Annual Top Films Lists

Top 100 Most Anticipated Foreign Films of 2017: #15. Erick Zonca’s Black River

Published on January 9, 2017

Black River

Director: Erick Zonca
Writer: Erick Zonca, Lou de Fanget Signolet

French director Erick Zonca scored his most critically acclaimed hit with his 1998 debut The Dreamlife of Angels, which competed in the Cannes main competition and won Best Actress awards for its lead stars Elodie Bouchez and Natacha Regnier. He’d receive additional acclaim a decade later for his third feature Julia (2008) which starred Tilda Swinton (in one of her best performances) as an alcoholic kidnapper. Since then, he dabbled in television with the war film White Soldier, but finally announced a new project last year with Black River starring Vincent Cassel, Romain Duris, and Sandrine Kiberlain. Cassel plays the lead as a cop investigating the death of a child when is own son suddenly reappears in his life.

Cast: Vincent Cassel, Sandrine Kiberlain, Romain Duris, Elodie Bouchez, Charles Berling

Production Co./Producer(s): Films Distribution, Curiosa (Olivier Delbosc).

U.S. Distributor: Rights available.

Release Date: Currently in post-production, this could be a return to Cannes for Zonca, but he could also bow in competition in Berlin (where Julia competed in 2008).

Nicholas Bell

Los Angeles based Nicholas Bell is IONCINEMA.com's Chief Film Critic and covers film festivals such as Sundance, Berlin, Cannes and TIFF. He is part of the critic groups on Rotten Tomatoes, The Los Angeles Film Critics Association (LAFCA), the Online Film Critics Society (OFCS) and GALECA. His top 3 for 2021: France (Bruno Dumont), Passing (Rebecca Hall) and Nightmare Alley (Guillermo Del Toro). He was a jury member at the 2019 Cleveland International Film Festival.