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Fullmetal Alchemist is a story of two brothers who know what it is to have each other’s backs when all the world does is demand. Hiromu Arakawa, the mangaka behind the series, grew up with the understanding of equivalent exchange. According to Newton’s third law of motion, for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.

Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood | Credit: Studio Bones

The laws of equivalent exchange apply heavily even in alchemy. It is all about the give and take of nature. Alchemy is about maintaining balance in the world. Combining nature and science into one big experiment and creating something entirely new out of it. It is all about trial and error, but most importantly, it is about respect and sacrifice. For two brothers who were ready to sacrifice their own selves for their mother, alchemy was a dark art.

Fullmetal Alchemist Tests a Brother’s Love...

Heart in the Right Place: Chokri Lets the Body & the Camera Do the Talking in Rom Dramedy

French Canadian filmmaker Monia Chokri adds another notch to the bedpost focusing on the romantic relationships we begin and the romantic relationships we begin to … ponder. If fellow 514 filmmaker Denys Arcand had a knack for philosophizing what makes opposites attract, with Simple Comme Sylvain we get into complex hierarchies about our role within the couple, the roles that are assigned to us and our active role-playing of sorts — dog leash et al. Working with more of a formal visual strategy that actually reminds of 70s and giallo cinema, Chokri’s tendency to overstuff the narrative with a lot of dialogue and discord as in her first two features (2019’s A Brother’s Love and 2022’s Babysitter) is replaced by more introspection, nuance and fluff.…...

Another small blurb in the Le film français provides us with an update on what is in the works for Monia Chokri. She might be crossing the Atlantic for fourth feature outing — for what is linked “around a phenomenon that is happening right now.” This could be anything really – social or cultural movements, the human condition or more interplays between the sexes, but the other concrete info is that La Femme de mon frère (and Falcon Lake) collaborator writer François Choquet will assist here. We expect this to be a France-Canada co-production and at the earliest, not ready until 2025 if this is indeed the next project.…...

The rom-com has always appeared to be in safe hands with French-language cinema, but Quebecois director Monia Chokri wanted to push the boundaries of the genre even further with her new film “Simple comme Sylvain.”

“French people like to talk about love but they always do it in the same way of toxic relationships. And there aren’t so many [rom-coms] made by women,” says Chokri, who was last in Cannes in 2019 with her debut feature, “A Brother’s Love,” which won Un Certain Regard’s Jury Cup de Coeur.

“Simple comme Sylvain” centers on a posh French-Canadian woman in a sexless marriage who turns her life upside down when she has an affair with her contractor.

The Quebec-born actor broke out in meaty roles in Canadian auteur Denys Arcand’s “The Age of Darkness” and Xavier Dolan’s “Heartbeats” and “Laurence Anyways.” She also acts in “Simple comme Sylvain,” playing her protagonist’s outspoken best friend,...

Memento International has boarded “Falcon Lake,” the feature debut of Quebec-born artist and actor Charlotte Le Bon which will world premiere at Cannes’ Directors’ Fortnight.

Penned by Le Bon, François Choquet and Karim Boucherka, “Falcon Lake” is adapted from Bastien Vivès’s graphic novel “A Sister.” The story follows Bastien, a 13-year old boy who moves with his family from Paris to a lakeside chalet in Quebec where he bonds in an unexpected way with Chloé, 16.

Joseph Engel and Sara Montpetit (“Maria Chapdelaine”) star in the film alongside Monia Chokri (“A Brother’s Love”), Arthur Igual, Karine Gonthier-Hyndman, Thomas Laperrière, Anthony Therrien, Pierre-Luc Lafontaine and Jeff Roop.

“When we are teenagers, our love life becomes the center of everything and it is easy to find ourselves in a turmoil of euphoria, fear and pain,” said Le Bon who has starred in films by Michel Gondry (“Mood Indigo”), Jalil Lespert (“Yves Saint...

