21/12/2005

The fortnight to come is full of cinematic novelties, as it as always the case during Christmas break. However, unlike most of the time, Europe will be well represented. This year, there will be competition for the usual hollywood blockbusters.

Thus, on the six features coming out today, there only one US production, the usual Christmas Disney (The Chronicles of Narnia) and five European movies —in the larger sense of the epithet, for these include a Turkisk feature, Organize Isler, by Yilmaz Erdogan. Two are co-produced in the United States: Mary [+see also:
trailer
film profile], a French/Italian co-production directed by the American filmmaker Abel Ferrara, who reinvents a piece of the Old Testament by creating a mise en abyme (distr. Paradiso Filmed Entertainment) and The Constant Gardener, in which the Brazilian director Fernando Meirelles shows the Bristish actor Ralph Fiennes as a brazen man who goes to Kenya to fight against oppressive powers (distr. Cinéart-Cinélibre). Films de L'Elysée gives the Belgian public an opportunity to forget the grey Winter sky and enjoy Le Cactus, a French comedy by Michel Munz and Gérard Bitton starring Clovis Cornillac and Pascal Elbé as two peas in...India. Last but not least, a Belgian children's movie is distributed by Kinepolis Film Distribution: Buitenspel by Belgium Jan Verheyen, a family drama produced by Favourite Films (the producer of quite a few popular successes, such as Steve + Sky).

(The article continues below - Commercial information)

Next week, there will be a few big US movies, but Europe will be nicely represented by Luc Besson's new top secret project (whom nobody has seen yet): Angel-A, starring Jamel Debbouze, Gilbert Melki and the Danish director and photographer Rie Rasmussen. Lumière will launch the last European productions of the year: Dalecarlians [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Maria Blom
film profile] by Maria Blom, bittersweet comedy to which Cineuropa dedicated a Focus and the German production The White Masai, in which Hermine Huntgeburth describes the true story of a young woman who left everything she had in Europe to live with a Masai warrior. What the distributors are pulling out of their Christmas hats is all very different and but these films have in common an exotic flavour.

(Translated from French)