Music Box Films is proud to annouce the release of François Ozon’s BY THE GRACE OF GOD, based on the gripping true story of three adult men who band together to expose the code of silence in the Catholic Church that continued to empower a priest who abused them as boys. BY THE GRACE OF GOD is scheduled to open in New York on Friday, October 18 at Film Forum, and in Los Angeles on October 25 at the Nuart followed by a national roll out.

Alexandre (Melvil Poupaud, Laurence Anyways), lives in Lyon, a bastion of the French Catholic bourgeoisie, with his wife and five children. A fervent churchgoer, he learns that Father Preynat (Bernard Verley), the priest who abused him when he was a Boy Scout, is still working with children. He decides to take action, soon to be joined by two other victims of the priest, François (Denis Ménochet, Custody and Inglorious Basterds) and Emmanuel (Swann Arlaud, Bloody Milk). The three go to great lengths to denounce the perpetrator and the institution that has protected him, a risky endeavor that endangers relationships with their loved ones, and compromise their own fragile selves.

The film is based on Ozon’s extensive research and interviews with Father Preynat’s real life victims, who fully supported the director’s project. The explosive investigation and subsequent trial of Cardinal Barbarin became a French media sensation, covered widely around the world.

Father Preynat was indicted in January 2016 and placed under judicial supervision for sexual assault. On July 4, 2019 he was defrocked by a church tribunal, and faces trial in a French court next year. In March of 2019, Cardinal Barbarin was found guilty by a French court of covering up decades-old sexual abuse by Father Preynat and received a six-month suspended sentence which he is appealing.

The drama marks a departure for François Ozon, one of French cinema’s most prolific writer-directors whose career has spanned the last 20 years. His credits include See The Sea, Under the Sand, Hideaway, In The House, Swimming Pool, The New Girlfriend and Frantz. He recently finished filming his twentieth feature film, Summer ’84. BY THE GRACE OF GOD won the Silver Bear at the 2019 Berlin International Film Festival.

"A thoughtful, fast-paced, and immaculately acted procedural that unfolds with the urgency of a newspaper deadline, “By the Grace of God” zips through the facts of this horrid case, while also shaping them into a lens through which to examine the uneasy relationships between mercy and justice — between faith and the flawed institution that exists to preserve it.” Indiewire, David Ehrlich

“There's of-the-moment cinema and then there's on-the-moment cinema, ripped so freshly from the headlines that the filmmaking still bears a few ink smudges.” Variety, Guy Lodge

Kino Lorber is proud to announce the release of SYNONYMS, the striking new film by acclaimed Israeli filmmaker Nadav Lapid whose Policeman and The Kindergarten Teacher quickly established him as one of the most original directors working today. Winner of the top prize at this year’s Berlin Film Festival along with the International Critics Prize (FIPRESCI), and a selection of the upcoming Toronto and New York Film Festivals, SYNONYMS is scheduled to open in New York on Friday, October 25 at Film at Lincoln Center and The Quad Cinema followed by a national roll out.

Entirely set in Paris, SYNONYMS focuses on Yoav (Tom Mercier), a young Israeli man who has moved there with great expectations that France will save him from what he sees as the madness of his country. Desperate to erase his origins, he refuses to speak Hebrew, relying on a French dictionary to communicate with the new people he encounters. Inspired by the real life experiences of writer-director Nadav Lapid, SYNONYMS features a hypnotic performance from newcomer Tom Mercier as the deeply alienated Yoav. In this tragicomic puzzle about cultural identities, Yoav's attempts to find himself awaken past demons while opening up an existential abyss.

After completing his military service, 44-year old Lapid studied philosophy at Tel Aviv University while writing sports columns and short stories. Much like his SYNONYMS protagonist, he soon felt he had to leave Israel determined never to come back. Uprooting himself, he moved to Paris because of his self-professed admiration for Napoleon, and a passion for soccer star Zidane and Godard movies. Lapid ended up returning to Israel to pursue a degree at the Sam Spiegel Film School in Jerusalem. He made his much admired debut in 2011 with Policeman (winner of three prizes at the Jerusalem Film Festival, the Special Jury Prize in Locarno, and a New York Film Festival selection), followed by The Kindergarten Teacher (Cannes Film Festival’s Critics’ Week, New Directors/New Films), released by Kino Lorber in 2015.

SYNONYMS marks the screen debut of 25 year-old actor Tom Mercier who is currently shooting “We Are Who We Are,” the new HBO series directed by Luca Guadagnino (Call Me By Your Name) opposite Chloe Sevigny.

