15/03/2019 - The Belgian filmmaker is reopening a chapter in France’s colonial history with this adaptation of a Laurent Mauvignier novel

Director Lucas Belvaux and actor Gérard Depardieu

Lucas Belvaux is gearing up to begin the shoot for his new film, Home Front [+see also:
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interview: Lucas Belvaux
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This is the second time that French novelist Laurent Mauvignier has had one of his works adapted by a Belgian director, following the January release of Keep Going [+see also:
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interview: Joachim Lafosse
film profile] by Joachim Lafosse. Home Front explores the wall of silence surrounding the so-called “years of lead” that the Algerian War represented for France and its people. In it, we follow several former soldiers who were deployed on the front line for two years, and who, ever since their return to France, have stayed quiet about their experience. Forty years later, their past catches up with them, and they will have to confront this particular chapter in world history and their own life stories.

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After homing in on the issue of National Front voting in This Is Our Land [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Lucas Belvaux
film profile], Belvaux now ponders this founding era in French history, which is nonetheless seldom fictionalised. Flanking Gérard Depardieu are two thesps who previously acted for Belvaux in his An Amazing Couple [+see also:
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film profile] – On the Run [+see also:
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trailer
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Q&A: Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne
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The filmmaker will be accompanied for the first time by DoP Guillaume Deffontaines, who regularly partners up with Bruno Dumont and won the César Award for Best Cinematography for Slack Bay [+see also:
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trailer
film profile], Not My Type [+see also:
trailer
interview: Lucas Belvaux
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The film, principal photography for which will start on 4 April in the Morvan and Morocco, is being produced in France by David Frenkel for Synecdoche and by Patrick Quinet for Belgian outfit Artemis Productions. It will be distributed by Ad Vitam in France and is being sold overseas by Doc & Film. France 3 Cinéma is also on board as a co-producer, with backing from Canal+, Ciné+, France Télévisions, the Bourgogne-Franche-Comté region, the CNC, the Film and Audiovisual Centre of the Wallonia-Brussels Federation and Eurimages.

(Translated from French)