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RELEASES France

De France tracks down amphetamine dealers in Sphinx

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The latest example of the genre film trend in France, Nicolas Boukhrief’s Sphinx [+see also:
trailer
film profile
]
is being launched today by Gaumont on around 250 screens.

Starring Belgian actress Cécile de France (soon to be seen in Clint Eastwood’s Hereafter), Fred Testot and Julien Boisselier, this tense, dark and understated thriller confirms the talent of the director of Cash Truck for this genre.

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Co-written by Boukhrief and Dan Sasson, the film centres on two ordinary police officers who are accused of a blunder after injuring the son of an MP who shot one of their colleagues dead for no reason. In order to prove their innocence, they decide to carry out an investigation into the drug responsible for their attacker’s mad outburst.

Inspired by an article on the new amphetamines from Asia, which are cheap and unleash aggression in those who take them, Boukhrief was faced with the question of how much violence is acceptable on screen.

"With these two cops who descend into crime, get high on drugs and murder dealers, a story like Sphinx can give rise to quite extreme images (…) I started off by thinking about the film’s target audience (..) Why be aggressive with them? It’s perhaps not the best way to get them to like the genre. As a result, we opted for scenes of violence that try to be powerful, but never shocking."

Produced by Les Films du Worso for €7.72m, Sphinx was co-produced by Gaumont and Belgium’s Entre Chien et Loup, pre-bought by Canal +, Ciné Cinéma and TPS Star and backed by the ING Invest tax shelter fund.

This Wednesday’s ten other new releases include Joe Lawlor and Christine Molloy’s UK/Irish feature Helen [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Joe Lawlor and Christine M…
film profile
]
(KMBO on ten screens); and six other French titles: Olivier Dahan’s melodramatic road movie My Own Love Song [+see also:
trailer
film profile
]
(Mars Distribution on 150 screens); Pascal Thomas’s comedy Ensemble, Nous Allons Vivre Une Très, Très Grande Histoire d'Amour [+see also:
trailer
film profile
]
(“Together, We’re Going To Have A Very Great Love Affair”, Rezo Films on 215 screens); Solveig Anspach’s made-for-TV drama Louise Michel la Rebelle (Hévadis Films); Christian Merlhiot’s The Trial of Oscar Wilde (pointligneplan.); and the documentaries Think Global, Act Rural by Coline Serreau (Memento Films on 85 screens) and Les Arrivants (“The Arrivals”) by Claudine Bories and Patrice Chagnard (Happiness on 15 screens).

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(Translated from French)

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