Poliss and Outside Satan track down evil in this week’s line-up

19/10/2011

Two new domestic releases unveiled at this year’s Cannes Film Festival are hogging all the critical acclaim today: Maïwenn’s Poliss [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Maïwenn
film profile], launched by Mars Distribution on a 407-print run, and Bruno Dumont’s Outside Satan [+see also:
trailer
film profile], launched by Pyramide in 50 theatres.

Winner of the Jury Prize on the Croisette, the fiery and highly moving Poliss flirts constantly with the thin red line of excess. It is carried by a cast of unbridled actors including Karine Viard, JoeyStarr and Marina Foïs in the role of police officers in the Child Protection Squad who investigate the darkest cases affecting today’s children.

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Tracking down evil is also at the heart of filmmaker-philosopher Bruno Dumont’s superb Outside Satan, discovered in the Un Certain Regard section at Cannes (see review). Beautiful and masterful in its directing style, the film blends supernatural elements with the banality of the everyday.

Meanwhile, Rezo Films is releasing a 20-print run of Santiago Amigorena’s Another Silence [+see also:
trailer
interview: Santiago Amigorena
film profile], starring Marie-Josée Croze as a killer determined to get revenge. The film was unveiled in Venice Days 2011 (see review and see video interview).

Other new releases very different in style from the above are children’s animated films Emilie Jolie by French duo Francis Nielsen and Philippe Chatel (Gebeka Films on 191 prints) and The Great Bear by Denmark’s Esben Toft Jacobsen (discovered at the Berlinale 2011 – Bac Films on 127 prints), as well as Oliver Parker’s UK/French/US comedy Johnny English Reborn [+see also:
trailer
film profile] (see news), promoted by its distributor StudioCanal under the tagline "Stupidity is eternal".

Also hitting screens are Spanish helmer Agusti Vila’s The Mosquito Net [+see also:
trailer
film profile] (top winner at Karlovy Vary in 2010 – distributed by Bodega Films); and two French documentaries: Florence Dauman’s Un Été + 50 (Tamasa Distribution) and Yasmina Adi’s Here We Drown Algerians (Shellac).

At the box office, the gamble has paid off for Michel Hazanavicius’s silent, black-and-white film The Artist [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Michel Hazanavicius
film profile], which has kicked off with 366,000 admissions in five days (on 295 prints – distributed by Warner); Bibo Bergeron’s animated flick A Monster in Paris [+see also:
trailer
film profile] has got off to a good start (300,000 viewers on 617 prints – EuropaCorp Distribution); and Danish director Nicolas Winding Refn’s Drive is enjoying smash hit success (722,000 fans in 12 days on 307 prints – Le Pacte).