France Focus: producers

Alain Attal
Les Productions Du Trésor

In Cannes with…
Maïwenn’s Palme d’Or contender Mon Roi and Cowboys, the debut feature of long-time Jacques Audiard collaborator Thomas Bidegain, which is screening in Directors’ Fortnight.

Behind the scenes
“The work of an artist is complicated,” says Attal, when quizzed about producing Maïwenn’s passionate, destructive love story Mon Roi, their second collaboration after Polisse, which won the Jury Prize at Cannes in 2011.

“First of all, you’ve got to leave one adventure behind,” he says. “But as the boat draws to the quay it sometimes takes longer to get off than you expect, especially if you’ve been enjoying the journey. Then you’ve got to be in the right frame of mind to set off on a new adventure.”

Philosophical, supportive and pragmatic, Attal acted as a sounding board for Maïwenn’s early ideas, accompanied the writing of a first rough draft and brought in Of Gods And Men and Haute Cuisine co-writer Etienne Comar to assist in the final screenplay.

“Maïwenn is very intuitive while Etienne is more structured,” says Attal. “I put them together and crossed my fingers.”

In the backdrop, financing the film was tough according to Attal but the presence of Vincent Cassel opposite Emmanuelle Bercot helped, as did the support of Canal Plus and StudioCanal.

“It belongs to that category of so-called ‘films du milieu’ - films budgeted between €5m and €9m [$5.6m and $10m] - which are the hardest to finance in France,” he says.

Upcoming titles
Nicole Garcia’s  From The Land Of The Moon (Mal De Pierres), a French-language adaptation of Milena Agus’ Italian novel, starring Marion Cotillard as a woman in a loveless marriage who embarks on an affair.

Stephanie Di Giusto’s period drama The Dancer, starring musician and actress Soko as US dancer Loie Fuller, creator of the serpentine dance, opposite Elle Fanning as Isadora Duncan. Long-time collaborator Guillaume Canet’s next film, and a project by Populaire director Régis Roinsard set in London.

Future of French cinema
“As time passes, French producers have to be more and more ingenious and inventive. Auteur films, and in particular ambitious auteur films - not formatted for a 9:30pm TV slot - are increasingly complicated to finance,” says Attal.

Edouard Weil and Alice Girard
Rectangle Productions

In Cannes with…
Valérie Donzelli’s Palme d’Or competitor Marguerite And Julien and Gaspar Noé’s Midnight-screener Love.

Behind the scenes
Rectangle founder Weil first worked with Donzelli on her much-praised 2011 Critics’ Week opener Declaration Of War (La Guerre Est Declarée).

“We met one another at the right time. There was a determination to make the film happen… on whatever amount of money we managed to pull together. A relationship of trust grew from there,” says Weil.

Their second collaboration Hand In Hand (Main Dans La Main) was not as well received. “That didn’t matter, it was part of her journey and I was happy to be part of it,” he says. “I like to trace a path with my directors, rather than make one or two films and then move on.”

Rectangle produces a range of works, from first and second films, handled mainly by in-house producer Alice Girard, to bigger budget comedies and dramas.

Upcoming productions
Rectangle is shooting David Charhon’s $16.7m (€15m) buddy comedy Les Naufragés, starring Daniel Auteuil and Laurent Stocker as two men marooned on an island.

Charhon’s last film Other Side Of The Tracks starred Omar Sy and was acquired by The Weinstein Company for the US.

Also, there is Elia Suleiman’s It Must Be Heaven, a fairy-tale about the absurdity of life, which is a co-production with Wild Bunch; Bertrand Bonello’s Paris Is Happening; Antonin Peretjatko’s comedy La Loi De La Jungle; and Tonnerre director Guillaume Brac’s next film.

Future of French cinema?
“We’re blessed with an extraordinary system in France. We have to ensure it survives and continues to adapt, to preserve something very important in our national filmography - diversity. It’s the makers of the fragile films of today who become the big cineastes of tomorrow,” says Weil.

