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Hot off the heels of a huge SXSW premiere and with a Grand Jury Prize win to boot, Adam Leon's feature debut has been picked up by the folks at IFC and keeping with a stellar month of March, it'll be highlighted at the New Directors/New Films festival which officially kicks off this week. While no release date has been mentioned, we expect Gimme the Loot to show this summer with, if lucky, an international premiere at a sidebar such as Cannes Critics' Week.

"Despite the one-dimensionality of its anti-patriarchal theme (appeasing the knee-jerk expectations of European film fest audiences), the Dardennes avoid cheapening the story with ideological smugness, achieving an emotional resonance without easy sentimentality."

We threw you a batch of photos of Laurence Anyways last week, and earlier today Quebec's daily La Presse nabbed the first look at the poster (see below - I'll look in finding a better high res pic shortly) and the much anticipated trailer which features Melvil Poupaud in an all-encompassing lead role and what appears to be strong supporting female characters which bridges actresses from Quebec and France. Click on the screen cap below to see the trailer.

In the seven previous editions (with 2007 being the best crop of films with noteworthy titles such as Bertrand Bonello's De La Guerre, Michelangelo Frammartino's Le Quattro Volte, Semih Kaplanoglu's Milk, Ciro Guerra's The Wind Journey, João Pedro Rodrigues' To Die Like A Man and So Yong Kim's Treeless Mountain), L’Atelier has been a pivotal stop for new auteurs in world cinema finding some coin. And while this doesn't carry the same weight as Rotterdam, so far the ratio is 72 for 115. Among the 15 projects selected this year we find find the likes of Dutch helmer Marco van Geffen (pictured) who gave us last year's Among Us (Locarno, TIFF), docu helmer Mahmoud Al Massad (Sundance's Recycle) and a foursome of filmmakers who've workshopped their nascent projects at the well-regarded Torino Film Labs. Here's the list below:

"In Pavilion, Sutton quietly watches Max and his friends and though the results are subtle, at times too subtle, they’re more often revealing; the kids often say very little, but in their blank stares they say a lot. He observes the kids and lets them interact freely, lets them be themselves, and in so doing captures the enormity of the tiny wins and losses that make up teenage life."

"A film about a group of bawdy broads making a life in a decadent whorehouse could make for tasteless rubbish, but House of Pleasures is a masterful film that takes it's sex laden subject, and shapes it into an unsettling tragedy that examines the companionship of the women, and the messy entrapment of a profession they've committed to."

"Jendreyko's film is a magnetic triumph of history and language through the personal story of a reflective old linguist. Fare warning though - at the finish of the film you may have a strange desire to iron your shirts and read Crime and Punishment."

After dipping into romantic drama terrain with his debut film XX/XY and examining the dot-com bubble bursting a decade later in August, Austin Chick's Thelma and Louise take Manhattan like thriller has found a distributor with a fanbase to match. Anchor Bay Films have put the cuffs on the helmer's third directorial outing.

Contempo Queer cinema is alive and well. After showings at Sundance and in Berlin, Ira Sachs' Keep the Lights On is following along in the footsteps of Weekend and Pariah towards a theatrical release as Music Box Films inked a deal for the North American rights to the film.

Anyone who loves classic hand drawn animation surely is familiar with the Japanese giant, Studio Ghibli, and the fat and fluffy Totoro creature that accompanies the title. Hell, at the very least, most Americans have been introduced to Totoro from his cameo appearance in the latest iteration of Toy Story.

As we begin to prep our 2012 Cannes predictions list (scheduled for next week), we've come across some stills for Xavier Dolan's Laurence Anyways. His third film, will likely be a strong contender for a showing at a festival where he got to showcase his first pair of films (J'ai tue ma mere, Les Amours imaginaires).

"Nourizadeh's debut is an over the top film full of 'HOLY SHIT' moments that don't elevate the material, but makes for an entertaining ride nonetheless. Despite its ridiculousness, it continuously surprises while telling a story of three friends' rise in popularity over the course of a single weekend through the destruction of one boy's neighborhood."

"Odds seemed in Weitz’s favor for his latest effort, Being Flynn, based on the 2004 memoir by Nick Flynn, Another Bullshit Night In Suck City. Unfortunately, this is one adaptation that doesn’t quite make a successful transition to the silver screen, and that’s for a few reasons. While at least the book title wasn’t subject to the deadening censorship of film and media, the original source is bound to be a much better read than its celluloid counterpart plays as a film."

Attenberg formed abruptly as a film that observes the human species as little animals who are scared of their reproductive system... Observing them in the manner of nature documentaries. Sir David Attenborough's documentaries move me to tears. I consider them highly poetic, scientific melodramas.

"The fourth feature film from director Jiang Wen (best known for his 2000 film Devils on the Doorstep) infuses samurai inspired comedy with classic Western flairs like train robberies, crime lords, and the oppression of small town communities in need of new law. For the most part, it’s an entertaining effort worth the rather lengthy running time."

" If Gregorio’s first exercise was an inconsequential yet pleasant Roman holiday, his latest effort carries a more substantial gravitas as it undramatically circulates around dissatisfaction with aging and the loss of virility."

Not sure if last year's My Week with Marilyn sparked any renewed interest in the icon, but the Cannes people certainly think that a plastered image of the actress on the Croisette would make for some great eye-candy this coming May.

Fans of Mélanie Laurent can count on the Film Movement folks to import one of her French title items a little bit past the midday point this year (third quarter), as the mini label picked up The Day I Saw Your Heart - a Jennifer Devoldère signed dramedy featuring Laurent, Michel Blanc and Florence Loiret Caille.

I couldn't help but cringe at the notion of a reunion project between director Sergio Castellitto (see final pic below) and muse Penelope Cruz - but then again, anything can top the dismal, 2004 relationship drama Don't Move. Expectations are indeed low for Twice Born - as it appears to be a big reveal in the final 15 minutes type of flashback-forward sort of drama, but it has got Emile Hirsch and Cruz going for it.