Cesar winner Pierre Niney to topline Francois Ozon’s “Frantz”

PanARMENIAN.Net - France’s prominent auteur Francois Ozon, whose latest film “The New Girlfriend” played at Toronto, is set to follow up with “Frantz,” a period drama starring rising actor Pierre Niney (“An Ideal Man,” “Yves Saint Laurent”), Variety reports.

“Frantz” takes place in the aftermath of WWI and centers around the encounter between a young German (Paula Beer) who grieves the death of her fiancé in France, and a mysterious French man (Niney) who visits the fiance’s grave to lay flowers.

Niney, who won a Cesar award (Gaul’s equivalent to the Oscar) for his perf in Jalil Lespert’s “Yves Saint Laurent,” stars in “Frantz” opposite German thesps Beer, Marie Gruber, Ernst Stötzner, Johann von Bülow and Anton von Lucke.

The movie is produced by Ozon’s regular producers, Eric and Nicolas Altmayer at Mandarin Cinema. Nicolas Brigaud-Robert and Francois Yon’s Films Distribution is handling international sales. The movie’s first still (pictured above) was just unveiled and Films Distribution will reveal more pics to EFM buyers in February.

Stephane Celerier’s Mars Distribution will release the movie in 2016 in France.

Ozon is best known for “Young and Beautiful” and “Swimming Pool,” which competed at Cannes in 2013 and 2003, respectively. He also earned a Bafta nomination for Catherine Deneuve starrer “Potiche,” which is being remade in the U.S. by L.A.-based Epic Pictures Group.