A Cannes Film Festival regular with her Critics’ Week showcased Ava (in 2017) and Directors’ Fortnight selected The Five Devils (2022), Léa Mysius has found her third feature. The French filmmaker will adapt Laurent Mauvignier’s recent French thriller Histoires De La Nuit (The Birthday Party) – it sounds like a great read per The Guardian. The Screen Daily folks report that Les Films de Pierre’s Marie-Ange Luciani and F Comme Film’s Jean-Louis Livi will produce. No cast has been attached yet, but it looks like there’ll be a meaty part for a lead female. Shooting is planned for May 2024, which means they’ll likely submit this for the Palme d’Or comp in 2025/ It’s worth mentioning that Mysius has technically been included in the comp before as she helped write Claire Denis’ Stars At Noon, Arnaud Desplechin’s Ismael’s Ghosts, Oh Mercy!, and Jacques Audiard’s Paris, 13th District. Luciani who sees her Anatomy of a Fall drop in theatres today, coins this has a female version of Cronenberg’s A History of Violence.
Set in a hamlet in rural France, the story follows a man and his wife, their daughter and an artist neighbour. As the man plans a surprise for his wife’s birthday, inexplicable happenings begin to disrupt the hamlet’s quiet existence before turning into a nightmarish chain of events when night falls.
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).
