Pictured above is Diane, a character in Larry Clark's upcoming Paris-set film The Smell of Us.
In Brief
- The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) has added Alfred Hitchcock's nine surviving British silent films to its register for restoration and preservation. According to the British Film Institute, these films "are among the greatest achievements of British silent cinema, and are blueprints for the rest of his body of work."
- French police have found a new suspect for the 2008 unsolved murder of the pregnant Catherine Burgod after identifying DNA from the crime scene. The DNA belongs to none other than actor Gérald Thomassin, who earned much acclaim at the age of 16 for his debut in Jacques Doillon's Le Petit Criminal.
- The always spectacular Paris Cinema Festival, which mixes sneak previews of anticipated arthouse film with exhaustive retrospectives and repertory films, recorded its highest attendance in five years, according to La Parisien. This summer's festival boasted 3.5 million entries in four days. Here's to many more to come.
Cineuropa has the scoop on a number of intriguing upcoming European productions.
- French director Céline Sciamma, who has already earned wide acclaim with her unflinching depictions of adolescence, Tomboy and Water Lillies, will be returning once again to the theme with her upcoming film Band of Girls (Bande de Filles). According to her producer, this will be her last film dealing with adolescence before she tackles other subjects, and the cast will be comprised of "unknown young women between the ages of 16 and 20."
- A French superhero romance? Sorta! Thomas Salvadore's debut feature, Vincent, will tell the story of a character "whose strength, reflexes and agility increase tenfold in the presence of water. He has never told anyone. But when he settles in a village and meets Lucie, he falls in love and reveals his secret."
- Oskar Roehler is following up his well-received autobiographical Sources of Life with a new film called Punk about a 19 year-old who moves in the 1980s to West Berlin, to find himself.
Box Office
If following the European box office for the past two years has taught me anything, it's that Europeans love family-oriented CGI animation movies from the U.S. And so, it is with little surprise that I report that Despicable Me 2 is doing gangbusters in every territory where it opened, including Spain, Germany, and especially in the UK, where it took in around 34 million. In territories that haven't gotten a chance to spend a few hours with those adorable minions, World War Z and The Lone Ranger fought it out, with World War Z winning in Belgium and France and The Lone Ranger taking the top place in Greece and Italy.
As far as actual European movies go, the biggest local success story of late is Paolo Sorrentino's The Great Beauty. The Italian-produced film has taken in around $8 million locally, which is more than both Man of Steel or World War Z. Also, Players, the Danish film starring Casper Christensen of Klown fame is going strong in it's third week of domestic release and is nearing the $1 million mark -- no small thing in Denmark.