«The most murdered woman in the world», our editor's favorite

Neuchâtel International Fantastic Film Festival (NIFFF) - Jonas Follonier

Franck Ribière plunges us into 1930s Paris, in a film that focuses on theater, the transition to cinema and the beginnings of gore. La Femme la plus assassinée du monde, our editor's favorite.

We are in Pigalle in the 1930s, at a time when the theater was reeling from the arrival of cinema. The woman who has been murdered more times than any other in the history of the world actually existed just as she appears in the film: her name is Paula Maxa, an actress who is killed every night on the stage of the Grand Guignol. The theater in question offers the very essence of horror. «Blood, semen, and sweat»: that’s what the audience comes for, according to the theater’s director, André de Lorde.

This craze for gore in th