The Ice Tower (Cinecity)

Part of CINECITY 2025

Teenager Jeanne mourns her mother's death and has become obsessed with Hans Christian Andersen's The Snow Queen, a story she recounts to other children at her foster home. After running away, she breaks into a studio where the fairytale is being filmed, and a disturbing relationship develops with Cristina, the actress playing the icy monarch.

With hints of the hallucinatory quality of films like Vertigo and The Red Shoes, director Lucile Hadžihalilović conjures up a frozen and eerie landscape. She elicits powerful performances from Cotillard (the two worked together previously on the director's feature debut Innocence) and newcomer Clara Pacini.

‘Casts a creepy spell that lingers and even deepens in the mind long after it's over' - IndieWire