Faucher adapts Testud’s portrait of childhood in Gamines
Shooting got underway on Monday on Gamines (“Kids”), the second feature by Eléonore Faucher after A Common Thread (which picked up the Grand Prize at Cannes Critics’ Week in 2004).
Having tried in vain to get a film about the Algerian War off the ground, the young director decided instead to adapt a novel written by actress Sylvie Testud (Sagan [+see also:
trailer
film profile]), who stars in the film. The cast also includes Zoé Duthion, Amira Casar, Marc Barbé, Jean-Pierre Martins, Roxanne Monnier and Louise Herrero.
Published in 2006 and adapted for the big screen by Faucher, Gamines retraces the search by protagonist Sibylle (played by Duthion when young and Testud as an adult) for her absent father. The ten-year-old girl – who lives in Lyon with her two sisters and Italian-born, single mother – steals a photo from her mother’s bedroom.
For 30 years, this photo remains in her pocket until one day she studies it carefully and notices the figure of a man. This man she never knew could possibly be her father, who left when she was barely two years old and whose name is never mentioned by her family.
Gamines is the portrait of a penniless and rather chaotic childhood, of the complicity and rivalry between three sisters and the search for a father’s ghost. The film is produced by Blanche Guichou for Agat Films, with co-production backing from Rhône-Alpes Cinéma and pre-sales from Canal + and Ciné Cinéma.
Shooting is scheduled to last until September 17 in Paris and the Rhône-Alpes region. TFM will release the film domestically and TF1 International will handle international sales.
(Translated from French)
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