Events

Music Box Films is proud to announce the US release of FRANTZ, acclaimed French writer/director Francois Ozon’s elegiac and haunting tale of love and remembrance, starring Pierre Niney (Yves Saint Laurent) and rising star Paula Beer.  Winner of the Best Cinematography Award at the 2017 César Awards, and a selection of the 2016 Venice, Telluride, Toronto and Sundance Film Festivals, FRANTZ is scheduled to open in New York on Wednesday, March 15 at Film Forum and Lincoln Plaza Cinema, followed by a national roll out.

Set in Germany and France in the immediate aftermath of the First World War, (1914-1918), FRANTZ recalls the mourning period that follows great national tragedies as seen through the eyes of the war’s “lost generation”: Anna (21 year-old Paula Beer in a breakthrough performance), a bereft young German woman whose fiancé, Frantz, was killed during trench warfare, and Adrien (Pierre Niney, Yves Saint Laurent), a French veteran of the war who shows up mysteriously in her town, placing flowers on Frantz’s grave. Adrien's presence is met with resistance by the small community still reeling from Germany’s defeat, yet Anna gradually gets closer to the handsome and melancholy young man, as she learns of his deep friendship with Frantz, conjured up in evocative flashbacks.

What follows is a surprising exploration of how Ozon's characters’ wrestle with their conflicting feelings - survivor’s guilt, anger at one’s losses, the overriding desire for happiness despite everything that has come before, and the longing for sexual, romantic and familial attachments. Ozon drew his inspiration from Ernst Lubitsch’s 1932 drama Broken Lullaby, with stunning visual references to painter Caspar David Friedrich.

20 year-old German actress Paula Beer won the Venice Film Festival’s Marcello Mastroianni Award for Best Young Actress for her performance in FRANTZ, and will next be seen in Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck’s Werk ohne Autor.  With over 20 films to his credit, 27 year-old Pierre Niney is best known to US audiences for his César-winning performance as legendary designer Yves Saint Laurent in YSL, and will next be seen opposite Charlotte Gainsbourg in La promesse de l’aube.  

One of French cinema’s most prolific writer-directors, Francois Ozon has explored and subverted many genres in a career spanning over 30 films that include Water Drops on Burning Rocks, Criminal Lovers, Under the Sand, 8 Women, Swimming Pool, 5x2, Time To Leave, Hideaway, Potiche, In the House, Young and Beautiful and The New Girlfriend.  He is currently in post-production on L’Amant Double, starring Marine Vacth - whom he had previously cast in Young and Beautiful - as well as Jérémie Renier and Jacqueline Bisset.

“Astonishingly beautiful and inquisitive. it’s impossible to deny the sheer narrative sophistication. Elevated by a quartet of stunning performances ” - Eric Kohn, Indiewire

“Intellectually stimulating and emotionally satisfying.” – Jonathan Romney, Screen Daily

"A richly imagined and superbly assembled period piece." - Boyd van Hoeij, The Hollywood Reporter