French take Toronto by storm

by Fabien Lemercier

06/09/2007 - A copious contingent of 33 French majority (co-)productions will screen at the 32nd Toronto Film Festival (September 6-September 15).

The Canadian event will give pride of place to Alain Corneau’s Second Wind [trailer] (see news), which will get a gala world premiere screening on Saturday. The spotlight will also be on Nadine Labaki’s French/Lebanese co-production Caramel [trailer], the darling of May’s Cannes Directors’ Fortnight.

Five other titles will premiere at the renowned festival: Florent-Emilio Siri’s Intimate Enemies [trailer] and Philippe Faucon’s Dans la vie [trailer] (see news) in the Contemporary World Cinema section, Michelange Quay’s Eat, for This Is My Body [trailer] (produced by Les Films à Un Dollar and sold by Memento Films) in the Visions programme, Julien Leclercq’s anticipation thriller Chrysalis [trailer] starring Albert Dupontel (produced and sold by Gaumont) in the Vanguard section and Xavier Gens’ Frontier(s) (see news) in the Midnight Madness category.

World sales agents will abandon Venice’s Lido to head for the Canadian city, with films screened at Venice also getting a showing at Toronto. These include Claude Chabrol’s A Girl Cut in Two [trailer] (see article), Eric Rohmer’s Les Amours d'Astrée et de Céladon [trailer] (see article), Youssef Chahine’s Chaos, Amos Gitaï’s Disengagement [trailer] (see news), as well as minority co-productions Vincenzo Marra’s L’ora di punta [trailer], Jose Luis Guerin’s En la ciudad de Sylvia [trailer] (see article), Manuel de Oliveira’s Cristovão Colombo – O Enigma [trailer] and Philippe Kohly’s Callas Assoluta.

Cannes prizewinners to screen at Toronto include Marjane Satrapi and Vincent Paronnaud’s Persepolis [trailer, film focus] (see Focus), Julian Schnabel’s The Diving Bell and the Butterfly [trailer] (see article), Naomi Kawase’s French/Japanese feature The Mourning Forest and Gus Van Sant’s French production Paranoid Park [trailer] (see article).

Other Cannes titles are Christophe Honoré’s Love Songs [trailer] (see article), Catherine Breillat’s An Old Mistress [trailer], Céline Sciamma’s Water Lilies [trailer] (see interview), Hou Hsiao Hsien’s Flight of the Red Balloon [trailer] (see news), Inside [trailer] by directing duo Alexandre Bustillo and Julien Maury, Barbet Schroeder’s Terror’s Advocate [trailer] (see article ), collective film Chacun fait son cinéma, Caméra d’Or winner Jellyfish [trailer] by Israeli directing duo Etgar Keret and Shira Geffen and Jacques Nolot’s Before I Forget [trailer] (see news).

Minority co-productions at Toronto are Alexander Sokurov’s Alexandra [trailer] (see article), Béla Tarr’s The Man from London [trailer] (see interview), Volker Schlöndorff’s Ulzhan [trailer], Carlos Reygadas’ Silent Light [trailer], Roy Andersson’s You, the Living [trailer, film focus], Daniele Luchetti’s My Brother is an Only Child [trailer, film focus] (see news) and Sandra Kogut’s Mutum.

Berlinale titles selected for the North American festival include François Ozon’s Angel [trailer] (see interview) and Jacques Rivette’s Don’t Touch the Axe [trailer] (see news), while Hiner Saleem’s Locarno prizewinner Sous les toits de Paris [trailer] also features.

The line-up also features French/UK co-production Son of Rambow by Garth Jennings, Salif Traoré’s Faro; Philippe Calderon’s The Besieged Fortress [trailer]; Jean-Pierre Lledo’s Algérie, Histoires à ne pas dire.

A number of non-French films feature in the line-up of French sales agents, such as Terra by Aristomenis Tsirbas, Woody Allen’s Cassandra’s Dream [trailer], Kevin Macdonald’s My Enemy’s Enemy and Hana Makhmalbaf’s Buddha Collapsed out of Shame (Wild Bunch); Todd Haynes’s I'm Not There, Takeshi Kitano’s Glory to the Filmaker!, Mad Detective by directing duo Johnnie To & Wai Ka-fai, Emotional Arithmetic by Paolo Barzman (Celluloid Dreams); Jia Zhang-ke’s Useless (Memento Films); and Denys Arcand’s The Age of Darkness (Studio Canal).

(Translated from French)