Jason Solomons

London

Writer and Producer at Freelance

Writer at The New European

Producing: A Waiter in Paris; podcast Meet The Producer; writing @TheNewEuropean; film programming @GreenManFest

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Articles

Michel Hazanavicius on hope and the Holocaust

2 weeks ago | theneweuropean.co.uk | Jason Solomons

Michel Hazanavicius is famed for one of the most unlikely Oscar wins of all time. He shepherded The Artist, a silent, black and white French movie, starring actors unknown outside of French TV, all the way to the biggest prizes in cinema, including best director and best picture, at the 2012 ceremony in Hollywood.
Martin Parr, the people's photographer

2 months ago | theneweuropean.co.uk | Jason Solomons

Best-known for his hyper-realist images of Brits at the seaside, photographer Martin Parr has travelled the world taking pictures and accrued quite a lucrative side hustle as a fashion photographer, shooting for clients including Gucci, Vogue, Jacquemus and InStyle.
A Real Pain is a trauma tour de force

Jan 21, 2025 | theneweuropean.co.uk | Jason Solomons

You can call it the year’s most unlikely buddy movie. Or maybe it’s a road movie. You might even label it under the infamous genre of Holocaust film. Quite ingeniously and with an admirable lightness of touch, A Real Pain manages to be all of those and more, sparking a deep reflection on the scars of European history, generational trauma and the nature of grief. It’s also very funny. The film is written and directed, with equal dexterity and intelligence in both disciplines, by actor Jesse Eisenberg.
Take a bow, Claes Bang

Jan 14, 2025 | theneweuropean.co.uk | Jason Solomons

First of all, it’s pronounced “Claice”, as in plaice, like the fish. And “Bung”, as in what you use to plug a leak or – and this will become relevant in a bit – what dodgy football managers used to take in a brown paper bag. With epic new film William Tell on release, and his roles in works including The Square, Dracula and Bad Sisters, there’s so much to talk about with Claes Bang, Denmark’s latest breakout star, but, forgive me, I can’t get past his English accent. “I know, I know,” he smiles.
2073, the feel bad movie of the year

Jan 6, 2025 | theneweuropean.co.uk | Jason Solomons

The clock ticks, the world spins and another year on the calendar flicks into view. We’re in 2025 now and suddenly, 2073 doesn’t feel all that far off. I’m talking to Oscar-winning documentary-maker Asif Kapadia (Senna, Amy, Diego Maradona) about his latest film and why he set it (and named it) 48 years from now. “It’s not really very far away from where we are – I think it will look like now but feel very different,” he says.
Jazz, colonialism and the cold war: Grimonprez’s bold new film

Dec 10, 2024 | theneweuropean.co.uk | Jason Solomons

Just as great football managers create teams in their own likeness, film directors make movies that somehow reflect themselves. I’d seen the fascinating, dense, complex, brilliant, astounding, wholly eccentric “jazz ’n’ cold war politics” documentary Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat before having coffee with its maker, Belgian multimedia artist and “radical gardener” Johan Grimonprez. But after only a few minutes in his company, I could see exactly why the film is unique and as provocative as it is.
Conclave’s white smoke and dark secrets

Nov 26, 2024 | theneweuropean.co.uk | Jason Solomons

Any film based on a Robert Harris book has a bit of head start. The novelist has such a gripping and clear-eyed prose style that film adaptations tend to get right to the heart of the matter in double-quick time. Enigma, The Ghost Writer, An Officer and a Spy, The Edge of War – they have all enjoyed success on the big screen, and I’m still waiting excitedly, though I suspect vainly, for the fabled production of Pompeii.
Cinema’s last revolutionary

Oct 22, 2024 | theneweuropean.co.uk | Jason Solomons

Almost exactly 30 years ago, as the north European winter drew in and the nights got really long, two Danes sat down and changed the face of modern cinema. They were Lars von Trier and Thomas Vinterberg, and the revolution they started was eventually called Dogma 95, although they began discussing the manifesto’s 10 rules – the so-called “Vows of Chastity” – in the autumn of 1994.
François Ozon’s women with balls

Oct 8, 2024 | theneweuropean.co.uk | Jason Solomons

“All my women have big balls,” laughs François Ozon. It’s an uncharacteristically brash statement from this most elegant and stylish of French film-makers. But it is true. Over the years, he has become known as a consummate director of women in female-dominated comedies and dramas. “I should clarify that,” he adds quickly. “I like to show clever women who make their own way to get where and what they want.
Saoirse Ronan’s misty dream of a film

Sep 24, 2024 | theneweuropean.co.uk | Jason Solomons

I’m a Stranger Here Myself was a Kurt Weill tune, originally written for Marlene Dietrich in the musical One Touch of Venus when it premiered on Broadway in 1938. The phrase, taken from the title of Ogden Nash’s book, has come to signify a sense of dislocation and disorientation, and that sense that, no matter how familiar your surroundings, you never quite fit in.