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Held annually since 1932, the Venice Film Festival is the world's oldest film festival. Along with the Cannes Film Festival and Berlin International Film Festival, the Venice Film Festival is one of the "Big Three" European Film Festivals. Recently, many potential Academy Award front-runners have used the Venice Film Festival as a launching pad for their Oscar campaigns.

First introduced in 1949, the Golden Lion is the highest prize awarded at the Venice Film Festival. The Golden Lion remains one of the film industry's most prestigious and coveted awards. Countless winners of the Golden Lion now rank among the best films ever made.

Related: 10 Best Low-Budget Movies That Won An Oscar

Belle de Jour (1967)

Luis Buñuel's Belle de Jour stars Catherine Deneuve as a young housewife who constantly daydreams about erotic fantasies. Eventually, unbeknownst to her husband, she becomes a prostitute, working during the daytime while her husband is at work.

Bertrand Blier’s edgy romp about a pair of ne’er-do-well petty-crooks will go too far for many viewers — they’re antisocially chauvinistic in some really outrageous ways. Are they jolly adventurers or just terminally obnoxious? The twisted social comedy really needs its talented cast: Gérard Depardieu, Patrick Dewaere, Miou-Miou, Jeanne Moreau, Brigitte Fossey, and a very young Isabelle Huppert. The new presentation includes a commentary by Richard Peña.

Going Places

Blu-ray

Cohen Film Collection / Kino Lorber

1974 / Color / 1:66 widescreen / 118 min. / Les valseuses / Street Date October 11, 2022 / Available from Kino Lorber / 29.95

Starring: Gérard Depardieu, Patrick Dewaere, Miou-Miou, Jeanne Moreau, Brigitte Fossey, Jacques Chailleux, Isabelle Huppert, Thierry Lhermitte.

Cinematography: Bruno Nuytten

Production Designers: Jean-Jacques Caziot, Françoise Hardy

Film Editor: Kénout Peltier

Original Music:

Written by Bertrand Blier and Philippe Dumarçay from the novel by Bertrand Blier <smaStéphane Grappellill>

Produced by Paul Claudon

Directed by Bertrand Blier

The freedom of the screen that came with...

Giuseppe Tornatore’s romantic ode to the movies charmed America, convincing theater-goers that little Italian kids are the cutest in the world. Little Salvatore Cascio grows up in a projection booth under the life-tutelage of kindly Philippe Noiret. Arrow presents the theatrical version of this Best Foreign Picture Oscar winner in 4K Ultra HD. The (greatly) extended version is on a second Blu-ray — it plays like a different movie entirely.

Cinema Paradiso

4K Ultra HD + Blu-ray

Arrow Academy

1988 / Color / 1:85 widescreen / 174, 155, 124 min. / Nuovo cinema Paradiso / Street Date December 8, 2020 / 49.95

Starring: Philippe Noiret, Antonella Attili, Salvatore Cascio, Marco Leonardi, Jacques Perrin, Agnese Nano, Brigitte Fossey, Pupella Maggio, Leopoldo Trieste.

Cinematography: Blasco Giurato

Film Editor: Mario Morra

Original Music: Ennio Morricone, Andrea Morricone

Produced by Mino Barbera, Franco Cristaldi, Giovanna Romagnoli

Written and Directed by Giuseppe Tornatore

Every so often there comes along a European movie that so captures American audiences, one would...

Here's something to add to your Christmas wish list… Dial Code Santa Claus (1989) Director: René Manzor Stars: Alain Lalanne, Louis Ducreux, Brigitte Fossey When a psychopathic Santa Claus invades his house and kills his dog on Christmas Eve, a young boy dressed like Rambo must defend his home and his family at all costs. Dial Code Santa Claus (aka 3615 Code PÈRE…...

Page Three Media and Artemis Productions, which backed “The Danish Girl,” announced in Cannes “Second to Nun,” a new feature from Golden Globe winning director Alain Berliner.

