14/09/2012 - The CCA allocates over €3m to 50 projects, of which new films by Yolande Moreau, David Lambert, and Vanja d'Alcantara.

Fadila Laanan, the minister for culture and the audiovisual sector for the Government of the French Community of Belgium, has just approved results from the Wallonia-Brussels Federation Film Selection Committee's second session for aid. Fifty projects (including 14 fiction features) are to receive aid for screenwriting, development, or production that adds up to over €3m.

When the Sea Rises, a film that Yolande Moreau co-directed with Gilles Porte, was a big hit in 2004. The film, a melancholy love story with just the right touch of off-beat (just like its director), was also a declaration of love to the North, whose culture and landscapes, both urban and pre-urban, were magnified by Moreau and Porte's camera. Henri is now to be another beautiful story of an encounter between two solitary characters, Henri, an alcoholic in his fifties who takes refuge in alcohol, and Rosette, a slightly mentally deficient young girl who dreams of love and sensuality. And normalcy. The film is to be produced by French production company Christmas in July, with Versus in charge of production on the Belgian side.

Jawad Rhalib, now to launch into fiction after his notable first steps in documentary (notably in The Damned of the Sea), is also to receive aid for the production of L'Insoumise, produced by Iota Production. After a productive career in television, André Buytaers is also to make his first feature, Pianissimo, produced by Frakas Production. Finally, Rodrigo Litorriaga is also to make his first feature, La Francisca, produced by Saga Film.

Three young filmmakers have received aid for writing the screenplays of their second films. David Lambt, whose first film Beyond the Walls [+see also:
film review
trailer
making of
interview: David Lambert
film profile] was selected for the Critics' Week in Cannes and is expected out in France this November and in Belgium in January, is now busy writing I Am Yours, while Frédéric Dumont, who was discovered with Angel at Sea [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile], is preparing La Longue Marche. As for Vanja d'Alcantara (Beyond the Steppes), she is adapting Olivier Adam's bestselling novel Le Cœur Régulier [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile], about a slightly lost French mother who meets a mysterious Japanese man who dissuades people from committing suicide from the top of the cliffs under his home.

(Translated from French)