Robert Pattinson continues his tour of "difficult, auteur driven and inspired cinematic projects" + MORE

Robert Pattinson continues his tour of "difficult, auteur driven and inspired cinematic projects" + MORE

We already mentioned IonCinema including Queen of the Desert in their Top 100 Most Anticipated Foreign Films of 2015 and now they hit The Childhood of a Leader at #35.

The Childhood of a Leader
Director: Brady Corbet // Writers: Brady Corbet, Mona Fastvold 

Working with the likes of Bonello, Östlund, Assayas, Hansen-Løve and Baumbach, when you count the 2014 festival release year alone, actor Brady Corbet (Mysterious Skin; Funny Games U.S.; Simon Killer) has built quite the impressive resume working with the auteur set. While The Childhood of a Leader is his feature length directing debut, this counts as back to back years working in the filmmaker capacity when you take into account his writing creds in Mona Fastvold’s overlooked ’14 title, The Sleepwalker, and the soon to be premiered Sundance short Rabbit, by filmmaker Laure De Clermont-Tonnerre. Initially announced as starring Juliette Binoche (Corbet’s co-star from Clouds of Sils Maria), she was later replaced by Berenice Bejo. It goes without saying that most of the attention will be placed on Robert Pattinson, continuing his tour of difficult, auteur driven and inspired cinematic projects, but Corbet also nabs Tim Roth and Nymphomaniac star Stacy Martin in the lineup. Set in 1919, this story tells the tale of a ‘would-be-fascist,’ and the screenplay is inspired by a wide range of authorial pillars, from John Fowls to Jean-Paul Sarte with a bit of Volker Schlondorff’s 1966 classic Young Torless (which also served as a point of comparison for Haneke’s The White Ribbon). The film has been described as partially about a family that relocates to France for the Paris Peace Conference and about the events leading up to the Treaty of Versailles. Early descriptions of the film also point to elements of horror. 

Cast: Robert Pattinson, Berenice Bejo, Stacy Martin, Tim Roth
Producers: Brady Corbet, Chris Coen (Jane Got a Gun), Helena Danielsson (Call Girl), Antoine de Clermont-Tonnerre (Salvo) 

U.S. Distributor: Rights Available. 

Release Date: With filming set for this January, the Venice Film Fest organizers must be eagerly awaiting a chance at showcasing this film.

Maps To The Stars released their US trailer today and The Playlist included the film in their 25 Best Films of 2015 We've Already Seen. Here's their verdict on the film:

Verdict: Soapy to the point of lunacy, overwrought to a near-camp extreme, and atypically messy from the usually hospital-corners Cronenberg, “Maps to the Stars” is also a huge, almost sinful truckload of fun. Assembling a wonderful cast who take delight in ripping to shreds the folly and hubris of the vacant Hollywood lifestyle, the film is a riot of inside-baseball winks about the film industry, and the deeply narcissist, rotten-to-the-core sellouts who populate it. Julianne Moore’s titanic performance as the fading star facing encroaching middle age (and therefore irrelevance) is so good that it won her Cannes' Best Actress award, and in one go ensures that she herself will never suffer her character’s fate. But all of the cast do sterling work: it’s a, "Hey, where you been?" to John Cusack, and a, "Hello, we’ll be seeing a lot more of you," to Evan Bird, especially. It’s may simply be a gonzo gothic telenovela (so much soap can only ever generate so much froth), but it’s a giddy good time at the pictures.