Whether a fan of intense drama, light comedy, nail-biting suspense, original animation, or dystopian science fiction, this is the festival for you!

You have exactly 24 days to discover the seven feature and thirteen short films in the official selection on MyMetaStories.eu as well as on some 20 partner platforms worldwide! 🌐

If you haven’t already, become a member at MyMetaStories.eu to take advantage of all the films the festival has to offer. If you run into any difficulties, don’t hesitate to reach out to us at contact@mymetastories.eu📝      

Don’t forget to subscribe to our social media accounts to stay abreast of all the latest happenings at this inaugural festival. Get to know the filmmakers of the official selection through exclusive interviews and messages for members only.

Get your popcorn ready and have a good festival!

MyMetaStories dates

• From October 6 to 29, 2023, movie buffs worldwide will be able to access films from the premier edition of the festival, online, via streaming platforms.
• From October 13 to 16, 2023, festivalgoers can enjoy the Minecraft^® festival experience: the first film festival ever hosted inside the famous video game platform! 🎮

🇪🇺🌟🎬🌎🍿👾

MyMetaStories is a project supported by the European Commission’s Europe Créative programme. 

MyMetaStories is not an official Minecraft^® event and is not approved by or associated with Mojang or Microsoft.

More than 200 French and German participants from the film and audiovisual industries will gather at the Goethe-Institut Paris on Tuesday October 10 and Wednesday October 11 for the 21st edition of the event.

This year, the Franco-German Film Meetings will feature a renewed format. Participants will have the opportunity to attend panels, keynotes, case studies, and take part in working groups.

This year's themes include the following:

• Producing with platforms: current developments
• Artificial intelligence applications
• Protecting our sovereignty - developing our cultural identity
• Audiovisual case study on the European co-production In Her Car
• Film case study on the Sonne und Beton co-production
• Two markets, two realities: distribution in France and Germany

The event will be punctuated by festive moments at various locations in the capital, including the opening cocktail reception at the Comptoir Général on the evening of October 10, and the lunch hosted by Cofiloisirs on October 11 at the Goethe-Institut.

Echoing the 20th edition, which was held alongside the Berlin French Film Week, this year's Franco-German Film Meetings will introduce the German Film Festival at L'Arlequin cinema in Paris. Meeting participants will also be invited to the launch of the 28th edition of the Festival, with the opening screening of the film The Teachers' Lounge (Das Lehrerzimmer). They can then head to the Chez Prince bar for the Atelier Network evening.

For the second year running, and in partnership with OFAJ-DFJW, a delegation of German and French students will have the opportunity to attend the entire Franco-German Film Meetings program and take part in an exclusive meeting with French and German professionals.

If you have any queries, please contact rdv-unifrance@unifrance.org

For each territory, the market shares by broadcast time give an overview of the market configuration and the penetration of French titles. In addition, the top three positions and the distribution of French broadcasts by genre allow us to identify the titles that received the highest broadcast ratiod over the period.

For the next indicator, which will be published in October, Unifrance will focus its analysis on broadcasts in Germany, Spain, Italy, the United Kingdom, and the United States in August 2023.

Unifrance members can download the monthly market indicator of French audiovisual programs on international television below (in French only).
 

Unifrance: How did you come up with the idea for this film, and with the treatment of the subject matter?

Benjamin Clavel Benjamin Clavel: The idea came not from me, but from Julien Abadie and Jérôme Dittmar, the two co-writers I worked with. Julien is an author based in Montreal now, who had written a book on Speed Racer, one of the Wachowskis' films. He and his editor, Jérôme Dittmar, had a project to talk about Matrix more widely and in a more accessible way than in a niche book, with the dream, or at least the strong desire, of making a documentary out of it. If you're going to talk about cinema, you might as well do so with moving images.
Jérôme knew the producer, Dominique Barneaud (Bellota Films), from a previous project. It was Dominique who came to talk to me about the project. Obviously, I was immediately interested. The subject wasn't quite what it is today. It was a big job to pick out the themes that seemed relevant for an audiovisual medium, and for this ARTE slot, since this channel was targeted from the outset. But it was fascinating, a real painstaking task to prune the subject matter and get to the heart and soul of what the Wachowskis wanted to say. In the making of the film, in the writing of the voice, and in the whole formalization of the project, I brought out the issues that had spoken to me at the time and that I felt were the strongest.
I'd already made some cinema documentaries, so I obviously had in the back of my mind the idea of one day making a documentary about the Wachowskis or Matrix, but I'd never got the ball rolling. When you're a director or a writer, you always have ten or fifteen projects on the go, waiting for an opportunity. Matrix wasn't a project I'd written out completely, but it was one I had in mind. It was a real pleasure to be able to get down to work on it, especially with a point of view as relevant as that of the two co-authors.

