Retro IONCINEMA.com

Top 100 Most Anticipated Films of 2008: #84 The Countess

Published on October 1, 2012

#84.The Countess

Director/Writer: Julie Delpy
Producers: Delpy, Matthew E. Chausse, Martin Shore, Andro Steinborn, Christopher Tuffin
Distributor: Currently Seeking Distribution

The Gist: The thriller is set against the violent and macabre world of 17th Century Eastern European aristocracy. Reminiscent of the political intrigue of “The Illusionist” and the haunting stylings of “Bram Stoker’s Dracula”, “The Countess” tells the tale of Erzebet Bathory (Julie Delpy) an aging noblewoman whose years of solitude and loneliness transforms her into a cold and distant figure among Hungarian nobility.

Fact: Written by Delpy, this is her passion project – she has been working on it for some time and was supposed to film this before making her directorial debut on 2 Days in Paris.

See It: Several territories have bought the rights to the project – vouching on a film that stars Ethan Hawke but is far from being the next Before Sunrise.

Release Date/Status?: Currently in pre-production, this could be a very late arrival on the film festival scene.

Related Topics:

Eric Lavallée

Eric Lavallée is the founder, CEO, editor-in-chief, film journalist and critic at IONCINEMA.com (founded in 2000). Eric is a regular at Sundance, Cannes and TIFF. He has a BFA in Film Studies at the Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema. In 2013 he served as a Narrative Competition Jury Member at the SXSW Film Festival. He was an associate producer on Mark Jackson's This Teacher (2018 LA Film Festival, 2018 BFI London). In 2022 he served as a New Flesh Comp for Best First Feature at the 2022 Fantasia Intl. Film Festival. Current top films for 2022 include Tár (Todd Field), All That Breathes (Shaunak Sen), Aftersun (Charlotte Wells).