Eric Lavallée

Currently making the rounds for a Foreign Oscar bid, Feo Aladag's Die Fremde (When We Leave) has just won the European Parliament's Lux prize beating out fellow nominees in Olivier Masset-Depasse "Illegal" and "Akadimia Platonos" by Greek helmer Filippos Tsitos. In previous years was awarded to: Fatih Akın's The Edge of Heaven, Dardenne Bros.' Lorna's Silence and last year's Philippe Lioret's Welcome.

IFC Films' TIFF shopping might not be complete, as the distrib picked up the rights to Pierre Thorentton's Yves Saint Laurent: L’Amour Fou. The French language docu on the fashion icon received it's world premiere screening last September at TIFF and will be released theatrically sometime next year.

Earlier mentions of Michael Haneke's These Two being a tad too close to Sarah Polley's Away From Her can officially be put to rest. Essentially, both films focus on twilight years aged couples dealing with symptoms/consequences of growing old and subsequently coming to terms with it, but while Polley's film works with degenerative disease text, Haneke's film will strike his featured couple with a stroke - making a victim of not one, but two people.In other news, These Two will be shot in February and last for about 40 days, meaning we could see the film released by year's end. Big question is: who will handle the score?

Note: this is not some casting news headline from a couple of years back. Wild Grass featured ensemble of André Dussollier, Sabine Azéma, Mathieu Amalric and Anne Consigny are joining Alain Resnais' next feature, which will begin lensing in January of next year.

One more nugget of French film production news from this report, Roberto Succo and Red Lights filmmaker Cedric Kahn is setting up his next project for the month after the holidays. Reported a couple of days ago, Guillaume Canet and Leila Bekhti are toplining Une Vie Meilleure which certainly addresses many of the concerns that couples of currently facing - credit card debt, late home payments et al.