09/01/2013 - For Samuel Collardey, the Odyssey of a young African who has set his heart on European football. The black continent also, with Paradise : Love and Tey

"I'm naive enough to believe that it's still possible to make dreams come true, that the world is not yet completely rotten." By focusing in Little Lion, launched today by Pyramide in 45 copies, on "the path taken by an adolescent in search of an ideal", Samuel Collardey pursues his fascinating experiments on the borderline between documentary and fiction. In the wake of The Apprentice [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile] (winner of the Venice Critics' Week Award in 2008 and the Louis Delluc Prize for Best Debut Film), a documentary with a fictional feel, the director reveals "a fictional story swallowed up by a documentary". It addresses a vast social subject (the conditions of African migration towards European football) without abandoning one of Collardey's favourite themes: "the relationship between a youngster and an adult with a certain fallibility".

Inspired by the very real adventures of a player for FC Sochaux, the film is centered around a 15 year-old from Senegal (Mytri Attal), dreaming about "Barça" and Chelsea. Spotted by an agent, he sets off for Europe, placing his family in debt, but is abandoned penniless in Paris. Rejecting the prospect of a "shameful" return home, he then embarks on a series of makeshift efforts to get along, before being saved by meeting an amateur coach (Marc Barbé) who puts him back on track towards his dream.

"The tale of this kid really knocked me out," explains the film-maker. "We researched for three months in Paris to incorporate a lot of documentary material which would nourish the scenario, and we worked with a majority of non-professionals, mixing them with actors. The production process then consisted of integrating our fictional story into real, pre-existing situations." A delicate and imperfect alchemy which nevertheless won the support of French critics.

Africa and Europe also lie at the heart of the controversial Paradise: Love [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile] by Austrian director Ulrich Seidl (review - Happiness Distribution in 22 cinemas), discovered in competition in Cannes and the first part of a trilogy whose second episode (Paradise: Faith) won an award in Venice.

The African continent also lies at the core of the very good movie Tey [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile] by Alain Gomis, which drew appreciation when competing at the last Berlinale (review - Jour2Fête in 20 copies).

Our survey of new items is completed by the ambitious first feature-length film Les Jeux des nuages et de la pluie by Benjamin de Lajarte (Rezo Films in 10 copies), the icy Une Histoire d'amour [+see also:
trailer
film profile] by Hélène Fillières (news - Wild Bunch Distribution in 65 cinemas) and the romantic comedy Un Prince (presque) charmant [+see also:
trailer
film profile] by Philippe Lellouche (EuropaCorp Distribution in 328 cinemas).

Worth noting from a box-office point of view, the clearly confirmed impact of Omar Sy on admissions for De l’autre côté du périph [+see also:
trailer
film profile] (news - 1.6 million viewers in 19 days) and the positive effect of school holidays on the cartoon films Ernest and Célestine [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Benjamin Renner, Vincent Pa…
film profile] (676,138 spectators in 26 days) and Niko 2 - Little Brother, Big Trouble [+see also:
trailer
film profile] (732,592 admissions in almost six weeks).

(Translated from French)