The Ice Tower

When impressionable 15-year-old runaway Jeanne (Clara Pacini) stumbles upon a soundstage, she’s just looking for a warm place to rest. Realising the film in progress is an adaptation of her favourite story, Hans Christian Andersen’s The Snow Queen, Jeanne takes on the identity of another girl and slowly embeds herself into the production. Enchanted by mysterious lead actress Cristina (Marion Cotillard), Jeanne is drawn further and further into the film’s icy realm.

Seductive and otherworldly, this mesmeric crystalline fairytale plays out in the bitter mountain cold of a remote village in 1960s France. Known for her distinctive, sinister fables, director Lucile Hadžihalilović swirls around themes of artifice, corrupted desire, feminine obsession and false idols.

The film premiered at the Berlinale where it was praised for its dazzling costuming and production design, grand cinematography and textured electronic score. Featuring a cameo from Hadžihalilović's partner, filmmaker Gaspar Noé, as the director of the film-within-a-film, this dark fantasy is a silvery meditation on trauma, artifice and sacrifice that is as sensual and hypnotic as The Ice Queen herself.

– Amanda Jane Robinson