20/04/2016 - Turned down for the selections at Cannes, the film, which centres around "young people planting bombs in Paris in the present day" will be competing for the Golden Shell

Nocturama by Bertrand Bonello

Putting the cat amongst the pigeons in the midst of the announcements of the selections at Cannes, Wild Bunch has revealed that Nocturama [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Bertrand Bonello
film profile] by Bertrand Bonello will be participating in the competition of the 64th San Sebastián Film Festival (from 16 to 24 September 2016). Ever since it was made, the 6th feature film by the filmmaker after The Pornographer (shown in Critics’ Week at Cannes in 2001), Tiresia (shown in competition at Cannes in 2003),  On War [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile] (Directors’ Fortnight, 2008), House of Tolerance [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Adèle Haenel
film profile] (shown in competition at Cannes in 2011) and Saint Laurent [+see also:
film review
trailer
Q&A: Bertrand Bonello
film profile] (shown in competition at Cannes in 2014), has been accompanied by a strong sense of controversy as it centres, as the director declared in "Les Inrocks" magazine in January 2015, on "young people planting bombs in Paris in the present day", with characters "from different social backgrounds, as I want to avoid stigmatising people from the suburbs or people who are muslims, for example." The cast most notably features Finnegan Oldfield, Vincent Rottiers, Manal Issa and Hamza Meziani. 

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Written by the director, the story kicks off in Paris one morning, with a handful of young people, from different backgrounds. Each of them embark on a strange journey through the maze-like tunnels of the metro and the streets of the capital. They seem to be carrying out a plan. Their movements are precise, almost dangerous. They meet in the same place, a department store as it closes its doors for the evening. Soon Paris explodes. The attack has begun.... 

Produced by Edouard Weil and Alice Girard for Rectangle Productions with Wild Bunch (which will distribute the film in France on 31 August and is selling it internationally) and My New Pictures, Nocturama was made on a budget of €5.61 million, with co-producers including Arte France Cinéma and German companies Pandora and Arte Deutschland/WDR, pre-purchases from Canal+ and Ciné+, and support from the Île-de-France region, the Medienstiftung NRW and the mini co-production treaty between France and Germany.

(Translated from French)