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PRODUCTION France

An electric dream in the Landes

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- Marie Gillain, Miou Miou, and Jalil Lespert are to star in François-Xavier Vives’ first feature film.

For a week now, cameras have been rolling in Belgium on the set of Landes by François-Xavier Vives, a first feature film set in the 1920s, at the heart of an immense industrial forest in the southwest of France on the brink of social crisis. The film is to feature Marie Gillain (nominated for a 2012 César for All Our Desires [+see also:
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film profile
]
), Miou Miou (The Concert [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Radu Mihaileanu
film profile
]
), Jalil Lespert (Love and Bruises [+see also:
trailer
interview: Lou Ye
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]
), Bernard Blancan, Steve Driesen, Swan Mirabeau, Rosalia Cuevas, and Christelle Cornil.

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Written by the director along with Emmanuel Roy and Camille Fontaine, the screenplay revolves around Liéna, 35, who suddenly finds herself without her beloved husband. Her grief is immense. Who was he really? And who is she, so different from all the other bourgeois surrounding her? She may seem to be full of life, insolent and free, but she is going to have to find a way to continue living without her husband, who was one of the largest forest owners in the country and who had the eccentric dream of bringing electricity to all parts of his land. Liéna, eager to show herself to be a worthy heiress, takes on this electric dream, but neither her social peers, nor the syndicates want it. She struggles, stamps her foot, make mistakes, and ends up seeing the heathland for what it really is. This modern woman then starts to develop a new dream: one of a new social and emotional context, far from the frozen, suffocating reality she is living.

Produced Florence Borelly for Sésame Films (who also produced Captain Ahab by Philippe Ramos) and co-produced by Alain Berliner for Belgian production company WFE, Landes (selected by Emergence) has been pre-bought by Canal +, Ciné+, the RTBF and Belgacom. Also supported by the Sofica Cinémage 6, the Aquitaine region, the Landes local assembly, and Wallimage-Bruxellimage, the crew will film for two weeks in Belgium, especially on the grounds of a stately home, and then film again from April 2 to the beginning of May in the south of Gironde and in the north of the Landes, in the southwest of France. Sophie Dulac Distribution will be in charge of the film’s distribution in France, and negotiations are underway for international sales.

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(Translated from French)

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