How would you describe the documentary in a few lines? How does it differ from other projects based on the cult saga?

Benjamin Clavel: It's a really enjoyable film to watch, and includes all the great landmarks and moments of the films. There's a popcorn aspect to it that's really enjoyable, and at the same time, it delves into subjects that hadn't been explored before. The film is quite singular, going in a different direction from the analyses that have been made of Matrix. Matrix is seen as a piece of pop culture, one in which reality has caught up with fiction. The documentary is dense, but I think it explores things that few people have thought about, notably the link with psychedelia, with the 1960s and 1970s, a link that has been little dealt with, at least in documentaries.
I'd also like to highlight the incredible work of Sébastien Iglesias, who created the illustrations that punctuate the narrative, and give a shout out to Baptiste and Pierre Colleu for creating the original music.

The political and avant-garde dimension of Matrix is obvious. How did you manage to make this subject your own?

Benjamin Clavel: I really discovered Matrix on the big screen when I was 17. At 17 you're very optimistic, you dream, you want a lot of things, and I was quite politically active. As I say at the start of the film, I initially took Matrix for a blockbuster that wasn't necessarily going to open up any philosophical or thought-provoking avenues for me. That's why I wanted to tackle the political question, which is present in all the Wachowskis' films. Because at the time, I saw it as a contradiction. A big-budget American film from Warner Bros. with a huge marketing campaign couldn't be a film with the political connotations or ideals I had. In fact, it's really a film of its time, coming out at the beginning of alter-globalization. There was something happening at that time with regard to a capitalism that would be overwhelming.
The political question is addressed in the background, stemming from aesthetic and philosophical issues. The Wachowskis are not filmmakers who make overtly political films, but entertainment and science fiction. The political dimension derives from the philosophical scope of their work.
There's another nuance to be added. Like all great works that become classics, they are reinterpreted to suit the times. And we see this to a large extent in the documentary.

Your documentary ends with the questions "What is real and what is not?" and "Is it important to distinguish between the two?". What do you think as a documentary filmmaker?

Benjamin Clavel: The image is always real. In fact, even when we talk about the virtual, we're talking about something real. The question is not so much to distinguish the real from the virtual, but to know where we want to be, in which reality. There are parallel realities, as we see in the film with the psychedelia.
It's true that the anecdote Keanu Reeves tells at the end of the film, about a little girl who doesn't care to distinguish between what's real and what's not, raises questions. I'm using it to make a point. I don't know the age of this girl; I think he says she's 13 or 14. But as we can see today, there's a desire to escape into alternative worlds, be they virtual or otherwise, a bit like being under the effect of a drug, with all the pleasure that can bring, but also all the danger. We talk about video game addiction, and that's certainly a good term, because you end up getting used to it and losing your footing.
I'm still convinced, and this is what I wanted to say at the end of the documentary, that it's important to distinguish virtual reality from physical reality. That's not to say that we shouldn't delve into virtual reality, but that we should go into it with an awareness of it.

The documentary conveys universal values such as love and freedom. Did you have an international audience in mind when you wrote the film?

Benjamin Clavel: Yes, the international aspect was considered from the outset, firstly because our subject is North American, and therefore necessarily with a foot in the USA, in Hollywood. The Matrix films were shot in Australia and the film had a genuine worldwide impact, not just in France, but throughout Europe and the rest of the world. When you try to build a discourse around Matrix, you try to address everyone, no matter the language barrier. It was also interesting to see the reactions of potential future buyers in Biarritz, to see that the pleasure seems to be shared!
There are things we all agree on pretty quickly, whether for better or for worse, such as big-city downtown spaces, which all look absolutely the same these days, or collective imaginaries like that of Matrix.
I made a documentary on Neill Blomkamp, who directed District 9, Elysium, and Chappie, and has just released a new film. He's someone who's pretty much of my generation, who was also very affected by Matrix, and he's Canadian-South African. It's great to be able to share on this scale.

