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PRODUCTION France

Play It Like Godard: the tribulations of a young, gifted filmmaker

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He won a Palme d’Or at 15 years of age and a César Award at 16, but for JC, the hardest test is the baccalaureate! For his debut directorial feature, Play It Like Godard, sales of which MK2 will get underway at the Toronto International Film Festival (September 8-18, 2011), actor Jonathan Zaccaï has chosen a parodic comedy set in the film industry world.

This French/Belgian co-production boasts a cast including Vincent Lacoste (nominated for the Best Male Newcomer César in 2010 for The French Kissers [+see also:
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), Elsa Zylberstein, Aure Atika, Ella Waldmann, Elodie Hesme and Eric de Montalier, with appearances by Kad Merad and Gilles Lellouche.

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Scripted by Zaccaï, the film traces the misadventures of Jean-Christophe Kern, better known by his pseudonym JC. He is not like other teenagers: a renowned film director and regular award-winner, at 17 years old he reigns over the young generation of filmmakers with ever more ambitious projects and actors who will do anything to work with him.

A mix of Peter Sellers, Jean-Luc Godard and a teen lambda with romantic relations and his relationship with his parents, JC wonders how he can pass his baccalaureate without working…

The subject of a teaser in MK2’s free magazine Trois Couleurs with a mock interview with JC, who is presented as a heir to the likes of Steven Soderbergh, Gregg Araki and Darren Arofnosky, Play It Like Godard was shot last February as a docu-fiction. According to Zaccaï, it is not a film about the world of cinema, but a critical look at the absurdity of the cult of precociousness.

Produced by Vicious (the director’s Paris-based company) and Belgium’s Nexus Factory, Play It Like Godard will be released in France on January 25, 2012 by MK2 Diffusion.

At Toronto, MK2 International’s line-up also includes, among others, Oliver Hermanus’s Beauty [+see also:
trailer
film profile
]
(acclaimed in this year’s Cannes Un Certain Regard section – see review – to screen in competition at the TIFF); Rabah Ameur-Zaïmeche’s Smugglers’ Songs [+see also:
trailer
film profile
]
(Jean Vigo Award – see news – and unveiled in competition at Locarno); and The Fairy [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Dominique Abel, Fiona Gordon
film profile
]
by directorial trio Fiona Gordon, Dominique Abel and Bruno Romy (see review of Cannes premiere); and eagerly-awaited titles currently in production or post-production: Walter Salles’s On the Road, Olivier Assayas’s Something In The Air (see news), Xavier Dolan’s Laurence Anyways and Abbas Kiarostami’s The End.

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(Translated from French)

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