Bertrand Bonello’s De la guerre, one of the projects selected for this year’s Cinéfondation Atelier at the Cannes Film Festival (see news), appears to have found the last part of financing and will start shooting in June.

The director’s fourth feature will star Italian actress Asia Argento alongside France’s Mathieu Amalric and Laurent Lucas (see interview).
Selected in the Panorama sidebar at the 1989 Berlin Film Festival with his debut feature Something Organic, Bonello won at the 2001 Cannes Critics’ Week with The Pornographer and presented his official competition entry Tiresia at Cannes 2003.

De la guerre recounts the trials and tribulations of a director approaching his 40th birthday (Amalric) who is slightly removed from reality.

A night locked up in a coffin changes him forever. After doing a life check, the protagonist decides to follow a man to an isolated area of the world, the Kingdom. Ruled by a mysterious and charismatic woman (Argento), the Kingdom is home to self-sufficient inhabitants and governed by a warlike order where the motto "reaching pleasure is a war" reigns.

Produced by Kristina Larsen for Les Films du lendemain – who recently co-produced Pascale Ferran’s Lady Chatterley [trailer] and Ballon rouge [trailer] (lit. “The Red Balloon”) by Hou Hsiao-Hsien – De la guerre is also being produced by My New Picture, an outfit set up last year by the director.

The €2.9m film, €500,000 of which it has already secured, will have an eight-week shoot in Paris and Luxembourg. The script and the director’s note of intention can soon be read online on the Cinéfondation website, along with the profiles of individual meetings for producers, distributors and financiers interested in meeting with the director and his producer at the Atelier.