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INDUSTRY France

Sauvages ! by Claude Barras in Groupe Ouest selection

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- The new project by the director of My Life as a Courgette is among the eight titles selected for the 2018 program in Brittany

Sauvages ! by Claude Barras in Groupe Ouest selection
Director Claude Barras

Eight projects and ten directors have been included in the Groupe Ouest 2018 selection and will be receiving writing coaching, along with three group sessions in residence in Brittany this year. Sauvages ! by Swiss director Claude Barras stands out in particular, after making a dazzling debut with the feature film My Life as a Courgette [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Claude Barras
film profile
]
. A sensation in 2016 at the Directors' Fortnight, the film has not only seduced the public (826,000 admissions in France and released in sixty countries), but also accumulated more than 50 recognitions, including nominations at the Oscars and Golden Globes, two César awards, two Lumière Awards, the European Film Award for Best Animated Film, the Crystal for Feature Film, the Audience Award at Annecy and three Emile Awards. 

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Claude Barras is now working on the screenplay of Sauvages ! along with Canadian novelist Nancy Huston and the comic book writer Morgan Navarro. The plot is set in an Indonesian forest threatened by palm oil plantations. Moah, a young orangutan, sees his mother killed by poachers. A vet at a shelter plans to send him to a zoo. But he hasn’t factored in his son, Alex, and Keria, the young native who found Moah in the forest, and who will do everything she can to set him free.

The 2018 Groupe Ouest selection also includes screenplays for the second feature films by two young French filmmakers: Señor Coconut by Yann Le Quellec (noticed thanks to Cornelius, The Howling Miller [+see also:
trailer
film profile
]
, winner of the audience award last year at Belfort) and Battre à tout rompreby Nolwenn Lemesle (noticed thanks to Pieces of Me [+see also:
trailer
film profile
]
, winner of the Bayard d'Or for Best Debut Film at Namur in 2012).

Three screenplays for French fiction debut feature films have also been selected, including the VR project, V.V by the stereographer Josephine Derobe (selected this year by the College Cinema VR at the Venice Biennale with the VR documentary project Meet Mortaza) Zahra et les morts by Holy Fatma, which immerses the viewer in poetic horror cinema, and EELAM byLawrence Valin, which will be an immersive film into the Tamil gangs of Paris.

Two Belgian projects have also been selected, Belgica Belgica by Guy Dessent and La Vie Mécanique, which will be the first foray into fiction by Eve Duchemin (Magritte 2017 for best documentary with En Bataille, theportrait of a prison govenor).

Among the winners of previous editions are films by Houda Benyamina (Pour Assia), Leyla Bouzid (Trois histoires d'amour et de désir), Alanté Kavaïté (Submergée) and Lucile Hadzihalilovic (La Reine des Neiges).

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(Translated from French)

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