19/10/2010

While Luc Besson’s Arthur and the Two Worlds War [+see also:
trailer
making of
interview: Luc Besson
film profile] has drawn over 700,000 viewers within five days of its release, another animated EuropaCorp production, The Boy with the Cuckoo Clock Heart (also known as The Mechanics of the Heart), is among seven feature projects to screen at selected cinemas during the third 2010 selection by the Ile-de-France Regional Support Fund for Technical Film and Audiovisual Industries..

Directed by Mathias Malzieu and Stéphane Berla, The Boy with the Cuckoo Clock Heart will be financed by the Ile-de-France region to the tune of €476,000 for a total budget of €19.5m, including co-production funding from France 3 Cinéma. Production, which kicked off on March 22, will last 315 days.

Adapted from the eponymous novel by Mathias Malzieu (also frontman of the French band Dionysos), the film opens in Edinburgh in 1874 with the birth of Jack on the coldest day of the world: his heart was frozen. A midwife, half-witch, half-shaman, succeeds in saving the newborn by replacing the defective heart with a clock. The prosthesis works and Jack survives, though as a result avoids all feelings, anger and especially no love. However, the sultry look of a small street singer puts Jack to the test.

The French-German co-production Shanghaï – Belleville by Show-Chun Lee will be funded in the region of €408,000. The 45-day shoot of the €2.5m debut feature from Clandestine Films already backed by National Film Centre (CNC) advance on receipts is to begin lensing in January, with a projected cast including Shu Qi and Stanley Huang.

A sum of €340,000 will go to French-Italian co-production Toute une nuit by Géraldine Maillet, a €3m budget romance from Bee Films (co-produced by France 2 Cinéma). The 32-day shoot is expected to kick off in January, starring Julie Gayet and Claudio Santamaria among the projected cast.

The Ile-de-France region has also provided funding of €408,000 for Mikael Buch’s Let My People Go!. The debut feature produced by Les Films Pelléas on a €3.6 budget will be co-produced by Belgian outfit Need Productions and has received CNC advances on receipts. The film was co-scripted by the director and Christophe Honoré.

Funds of €476,000 have been allocated to Djamel Bensalah’s comedy Capitaine Khalid, a €8.1m production from Miroir Magique. The title charts the adventures of an investigator of immigrant origin nominated by a police prefect to calm a suburb terrorised by "the mosque killer". But hoping to torpedo the police prefect’s career, the head of police manipulates conditions so that the most unfit policeman is nominated.

Two documentary projects have also been selected and have received funding of €77,000 each: Nicolas Philibert’s La Maison de la Radio (produced by Les Films d'Ici) and Lam Lê’s Immigrés de force (ADR Productions).

(Translated from French)