CCA supports Alain Berliner’s return to the big screen

by Aurore Engelen

15/05/2012 - The Belgian French Community’s Film and Audiovisual Centre (CCA)’s film selection committee has just published the list of film projects to receive aid for its first 2012 session. Fifteen fiction feature film projects will receive aid for screenwriting or production, seven short film projects and four experimental film projects will receive aid for their production, and 12 documentaries will receive aid for their development or production, for a grand total of €3,878,000.

Torpedo [trailer] is barely out in cinemas, but already Matthieu Donck is back at the drawing board for his second feature, East. After Cannes and before Ernest & Célestine [trailer, film focus]’s release in December, Vincent Patar and Stéphane Aubier should be writing their adaptation of the cult series Picpic André Shoow for the big screen. Picpic André is to be a sort of prequel to A Town Called Panic [trailer, film focus], to feature André (the bad horse) and Coboy (French pronunciation of “Cowboy”) before they become animated figurines in A Town Called Panic. This new feature should give Picpic, the forgotten pig, the credit he deserves. It all promises to be a great moment of gentle madness.

As for aid to production, adolescence and youth seem to be the common theme in the three films chosen for the first college (for debut and second works). In Bici, produced by Versus, Dominique Laroche will tell the story of a young rebellious rock singer, ready to do almost anything to seduce her band’s guitarist, even break up the band. In Melody, his second feature once again produced by Artémis, Bernard Bellefroid will tell the tale of a young woman who agrees to carry another person’s baby as a way out of her financial insecurity. Finally, in Happy Days (also a second film, produced by Iota), Philippe de Pierpont will follow two young boys who have run away from home.

In the second college, the following established filmmakers have received support: the director of Argentinian origin Diego Martinez Vignati for his third film La terra roja (lit. “Red earth”) produced by Entre chien et loup, and Alain Berliner, who thus returns to the big screen, notably after the first season of Clara Sheller, and an adaptation of Balzac’s La Peau de Chagrin. For his next film, La Dictature des Sentiments (lit. “The dictatorship of emotions”), to be produced by his production company WFE, he will bring together actors Laura Morante, Gaspard Proust, and François Berléand.

(Translated from French)