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CANNES 2017 Market / France

Aces aplenty for Doc & Film International

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- At Cannes, the French company will be selling West of the Jordan River, which will be premiered in the Directors’ Fortnight, plus a huge array of other tantalising titles

Aces aplenty for Doc & Film International
West of the Jordan River by Amos Gitai

French sales agent Doc & Film International, managed by Daniela Elstner, will spring into action at the Film Market of the 70th Cannes Film Festival (17-28 May) with a highly varied slate that virtually guarantees it some great deals. The leader of the pack is the documentary West of the Jordan River (Field Diary Revisited) [+see also:
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by Amos Gitai, which will have its world premiere in the Directors’ Fortnight. In this civic-minded film, the filmmaker sheds light on the efforts of a number of Israelis and Palestinians as they try to overcome the intractable reality of the occupied territories.

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Two market premieres strictly reserved for buyers are also on the menu for Catch the Wind by Gaël Morel (see the article – toplined by Sandrine Bonnaire) and Volubilis by Faouzi Bensaïdi. The latter director, who won an award in Un Certain Regard at Cannes in 2003 with A Thousand Months, before taking part in the Venice Days in 2006 with WWW: What a Wonderful World [+see also:
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and in the Berlinale Panorama in 2012 with Death for Sale [+see also:
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interview: Faouzi Bensaïdi
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, has this time made a film that revolves around a lovestruck couple. Abdelkader is a security guard and Malika is a member of domestic staff. They have just got married, and despite their money problems, they dream of one day moving in together and letting their love blossom. But one day, an extremely violent and embarrassing incident befalls Abdelkader, turning their destiny on its head. Volubilis was produced by France (via Barney Productions) and Morocco.

Other market screenings include the documentaries Bones of Contention by US director Andrea Weiss (revealed in the Berlinale Panorama) and the Belgian production Children of Chance [+see also:
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by Thierry Michel and Pascal Colson, who immersed themselves in a small primary school in a former mining town and followed the daily lives of the children of immigrants as they finished their primary education with a highly dynamic teacher.

Doc & Film International will also be at Cannes to pre-sell a huge number of titles. Standing out at the pre-production stage are Coincoin and the Extra-humans by Bruno Dumont (season two of the series Li’l Quinquin [+see also:
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, which will again spawn a film version – a Taos Films and Arte production that will begin principal photography this summer), the as-yet untitled upcoming documentary by Nicolas Philibert (the director of such films as To Be and to Have), which will be produced by Archipel 35, and the Australian-French co-production Slam [+see also:
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interview: Partho Sen-Gupta
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by Partho Sen-Gupta, in which a man has to cope with the disappearance of his sister, who is soon suspected by the media of having joined IS in Syria – although he is not totally convinced.

Titles worth mentioning in post-production include the French-Belgian co-production Lola Pater by Nadir Moknèche (see the article) and the French-Portuguese film Rage [+see also:
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by Brazil’s Sérgio Tréfaut, the plot of which unfolds in the 1950s in the south of Portugal, an area under the control of rich families supported by the police, where the poor are dying of hunger and where a smuggler incurs the wrath of the most powerful landowner in the region.

The array of documentaries in post-production also looks set to impress, with the French-Swiss co-production No Man Is an Island [+see also:
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by Dominique Marchais, who threw himself into investigating European democracy, the Swiss-French-German co-production Where Are You, João Gilberto? [+see also:
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interview: Georges Gachot
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by Georges Gachot, which attempts to track down the whereabouts of the Brazilian musician, Ex Libris – The New York Public Library by famous US filmmaker Frederick Wiseman, and the Los Angeles-set French-German title Game Girls [+see also:
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by Alina Skrzeszewska.

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(Translated from French)

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