Icarus Films Tabs Sept. 13 As The Domestic DVD Debut Date For Writer/Director Yann Gozlan's Black Box Suspense-Thriller

Icarus Films announced this past week that they will be teaming up with France’s Premiere film production and distribution source, Distrib Films, for the domestic DVD rollout of writer/director Yann Gozlan’s hi-tech mystery thriller, Black Box.   The street date will be Sept. 13.

Because of the potential controversary related to the subject of Black Box, it was “previewed” far from home at Australia’s multi-venue French Film Festival (sort of a traveling roadshow … from city to city over a one-month period) beginning in March of last year.   The reviews were solid … Gozlan had a genuine hit on his hands.

The film then played a couple of film festivals during the summer of last year before finally opening up theatrically in France (and selected French-speaking markets) in September.   A couple of arthouse venues in New York (Apr. 29) and Los Angeles (May 6) have been the only domestic exposure, so it arrives from Icarus Films on DVD in September virtually unseen.

So how good is Gozlan’s Black Box?   First off, it was nominated for five César Awards, France’s equivalent to the Oscar, including Best Actor for the film’s star, Pierre Niney (his fifth such nomination — previously for Ozon’s Frantz, and as the title character in filmmaker Jalil Lespert’s Yves Saint Laurent — he won the César Award for Best Actor — plus Best Supporting Actor nods in Just Like Brothers and 18 Years Old and Rising) and Best Screenplay for Gozlan (with Nicolas Bouvet-Levrard and Jérémie Guez).

Secondly, as the reviews poured in, De Palma’s Blow Out, Coppola’s The Conversation and Antonioni’s Blow-Up were cited as touchstone comparisons over and over again.   Black Box is that good, that’s pretty good company to be compared to … and needless-to-say, it was a theatrical hit in Europe last year.

So, what’s the controversary?   Why the comparisons?   The film begins with the crash of airliner into the side of a mountain in the Alps carrying something like 300 passengers.   The BEA (Bureau of Enquiry and Analysis) springs into action and audio engineer, Mathieu Vasseur (Niney) begins examining the audio from the plane’s two “black boxes” (CDR/Cockpit Data Recorder and FDR/Flight Data Recorder) and finds some initial and very tantalizing evidence that the crash was an act of terrorism.  

Case closed, right?   No so fast, the more Vasseur analyses the data, the more he begins to suspect that there is more going on than “meets the ear” with this crash.   Without giving too much away (see Blow Out, see The Conversation, see Blow-Up), our reluctant hero may have stumbled upon an even more sinister explanation for the crash.   

As he goes down this rabbit hole, more and more pressure is applied, including to his marriage to Noémie (Lou de Laâge — Breathe, Jappeloup, The Innocents), who is with the airline industry.   At what point does the quiet pressure to back-off become more overt … and life-threatening?

Black Box on DVD this coming Sept. 13 from Icarus Films is presented in French, with English subtitles.