the third film I made with Tarik after “The Nile Hilton Incident” and “The Contractor.” To shoot Tarik’s latest film, we only used one lens: the 40mm scope Scorpio. The general idea of...
- 5/27/2022
- by Chris O'Falt and Erik Adams
- Indiewire
There are no more potential-killing words of creative advice than “write what you know.” Certainly it’s a shame that when donning her screenwriter chapeau, Valeria Bruni Tedeschi — a fine actress and a director with a deft, light touch, especially with breezy character comedy — seems to have taken them so to heart. Once again she goes back to the autobiographical well for her latest directorial trifle, “Forever Young,” which she co-writes alongside Agnès De Sacy and regular collaborator Noémie Lvovsky.
Once again the result is set in a rarefied world of which Bruni Tedeschi has intimate knowledge: this time the 1980s acting school run by the late French theater, opera and film director Patrice Chéreau. And once again she fails to make much of a case for why any of it should resonate with anyone outside this tiny, hermetically enclosed community. Staying in your lane is hardly a...
Once again the result is set in a rarefied world of which Bruni Tedeschi has intimate knowledge: this time the 1980s acting school run by the late French theater, opera and film director Patrice Chéreau. And once again she fails to make much of a case for why any of it should resonate with anyone outside this tiny, hermetically enclosed community. Staying in your lane is hardly a...
- 5/24/2022
- by Jessica Kiang
- Variety Film + TV
Director Ladj Ly's "Les Miserables" is not a contemporary, retelling of Victor Hugo's classic. In fact, it is a gritty and fiery urban thriller with a social urgency bubbling under the surface to provide added depth.
Set in the low-income housing district of Montfermeil, which was also the setting for parts of Victor Hugo's novel, the film tells us of the class struggle and culture clashes between disenfranchised immigrants in Paris today.
The narrative follows police officer Ruiz (Damien Bonnard) on his first day of work at his new unit in the ghettos of Paris, where he patrols along with his experienced partners, the veteran short-fused squad leader Chris (Alexis Manenti) aka "the Pink Pig" and his absolutely laidback companion Gwada (Djibril Zonga), who harass mostly the Muslim immigrants to the point of simmering community resentment.
It is in this community we meet a few key players, namely...
Set in the low-income housing district of Montfermeil, which was also the setting for parts of Victor Hugo's novel, the film tells us of the class struggle and culture clashes between disenfranchised immigrants in Paris today.
The narrative follows police officer Ruiz (Damien Bonnard) on his first day of work at his new unit in the ghettos of Paris, where he patrols along with his experienced partners, the veteran short-fused squad leader Chris (Alexis Manenti) aka "the Pink Pig" and his absolutely laidback companion Gwada (Djibril Zonga), who harass mostly the Muslim immigrants to the point of simmering community resentment.
It is in this community we meet a few key players, namely...
- 3/9/2020
- GlamSham
The visual language of film is universal. In “Parasite,” low, flickering light shows the distraught look on the face of the patriarch of the Kim family as the basement floods and his meager possessions are washed away. In “Corpus Christi,” natural light is used as a metaphor to symbolize life. Cinematographers of four of the Oscar nominees for international feature film recount the key moment that communicates the movie’s message in a truly cinematic manner.
Corpus Christi (Poland)
Piotr Sobociński worked closely with director Jan Komasa to remove unnecessary dialogue and rearrange the chronology of certain scenes in the drama about an ex-con pretending to be a priest. Static shots and the use of anamorphic lenses made for an aesthetic of modesty.
Sunlight is scarce throughout the film until Daniel (Bartosz Bielenia) is called upon to give last rites to a drying woman. Sobociński wanted to contrast this solemn moment,...
Corpus Christi (Poland)
Piotr Sobociński worked closely with director Jan Komasa to remove unnecessary dialogue and rearrange the chronology of certain scenes in the drama about an ex-con pretending to be a priest. Static shots and the use of anamorphic lenses made for an aesthetic of modesty.
Sunlight is scarce throughout the film until Daniel (Bartosz Bielenia) is called upon to give last rites to a drying woman. Sobociński wanted to contrast this solemn moment,...
- 2/5/2020
- by Carlos Aguilar
- Variety Film + TV
Paris-based sales powerhouse to launch new titles by Maïwenn, Stephane Brizé, Louis Garrel and Bruno Podalydès.
Wild Bunch is to launch sales on new films by Maïwenn, Stéphane Brizé, Louis Garrel and Bruno Podalydès at Unifrance’s Rendez-vous with French Cinema in Paris next week (January 16-20).
