20/09/2007

Entre Chien et Loup production La Maréa from Argentinean director Diego Martinez Vignatti opens this week in three arthouse theatres, in Brussels, Flanders and Wallonia.

Selected at many festivals, notably in official competition at Rotterdam, La Maréa is a feature debut that recounts the poignant mourning of Azul (Eugenia Ramirez Miori), who first takes refuge in the seaside after the accidental death of his son.

DoP Martinez Vignatti – who has worked with Carlos Reygadas (Japan and Battle in Heaven [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Carlos Reygadas
interview: Jean Labadie
film profile]) – had previously directed the successful documentary (his first) Nosotros, which made him known as a director in 2003, after prestigious selections at Rotterdam and at Paris’ Cinéma du Réel festival.

La Maréa was, so to speak, directed without any particular plan: "We decided to make the film in September 2006," explains producer Sébastien Delloye. "I had a treatment a month later and we shot in April, without a script. But the whole principle of the film was to direct it with a different approach."

To distribute this “magnificent but quite radical auteur" film, Entre Chien et Loup reactivated its existing distribution outfit Dreamtouch. "Today we think that big distributors don’t know how to work on this genre of films, they are up to their eyes and don’t have the time to wait hand and foot on small films like this one, to evaluate releases and plan beforehand. We therefore contacted the cinemas ourselves."

A regular producer of most of Lucas Belvaux’s films (Trilogy: Three, Nature contre nature, The Right of the Weakest [+see also:
trailer
film profile]), Entre Chien et Loup has also produced films by directors such as Sam Garbarski (The Rashevski Tango, Irina Palm [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Sam Garbarski
interview: Sébastien Delloye
film profile]) and Pierre-Paul Renders (Thomas in Love, Mr. Average [+see also:
trailer
film profile]).

The production company founded by Diana Elbaum has some attractive projects lined up: Amos Kollek’s Restless and Wang Bing’s Soleil Aveugle; and several majority features, such as Nabil Ben Yadir’s comedy Les Barons; Garbarski’s upcoming title (an adaptation of Joru Taniguchi’s manga); Quartier Lointain (“Distant Area”); an adaptation of Amélie Nothomb’s novel Cosmétique de l'ennemi (“Enemy’s Make-Up”), directed by Martin Coiffier; Bavo Defurne’s Souvenir (“Memory”); and Emily Sunshine by Lieven Debrauwer (Pauline and Paulette [+see also:
trailer
film profile], Sweet Jam [+see also:
trailer
film profile]).

Two other titles to be released by Dreamtouch before next summer are Teona Sugar Mitevska’s I Am from Titov Veles [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Teona Strugar Mitevska
film profile], a Macedonian co-production selected at Toronto and in the Berlinale Panorama section; and Delphine Leherricey’s Locarno Film Festival entry Comme à Ostende, both Entre Chien et Loup productions.

(Translated from French)