New film Fatherland took Sandra Hüller back to a divided Germany. She talks about damaged dreams, Hollywood feelgood and - just maybe - appearing in the new Marvel movie
Sandra Hüller is crying, and it feels very strange. A wildly gifted actor, she can convey every human emotion there is. On screen, though, she is most often asked to embody deep self-possession. Even doing karaoke, Hüller is in control. And in real life, life is good. Her 2026 will end with four high-profile movies this year alone. Two (Fatherland and Rose) are black-and-white arthouse films that centre on her brilliance, and though one of the others (Digger) is already a Hollywood cautionary tale, a second (Project Hail Mary) was a giant $684m hit. (There may also be a fifth movie, bigger still. We will come back to that.)
And yet, dressed in film star black, she is in tears. “This is really hard for me,” she says.
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© Photograph: Victoria Stevens
© Photograph: Victoria Stevens
© Photograph: Victoria Stevens
Shot by Sofia’s mother Eleanor this documentary shows something of the strain of shooting a period piece, but is a far cry from the tumultuous portrait of her husband in Hearts of Darkness
It is 20 years since the release of Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette starring Kirsten Dunst; it is a supportively unjudging, unironised study of the queen’s early years before the 1789 revolution, lavishly and accurately costumed, shot on location at Versailles and based on the Antonia Fraser biography – but also subversively and amusingly using pop tracks from the 70s and 80s on the soundtrack. It got a storm of booing from French critics, reportedly annoyed at the way their history had been reduced to a music video and fashion shoot with no French actors involved. Or hardly any.
In fact, for all the lack of political grit, the film was interesting and accomplished, and deservedly has a fanbase – and it is to that constituency that this making-of documentary from the director’s mother Eleanor Coppola is really addressed. It is basically a sweet family home movie on digital video which shows something of the strain and the longueurs of shooting a demanding period picture, but tactfully not seeing anything really explosive or bad-tempered. It is very far from Eleanor Coppola’s sensational behind-the-scenes film Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse about the tumultuous creation of Apocalypse Now, directed by her husband Francis Ford Coppola.
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© Photograph: Sofia Coppola
© Photograph: Sofia Coppola
© Photograph: Sofia Coppola
Olivia Colman goes vulpine, Rupert Grint’s newborn is a monster and Joko Anwar makes a warmhearted violent ghost story set in an Indonesian prison
If I’d ever wanted children, the films showing at the 59th edition of the International Fantastic film festival of Catalonia in the coastal town of Sitges, south of Barcelona, would have soon set me straight. This year’s recurring themes were explosive parturition, chewed-up nipples and the fruit of the womb turning out to be at best sociopathic, at worst inhuman.
The theme was celebrated in an evil-kiddy exhibition at the Miramar Cultural Centre, marking the 50th anniversary of Narciso Ibáñez Serrador’s “fantaterror” classic Who Can Kill a Child?, some of which was filmed in Sitges itself. The expo traced the subgenre from 1956’s The Bad Seed, via Rosemary’s Baby and The Exorcist, to this year’s Nightborn, in which poor Rupert Grint, as the hapless husband, is no match for the developing folk-horror bond between his depressed wife, their newborn “child”, and the spooky forest surrounding their house. Finnish director Hanna Bergholm, in her introduction, confessed it was inspired by her experiences of motherhood. Only up to a point, one hopes.
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© Photograph: Andrea Miconi
© Photograph: Andrea Miconi
© Photograph: Andrea Miconi
« Terroristes, c'était ainsi que l'on nommait les gars du maquis », chante Céline Girault. Avec le metteur en scène de théâtre Philippe Chuyen et sept jeunes en insertion issus de missions locales, le cinéaste se met, quatre-vingts ans plus tard, dans les pas de Gleb Sivirine, alias lieutenant Vallier, à la tête d'une troupe de très jeunes maquisards. Le journal de bord du résistant, son Cahier rouge (aux éditions Parole), sera suivi à la lettre jusqu'à sa représentation théâtrale, dans le strict respect de la temporalité du maquis Vallier (six mois, de février à août, en 1944 pour les résistants, en 2024 pour les comédiens). Des gorges de la Siagnole à la presqu'île de Giens en passant par le Verdon et Canjuers, on suit les apprentis comédiens qui vivent au jour le jour cette évocation, jusqu'au village de Collobrières, que d'autres jeunes, apprentis soldats, ont libéré huit décennies auparavant. En un crapahutage mémoriel dans les sentiers périlleux du Haut-Var, de bergeries en grottes, la troupe, un peu foutraque mais fidèle, fait revivre l'histoire d'une très modeste armée de l'ombre attendant désespérément un débarquement libérateur.