Drawing on her own complex history, Maïwenn’s fifth feature DNA revolves around a woman with close ties to a beloved Algerian grandfather who protected her from a toxic home life as a child. When he dies, it triggers a deep identity crisis as tensions between her extended family members escalate revealing new depths of resentment and bitterness.
Wild Bunch is to launch sales on new films by Maïwenn, Stéphane Brizé, Louis Garrel and Bruno Podalydès at Unifrance’s Rendez-vous with French Cinema in Paris next week (January 16-20).
Drawing on her own complex history, Maïwenn’s fifth feature DNA revolves around a woman with close ties to a beloved Algerian grandfather who protected her from a toxic home life as a child. When he dies, it triggers a deep identity crisis as tensions between her extended family members escalate revealing new depths of resentment and bitterness.
- 1/9/2020
- by 1100388¦Melanie Goodfellow¦0¦
- ScreenDaily
Cannes Jury Prize winner is also France’s submission to the Oscars this year.
Ladj Ly’s debut feature and Cannes Jury Prize winner Les Misérables, revolving around social tensions in a tough Paris suburb, is the frontrunner in the 25th edition of France’s Lumière awards this year, with seven nominations.
The awards which are voted on by some 130 international correspondents hailing from 40 countries are France’s equivalent of the Golden Globes.
Les Misérables has been nominated for best film, director, screenplay, cinematography, first film and twice in the best new actor section for two of its cast members,...
Ladj Ly’s debut feature and Cannes Jury Prize winner Les Misérables, revolving around social tensions in a tough Paris suburb, is the frontrunner in the 25th edition of France’s Lumière awards this year, with seven nominations.
The awards which are voted on by some 130 international correspondents hailing from 40 countries are France’s equivalent of the Golden Globes.
Les Misérables has been nominated for best film, director, screenplay, cinematography, first film and twice in the best new actor section for two of its cast members,...
- 12/3/2019
- by 1100388¦Melanie Goodfellow¦0¦
- ScreenDaily
“All my life is loving you,” is a line of dialogue that, on the page, looks worn thin with familiarity, a little like the trite English title of Claire Burger’s solo directorial debut, “Real Love.” But to reveal that the words are spoken not by a pining lover during the dash-to-the-airport climax of a romantic comedy, but by a father unwittingly tripping on ecstasy, to his two teenage daughters and his estranged wife, is to hint at the nature of this gorgeous film’s gentle miracle, which is to take its well-worn, soapy setup and rinse it of cliché, so it comes up new and shining.
Floodlit by a superlatively sympathetic performance by Belgian actor Bouli Lanners, Burger’s partly autobiographical film, which she also wrote, starts in the aftermath of a departure. After two decades of marriage, and the raising of their two girls, Armelle (Cécile Remy-Boutang) has...
Floodlit by a superlatively sympathetic performance by Belgian actor Bouli Lanners, Burger’s partly autobiographical film, which she also wrote, starts in the aftermath of a departure. After two decades of marriage, and the raising of their two girls, Armelle (Cécile Remy-Boutang) has...
- 8/11/2019
- by Jessica Kiang
- Variety Film + TV
Pointedly repurposing the title of Victor Hugo’s classic novel about the laws of nature and grace, Ladj Ly’s “Les Misérables” bears little outward resemblance to the epic story of Jean Valjean and his stolen loaf of bread. But Ly’s first narrative feature — a gripping and grounded procedural that probes the tensions between Paris’ anti-crime police and the poor Muslim population they torment and suppress — revisits the French suburb of Montfermeil in the present day, and finds that little has changed in the 150 years since Hugo first characterized the strife he saw through his bedroom window.
Extended from Ly’s short of the same name, and inspired by the riots that erupted at the foot of the filmmaker’s building in 2005, “Les Misérables” vibrates with the kind of unshakeable verisimilitude that can only be earned through first-hand experience. At the same time, it’s not like the movie...
Extended from Ly’s short of the same name, and inspired by the riots that erupted at the foot of the filmmaker’s building in 2005, “Les Misérables” vibrates with the kind of unshakeable verisimilitude that can only be earned through first-hand experience. At the same time, it’s not like the movie...
- 5/15/2019
- by David Ehrlich
- Indiewire
A dingy apartment door is kicked in from the outside and a slick-looking detective bursts in brandishing a gun. Bullets fly, kicks are roundhoused, and the cop is put through an interior wall, resulting in his arms and fists fighting off one foe, while his flailing legs dispatch another in the next room over. This choppy, exaggerated melee is not the typical beginning to a film selected for Cannes, even one in the occasionally genre-friendly Directors’ Fortnight, and though it’s quickly revealed to be imaginary — a bedtime story told to a little boy grieving for his dead hero-cop father — the tone of merry lunacy sets the bar for Pierre Salvadori’s “The Trouble With You.”
