Annual Top Films Lists

Top 200 Most Anticipated Foreign Films of 2023: #31. Ira Sachs’ Passages

Published on January 17, 2023

Passages

A project we thought might drop in ’22 is leading the gem offerings from the beginning of ’23 instead. American indie filmmaker Ira Sachs (Forty Shades of Blue, Keep the Lights On) has been working with foreign coin on several projects now and in this case – he lassoed the trio Ben Whishaw, Franz Rogowski and Adèle Exarchopoulos from adjoined countries for what is Passages. Production took place in October of 2021. Saïd Ben Saïd and Michel Merkt produced the project. Josée Deshaies was the cinematographer here.

Gist: Co-written by Sachs and Mauricio Zacharias, set in contemporary Paris, German filmmaker Tomas (Franz Rogowski) embraces a love affair with a young woman named Agathe (Adèle Exarchopoulos), an impulse that blurs the lines which define his relationship with his husband, Martin (Ben Whishaw). Grappling with contradicting emotions, Tomas must either embrace the confines of his marriage or come to terms with the relationship having run its course.

Release Date/Prediction: This is part of the Premieres section line-up at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival. We’ll be at the world preem at the Library on January 23rd.

Eric Lavallée

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).