02/07/2009

Yesterday evening, the Brussels Film Festival presented a unique Belgian title. Neither a Walloon, Flemish nor Brussels production, Holy Money is an English-language film set in Italy and featuring not one Belgian actor.

Holy Money is the debut feature by established DoP Maxime Alexandre, who has worked in both Europe and the US. The film is also the crazy brainchild of two men who were not destined to become producers.

A few years ago, lawyer Gauthier Broze and solicitor Benedikt Van der Vorst, discovered Tonino Benacquista’s novel Holy Smoke. Impressed by the story, they began to toy with the idea of making a film version, and bought the rights from Gallimard.

Aware of their lack of experience, they started by setting up an intermediary Tax Shelter company (Movie Stream), which enabled them to get a feel for the reality of the sector. They collaborated on projects as diverse as Benoît Delépine and Gustave Kerven’s Aaltra and Miel van Hoogenbemt’s Miss Montigny [+see also:
trailer
film profile].

Confident in their new skills, they created StarLighter, and set out in search of a screenwriter, co-producers and, finally, a director.

Holy Money is a hybrid film, combining different genres. It is pure entertainment, set against a backdrop of religion and the mafia, in a picturesque village in the heart of Italy. Like the film itself, the cast is eclectic, bringing together actors from Italy (Valeria Solarino), the US (Ben Gazzara, Aaron Stanford), the UK (Suzanne Bertish), Portugal (Joaquim de Almeida) and the Czech Republic (Karel Roden).

The €7.5m film was 50% financed by the Tax Shelter fund and 50% by private investors. It is set to be released by Kinepolis Film Distribution in late August or early September.

(Translated from French)