08/03/2005 - Director Cédric Kahn is currently in the post-production phase of his sixth feature, L’Avion, starring Vincent Lindon, Isabelle Carré, and Lambert Wilson, a Franco-German coproduction, on screen in May 2005.

Director Cédric Kahn is currently in the post-production phase of his sixth feature, L’Avion, starring Vincent Lindon, Isabelle Carré, andLambert Wilson. This French and German co-production will be released in France and Switzerland in May —while the director’s previous film, Feux Rouges, starring Carole Bouquet and Jean-Pierre Darroussin will be launched in Italy on the 22th of April by Bim.

Adapted from the French comics Charly, jouet d'enfer, by Magda and Lapière, L’Avion is the story of a eight-year old boy who gets, as a Christmas present, a huge plane model instead of the bicycle his father (who dies shortly after that) had promised. But the model soon proves extraordinary ; it is ‘alive’. Thus, young Charly starts a crazy adventure with his new ‘friend’ the plane, with the intention of finding his father to thank him for the unexpectedly fantastic present. The script was co-written by the director and Ismaël Ferroukhi (director of Grand Voyage, Best First Feature at the Mostra 2004), a successful duet, as their collaboration in Trop de bonheur showed in 1994.
With a 10-million-euro budget, L’Avion is mainly (80%) produced by Marc Missonnier and Olivier Delbosc for the French company Fidélité Productions. The other 20 % were provided by the German company Akkord Filmproduktion. The film also benefitted from a 270-thousand-euro advance-on-contract from the French Centre National de la Cinématographie (CNC), a co-production and pre-sale participation of 1.1 million euros from France 3 Cinéma, a 600 000 euro funding from Eurimages, 165 000 euros as a French-German co-production, and 1 million euros from the Filmstiftung NRW. It will be distributed in France by Pathé which will also handle international sales. In Switzerland, the distributor is TBA.

(Translated from French)