The Ice Tower

The Ice Tower (2025)

La Tour de glace

Colder than ice, her kiss pierces the heart.

Jeanne, a 15-year-old orphan, witnesses the shoot for a film adaptation of the fairy tale The Snow Queen, and she becomes fascinated by its star, Cristina, an actress who is just as mysterious and alluring as the Queen she is playing.

Date of release
2025-09-17
TMDB
5.7 / 10 (33)
Runtime
1h 58m
Genres
Fantasy, Drama
Director
Lucile Hadžihalilović

Casting

Interesting facts

  • Budget: €4.9M

The Ice Tower is a 2025 fantasy drama film directed by Lucile Hadžihalilović from a screenplay she co-wrote with Geoff Cox. Set in the 1970s, it stars Marion Cotillard as an actress who is shooting a film adaptation of Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tale The Snow Queen, in which she plays the title character, and Clara Pacini as a runaway teenage orphan who becomes infatuated with the actress. The cast also includes August Diehl and Gaspar Noé in supporting roles. A co-production between France, Germany and Italy, the film had its world premiere at the 75th Berlin International Film Festival on 16 February 2025, where it won the Silver Bear for Outstanding Artistic Contribution.

Production

On 20 March 2017, Cineuropa reported that Lucile Hadžihalilović was finishing the screenplay for her next film, La Reine des Neiges (The Snow Queen), which had been selected by Groupe Ouest as one of the eight projects that would benefit from a writing coaching programme in Brittany that year. Hadžihalilović co-wrote the screenplay with Geoff Cox, with whom she had collaborated in Évolution (2015) and Earwig (2021).

On 22 June 2023, ARTE France announced that it would co-produce the film, now titled La Tour de glace (The Ice Tower) and starring Marion Cotillard, with Metropolitan Filmexport set to distribute it, and that shooting would take place in France and Germany between January and February 2024.

The film was co-produced by France's 3B Productions, Germany's Sutor Kolonko, and Italy's Albolina Film. The crew includes Jonathan Ricquebourg as the director of photography, Julia Irribarria as set designer, and costumes made by Laurence Benoit.

The word "glace" in the original French title (La Tour de glace) means both "ice" and "mirror". Cristina and Jeanne mirror each other throughout the film. Hadžihalilović told Filmmaker Magazine in February 2025:

It was clear from the script that what happens in the film-within-the-film is, in fact, a continuation of what happened to Jeanne in real life, on the set. Similarly, what happens between her and Cristina mirrors what happens in the film. It's the same story which is being told sometimes in reality, sometimes in the film-within-the-film, or maybe in Jeanne's dreams at some point.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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