After bursting onto the international stage with roles in Xavier Dolan’s “Heartbeats” and “Laurence Anyways,” and premiering her own directorial debut, “A Brother’s Love,” at the Cannes Film Festival in 2019, Quebecoise filmmaker Monia Chokri approached her sophomore feature as a kind of challenge.

Adapted from the 2017 play by author Catherine Léger, “Babysitter” — premiered at the Sundance Film Festival on Jan. 22 — marks Chokri’s first directorial outing working from someone else’s text.

“Taking someone else’s words and transposing them to images was a formative experience,” Chokri tells Variety. “[In doing so] I wanted to focus on my own directing, on how best to highlight and improve my work behind the camera. That’s where I could contribute deeply to the project, and could advance from a visual and technical standpoint.”

Diving into the source material — which tracks a proto-MeToo narrative as it follows a macho engineer Cedric dealing with the fallout...

The clumsy, drunken lunge and uninvited cheek-kiss that precipitates the action in wildly uneven French-Canadian comedy “Babysitter” is oddly appropriate for a film that can also feel like the victim of misguided, intrusive, if hardly malevolent exuberance. Far less coherent than her more focused and confident debut “A Brother’s Love,” Monia Chokri’s second feature is basically a series of sketches, some of which comment on ingrained, unconscious misogyny, while others lampoon the culture of hypersensitivity around less severe examples of unexamined sexism, such as that forced kiss. This makes it apt, too, that “Babysitter” has such a sugary aesthetic: It often looks like the cake it wants both to have and to eat.

An awkward prologue bears the scars of restrictive pandemic shooting. Through headachey close-ups, whip-pans and crash zooms, Chokri tries to fabricate the atmosphere of a crowded arena where an Mma title fight is underway. The pans...

Whether it’s coming out of Nashville, New York, L.A., or points in between, there’s no shortage of fresh tunes, especially from artists who have yet to become household names. Rolling Stone Country selects some of the best new music releases from country and Americana artists. (Check out last week’s best songs.)

Shonna Tucker, “A Brother’s Love”

This country-soul lullaby from Alabama singer-songwriter-bassist Shonna Tucker is a touching ode to fraternal companionship and the type of trust that turns close friends into family. “I ain’t your mama,...

MyFrenchFilmFestival, an online film festival dedicated to French movies launched by the promotion org UniFrance, will showcase 33 titles, including a competitive lineup of 10 feature films and 10 shorts.

Set to run Jan. 15 to Feb. 15, the 11th edition of the festival will collaborate with more than 60 platforms around the world to allow movies to be watched across more than 200 territories.

The roster of films selected to compete as part of this year’s MyFrenchFilmFestival includes Sébastien Lifshitz’s “Adolescents,” a documentary exploring the evolving friendship of two young women through the years; Hafsia Herzi’s “You Deserve a Lover,” a drama about a young woman struggling to overcome a breakup; and Frédéric Fonteyne’s “Filles de joie,” a social drama about family women leading double lives to make ends meet.

The rest of the lineup comprises Bruno Merle’s “Felicita,” a family dramedy about an eccentric couple raising a child; Stéphane Batut...

Chokri’s debut feature A Brother’s Love premiered in Cannes Un Certain Regard in 2019.

Bac Films International is launching sales on Canadian actress/filmmaker Monia Chokri’s #MeToo-era comedy drama Babysitter at next week’s AFM.

The film successfully wrapped in Quebec in October, just as the Canadian province went into partial lockdown due to a second wave of Covid-19 cases.

It is Chokri’s second feature after A Brother’s Love, which opened Cannes Un Certain Regard in 2019 and shared the jury’s Coup de Coeur prize with The Climb.

Patrick Hivon, who also co-starred in A Brother’s Love, plays...

The films are: Portrait Of A Lady On Fire; A White, White Day; Give Me Liberty ; The Perfect Candidate and A Brother’s Love.

Göteborg Film Festival Film has teamed up with Swedish distributors to launch several new arthouse titles on its VOD platform Draken Film.

