15/04/2009

This is a quiet week for new releases. While some are savouring their last Easter eggs, exhibitors and distributors are banking on the numerous family films launched in previous weeks to attract audiences over the remaining holiday.

Imagine Film Distribution is nonetheless launching two new films, including Hooked [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Adrian Sitaru
film profile], the debut feature by Adrian Sitaru, who won an award at the Namur International Francophone Film Festival for his short Waves.

Unlike most of the other New Romanian Wave exponents, Sitaru doesn’t set his films in a strong historical context, but against a contemporary backdrop with a focus on the personal. Picnic is a romantic saga about a couple on the verge of breaking up, filmed using point of view shots.

The film was co-produced by Romania’s 4Proof Film and France’s Movie Partner In Motion Film.

Imagine’s other new release is Jean-Paul Jaud’s French documentary That Should Not Be: Our Children Will Accuse Us. France, the land of gastronomy, thus succumbs to the recent wave of food-themed documentaries, after US director Morgan Spurlock’s Super Size Me and Austrian filmmaker Erwin Wagenhofer’s We Feed the World [+see also:
trailer
film profile].

That Should Not Be centres on a Cévennes village that is considered pioneering because the school canteen serves organic food. We can sense the awareness-raising aim of the film, which surfs on the wave of major US-style green documentaries, in this case replacing Al Gore’s eloquence and Leonardo Di Caprio’s lyricism with Gabriel Yared’s melancholy score. Produced by J+B Séquences, the film is being launched on seven screens.

Also hitting theatres is Shane Meadows’ UK film Somers Town [+see also:
trailer
film profile].

However, this week’s major European release is the highly anticipated OSS 117: Rio Ne Répond Plus [+see also:
trailer
film profile]. In this sequel, the hateful spy sets out on a new adventure and lives it up in sunny Brazil.

s The winning team hasn’t changed: Jean Dujardin once more plays the secret agent, with Michel Hazanavicius directing and the Altmayer brothers producing for Mandarin Films in collaboration with Gaumont.

(Translated from French)