The Ice Tower (Drama)

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Director: Lucile Hadžihalilović
Producer: 3B Productions,Davis Films,Arte France Cinema,BR pour Arte,Sutor Kolonko
Screenwriter: Geoff Cox,Lucile Hadzihalilovic
Cinematographer: Jonathan Ricquebourg
Editor: Nassim Gordji-Tehrani
Costume Designer: Laurence Benoit
Key Cast: Marion Cotillard,August Diehl,Clara Pacini

Winning a Silver Bear at the 2025 Berlinale, visionary cinematic dreamer Lucile Hadžihalilović’s latest luminous cinematic fairytale is not to be missed.

When 15-year-old Jeanne runs away from her poor mountain family, she stumbles onto the set of a film shoot – an adaptation of Hans Christian Andersen’s classic fairytale The Snow Queen, starring larger-than-life leading lady Cristina (Marion Cotillard, Lee, MIFF 2024). As Jeanne worms her way into the production, she grows increasingly entranced and obsessed by Cristina, who opens her eyes to the desires and horrors of adulthood.

Lucile Hadžihalilović’s surreal fables about childhood and adolescence – including Innocence (MIFF 2005) and Earwig (MIFF 2022) – grow in esteem with each passing year; and The Ice Tower, gloriously shot by DOP Jonathan Ricquebourg (The Taste of Things), adds another impressive entry to her body of work. Reunited with Hadžihalilović two decades after Innocence, Cotillard heads a cast also featuring breakout young star Clara Pacini, August Diehl and the filmmaker’s husband and long-time collaborator, Gaspar Noé (Climax, MIFF 2018), who plays the director of the film-within-a-film. A cold, strange, impressionistic portrait of innocence lost, The Ice Tower is a vibrant cinematic vision from one of this century’s most distinctive, uncompromising auteurs.

“Hadžihalilović is a director who refuses to compromise her very distinctive vision … [The film is] utterly beautiful in every frame with a breakout lead performance by young French actress Clara Pacini.” – Screen Daily