Berliner’s decades-ahead-of-its-time “Ma Vie en Rose,” the tale of a young transgender girl with dreams of growing into a mature woman and marrying the boy next door, was a breakout hit at Cannes, nominated at the Baftas and the French Academy César Awards and won a Golden Globe in 1997.

“Second to Nun” is a U.S., Belgium and France co-production which features a star international cast including Brigitte Fossey (“Cinema Paradiso”), Claudia Cardinale (“Once Upon a Time in the West”) Rossy de Palma (“Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown”), Raul Torres (“Wonderstruck”) and Larry Cech (“Absinthe”). According to its producers, further cast additions are forthcoming.

Set in the South of France during the Cannes Film Festival, “Second to Nun” will...

Every week, IndieWire asks a select handful of film critics two questions and publishes the results on Monday. (The answer to the second, “What is the best film in theaters right now?”, can be found at the end of this post.)

This week’s question: In honor of “The Florida Project,” which has just started its platform release across the country, what is the greatest child performance in a film?

Jordan Hoffman (@JHoffman), The Guardian, Vanity Fair

I can agonize over this question or I can go at this Malcolm Gladwell “Blink”-style. My answer is Tatum O’Neal in “Paper Moon.” She’s just so funny and tough, which of course makes the performance all the more heartbreaking. She won the freaking Oscar at age 10 for this and I’d really love to give a more deep cut response, but why screw around? Paper Moon is a perfect film and she is the lynchpin.

Giuseppe Tornatore’s ode to the Italian love of movies was a major hit here in 1990, despite being severely cut by Miramax. In 2002 the director reworked his long version into an almost three-hour sentimental epic that enlarges the film’s scope and deepens its sentiments.

Cinema Paradiso

Region B Blu-ray

Arrow Academy

1988 / Color / 1:85 widescreen / Special Edition / 174, 155, 124 min. /

Nuovo cinema Paradiso / Street Date March 21, 2017 / 39.95

Starring: Philippe Noiret, Antonella Attili, Salvatore Cascio, Marco Leonardi, Jacques Perrin, Agnese Nano, Brigitte Fossey, Pupella Maggio, Leopoldo Trieste

Cinematography: Blasco Giurato

Production Designer: Andrea Crisanti

Film Editor: Mario Morra

Original Music: Ennio and Andrea Morricone

Produced by Mino Barbera, Franco Cristaldi, Giovanna Romagnoli

Written and Directed by Giuseppe Tornatore

Your average foreign import movie, it seems, makes a brief splash around Oscar time and then disappears as if down a rabbit hole. A few years back I saw a fantastic Argentine movie called The Secret in Their Eyes.

It’s 1940, and the Nazi invasion of France is fully under way. A mother, father, a five-year-old girl and her tiny dog are among a throng of refugees fleeing Paris and jamming roads across the French countryside while German planes drop bombs and strafe their path with a relentless rain of machine gun fire. Soon the girl will be completely alone, her parents and that beloved dog all cut down in front of her eyes. But before she even has the chance to process what has happened (if she even can—on the most immediate level, she believes they’re only asleep), she’s given a ride by an older couple, one of whom cruelly flings the animal’s corpse, the only thing the girl has been able to save of her now-devastated familiar world, into a creek. The girl, Paulette (Brigitte Fossey), jumps off their wagon, retrieves the dog...

Giuseppe Tornatore Remembers as Cinema Paradiso Turns 25

By Alex Simon

Giuseppe Tornatore’s Cinema Paradiso won the 1990 Best Foreign Film Oscar after setting box office records the previous year all over the world. Paradiso had a rough journey on its road to glory, however, with the then-32 year-old writer/director being forced to cut nearly 30 minutes from its original running time and facing critical excoriation and box office indifference upon its original release in Italy. It’s a fitting metaphor for a film that has become a classic tale about fate, perseverance, and destiny.

Set in Sicily beginning in the years just after Ww II to the late 1950s, and framed by modern-day flashbacks of a renowned film director (French actor/director Jacques Perrin) returning to his Sicilian town for the first time in 30 years, Tornatore’s hero (and alter-ego) is pint-sized Toto, who finds himself obsessed with the movies,...

