15/04/2015 - Guillaume Canet and Charlotte Le Bon topline the feature debut by Marie Madinier, produced by Les Films du Lendemain

On 7 April, the eight-week shoot for the feature debut by Marie Madinier, Le secret des banquises [+see also:
trailer
film profile] (lit. “The Secret of the Ice Floes”), got under way. According to Cineuropa’s sources, the cast brings together Guillaume Canet (nominated for the César Award for Best Actor in 2015 for Next Time I’ll Aim for the Heart [+see also:
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film profile] and for the Lumière Award in the same category in 2014 for Jappeloup [+see also:
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interview: Lou de Laâge
film profile]; winner of the Best Actor Award at Rome in 2011 for A Better Life [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Cédric Kahn
film profile]; and soon to appear in Icon by Stephen Frears), Charlotte Le Bon (who rose to fame in Asterix and Obelix: God Save Britannia [+see also:
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film profile], nominated for the César Award for Best Supporting Actress in 2015 for Yves Saint Laurent [+see also:
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interview: Jalil Lespert
film profile]), Patrick d'Assumçao (nominated for the César Award for Best Supporting Actor in 2014 for Stranger by the Lake [+see also:
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interview: Alain Guiraudie
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interview: Christophe Honoré
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Written by the director herself, the story revolves around professor Quignard and his team, who are studying PPM, a protein extracted from penguins and renowned for its powers of immunisation. An American team is following hot on the heels of their research – a team that, unlike them, has been authorised to carry out clinical trials on human subjects, which is the key to the discovery. In order to get the laboratory out of this tight spot and attract her boss’s attention, Christophine, a young PhD student who is a little out of her depth, decides to inject herself with the penguin genome... Interestingly, Marie Madinier, who was trained in the screenwriting department of La Fémis, won the Best Screenplay Junior Award with this script in 2011.

Produced by Kristina Larsen for Les Films du Lendemain, Le secret des banquises is benefiting from a co-production by France 2 Cinéma. Having also been pre-purchased by Canal+ and OCS, the feature will be shot partly at the Aubervilliers Studios on sets designed by Stéphane Rozembaum. The DoP’s shoes are filled by Pascal Marti. Distribution in France will be managed by Mars Distribution in 2016, while the international rights have been acquired by TF1 Droits Audiovisuels.

Les Films du Lendemain recently produced Diary of a Chambermaid [+see also:
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interview: Benoît Jacquot
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interview: Adèle Haenel
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film profile] by Bertrand Bonello, the three latest movies by Cédric Kahn and several features by Chinese director Lou Ye in its filmography.

(Translated from French)