Sylvie Pialat
Les Films Du Worso

In Cannes with…
Guillaume Nicloux’s Palme d’Or contender Valley Of Love and Corneliu Porumboiu’s The Treasure.

Behind the scenes
It has been a high-profile 12 months for Pialat, producer of Abderrahmane Sissako’s Oscar-nominated Timbuktu, which premiered in Competition at Cannes last year.

“It didn’t win any prizes but it didn’t matter… the screenings went well, the critics loved it; it all started at Cannes,” says Pialat over the phone, on the eve of a trip to Cuba for a screening of the film in Havana.

The picture swept the board at the French Césars this year, having gained fresh resonance for its anti-extremism message following the Charlie Hebdo killings in January, while Pialat won the Toscan du Plantier award for producer of the year.

The Cannes habitué, whose other recent notable festival debut was Alain Guiraudie’s Stranger By The Lake, is back at the Palais with two titles.

Nicloux’s Valley Of Love, starring Isabelle Huppert and Gérard Depardieu as a divorced couple reunited in Death Valley by their dead son, is their fourth collaboration.

“The important thing for me is the director and whether we connect. I met Guillaume a long time ago through my husband who wanted to adapt a book he had written,” says the producer referring to her late partner, the director Maurice Pialat.

“Valley Of Love is very different from The Nun. It’s a personal subject that Guillaume wrote alone straight after The Nun and working with Isabelle Huppert on that film,” she adds.

Upcoming titles
Guiraudie’s road movie Rester Verticale, which is due to shoot in September. Les Films Du Worso has recently completed Lucile Hadzihalilovic’s Evolution, set against the backdrop of a mysterious island inhabited solely by women and young boys, and Joachim Lafosse’s The White Knights. Both films are expected to find festival slots over the summer.

Future of French Cinema
“Each film is a prototype. Each time you have to go and convince people, find money. It’s the same work over and over again.

“The success of one auteur does not necessarily shine on the others. It’s the same struggle every time,” says Pialat.

Amaury Ovise (left) and Jean-Christophe Reymond
Kazak Productions

In Cannes with…
Clément Cogitore’s The Wakhan Front (Ni Le Ciel, Ni La Terre) in Critics’ Week and L’Atélier project Morgan Simon’s Compte Tes Blessures.

Behind the scenes
Having produced 40 shorts in just five years, La Fémis-trained producers Reymond and Ovise are segueing into features.

Cogitore’s The Wakhan Front, about a French army operation in Afghanistan that takes a strange turn, marks their fourth and most ambitious feature to date.

“It was a complicated shoot. Apart from the fact it’s set in Afghanistan but shot in Morocco, it’s a film in which 10 characters are on screen practically all the time,” says Reymond.

“The screenplay is fantastic but people were scared we wouldn’t do it justice because of the budget,” he adds. “Our background in shorts, however, means we know how to shoot economically without losing the core elements of the story.”

Belgian actor Jérémie Renier co-stars alongside up-and-coming French actors Kévin Azaïs, the co-star of Thomas Cailley’s Fighters, and Swann Arlaud. “Jérémie is curious, he reads lots of scripts and isn’t scared of first films,” says Reymond.

Upcoming titles
Compte Tes Blessures, starring Azaïs; Nicolas Silhol’s Corporate about an HR manager dealing with a wave of company suicides; and Teddy Lussi-Modeste’s second film Un Vrai Batard, co-written with Rebecca Zlotowski, about a rising comic who tries to cut ties with his difficult background.

Future of French cinema
“For producers like us of mainly first-time auteur films costing around €1m to €2m [$1.1m to $2.2m], the convention collective [the new collective labour accord for crew introduced in 2013] does not facilitate film-making,” says Reymond.

“We work with young technicians who want to get experience on their first feature and the convention prevents them from coming on board. Once you’ve made a film, it’s often difficult to get a decent release in theatres, which in turn has a negative impact on getting future projects financed.”