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RELEASES France

Honoré focuses on family in Making Plans for Lena

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Today, Le Pacte is launching a 200-print run of Christophe Honoré’s new film, Making Plans for Lena [+see also:
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, which has been selected in competition for the upcoming San Sebastian Film Festival (September 17-26).

Enthusiastically received by critics, this is the sixth feature by the director of In Paris [+see also:
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(Directors’ Fortnight 2006), Love Songs [+see also:
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(in competition at Cannes 2007) and The Beautiful Person [+see also:
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(San Sebastian 2008).

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The film stars Chiara Mastroianni as a divorced mother suffering from depression and surrounded by a supportive but oppressive family. The cast also includes Marina Foïs, Marie-Christine Barrault, Julien Honoré, Fred Ulysse, Marcial di Fonzo Bo, Jean-Marc Barr and Louis Garrel.

Written by the director, this family saga is set in Brittany and Paris. It centres on a woman who is full of contradictions and chained to her close relations, including two young children who witness her deterioration, a bitter, unhappily married sister, a sneering brother, excessively well-meaning parents and an ex-husband who embodies love-hate relationships, present throughout the film. A portrait of shattered pride battling with the breakdown of everyday life, Making Plans for Lena is particularly laudable for its sensitive depiction of the Breton countryside.

Produced by Why Not Productions for €3.86m, the feature was co-produced by France 3 Cinéma and pre-bought by Canal+.

Mars Distribution is releasing on around 125 screens Cédric Kahn’s Les Regrets [+see also:
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(see news), starring Valeria Bruni-Tedeschi and Yvan Attal as former lovers who plunge back into a spiral of passion, in a similar vein to François Truffaut’s The Woman Next Door.

Meanwhile, Rezo Films is releasing a 25-print run of Eric Martin and Emmanuel Caussé’s eco-rural comedy No Pasaran (“They Won’t Pass”), whose cast includes Cyril Lecomte, Elodie Navarre, Bernard Blancan, Rossy de Palma and Murray Head (Pierre Javaux Productions, in co-production with France 2 Cinéma).

EuropaCorp is launching on around 15 screens its production Human Zoo [+see also:
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by Rie Rasmussen, which was unveiled at the latest Berlinale Panorama.

Non-domestic European cinema is represented by Austrian director Wolfgang Murnberger’s outlandish film The Bone Man [+see also:
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(MK2 Diffusion - 55 screens); and Eccentricities of a Blonde-Haired Girl [+see also:
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by Portugal’s Manoel de Oliveira (co-produced by France’s Les Films de l'Après-midi - released by Epicentre Films on around ten screens).

Finally, the line-up also includes Haim Tabakman’s Israeli/French co-production Eyes Wide Open [+see also:
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, which won acclaim in the Un Certain Regard section at Cannes and is released by Haut et Court on around 55 screens.

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(Translated from French)

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