If nostalgia is life through a rose-tinted lens then Cinema Paradiso celebrates that illusion and the power of film to immortalise precious moments. 25 years after its initial release the Italian Oscar-winner returns to the big screen this weekend, lovingly re-mastered and it is sumptuous, highlighting all the richness and texture of good old-fashioned celluloid. In short, it is pure film magic.

The story from writer/director Giuseppe Tornatore is loosely autobiographical, revisiting his childhood in post-war Sicily via the adorably cheeky Salvatore Cascio as Toto. The boy is constantly making a nuisance of himself at home (his father was lost at war) and in the projectionist's booth at the Cinema Paradiso where Alfredo (a wonderfully hangdog turn by French actor Philippe Noiret) tries to convince him that he should turn his mind to higher matters.

Even so, Alfredo is set on a pedestal. Peeking between the curtains Toto sees that...

(René Clément, 1952; StudioCanal, 12)

René Clément (1913-96) worked for years on documentaries before making his feature debut immediately after the second world war with La bataille du rail (1946), a celebration of the role of railway workers in the Resistance. It won the international jury prize at the first Cannes film festival, and his most famous movie, Forbidden Games (Les jeux interdits), also about the second world war, won an Oscar as best foreign language movie.

Set in 1940, this delicate, beautifully paced film centres on a middle-class five-year-old (Brigitte Fossey), orphaned by the Luftwaffe while fleeing from Paris, and her new friend, a young peasant lad (Georges Poujouly), who become obsessed with the rituals of burial as the war goes on around them. The film is both deeply moving and darkly comic, and the performances of Poujouly and the infinitely expressive Fossey (both of whom had acting careers as adults) are among...

★★★★☆ This year sees the centenary of the birth of not only one of French cinema's, but also the world's, most celebrated directors. Often referred to as the 'French Alfred Hitchcock', René Clément had a penchant for the macabre and mysterious, as reflected in four films newly released by francophile UK distributor StudioCanal. Starring Brigitte Fossey, Frank Langella, Oscar-winner Faye Dunaway and Mia Farrow's sister Tisa amongst others, Forbidden Games (1952), Gervaise (1956), The Deadly Trap (1971) and And Hope to Die (1972) perfectly reflect the otherworldliness and surreal atmosphere which pervaded much of Clément's work.

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Perhaps we should all agree the term “urban update” should be kept as far away from studio pitches as possible? The descriptor -- besides sounding like a mandatory software patch -- just does not do the film it's touting any favors whatsoever. But, that hasn't stopped the latest remake to be deigned as such from picking up a charismatic leading man in rapper/actor Common, and worthy source material in Francois Truffaut's 1977 film “The Man Who Loved Women.”

Shadow and Act reports that the update, which comes after a pretty dismal Blake Edwards remake starring Burt Reynolds and Julie Andrews, will transplant the original film's Paris location to Buenos Aires, where Marc Guiness (Common) decides to pen a memoir about the myriad relationships throughout his life. First-time feature director J. Kevin Swain, who has 'til now made a name with music videos and, er, “Being Bobby Brown,” will helm the project,...

A colorful, sentimental trip through the happy days when the Italo film biz wasn’t in a perennial ‘crisis’, this Amarcord about a marvelous Sicilian hardtop and a boy who loves the movies boasts eye-catching technical work and a solid cast. Young helmer Giuseppe Tornatore (The Professor) is an able storyteller who knows the value of cute kids and easy emotion. Beneath the schmaltz lie buried a lot of good ideas.

Clocking in at an overlong 2 1/2 hours (cut from three), film divides into three parts, corresponding to the three ages of cineaste-hero Salvatore. As an adorable 10-year-old moppet (first-timer Salvatore Cascio), the boy sneaks into the parochial Paradise Cinema to watch a priest (Leopoldo Trieste) snip out all the kissing scenes. He worms his way into the heart of crusty peasant projectionist Alfredo (a well-balanced Philippe Noiret) who speaks in film dialog.

With Alfredo the cinema is magic – like the...