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Reflecting the breadth of her legacy across different continents, French actor Isabelle Huppert was celebrated by the likes of Alfonso Cuarón, Claire Denis, Alejandro Jodorowsky and François Ozon at the 15th edition of the Lumiere Film Festival in Lyon where she received a sprawling career tribute on Oct. 18.

Huppert kicked off the festivities as she entered the 3000-seat auditorium dancing to the 1980’s disco beats of “Nuit de folie,” dressed in a shimmery champagne gown.

The joyful ceremony, emceed by Huppert’s longtime friend (and Cannes boss) Thierry Fremaux who runs the Lumiere Film Festival, was punctuated by live musical numbers ranging widely from Camelia Jordana’s singing a capella “I Will Survive,” to Julien Clerc performing his 1978 cult song “Ma Preference” by the piano, and French actor Sandrine Kiberlain playfully singing “Nuit de folie” which was said to be Huppert’s unexpected all-time favorite song.

The most vibrant homage...

Nora Arnezeder (“The Famous Five”) and Maria Bello (“A History of Violence”) are set to co-star in “Hell in Paradise,” a female-powered thriller inspired by a true story and produced by EuropaCorp’s Virginie Besson-Silla (“Dogman”).

Penned by Karine Silla (“A Butterfly Kiss”), “Hell in Paradise” revolves around Nina, a young French girl who leaves her native Marseille and accepts her first job as a receptionist at a luxurious hotel resort on a magnificent island of the Maldives, hoping for a better life. But when a tragedy befalls the hotel, Nina is propelled in a relentless spiral of lies and manipulations. Wrongly accused and sentenced to life in prison, she will have no other choice but to run between traps and escape this paradise turned into hell.

Arnezeder and Maria Bello star opposite Josephine de la Baume, Alyy Khan, Shubahm Saraf and Ranjit Krishnama. Gregoire Melin’s Kinology handles international...

Actress, director and writer Karine Silla has spoken out in defense of former partner Gérard Depardieu, with whom she has a 31-year-old daughter.

The actor, who was indicted for rape in 2021, has been at the heart of a media storm in France in recent weeks following the broadcast of a France Télévisions documentary probing multiple historic accusations of sexual misconduct against the actor.

Silla, who is the sister of Luc Besson’s wife Virginie Besson-Silla and is now married to actor Vincent Perez, told celebrity magazine Paris Match that she felt compelled to break her silence over the treatment of Depardieu.

“I thought long and hard before speaking out because, as we know, it is difficult for a surgeon to operate on his own child or for a judge to conduct a fair trial if the accused is a member of his family,” she said.

“Gérard Depardieu is a man...

Swiss actor, director and photographer Vincent Perez (The Crow: City of Angels, Queen of the Damned, Cyrano de Bergerac) is screening his latest, The Edge of the Blade, a period piece about dueling and honor, in the Horizons section of the 57th Karlovy Vary International Film Festival.

His fourth feature as a director is set in Paris in 1887, when duels were still common despite being prohibited by law. It premiered at the Munich film festival just a day before screening at the big cinema event in the Czech spa town. Perez also wrote the screenplay with his wife, French actress and screenwriter Karine Silla Perez.

The Edge of the Blade focuses on Clément Lacaze (portrayed by Roschdy Zem), a sword master and teacher at a fencing school whose nephew gets challenged to a duel by the more experienced Colonel Berchère (played by Perez himself). Meanwhile, feminist Marie-Rose Astié de Valsayre...

Vincent Perez as he appears in The Edge Of The Blade: 'It is like a choreography. I wanted to shoot it with wide shots to make it as realistic as possible' Photo: Gaumont He has done a fair amount of swashbuckling in his time therefore it’s no surprise that Vincent Perez should have used his prowess in a new film in which he stars alongside Roschdy Zem and which he also directs.

He co-wrote the script for duelling historical drama The Edge Of The Blade (Une affaire d’honneur) with his wife Karine Silla who have been together since he made his first short film L’Echange shown at the Cannes Film Festival in 1992.

The first time he clashed swords in a major way, he recalls at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival, was on stage in a production of Hamlet directed by the late Patrice Chéreau, an influential figure...

Mélita Toscan du Plantier has spent the best part of two decades running Morocco’s Marrakech International Film Festival.

This work carries on the legacy of her late husband, influential French producer Daniel Toscan du Plantier, who was the driving force behind the festival’s launch in 2001, overseeing two editions before his death in 2003 at the Berlin Film Festival.

Famously well-connected within the film world, Mélita Toscan du Plantier has since put the event on the international film festival map, pulling together starry juries and guest lists that would not look out of place at Cannes.

This year’s edition, running November 11 to 19, featured Paolo Sorrentino, Vanessa Kirby, Diane Kruger, Justin Kurzel, Nadine Labaki, Laïla Marrakchi and Tahar Rahim in the jury while other guests included Jim Jarmusch, Julia Ducournau, Leos Carax, Paul Schrader and Indian mega-star Ranveer Singh.

During the pandemic, this work was put on hold after the...

By turns, he scandalises and enthrals. Now, the country's most famous actor is leaving home, angry at the imposition of a new 'supertax'. As he seems all set to settle in Belgium, is this really adieu from Gégé?

From which ever angle you view him – literally, metaphorically, physically – Gérard Depardieu is a colossus of Gallic life.

The term most frequently used to describe the bon vivant but volatile embodiment of French popular cinema is "une force de nature".

Even as the off-screen – often drink-fuelled — excesses of Gégé, as he is fondly known, became ever more outrageous, his legion of French fans would shrug and say it was simply Depardieu being Gérard. As he stuck a chubby finger up to convention they laughed. The more undignified the performance (falling off his scooter while drunk, peeing in the aisle of an aircraft) they still laughed: this was Gérard, no mere mortal but a national institution.