2025, 90 min, en salles depuis le 16 septembre.
La maison est noire (1963), de Forough Farrokhzad. Court-métrage documentaire poétique sur une léproserie, méditation sur la souffrance et la dignité humaine.
La Brique et le Miroir (1965), d'Ebrahim Golestan. Un chauffeur de taxi découvre un bébé abandonné, portrait de l'Iran urbain des années 1960.
Qeysar (1969), de Massoud Kimiai. Drame de la vengeance devenu un classique fondateur du cinéma populaire iranien moderne.
La Vache (1969), de Dariush Mehrjui. Après la mort de sa vache, un paysan sombre dans la folie en s'identifiant à l'animal.
Un simple événement (1973), de Sohrab Shahid Saless. Chronique minimaliste de la vie quotidienne d'un jeune garçon dans une ville côtière.
Le Coureur (1985), d'Amir Naderi. Un enfant des rues rêve d'une vie meilleure grâce à sa détermination.
Bashu, le petit étranger (1986), de Bahram Beyzai. Un enfant déplacé par la guerre trouve refuge dans une famille du nord de l'Iran.
Où est la maison de mon ami ? (1987), d'Abbas Kiarostami. Un écolier traverse des villages pour rendre le cahier de son camarade.
Nassereddin Shah, acteur de cinéma (1992), de Mohsen Makhmalbaf. Fantaisie historique sur l'arrivée du cinéma à la cour du chah.
Le Foulard bleu (1995), de Rakhshan Bani-Etemad. L'histoire d'amour entre une ouvrière et un riche exploitant agricole.
Papier sans lignes (2001), de Nasser Taghvai. Une femme tente de devenir écrivaine, révélant les tensions de son couple.
Respiration profonde (2003), de Parviz Shahbazi. Deux jeunes amis errent dans Téhéran en quête de sens et de liberté.
Persepolis (2007), de Marjane Satrapi et Vincent Paronnaud. Film d'animation autobiographique sur l'enfance et l'exil de l'artiste Marjane Satrapi (1969-2026).
Le Chant des moineaux (2008), de Majid Majidi. Un père de famille affronte les difficultés économiques avec humanité.
Une séparation (2011), d'Asghar Farhadi. Conflit familial et judiciaire explorant les dilemmes moraux de la société iranienne.
La Loi de Téhéran (2019), de Saeed Roustaee. Thriller sur la lutte contre le trafic de drogue en Iran.
Ahead of the 40th anniversary of Stand By Me, Alec Joyner takes up Rob Reiner’s classic film and considers it from a few dozen angles. It’s a canny piece of critical writing on time, memory, masculinity, and tenderness, forces that often work against each other. (Joyner doesn’t raise the subject of Reiner’s violent death last year, though he pauses briefly on Chris, a character “freakishly knifed to death . . . trying to break up a fight.”) Stand By Me‘s two days of summer are a “vital pause” in the life of its characters, a “portal . . . into the expanse of time.” Here, Joyner illuminates that pause, and captures some of its elusive grace.
Stand by Me was slapped with an R rating, for the boys’ profanity, as well as the prominence of child abuse and death. This may have hampered ticket sales, but it also made it the first R-rated movie that many ’80s and ’90s kids saw. It made it a fitting rite of passage.
Still, there’s something lamentable in the verdict, the MPAA telling a faulty story much like the fictional adults of Castle Rock. How many blockbusters have promoted horrendous violence, only to make the PG-13 grade because they feel safely unreal? Stand by Me was received as dangerous because its horrors and its dirt live at home.
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