2023 is the Year of the Documentary. Is there a documentary you've particularly enjoyed that you'd like to share?

Benjamin Clavel: There's a documentary that I really liked, which I rewatched when making my documentary, even if it seems a bit far away, called Cobain: Montage of Heck, a documentary about Kurt Cobain directed by Brett Morgen, a close family friend, who is also an incredible director. I think this documentary perfectly combines beautifully painted and animated biographical parts, musical setting, and archival footage. For me, it's an example of documentary "writing." I'm also very fond of Agnès Varda, Gianfranco Rosi, and José Luis Guerín, the Spanish documentary filmmaker who made the film Work in Progress, which I saw on ARTE when I was younger. It had such an impact on me that I think it contributed to my desire to make documentaries. It's kind of my bedtime documentary. It's gorgeous in the way it approaches people. It's not particularly concerned with framing, nor is it a very composed documentary, but it gets right up close to people. It observes a construction site in Barcelona, in the city, buildings have already been razed and something else is being built. It's all about the local residents, who are seeing their neighborhood change.

Do you already have any initial leads for international sales of your documentary?

Estelle De Araujo Estelle De Araujo : We've already received offers and are negotiating. It's a project we started working with very early on, having pitched it at Sunny Side. We'd already worked with Bellota Films on other films, in other genres. We'd heard about the project for a while and it corresponded to what we wanted to develop at The Party Film Sales in terms of audiovisual documentaries, documentaries on very pop-culture, very cinema subjects. A desire linked to personal desires, but also to the things we've put in place in terms of international sales strategy.
We came on board quite early, having accompanied the film from Sunny Side, which was a good time to start talking about it. We were there right from the writing stage, which was very intense, with a lot of back and forth. It was great to follow the work as an exporter, to be able to start talking about it well in advance. In fact, that's what we're trying to do more and more, to generate interest and potential pre-sales

We started showing the film, and it was finished just before Biarritz, so the timing was very tight, but we upheld the deadline. Initial feedback from Europe, Australia, New Zealand, and the English-speaking world has been very good and encouraging, with promises of offers on the way.

It's also great to have been able to take advantage of Biarritz's video platform, at least for this film - it was viewed many times. These fruitful Rendez-Vous herald a great adventure for documentary abroad

The Anglo-Saxon world is showing great interest, but what about the United States?

Estelle De Araujo: It's going to be a challenge, because it's not a territory where there's a lot of space. But there's a cinema/society angle that's very well handled in the film, with a very good balance. It's going to take a little more time in the United States, but we're keeping a close eye on it.

Was the Unifrance Rendez-Vous in Biarritz useful?

Estelle De Araujo: It's a fairly strategic time of year, just after the start of the school year. As a vendor, our years tend to follow this pattern, from September to June. It's rather ideal to be able to launch the documentary during the Rendez-Vous, with a real spotlight on the film on the closing night. The Rendez-Vous offer great opportunities to meet our buyers; we were able to send them the film beforehand, which was effective, and the feedback is more direct. The timing for the film was ideal, and that's what we were targeting in our launch plan.

"Alma knows. If her mother persists in refusing to take the new treatment she's been offered, she'll die. So she has just one idea in mind: to change her mother's mind as they both drive to the Drôme. A final mother-daughter journey in which Alma will have to find the strength within herself to let her mother go."

Get ready to "think pink": since 1985, October has been Breast Cancer Awareness Month. Discover Just the Two of Us, a poignant short film directed by Clara Lemaire Anspach, fille de la cinéaste Solveig Anspach, daughter of filmmaker Solveig Anspach, who died of breast cancer in 2015 after a long personal battle with the disease.

English subtitles available.

With thanks to Topshot Films

Click here to watch the film

Ladybug & Cat Noir Awakening remained the monthly rankings' leader, attracting over 3.2 million spectators! Jeanne du Barry held on to second place, with Passages, new to the top 3 list, in third position.

