THE ICE TOWER / LE TOUR DE GLACE

FRANCE, GERMANY | 2025 | COLOR | DCP | 118’ | FRENCH

A 16-year-old orphan girl runs away from the foster family she lives with, somewhere in the French countryside in the 1970s, and ends up in the city. She has no money, so she sneaks in and finds refuge behind the scenes of a film shoot of “The Snow Queen,” which happens to be a favorite fairy tale of hers. She sleeps there and soon becomes an extra in the film and then the protégée of the extremely moody and acclaimed leading actress (Marion Cotillard), who hides many more secrets than her seductive face lets on. Returning once again to the motif of the girl in danger, which she has explored in her previous films, the creator of the mystical “Innocence” and “Evolution” places a story of almost vampiric seduction between fantasy and reality, sprinkling it with a charmingly otherworldly atmosphere, giving it dreamlike overtones and eliciting an imposing performance from Marion Cotillard. L.K.

DIRECTOR: Lucile Hadžihalilović
SCREENWRITERS: Lucile Hadžihalilović, Geoff Cox
DoP: Jonathan Ricquebourg
EDITOR: Nassim Gordji Tehrani
PRINCIPAL CAST: Marion Cotillard, Clara Pacini, August Diehl, Gaspar Noé, Marine Gesbert, Lilas-Rose Gilberti

LUCILE HADŽIHALILOVIĆ
French editor, screenwriter, producer, and director of Bosnian descent, born in 1961. She studied art history at the renowned La Femis in Paris. Collaborator and wife of Gaspard Noé, she is an independent art house filmmaker recognized in the wider festival circuit.

FILMOGRAPHY
2025 The Ice Tower
2022 Earwig
2015 Evolution
2004 Innocence