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Amazon will present The Mad Women's Ball by Mélanie Laurent in Toronto

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- With Lou de Laâge heading the cast, the first French film to be produced directly for the streaming platform will be unveiled in a gala screening before its worldwide online release on 17 September

Amazon will present The Mad Women's Ball by Mélanie Laurent in Toronto
Lou de Laâge and Mélanie Laurent in The Mad Women's Ball

Mélanie Laurent (jury member at the latest Cannes Film Festival) continues on her peculiar French career, working as actress and filmmaker. She has directed six feature films, including the environment-focused documentary Tomorrow [+see also:
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(co-directed with Cyril Dion and winner of the Best Documentary César award in 2016) while continuing on her acting career, noted recently by her very physical performance in Oxygen [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile
]
(discovered in May on Netflix).

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It is for another SvoD giant that Mélanie Laurent has directed The Mad Women's Ball [+see also:
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, set to have its world premiere next Monday in a gala screening at the 46th Toronto International Film Festival. The film, which is the first French production initiated directly for Amazon Prime Video, will be launched on the platform worldwide on 17 September. 

The 5th fiction feature from the director after Les Adoptés [+see also:
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film profile
]
(2011), Breathe [+see also:
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interview: Lou de Laâge
film profile
]
(2014), Plonger [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile
]
(2017) and the American production Galveston (2018), The Mad Women's Ball features in its cast Lou de Laâge (nominated for the Most Promising Actress César award in 2014 and 2015 for Jappeloup [+see also:
trailer
interview: Lou de Laâge
film profile
]
and Breathe, and currently in French cinemas in Black Box [+see also:
trailer
film profile
]
), the director herself, actor-director Emmanuelle Bercot (winner of the Best Actress award in Cannes in 2015 for My King [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile
]
), Benjamin Voisin (winner of the Best Male Newcomer Lumières award in 2021 and nominated for the Most Promising Actor César award for Summer of 85 [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile
]
, well-received currently in Venice in Lost Illusions [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Xavier Giannoli
film profile
]
), Cédric Khan, Lomane De Dietrich, Christophe Montenez and Grégoire Bonnet.

Adapted by the director together with Christophe Deslandes from the eponymous novel by Victoria Mas, the script for The Mad Women’s Ball tells the story of Eugénie, a luminous and passionate young woman at the end of the 19th century. Eugénie has a unique gift: she can hear and see the dead. When her family discovers her secret, she is taken by her father and brother to the neurology clinic of the La Salpêtrière hospital without any way of escaping her destiny. This clinic, headed by the eminent Professor Charcot, a pioneer in neurology and psychiatry, welcomes women who have been diagnosed as hysterical, mad, epileptic and with all other kinds of physical and mental illnesses. Eugénie’s path will then cross that of Geneviève, a nurse from the neurology unit whose life passes before her eyes without her truly living it. Their encounter will forever alter their destinies as they prepare for the famous “Mad women’s ball,” organised every year by Professor Charcot at the clinic…

The Mad Women’s Ball was produced by Alain Goldman and Axelle Boucaï for Parisian company Légende Films. The director of photography is Nicolas Karakatsanis (nominated for the 2012 Magritte award in his specialty for Bullhead [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Bart Van Langendonck
interview: Michaël R. Roskam
film profile
]
), from Belgium.

Regarding its other French productions, Amazon Prime Video will carry on with feature films with the comedy Flashback by Caroline Vigneaux, currently in post-production (the time travels of a female lawyer who will cross paths with all the women who fought for women’s rights throughout history) and, in the domain of series, with Salade Grecque by Cédric Klapisch (a follow up of the trilogy that began with Pot Luck and which will focus on the children of the protagonists), which is scheduled for 2022.

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(Translated from French)

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