03/05/2006

The shooting of the debut feature by Micha Wald, Voleurs de Chevaux [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile] (lit. "Horse Thieves"), has just been moved to France, where it should end in early June. The latest short by the Belgian director of Ukrainian origin, Alice et moi, recently released on DVD, was highly acclaimed by audiences and critics, as well as by juries at several international festivals, including Cannes and Locarno. His current project is a film about four Cossacks.

On the film’s set in Spa, Belgium, during a ball scene – one of the rare scenes with extras – Elias (played by the young François-René Dupont in his screen debut) is forced by his mates to get drunk and sing. The mood on the set is relaxed. Mylène St Sauveur (L'Incomparable Mademoiselle C, Familia) – the only female character in this adventure film – waits for her cue to enter the scene. The set is immersed in shadows, among rustic tables and dim candlelight.

Grégoire Colin (Sex is Comedy, Inquiétudes) is also on the set, and tells us that the perfect set decoration, the costumes and the direction of the actors in this scene reminds him of Michael Cimino’s Heaven's Gate. And his character? "Very brutal". A character "who has an extremely possessive relationship with his brother, which borders on invasive". He lives to eat, warm himself and protect this brother, to whom he is linked by a "children’s game that went wrong", leaving Elias crippled: "I will meet the two brothers and kill one of them (Grégoire Leprince-Ringuet). The revenge and the chase start there", when Jakub (Adrien Jolivet, Zim and co [+see also:
trailer
film profile]) begins hunting him down. The film is structured like a three-act tragedy.

Produced by Versus production, the €3m film was co-produced by France’s Rezo Production and Canada’s Forum Films, and backed by the Communauté française de Belgique, Wallimage and the Centre Val de Loire. Voleurs de chevaux also received an advance on box office receipts from the CNC, as well as funding from Eurimages and the MEDIA Programme and has already found a sales agent as well as distributors. Rezo Films is handling international sales and distribution in France, while Lumière will release the film in Belgium and Alliance Atlantis in Canada.

(Translated from French)