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PRODUCTION France

Down by Love for Guillaume Gallienne and Adèle Exarchopoulos

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- The film by Pierre Godeau tells a story of passion between a prison governor and an inmate; the Pan-Européenne and LGM production will be sold by StudioCanal

Down by Love for Guillaume Gallienne and Adèle Exarchopoulos
Adèle Exarchopoulos and Guillaume Gallienne at the 2014 César Awards

This evening, the crème de la crème of French cinema will rush over to Paris’ Théâtre du Châtelet for a César Awards ceremony at which all bets are off (read the article on the nominations). On that very same stage, exactly a year ago, Guillaume Gallienne (five Césars, including Best Actor for Me Myself and Mum [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile
]
) and Adèle Exarchopoulos (Most Promising Actress for her performance in Blue Is the Warmest Colour [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Abdellatif Kechiche
film profile
]
) hogged the limelight. Since then, the former, who is incidentally in the running again this year in the category of Best Supporting Actor for Yves Saint Laurent [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Jalil Lespert
film profile
]
, has carried on with his theatrical career at the Comédie Française, while also recently lending his voice to the lead character of Paddington Bear in Paddington [+see also:
trailer
making of
film profile
]
. The latter, meanwhile, turned heads last year in Insecure [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Marianne Tardieu
film profile
]
, and she will be seen again soon in Last Face by Sean Penn. The pair of rising stars have been busy filming the second feature by Pierre Godeau since the end of January: its working title is Down by Love [+see also:
trailer
film profile
]
.

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Written by the director (who dabbled in feature filmmaking for the first time in 2013 with Juliette [+see also:
trailer
film profile
]
), based on the novel Défense d'aimer (lit. “Loving Prohibited”) by Florent Gonçalves, the story revolves around Jean, a reputed and well-liked prison governor, whose career in the Civil Service is on the up. The arrival of a new inmate, Anna, will shatter this stability and draw them into a story of forbidden and passionate love. The plot is based on a true story – events that really happened to Florent Gonçalves, who was the governor of the Versailles women’s prison, where the young woman who acted as the bait in the sinister Ilan Halimi case (which has already served as the inspiration behind two films – read the article) was incarcerated.

Produced by Patrick Godeau for Pan-Européenne, and by Jean-Baptiste Dupont and Cyril Colbeau-Justin for LGM Cinéma, Down by Love is co-produced by France 2 Cinéma and StudioCanal (which will distribute the film in France and is handling international sales) with the support of Belgian outfit Versus Production. Having been pre-purchased by Canal+ and Ciné+, the feature is being shot over nine weeks in Ile-de-France, with Muriel Cravatte serving as DoP. The editor will be Hervé de Luze (nominated for the Oscar in 2003, winner of the César Award in 1998, 2007 and 2011).

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(Translated from French)

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