Oscar winners Cotillard and Farhardi unite on Paris-set feature

Marion Cotillard has committed to star in Asghar Farhadi’s [pictured] next feature, Alexander Mallet-Guy at Memento Films Production has announced.

“I’m very pleased that Marion Cotillard has joined us in this amazing adventure,” Mallet-Guy said in an exclusive announcement with French film trade Le FilmFrançais.

It is the first time Mallet-Guy is producing Farhadi, having distributed his previous pictures – About Elly and A Separation – in France, where the latter was a breakout art-house chalking up one million admissions. The film’s international box office stands at $25 million.

Memento Films International, which handled A Separation, is launching international sales on the feature at Cannes.

The shoot of the €11 million picture will take place in Paris this autumn. It is the first time Farhadi has shot outside of his native Iran.

Details of the storyline are under wraps while Farhadi finalises the script. Mallet-Guy revealed, however, that the film will be an emotional social thriller in the vein of A Separation, with multiple twists aimed at keeping the audience in suspense from the first frame to the last.

Talking to the Film Français, Asghar Farhadi said his aim was to, “present the viewers of my films with questions rather than answers; something the world needs more than ever today.  Posing new questions to old answers.  Perhaps this cinema can be named an inquiring cinema.”

Farhadi’s A Separation – capturing a marital breakdown in modern-day Iran – won an Oscar, Golden Globe and French César for best foreign film earlier this year as well Berlin’s Golden Bear in 2011.

Cotillard, who hits the red carpet today for Jacques Audiard’s Rust & Bone, won an Academy Award, BAFTA, César and Golden Globe for her performance as Edith Piaf in Olivier Dahan’s La Vie en Rose in 2007. 

In separate news, Farhadi and Mallet-Guy are to be honoured in Cannes as the first recipients of the EU Media Prize, aimed at the project with the best box office potential among the 500 projects submitted for development support in 2012.

Androulla Vassillou, the European Commission’s Commissioner for Education, Culture, Multilingualism, and Youth, will present the award to Farhadi and Mallet-Guy on Sunday.