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FUNDING France

CNC supports adaptation of Joseph Conrad’s Youth

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- Advances on receipts for Julien Samani, Marianne Tardieu, Fred Nicolas, Cristina Pinheiro, and Georgi Lazarevski’s first feature film projects

Five first feature film projects were recently selected during the fourth 2012 session of the National Film and Moving Image Centre (CNC)’s first committee for advances on receipts. Among them is Julien Samani (photo)’s Jeunesse [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile
]
(lit. “Youth”), an adaptation of the short story of the same name written by Joseph Conrad and published in the same volume as his famous Heart of Darkness. The director, who has been praised for his shorts (notably La peau trouée, which won the Jean Vigo Prize in 2005, won in Nyons and Belfort, and competed in Rotterdam), wrote the screenplay for this first fiction feature with Camille Fontaine (nominated for the 2010 Cesar for best adapted screenplay for Coco Before Chanel). The pitch? An old boat that is almost a shipwreck, a young inexperienced sailor, two old salts of the sea, a crooked boat owner, a mutiny, a highly risky sea crossing, a storm, and problems along the way. From Le Havre to Dakar, this ship’s odyssey is an initiatory journey from adolescence to adulthood. Les Films d’Ici is to produce the film.

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Marianne Tardieu’s Qui vive, a film to be produced by La Vie est Belle, was also promised an advance on receipts. The screenplay, co-written by the filmmaker and Nadine Lamari, centres on Chérif, a newcomer in the world of security, who lets thieves know about the shop where he works, thereby unwillingly triggering a tragedy. Trapped between two worlds, he will attempt to resist the ensuing pressure and suspicions…

The CNC also selected Fred Nicolas’s Max et Lenny. This very experienced assistant director (notably for Desplechin, Ivory, Kervern and Delépine, Merlet, Zonca…) wrote the project’s screenplay with François Bégaudeau (Entre les murs [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Carole Scotta
interview: Laurent Cantet
film profile
]
). Produced by Chaz Productions, the film is to tell the story of two teenagers who meet in the northern neighbourhoods of Marseille.

The awardees also feature Cristina Pinheiro’s Menina, a project to be produced by Easy Tiger. The screenplay, written by the director, is set in 1979 and centres on an eight-year-old girl from the Portuguese community helping her illiterate mother and witnessing the violent outbursts of her father, some of whose secrets she will discover.

Finally, an advance on receipts has been awarded to Zona franca, a first feature-length documentary project to be directed by Paris-based Belgian-Macedonian filmmaker Georgi Lazarevski.

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(Translated from French)

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