Decadent, hermetic, and gleefully hostile to realism, French writer-director Bertrand Mandico’s She Is Conann is the cinematic equivalent of a French Symbolist poem. Throughout, the oneiric imagery seeping from every frame takes precedence over narrative linearity. And yet, even as the film embodies the self-indulgent ideal of art for art’s sake, it devours itself from within and drops the viewer back into the arena of politics.
Lest we forget even for moment that we’re watching a film, She Is Conann is shot in black and white, aside from the sporadic flash of violence and one framing sequence set in hell’s antechamber, where a dead Conann (Françoise Brion) takes stock of her life of barbarism. For her guide, there’s the dog-headed punk clairvoyant Rainer (Elina Löwensohn), whose name could be an allusion to Rainer Maria Rilke or Rainer Werner Fassbinder. Their dialogue at any given moment...
Lest we forget even for moment that we’re watching a film, She Is Conann is shot in black and white, aside from the sporadic flash of violence and one framing sequence set in hell’s antechamber, where a dead Conann (Françoise Brion) takes stock of her life of barbarism. For her guide, there’s the dog-headed punk clairvoyant Rainer (Elina Löwensohn), whose name could be an allusion to Rainer Maria Rilke or Rainer Werner Fassbinder. Their dialogue at any given moment...
- 1/28/2024
- by William Repass
- Slant Magazine
The Oscars, it seems, agree with The Hollywood Reporter: Sandra Hüller is a star.
When THR put the German actress on its cover for its Toronto Film Festival issue, it was under the headline “Actress of the Year?” It was an acknowledgment that Hüller had given two of the most outstanding performances in film in 2023: as a novelist accused of murder in Justine Triet’s mystery thriller Anatomy of a Fall and as a domestic Nazi in Jonathan Glazer’s Holocaust drama The Zone of Interest.
On Tuesday, Hüller scored a nomination for the 2024 Oscars in the best actress category for Anatomy of a Fall. Both Anatomy of a Fall and The Zone of Interest were also nominated in the best picture and best director categories.
In Anatomy, Hüller plays Sandra Voyter, a successful German novelist living in the French Alps who may or may not have murdered...
When THR put the German actress on its cover for its Toronto Film Festival issue, it was under the headline “Actress of the Year?” It was an acknowledgment that Hüller had given two of the most outstanding performances in film in 2023: as a novelist accused of murder in Justine Triet’s mystery thriller Anatomy of a Fall and as a domestic Nazi in Jonathan Glazer’s Holocaust drama The Zone of Interest.
On Tuesday, Hüller scored a nomination for the 2024 Oscars in the best actress category for Anatomy of a Fall. Both Anatomy of a Fall and The Zone of Interest were also nominated in the best picture and best director categories.
In Anatomy, Hüller plays Sandra Voyter, a successful German novelist living in the French Alps who may or may not have murdered...
- 1/23/2024
- by Scott Roxborough
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
“She Is Conann” is a new science fiction fantasy thriller feature, directed by Bertrand Mandico, starring Claire Duburcq, Christa Théret, Sandra Parfait, Agata Buzek, Nathalie Richard, Françoise Brion, Julia Riedler and Elina Löwensohn, releasing February 2, 2024 in theaters:
“…traveling through the abyss, underworld dog ‘Rainer’ recounts the six lives of ‘Conann’, perpetually put to death by her own future, across eras, myths and ages.
‘Follow her, from her childhood as a slave of ‘Sanja’ and her barbarian horde…
“…to her accession to the summits of cruelty at the doors of our world…”
Click the images to enlarge…...
“…traveling through the abyss, underworld dog ‘Rainer’ recounts the six lives of ‘Conann’, perpetually put to death by her own future, across eras, myths and ages.
‘Follow her, from her childhood as a slave of ‘Sanja’ and her barbarian horde…
“…to her accession to the summits of cruelty at the doors of our world…”
Click the images to enlarge…...
- 1/5/2024
- by Unknown
- SneakPeek
Experimental French filmmaker Bertrand Mandico isn’t for everyone — i.e. an acquired taste whose visions push boundaries of cinematic expression — but he’s achieved something of a cult fandom over the last three decades. After last pairing with the director on 2022’s “After Blue” and 2017’s uninhibited Venice winner “The Wild Boys” — Cahiers du Cinéma’s top film of 2018 — the distributor Altered Innocence again teams with Mandico on another provocation. His 2023 Cannes premiere “She Is Conann,” nominated for the Queer Palm before going on to play at other festivals including Locarno, is an acid-trip transgressive riff on the Conan the Barbarian myth. IndieWire shares the trailer here.
Influences on the film include Tony Scott’s “The Hunger,” the works of Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Liliana Cavani’s “The Night Porter,” and Fellini’s “Satyricon.” Throw Ken Russell in there for good measure, with profane images in “She Is Conann” reminiscent of “The Devils.
Influences on the film include Tony Scott’s “The Hunger,” the works of Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Liliana Cavani’s “The Night Porter,” and Fellini’s “Satyricon.” Throw Ken Russell in there for good measure, with profane images in “She Is Conann” reminiscent of “The Devils.
- 1/4/2024
- by Ryan Lattanzio
- Indiewire
Yvonne Rainer’s first film is a fascinating immersion in radical art practice in all its meta-narrative incoherence and mess
Here is the first film from avant garde film-maker Yvonne Rainer, showing as part of a retrospective of her work at the Ica in London, affording viewers a chance to appreciate the wonky, wonderful weirdness that was integral to the New York experimental art scene in the early 1970s. Aptly enough for an artist who started her career in the dance world (having studied with such luminaries as Martha Graham and Merce Cunningham), Rainer grounds this in the world of dance, opening with a rehearsal of a company running through different moves. Don’t be alarmed if no sound is coming through – it’s meant to be that way. Rainer plays throughout with audience expectations and need for narrative closure, offering little titbits of story and then whipping them away...
Here is the first film from avant garde film-maker Yvonne Rainer, showing as part of a retrospective of her work at the Ica in London, affording viewers a chance to appreciate the wonky, wonderful weirdness that was integral to the New York experimental art scene in the early 1970s. Aptly enough for an artist who started her career in the dance world (having studied with such luminaries as Martha Graham and Merce Cunningham), Rainer grounds this in the world of dance, opening with a rehearsal of a company running through different moves. Don’t be alarmed if no sound is coming through – it’s meant to be that way. Rainer plays throughout with audience expectations and need for narrative closure, offering little titbits of story and then whipping them away...
- 8/14/2023
- by Leslie Felperin
- The Guardian - Film News
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