“Nadav Lapid’s astonishing, maddening, brilliant, hilarious, obstinate, and altogether unmissable new film” - David Ehrlich, Indiewire

"Nadav Lapid’s fiercely compelling SYNONYMS keep the pace with an Israeli in Paris caught somewhere between misfit struggle and revolutionary profundity.” Yonca Talu, Film Comment

Cohen Media Group is proud to announce the release of MY SON, writer-director Christian Carion’s French kidnapping thriller starring his long-time collaborator Guillaume Canet (Tell No One) in a powderkeg portrait of a man driven to extremes to protect his son. MY SON is scheduled to open on Friday, May 10 in New York (at the Quad Cinema and FIAF Florence Gould Hall) and Los Angeles followed by a national roll out.

After years of putting his career above his family, Julien (Guillaume Canet) has found himself with a failed marriage. One day he receives a distressing message from his ex-wife (Mélanie Laurent) that their seven-year-old son has disappeared while at camp. When authorities provide little help, Julien takes matters into his own hands. Fueled by his sense of guilt about neglecting his family, he is determined to do whatever it takes to find his son. That includes using physical force against anyone he speculates could be a suspect in the kidnapping – and disobeying police instructions by stepping outside of the law, as he begins to unfold the mystery of the boy’s disappearance.

MY SON marks the third and most unique collaboration between Canet and director Christian Carion, whose 2005 war drama Joyeux Noël earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Foreign Language Film. In a remarkable filmmaking twist, Carion made the decision to keep Canet almost completely in the dark about the movie’s plot. The film was shot in sequence over a quick six days, and Canet, onscreen for virtually every minute, was experiencing events, struggling with his emotions and discovering clues in real time just as his character was, adding a layer of authentic tension.

As a director, Guillaume Canet won the César for Best Director for his international hit thriller Tell No One, and his Little White Lies became one of France’s biggest box-office hits. As an actor, he has appeared in over 60 films from Danny Boyle’ The Beach to Stephen Frears’s The Program, and Olivier Assayas’ upcoming Non-Fiction, and many others.

Christian Carion’s first feature was the sleeper hit The Girl from Paris starring Mathilde Seigner as a young Parisian turned goat farmer, followed by his Oscar-nominated Joyeux Noël. His other features are the Cold War Russia-set espionnage thriller Farewell with Guillaume Canet and Emir Kusturica, and the World War II drama Come What May.

“Intense… Will keep you glued to your seat” - Jordan Mintzer, The Hollywood Reporter

Cohen Media Group is proud to announce the release of MY SON, writer-director Christian Carion’s French kidnapping thriller starring his long-time collaborator Guillaume Canet (Tell No One) in a powderkeg portrait of a man driven to extremes to protect his son. MY SON is scheduled to open on Friday, May 10 in New York (at the Quad Cinema and FIAF Florence Gould Hall) and Los Angeles followed by a national roll out.

After years of putting his career above his family, Julien (Guillaume Canet) has found himself with a failed marriage. One day he receives a distressing message from his ex-wife (Mélanie Laurent) that their seven-year-old son has disappeared while at camp. When authorities provide little help, Julien takes matters into his own hands. Fueled by his sense of guilt about neglecting his family, he is determined to do whatever it takes to find his son. That includes using physical force against anyone he speculates could be a suspect in the kidnapping – and disobeying police instructions by stepping outside of the law, as he begins to unfold the mystery of the boy’s disappearance.

MY SON marks the third and most unique collaboration between Canet and director Christian Carion, whose 2005 war drama Joyeux Noël earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Foreign Language Film. In a remarkable filmmaking twist, Carion made the decision to keep Canet almost completely in the dark about the movie’s plot. The film was shot in sequence over a quick six days, and Canet, onscreen for virtually every minute, was experiencing events, struggling with his emotions and discovering clues in real time just as his character was, adding a layer of authentic tension.

As a director, Guillaume Canet won the César for Best Director for his international hit thriller Tell No One, and his Little White Lies became one of France’s biggest box-office hits. As an actor, he has appeared in over 60 films from Danny Boyle’ The Beach to Stephen Frears’s The Program, and Olivier Assayas’ upcoming Non-Fiction, and many others.

Christian Carion’s first feature was the sleeper hit The Girl from Paris starring Mathilde Seigner as a young Parisian turned goat farmer, followed by his Oscar-nominated Joyeux Noël. His other features are the Cold War Russia-set espionnage thriller Farewell with Guillaume Canet and Emir Kusturica, and the World War II drama Come What May.

