08/02/2005 - Guédiguian, Téchiné, Audiard, Corneau, Wargnier...The official Competition of The 55th Berlinale gives a prominent place to the Names of the French cinema.

Wargnier, Guédiguian, Téchiné, Corneau, and Audiard: the 55th Berlinale which will be starting in three days, has seldom gathered so many key figures in French cinema. This year, a total of 19 French (co)productions will be presented in the different categories of the German festival. Furthermore, 23 French international sales companies (20 of which are supervised by Unifrance) and over 50 buyers will be attending the European Film Market.

Some of these companies’ presence clearly won’t be overlooked since their productions are in competition: Film Oblige together with Agat Films produced Robert Guédiguian’s Le Promeneur du Champ de Mars; Why Not Productions is presenting De battre mon cœur s'est arrêté [+see also:
trailer
film profile] by Jacques Audiard, while ARP is bringing Les mots bleus by Alain Corneau. Vertigo with Man to man by Régis Wargnier, has the privilege to open the festival. Last but not least, Gémini Films will participate in the competition with the film Les Temps qui changent [+see also:
trailer
film profile] by André Téchiné. These production companies’ ambition is obviously that one of the five French directors in competition this year will follow the example of Patrice Chéreau (Intimacy-2001), Bertrand Tavernier (L’appât/The Bait-1995), Jean-Luc Godard (Alphaville-1965), Claude Chabrol (Les cousins-1959),and Henri Georges Clouzot (Le salaire de la peur-1953) and bring another Golden Bear to French cinema.
This year, Agat Films deserves particular attention, for it runs not only in the official competition but also in specific categories : Crustacés et coquillages by Olivier Ducastel and Jacques Martineau will be shown in the section Panorama, where we also find Mauvais joueurs [+see also:
trailer
film profile] by Frédéric Balekjian (Pyramide), and the European coproduction Va, vis et deviens [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Denis Carot
interview: Didar Domehri
interview: Radu Mihaileanu
film profile] by Radu Mihaileanu, mainly supervised by the French producer Elzevir.

The five feature films in competition will obviously be included in the French selection for the European Film Market to represent their producers (Celluloid Dreams for Audiard, Pathé for Guédiguian, Gémini for Téchiné, Wild Bunch for Wargnier, and ARP for Corneau). The French have other important productions to recommend them: Gérard Jugnot’s Boudu for Pathé; Cuore sacro by the Italian Ferzan Ozpetek, the Norwegian film Factotum by Bent Hamer, and Dominik Moll’s Lemming for Celluloid Dreams; La marche de l'empereur for Wild Bunch; Once you’re born by Marco Tullio Giordana and Romanzo criminale by Michele Placido for TF1 International, and Le couperet by Costa Gavras for Studio Canal. Finally, the 2d Berlinale Co-Production Market (13th-14th February) sponsored by the program Media includes two French projects amongst the 30 projects selected to apply for funding: The Cold Virgin (Les Films du Safran) and Time On Two Legs (Link's Productions).

(Translated from French)