Stunning box office results for French films in theaters abroad in August

LFrench films attracted 4.8 million spectators and generated €21.2 million in international box office receipts in August. This is the highest monthly attendance level recorded since the beginning of 2020! While there were almost as many films in exhibition and new releases as in July, admissions rose by 39%. The strong global box-office recovery that began in July continued into August, and French cinema was able to count on a solid standard-bearer, Ladybug & Cat Noir Awakening. In less than two months, the animated film surpassed the 5-million-spectator mark internationally, the first French title to do so since  Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets (2017, 30.6 million admissions and €169.9 million in box office revenues), making it the third most-viewed majority-financed animated French production abroad in the last 25 years, behind The Little Prince (2015,18.4 million and €80.5 million) and Arthur and the Invisibles (2006, 10.2 million and €49.8 million)! Thanks to successful new launches, Ladybug & Cat Noir Awakening attracted more people of all ages than in the previous month, including 2.3 million Russians (Exponenta, €5.8 million euros) and 445,000 Chinese (China Film, €1.7 million), and sold over 1.1 million tickets in Germany (€8.9 million). It alone accounted for two out of three admissions for French titles outside France during the month of August. Ladybug hit new markets in September, not to mention being available on Netflix in three-quarters of foreign countries (including the USA). If this hadn't been the case, it might have been able to dethrone The Little Prince.
Despite the dominance of Ladybug, other French films also made a name for themselves this month, starting with the other two titles on the podium. Jeanne du Barry totaled over 1 million admissions abroad, including 903,000 in Russia (Russian World Vision, €3.5 million) and 46,000 in Poland (Gutek, €0.2 million), not to mention her promising debut in Italy (Medusa/Notorious, 63,000 admissions and €0.41 million). New comer Passages kicked off its international tour under the Mubi banner, inviting audiences to a dozen markets, buoyed by $0.4 million in North American sales (around 40,000 admissions) and 20,000 tickets sold in Mexico (€0.08 million). How to Survive Without Mum also returned to the monthly top 10, thanks to 49,000 admissions in Russia (Atmosfera, €0.2 million) and 14,000 in Hungary (Big Bang, €0.07 million), and The Young Lovers arrived and was appreciated by 56,000 Germans (Alamode, €0.5 million). Still on the other side of the Rhine, Rumba Therapy continued to win over moviegoers, with 151,000 admissions (Neue Visionen, €1.3 million), as did Argonuts and its more than 74,000 fans in the Nordic countries (€0.8 million).

Passages

Russia, Germany, and China: top 3 territories in August

As usual, Europe remained the leading geographic region for the theatrical distribution of French films. However, as Western Europe and Oceania were the only regions to see a decline in August attendance figures, it was the central and eastern part of the old continent that enabled France to maintain its leadership. 63.5% of August viewers came from Eastern Europe - a record! Thanks to the Chinese release of Ladybug, Asia offered France over 500,000 admissions. Given the above performances, it's not surprising to find Russia (2.8 million), Germany (509,000), and China (445,000) leading the monthly territory rankings in terms of number of spectators. Only two other countries exceeded 100,000 admissions: Poland (147,000) and Hungary (102,000).

Animation, biopics, and comedies were the most popular genres

Ladybug & Cat Noir Awakening ensured that animation remained the preferred international genre, attracting more people than in July (3.3 million admissions, 69% of total admissions). Thanks to the fine trajectory of Jeanne du Barry, biopics saw almost unchanged numbers month-on-month (512,000), as did comedy/drama (490,000), buoyed by its many ambassadors (How to Survive Without Mum, The Young Lovers, The Crime is Mine and two other titles in the monthly top 10 below). The other genre to post growth in August was drama (361,000, +11%), boosted by the arrival of Passages. French arthouse titles accounted for one in five admissions during the month under review, i.e. 1 million tickets sold (Jeanne du Barry, Passages, and The Crime is Mine made up the top three). Majority-French productions (95% of total admissions) and French-language productions (94%) accounted for the lion's share of the month's admissions; minority-financed productions hit an annual low (217,000 admissions), while foreign-language productions rebounded with Passages (302,000, +39%).

