Cannes 2014: Critics' Week

Breathe (Fr)

Dir Mélanie Laurent

Best known for her roles in Now You See Me and Inglourious Basterds, Breathe marks the second film — after The Adopted — directed by French actress Laurent. It centres on a fragile teenager who decides to take revenge when the most popular girl in the class ends their friendship. It stars up-and-coming actresses Lou de Laage and Joséphine Japy. Breathe plays as a special screening out of competition.

Contact Gaumont www.gaumont.f

Darker Than Midnight (It)

Dir Sebastiano Riso

Darker Than Midnight (Piu Buio Di Mezzanotte) marks 30-year-old Sicilian director Riso’s debut feature. It is based on the teenage years of Italian drag queen Davide Cordova, aka Fuxia, who at the age of 14 ran away from home to a Catania public park frequented by the city’s demi-monde. Riso has had several stints as assistant director, working on Roberto Faenza’s historical drama The Viceroys and several episodes of the Inspector Montalbano TV series. Picked up by Rai Trade just after its inclusion in the Critics’ Week line-up, Riso’s debut is already being circled by “several buyers”, according to head of sales Mattia Oddone.

Contact Rai Trade info@raitrade.it

Faire L’Amour (Fr)

Opening film

Dir Djinn Carrénard

Haiti-born, France-based auteur Carrénard’s second feature is billed as a “passionate love story” that follows the intense relationship between a musician and a young woman on home leave from prison. The CNC-backed drama, screening out of competition, is the follow-up to the director’s micro-budget debut feature Donoma, which also screened in Cannes and won the Louis Delluc prize. Faire L’Amour has a bigger budget and a major distributor behind it in the shape of Pathé. Grégory Bernard and Diane Jassem of Realitism Films produce.

Contact Elle Driver sales@elledriver.eu

Gente De Bien (Col-Fr)

Dir Franco Lolli

Lolli’s feature debut Gente De Bien centres on the relationship between a 10-year-old boy and his estranged father. Lolli’s short Rodri was selected for Directors’ Fortnight in 2012, and the Colombian director wrote Gente De Bien at the Cinéfondation Residence in 2010. Having studied at La Fémis in Paris, Lolli’s graduate film Como Todo El Mundo won several prizes, including the Grand Prize at Clermont-Ferrand.

Contact Versatile Films pboye@versatile-films.com

Hippocrate (Fr)

Closing film

Dir Thomas Lilti

Writer-director Lilti’s second feature, Hippocrate, screens out of competition and is a Doctor In The House-style comedy drama is about a young man who has been groomed all his life to be a great medic, like his father before him. The hitch is that he is not sure he’s up to the task. Vincent Lacoste and Reda Kateb star. After his debut feature Les Yeux Bandés in 2007, Lilti has since scripted films including Pirate TV and Welcome To Argentina.

Contact Le Pacte c.neel@le-pacte.com

Hope (Fr)

Dir Boris Lojkine

This drama follows the journey of two strangers, a man from Cameroon and a woman from Nigeria, as they trek across the Sahara on their way to Europe. Hope is the fictional feature debut of writer-director Lojkine, who previously made the documentaries Les Ames Errantes and Ceux Qui Restent. Producer Bruno Nahon was last at Cannes in 2012 with the documentary Les Invisibles, about ageing gay French men and women. Hope stars newcomers Justin Wang and Endurance Newton.

Contact Pyramide International lgarzon@pyramidefilms.com

It Follows (US)

Dir David Robert Mitchell

Mitchell’s follow-up to the dreamy The Myth Of The American Sleepover marks the noted young US director’s second outing in Critics’ Week. Northern Lights and Animal Kingdom co-finance the story of a young woman’s bizarre sexual encounter that leads her to believe she is being pursued. Maika Monroe stars.

Contact Visit Films rk@visitfilms.com

The Kindergarten Teacher (Isr-Fr)

Dir Nadav Lapid

Israeli director Lapid’s Hebrew-language drama follows a kindergarten teacher who nurtures the talents of a child with a gift for poetry. Sarit Larry and Avi Schnaidman co-star in the drama produced by Israel’s Pie Films and co-produced by France’s Haut Et Court and ARTE. Lapid’s 2011 festival favourite Policeman won awards at the Jerusalem and Locarno festivals and garnered seven Israeli Film Academy Awards nominations. The Kindergarten Teacher plays as a special screening out of competition.

Contact Le Pacte contact@le-pacte.com

Self-Made (Isr)

Dir Shira Geffen

From Israeli film-maker Geffen comes this story about two women — an artist from Jerusalem stricken with amnesia and a young Palestinian factory worker — who are accidentally misrouted at a checkpoint and consequently find themselves experiencing each other’s world. Geffen’s last feature Jellyfish, which she co-directed with her husband Etgar Keret, won the Camera d’Or when it played in Critics’ Week in 2007. Self-Made (Boreg) stars Jellyfish principal Sarah Adler and newcomer Samira Saraya.

Contact WestEnd Films info@westendfilms.com

The Tribe (Ukr)

Dir Myroslav Slaboshpytskiy

The debut feature from Ukrainian writer-director Slaboshpytskiy pays dark tribute to silent cinema, telling the story of a boarding school for deaf students in which a newcomer’s love affair puts him at odds with a clique within the school. The Tribe (Plemya) represents Slaboshpytskiy’s first trip to Cannes, although two of his shorts (Deafness and Diagnosis) screened in Berlin, and his 2012 short Nuclear Waste won Locarno’s Silver Leopard.

Contact Alpha Violet info@alphaviolet.com

When Animals Dream (Den)

Dir Jonas Alexander Arnby

Commercials and shorts director Arnby, who is a veteran of Danish alternative film school Super16, makes his feature debut with this artistic coming-of-age/horror story of a girl in a small Danish town who is hunted down because she is a werewolf. Sonia Suhl, Lars Mikkelsen and Sonja Richter star. Gaumont has already enticed a number of buyers — including Radius-TWC in the US and Altitude in the UK — with its sexy teaser for the film, which was also presented in Goteborg’s Works In Progress.

Contact Gaumont abuhl@gaumont.fr