“Intense… Will keep you glued to your seat” - Jordan Mintzer, The Hollywood Reporter

Panorama Europe 2019, the eleventh edition of the essential festival of new European cinema, co-presented by Museum of the Moving Image (MoMI) and the European Union National Institutes for Culture (EUNIC), includes a wide range of outstanding films by some of the continent’s most exciting emerging directors. The festival, which runs May 3 through 19 with a full slate at MoMI and two encore screenings at Bohemian National Hall, offers New Yorkers an overview of the current European film scene including three French language films highlighted below.

Our Struggles (Nos batailles)
SATURDAY, MAY 4, 2:00 P.M. at MoMI / New York premiere
Presented by Wallonie Bruxelles International (WBI)
Belgium/France. Dir. Guillaume Senez. 98 mins. DCP. With Romain Duris, Laure Calamy, Laetitia Dosch. Guillaume Senez confirms himself as one of Europe’s most deeply humanist directors, working in a lower-key vein than his compatriots, the Dardenne brothers. Following his acclaimed debut Keeper (about a teen boy whose soccer dreams are disrupted when his girlfriend gets pregnant), Our Struggles dramatizes the struggles of a factory manager and labor activist whose wife unexpectedly leaves him, forcing him to care for their two children. Romain Duris, one of Europe’s most magnetic actors (The Beat That My Heart Skipped, All The Money in the World), is compelling as a decent but overwhelmed man dealing with the challenges the contemporary world throws him.

3 Days in Quiberon (3 Tage in Quiberon)
With lead actress Marie Bäumer in person
SUNDAY, MAY 5, 4:30 P.M. at MoMI / New York Premiere
Presented by the Goethe-Institut New York
Germany/Austria/France. Dir. Emily Atef. 2018, 116 mins. DCP. With Marie Bäumer, Birgit Minichmayr, Charly Hübner. Actress Marie Bäumer accomplishes an amazing feat in Emily Atef’s engrossing drama about an extensive interview that Romy Schneider gave while staying at a French spa just a year before her untimely death in 1982. Bäumer captures the unique blend of magnetism, self-awareness, and vulnerability that made Schneider one of the most fascinating European stars of her time. Filmed in lush widescreen black-and-white well-suited for the setting’s gentle, windswept solitude, the film focuses on the increasingly close but wary friendship that emerges between Schneider and the journalist, while also following Schneider’s interactions with a close friend who arrives to keep her company. Further complicating the retreat is the photographer, who is an old flame of Schneider—who is haunted throughout by the recent suicide of her ex-husband, and an estrangement from her teenage son. Bäumer’s Schneider is bracingly honest, funny, and emotionally open.

SIDEBAR SCREENING
Romy Schneider in Le combat dans l'île
SUNDAY, MAY 5, 7:15 P.M. at MoMI
Dir. Alain Cavalier. France. 1962, 104 mins. 35mm. With Romy Schneider, Jean-Louis Trintignant.

Romy Schneider is at her best as the wife of an industrialist and right-wing extremist played by Jean-Louis Trintignant, in this rarely screened thriller from the height of the French New Wave. A jazzy noir that is set against the political turmoil of the early 1960s, Alan Cavalier’s film is stunningly photographed by the great Pierre Lhomme (best known for such films as Jean-Pierre Melville’s Army of Shadows and Jean Eustache’s The Mother and the Whore).

Return to Bollène (Retour à Bollène)
SUNDAY, MAY 12, 2:00 P.M. at MoMI / New York premiere
Presented by the Cultural Services of the French Embassy
France/Morocco. Dir. Saïd Hamich. 2017, 69 mins. Digital projection. With Anas El Baz, Saïd Benchnafa, Kate Colebrook. Nassim, a 30-year-old French-Moroccan man, returns from Abu Dhabi to his hometown in Southern France, with his American fiancée. But the trip offers little comfort; the failing city is now governed by the far right, the Moroccan community is isolated, and Nassim is virtually estranged from his father. Relationships and family bonds are tested. With a sure touch, Hamich draws us into a deeply absorbing series of confrontations and realizations, telling a universal story that is very much rooted in today’s political climate.

Tickets for screenings at MoMI are $15 (with discounts for seniors, students, and Museum members) and free at Bohemian National Hall. Advance tickets at MoMI are available at movingimage.us; reservations for BNH tickets may be made at www.czechcenter.com. A festival pass (good for all MoMI screenings) is available for $50.

For full lineup and schedule please visit movingimage.us/panoramaeurope2019