French films at international festivals in July and August 2023

In July and August, almost 300 majority- and minority-French films were selected for key  international festivals. Among them, three works representing the diversity of current French productions and co-productions were particularly in demand. First, of course, Justine Triet's 2023 Palme d'or winner Anatomy of a Fall, which was honored at four festivals this summer, including Karlovy Vary, Locarno, and Telluride (photo below. Next, Ira Sachs' Passages, which was discovered earlier this year at Sundance, was selected at New Horizons in Wrocław and at the Edinburgh Film Festival. Closing the festival's roundup, Lisandro Alonso's Eureka, which premiered at the Cannes Film Festival, was presented at Munich and at New Horizons.  Audiences at the Melbourne and Jerusalem Film Festivals were able to discover these three feature films, all programmed by these events. The New Horizons Film Festival in Wrocław, with 58 French works (both majority- and minority-financed), held the record for interest in French films, but Karlovy Vary (35) and Locarno (30) also showed great openness to French productions during this period.

> This report can be downloaded in PDF format below (French version only).

> This report is based on results recorded on September 6, 2023. Since our statistics for film releases are continuously being updated, the graphics generated automatically on our website will differ from the chart featured in this article.

On the festival front

"An alienating and seductive work in competition at the Lido," Cinematografo stated about Bertrand Bonello's The Beast, presented at the Venice Film Festival.
➡️ Read the article online
 

Also on the subject of Venice Film Festival selections, Deadline noted Xavier Giannoli's return to directing with Of money and blood, a series that received its world premiere on the Lido.
➡️ Read the article online
 

At the Toronto International Film Festival, Bâtiment 5, Ladj Ly's latest film, appealed to journalists: "A spiritual sequel to Les Misérables," we can read in Film Stage.
➡️ Read the article online
 

Colombia celebrated the return of the Festival de Cine Francés, and its homage to Jean-Luc Godard, in 16 cities around the country.
➡️ Read the article online
 

French animation nabbed two Cartoon Tributes at the recent Cartoon Forum, as reported by Variety.
➡️ Read the article online
 

And at San Sebastián, El País noted that two films by Joachim Lafosse and Xavier Legrand, respectively A Silence and The Successor, shared a common theme: "subjects marked by sexual abuse."
➡️ Read the article online
 

The international press testified to the robust state of the French audiovisual sector at foreign markets and festivals.

Starting with the record sales of French audiovisual works in 2022, announced during the  Unifrance Rendez-Vous in Biarritz, and reported by SeñalNews.
➡️ Read the article online
 

Variety also remarked on the success of the French audiovisual industry, thanks in particular to the American remakes of HIP and Le Bureau des Légendes.
➡️ Read the article online
 

SeñalNews also announced new international sales for Jade Armor, mainly in Canada, Belgium, and Denmark.
➡️ Read the article online
 

WorldScreen reported on the current projects of production company Superprod, during an interview with Jérémie Fajner and Clément Calvet.
➡️ Read the article online
 

 The Best of Us mini-series arrived in Spain, as mentioned in Neeo.es.
➡️ Read the article online
 

And The Reunion arrived in Latin America, reported this time in News Line Report.
➡️ Read the article online
 

In Brazil, Ouniverso da TV announced the broadcast of the documentary series Connexions on Film&Art.
➡️ Read the article online
 

And Prensario Internacional highlighted the triumph of The Fragile Colossus
at the Seoul International Drama Awards, where it won two major awards.
➡️ Read the article online
 

And another festival award, for the Oussekine mini-series at the Venice TV Awards.
➡️ Read the article online
 

And in theaters…

The New York Times commented on the release in the USA of the film The Mountain, at the beginning of September.
➡️ Read the article online
 

While still in the United States, Horror Fuel profiled Bowling Saturne, director Patricia Mazuy's first foray into genre filmmaking.
➡️ Read the article online
 

In Mexico, Primera Página focused on The Crime Is Mine: "A look at the past in order to understand the present."
➡️ Read the article online
 

In Norway, Cine.no interviewed Davy Chou about his film Return to Seoul: "Not your typical 'back to your roots' story."
➡️ Read the article online
 

And in Spain, La Razón said of Charlotte Le Bon's Falcon Lake, "a sensitive and tender film that is never suffocating nor morbid."
➡️ Read the article online
 

In The Netherlands, Cinemagazine published a glowing article about Jeanne du Barry. Maïwenn's film has already clocked up more than 21,000 admissions.
➡️ Read the article pnline
 

We'll finish in Japan, with an interview with Cédric Klapisch published on Nordot.com after the release of his latest film Rise.
➡️ Read the article online