The films are: Portrait Of A Lady On Fire by Céline Sciamma; A White, White Day by Hlynur Pálmason; Give Me Liberty by Kirill Mikhanovsky; The Perfect Candidate by Haifaa Al Mansour and A Brother’s Love by Mona Chokri.

During the first six months, half of the revenues from new subscribers will go to independent Swedish arthouse cinemas,...

Swedish distributors are joining forces with the Göteborg Film Festival’s VOD platform Draken Film to launch a series of upcoming arthouse movies online, and will use half of the proceeds to support local cinemas hit by the coronavirus crisis.

The first wave of films will include Céline Sciamma’s Portrait Of A Lady On Fire, Hlynur Pálmason’s A White, White Day, Kirill Mikhanovsky’s Give Me Liberty, Haifaa al-Mansour’s The Perfect Candidate, and Mona Chokri’s A Brother’s Love.

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Draken has linked up with local releasers Folkets Bio and Smorgasbord Picture House and is in talks with more distributors about future releases. A representative of the VOD service told us that, with more cinemas closing daily,...

Late last month we learned that Monia Chokri has found her quartet of players for her sophomore feature film set to begin production this summer. With Baby-sitter, Chokri cast herself, Patrick Hivon (her second outing with the actor), Steve Laplante and French actress Nadia Tereszkiewicz (from Dennis Berry’s 2018 title Sauvages and last year’s Venice entry Only the Animals by Dominik Moll (read review). d’Amérique Film’s Martin Paul-Hus and Phase 4 Productions’ Fabrice Lambot are producing. Chokri’s celebrated debut film was the Un Certain Regard winning La femme de mon frère (A Brother’s Love).

Gist: Based on the play by Catherine Léger, this is about a recently unemployed man who repents by writing a book of apologies to women in his former workplace.…...

The Santa Barbara International Film Festival has announced the lineup for its 35th edition, which will take place from January 15 to 25. There will be 47 world premieres and 71 U.S. premieres, with 50 countries represented overall, in addition to starry tributes that serve as an awards season stop for top Oscar contenders. Among those feted in their respective categories will be Renée Zellweger (American Riviera Award), Scarlett Johansson and Adam Driver (Outstanding Performers of the Year Award), Laura Dern (Cinema Vanguard Award), Brad Pitt (Maltin Modern Master Award), along with the winners of the Virtuosos Award: Awkwafina, Taron Egerton, Cynthia Erivo, Beanie Feldstein, Aldis Hodge, George MacKay, Florence Pugh, and Taylor Russell.

The Sbiff is also unique in its yearly celebration of below the line talent. The crafts artists who’ve won the Variety Artisans Award this year are Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez (“Frozen II”), Michael Giacchino (“Jojo Rabbit”), Kazu Hiro...

A thirtysomething’s platonic love for her brother knows no bounds, which puts her in an awkward position when he finally starts dating the near-perfect girl in A Brother’s Love (La femme de mon frere). Though it might sound like a pitch for a high-concept studio comedy starring Amy Schumer, this is actually the basic plot outline of the sweet, funny and somewhat melancholy feature debut from Quebec actress-turned-director Monia Chokri (from Xavier Dolan’s Heartbeats and local zombie hit Ravenous).

While there might be no belly laughs or gross-out gags, this rather meandering opening film of the Un Certain ...

A thirtysomething’s platonic love for her brother knows no bounds, which puts her in an awkward position when he finally starts dating the near-perfect girl in A Brother’s Love (La femme de mon frere). Though it might sound like a pitch for a high-concept studio comedy starring Amy Schumer, this is actually the basic plot outline of the sweet, funny and somewhat melancholy feature debut from Quebec actress-turned-director Monia Chokri (of Xavier Dolan’s Heartbeats and local zombie hit Ravenous).

While there might be no belly laughs or gross-out gags, this rather meandering opening film of the Un ...