22/01/2013 - Premium Films and Wide Management are selling candidates for the Tiger Awards. World premiere for Lightning by Manuela Morgaine at Bright Future

Although France is not directly represented in competition at the 42nd Rotterdam Film Festival, which will begin tomorrow, two of the 16 films competing for the Tiger Awards are being sold internationally by French companies: Premium Films for Soldier Jane (article) by Austrian director Daniel Hoesl and Wide Management for Silent Ones [+see also:
trailer
film profile] by Dutch director Ricky Rijneke, entirely filmed in Hungary with local actors (including Orsi Tóth).

French productions will, however, be very well-represented in other sections of the festival, including the Bright Future sidebar in which Lightning (photo) by Manuela Morgaine will make its world premiere. Produced by Mezzanine Films, this 3 hr 50 minute film was shot between 2004 and 2012 in five countries (including Syria in Aleppo, Libya, Tunisia and Guinea Bissau). In four seasons, like the various aspects of lightning (which strikes, revives, creates a mythology and embodies a thunderbolt of love), the director straddles the line between documentary and legend in an unconventional work in which the gods Baal and Saturn eventually cross the path of Symeon the stylite, people suffering from melancholy, others struck by lightning, and torn lovers at the nocturnal ball of lightning.

The Bright Future section will also feature the world premiere of Matei Child Miner by Romanian director Alexandra Gulea (coproduced on the French side by La Vie est Belle Films Associés). The Morning Star by Sophie Blondy (with its baroque cast including Denis Lavant, Iggy Pop, Tchéky Karyo, Natacha Régnier and Béatrice Dalle), Hold Back [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Rachid Djaïdani
film profile] by Rachid Djaïdani, Une histoire d’amour [+see also:
trailer
film profile] by Hélène Fillières, Ma belle gosse [+see also:
trailer
interview: Shalimar Preuss
film profile] by Shalimar Preuss and The Patience Stone [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile] by Atiq Rahimi will also be screened, as well as the minority coproductions Blancanieves [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Pablo Berger
film profile] (Noodles Production), Melaza (Promenade Films) and Ziba (Tournez s'il vous plait).

The majority productions Something in the Air [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Olivier Assayas
film profile] by Olivier Assayas, God's Horses [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Nabil Ayouch
film profile] by Nabil Ayouch, The Girl from Nowhere [+see also:
trailer
film profile] by Jean-Claude Brisseau, Mirror My Love by Siegrid Alnoy (with Judith Chemla, Fanny Ardant, Laurent Stocker and Carlo Brandt – a Flach Films production with Pyramide handling sales), Cherchez Hortense [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile] by Pascal Bonitzer, L’enclos du temps [+see also:
film review
film profile] by Jean-Charles Fitoussi, Gebo and the Shadow [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile] by Portuguese director Manoel de Oliveira, Trois exercices d'interprétation by Romanian director Cristi Puiu (Chantiers Nomades) and White Epilepsy by Philippe Grandrieux will all be featured in the Soectrum programme. Also worth noting, the world premiere of the Belgo-Germano-French coproduction La tendresse [+see also:
trailer
interview: Marion Hänsel
film profile] by Marion Hänsel and the presence, in all the various sections of the festival, of many French international vendors in action (including Memento, Doc & Film, Wild Bunch, Urban Distribution International, Funny Balloons, Le Pacte, Coproduction Office and Pascale Ramonda).

(Translated from French)