The loopy plot follows Yvonne (Adèle Haenel), a police officer on desk duty who, two years after the death of her cop husband Santi (Vincent Elbaz) inadvertently discovers he was far from the crusading...
The loopy plot follows Yvonne (Adèle Haenel), a police officer on desk duty who, two years after the death of her cop husband Santi (Vincent Elbaz) inadvertently discovers he was far from the crusading...
- 5/19/2018
- by Jessica Kiang
- Variety Film + TV
Indiewire reached out to the filmmakers with films in the “New Auteurs” and “American Independent” sections of this year’s AFI Fest to find out what cameras they used and why they chose them.
Read More: AFI Fest 2016: 14 Movies We Can’t Wait to See at the Festival
“One Week and a Day”
Arri Alexa Xt
Dir. Asaph Polonsky: “It allowed scenes in long takes and the use of zoom lenses, sticks, dolly, Steadicam and handheld, were the tools that served the D.P., Moshe Mishali, and I the most as we tried to be subtle about reflecting the characters journeys visually.”
“Dark Night”
Arri Amira with Cooke lenses
Dir. Tim Sutton: “Good combination.”
“Divine”
Red Dragon
Dir. Houda Benyamin: “We wanted to work on the idea of focus — getting to details from the big picture, getting to things from a distance, which in a way symbolizes...
Read More: AFI Fest 2016: 14 Movies We Can’t Wait to See at the Festival
“One Week and a Day”
Arri Alexa Xt
Dir. Asaph Polonsky: “It allowed scenes in long takes and the use of zoom lenses, sticks, dolly, Steadicam and handheld, were the tools that served the D.P., Moshe Mishali, and I the most as we tried to be subtle about reflecting the characters journeys visually.”
“Dark Night”
Arri Amira with Cooke lenses
Dir. Tim Sutton: “Good combination.”
“Divine”
Red Dragon
Dir. Houda Benyamin: “We wanted to work on the idea of focus — getting to details from the big picture, getting to things from a distance, which in a way symbolizes...
- 11/11/2016
- by Casey Coit and Chris O'Falt
- Indiewire
Exclusive: French Riviera-set ensemble romantic comedy to co-star Adèle Haenel, Audrey Tautou, Vincent Elbaz and Damien Bonnard.
MK2 has acquired worldwide rights to Pierre Salvadori’s ensemble romantic comedy The Trouble With You revolving around a police officer who finds out that her late police chief husband was corrupt to the bone, a discovery that unleashes a farcical chain of events.
Adèle Haenel co-stars as Yvonne, a police officer on French Riviera who discovers her dead husband Santi led a double life after a criminal she is interrogating recognises her wedding ring as the loot from a jewellery heist he helped stage.
The discovery sends her life into a tail-spin. Her late husband was hailed as a hero by his colleagues and their young son after he died in the line of duty. She grapples with whether she should come clean about her husband’s true persona. Close colleague Louis advises her to keep quiet.
Louis is played...
MK2 has acquired worldwide rights to Pierre Salvadori’s ensemble romantic comedy The Trouble With You revolving around a police officer who finds out that her late police chief husband was corrupt to the bone, a discovery that unleashes a farcical chain of events.
Adèle Haenel co-stars as Yvonne, a police officer on French Riviera who discovers her dead husband Santi led a double life after a criminal she is interrogating recognises her wedding ring as the loot from a jewellery heist he helped stage.
The discovery sends her life into a tail-spin. Her late husband was hailed as a hero by his colleagues and their young son after he died in the line of duty. She grapples with whether she should come clean about her husband’s true persona. Close colleague Louis advises her to keep quiet.
Louis is played...
- 10/31/2016
- ScreenDaily
Cannes -- Life is opportunity. More than ever before, I believe that. I have to believe that. In just over a week, I turn 44, and I stand at the edge of some major upheavals in my life. It has taken me a longer time to reach this point than I would have liked, but I eventually realized that inertia is no way to live. I would rather confront the pain and the disappointment of sifting through the ashes of a marriage burnt to the ground than continue to simply drift along hoping for some miraculous change for the better. There is nothing more terrifying to me than change, and I feel like that's true for most of us. We accept the way things are and consign dreams of change to being just that… dreams. The courage it takes to affect real change is not something we come by easily, and...
- 5/15/2014
- by Drew McWeeny
- Hitfix
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