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RELEASES France

Debut features hold their own with Eight Times Up, Domaine

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The new releases hitting French theatres today offer a fine illustration of the diversity of French production. Alongside Luc Besson’s mega-production The Extraordinary Adventures of Adèle Blanc-Sec [+see also:
trailer
film profile
]
(see news) and several minority co-productions, the line-up also includes two low-budget debut features discovered at Venice and San Sebastian.

UFO Distribution is releasing a 43-print run of Xabi Molia’s Eight Times Up [+see also:
trailer
film profile
]
(see news), which was unveiled at San Sebastian in the Zabaltegi-New Directors section and stars Julie Gayet and Denis Podalydès. Meanwhile, Contre-Allée Distribution is launching on around ten screens Patric Chiha’s French/Austrian co-production Domaine [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile
]
, which premiered in Venice Critics’ Week (see review) with a cast headed by Béatrice Dalle.

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Produced for respective budgets of €1.81m and €1.51m, the two titles received a pre-production advance on receipts from the National Film and Moving Image Centre (CNC).

For the record, the level of talent renewal in France remains very high, for 77 debut films were accredited in 2009, i.e. 42.3% of French initiative productions. Seventeen of these debut works received a pre-production advance on receipts from the CNC, 41 were pre-bought by Canal + (for an average investment of €915,500), 16 by TPS Cinéma and 40 by Ciné Cinéma, while the terrestrial networks co-produced 18 of them.

French productions also stand out for their international openness, as demonstrated by this week’s two co-productions: Iranian director Nader T. Homayoun’s Tehran [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile
]
(also unveiled at Venice - Haut et Court Distribution); and Spring Fever [+see also:
trailer
film profile
]
by China’s Lou Ye, which won Best Screenplay at last year’s Cannes Film Festival (distributed by Le Pacte).

Diaphana is releasing a 25-print run of Italian director Renato de Maria’s Front Line [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Luc & Jean-Pierre Dardenne
interview: Renato De Maria
film profile
]
, co-produced by Belgium via the Dardenne brothers’ company.

Finally, this week also sees the launch of Brit director Paul Greengrass’s Green Zone [+see also:
trailer
film profile
]
, co-produced by the United States, France (StudioCanal), the United Kingdom (Working Title) and Spain (Antena 3 Films)

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(Translated from French)

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