23/06/2015 - The great Austrian filmmaker, who has won two Palmes d'Or at Cannes, has remained fairly cryptic about the reasons behind his abandoning the project

Several days ago, Austrian director Michael Haneke declared to the Agence France-Presse (AFP) from Vienna that he was “abandoning” his feature-film project Flashmob, but that he was working on a new movie that will bring him to France.

Flashmob, which was due to tell the story of several characters as they meet for an operation of the same name, was meant to be shot last summer, but Haneke postponed production of the film for casting reasons. For the moment, the halt in production is final, "owing to several reasons that I do not wish to discuss".

Nevertheless, the man behind Amour [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Michael Haneke
film profile] did make the following announcement: “In any case, I am thinking of coming to France on several occasions in order to prepare things and to do some research...”. He was referring to his collaboration with author and psychologist Sarah Chiche, who devoted an essay to the topic of evil in his films, entitled Éthique du Mikado (Presses Universitaires de France), because she considers that "the game of Mikado always reveals a tipping point where, on the slope of evil, other moral choices suddenly become possible, not for the characters, but rather for the viewer" (source: AFP).

Since receiving his most recent Palme d'Or, which was followed up by a Golden Globe, the Oscar for Best Foreign-language Film and the César Award for Best Film, he has directed Mozart’s Cosi fan tutte in Madrid.

(Translated from French)