Top 200 Most Anticipated Foreign Films of 2023: #168. Helene Cattet & Bruno Forzani’s Darling

Darling

The husband-and-wife filmmaker tandem from Brussels known best for exploring their worlds via a giallo lense, moved into animated film territory sometime around 2018 with Darling. After Amer (2009), The Strange Colour of Your Body’s Tears (2013), and Let the Corpses Tan (2017), Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani focus in the somewhat seedy world of the 1960s NYC with a project that revolves around art and….vengeance. The curious source material is an adaptation of Iris Owens’ first erotica novel in the 50’s (under her pseudonym, Harriet Daimlera). Belgium’s Kozak Films and France’s Tobina Films are producing. The duo will be heading into Reflection in a Dead Diamond this April, so if the final touches have been placed on Darling then we’ll have back to back years of their output or … a really busy 2024.

Gist: New York, early 60s. Gloria, a young painter in her twenties, lives in the underground artistic microcosm of the Big Apple. One night, she is attacked and raped by a mysterious character with white eyes. This aggression provokes an inner cataclysm that inexorably pushes her towards self-destruction. In order to put an end to the chaos he has caused in her, Gloria decides to search for this man in the streets of New York.

Release Date/Prediction: We think this could slip into the Directors’ Fortnight in Cannes or Locarno.