30/11/2010

Shooting started yesterday in Lyon on Les adoptés, the debut directorial feature by actress Mélanie Laurent .

At 27, the first-time director is a rapidly rising star on the French film scene. Winner of the Best Female Newcomer Cesar in 2007 for Don’t Worry, I’m Fine [+see also:
trailer
film profile], the actress was named a Shooting Star by European Film Promotion the same year.

Laurent’s career got an international boost at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival with Inglourious Basterds [+see also:
trailer
film profile] and she went on to appear in popular hits The Concert [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Radu Mihaileanu
film profile] and The Round-Up [+see also:
trailer
film profile]. She will grace screens in 2011 in Jennifer Devoldere’s Et Soudain, Tout Le Monde Me Manque (“And Suddenly, I Miss Everyone”) and Jérôme Le Gris’s Requiem For A Killer.

After attracting attention as a director with her short film Less and Less (selected in competition at Cannes in 2008), Laurent thus makes the transition to features with Les adoptés. She will also act in the film, alongside Clémentine Célarié (to be seen in 2011 in Régis Wargnier’s La Ligne Droite), Marie Denarnaud (Rivals), Denis Menochet (who has recently shot Skylab and Special Forces) and Florence Foresti.

Co-scripted by Laurent and Morgan Perez, the film centres on Lisa, a young single mother who raises her son alone, with her mother Millie and her adopted sister Marine, from whom she is inseparable. When Marine falls in love with Alex, Lisa must learn to share her sister until the day Marine, pregnant, suffers a serious accident and falls into a coma.

Over long months, between pain and hope, Lisa and Alex learn to live together, to hope and prepare themselves for the worst...

Produced by Bruno Levy for Move Movie, Les adoptés is co-produced by TF1 Films Productions, Rhône-Alpes Cinéma and StudioCanal. The latter will handle international sales and release the film in France on November 23, 2011.

(Translated from French)