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FESTIVALS France

Corneau and de Bartillat vie for Marco Aurelio award

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French cinema will have two selling points – experience and youth – in the official competition programme of the 2nd RomeFilmFest, which kicks off tomorrow.

Opening the event is The Second Wind [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile
]
from veteran director Alain Corneau, a loose remake of Jean-Pierre Melville’s 1966 cult thriller (see article). Corneau’s title had its world premiere at Toronto.

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Bolstered by a stellar cast (Daniel Auteuil, Monica Bellucci, Michel Blanc, Jacques Dutronc, Éric Cantona, Daniel Duval, Gilbert Melki, Nicolas Duvauchelle), the €22.74m film – opening in France on Wednesday – was produced by ARP Sélection and included co-production funding of €3.3m and pre-sales from TF1 Films Production, as well as pre-sales from Canal + (€3.4m) and CinéCinéma, and Ile-de-France region funding of €500,000.

International sales are being handled by Wild Bunch.

Also vying for the Marco Aurelio Award is Laurent de Bartillat’s feature debut The Vanishing Point [+see also:
trailer
film profile
]
(formerly La Fortune).

The thriller – starring Sylvie Testud, Jean Pierre Marielle and James Thiérrée and opening on local screens November 28 through ID Distribution – is from the slate of Shilo Films, a company on the road to success, as Frédéric Bellaïche and Geoffroy Grison this year saw another one of their productions (Raphaël Nadjari’s Tehilim) selected in competition at Cannes.

Produced on a €1.6m budget, The Vanishing Point received CNC advances on receipts and pre-sales from Canal + and CinéCinéma. Films Distribution is handling international sales.

Written by the director and Alain Ross, the story follows the investigation by a 25 year-old student of paintings by the artist Watteau. Convinced that some of the paintings have a hidden meaning, the young woman then encounters an enigmatic mute man, after which she interrupts her research to delve into the heart of the two-thousand year-old mystery.

Also featuring among the 14 competition titles this year at Rome is L' amour Caché [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile
]
by Alessandro Capone, starring Isabelle Huppert and Mélanie Laurent (2007 César for Best Newcomer and French Shooting Star, see interview).

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(Translated from French)

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