05/05/2010

The top release of the week is Italian title Front Line [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Luc & Jean-Pierre Dardenne
interview: Renato De Maria
film profile] by Renato De Maria, co-produced by the Dardenne brothers’ Les Films du Fleuve. Set in th 1980s, during the years of domestic terrorism in Italy, the film is based on the autobiography of Sergio Segio, a leader of an armed organisation of the extreme left wing (see news). Following the controversy that came about with the film’s state financing, Italian producer Andrea Occhipinti (Lucky Red) renounced public funding, a move considered courageous by the Dardennes.

Front Line stars Riccardo Scamarcio (Loose Cannons [+see also:
trailer
film profile]), Giovanna Mezzogiorno (Vincere [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Cannes 2009 Marco Bellocc…
interview: Filippo Timi - actor
film profile]) and Fabrizio Rongione, who has been dividing his time between Liège (where he lately filmed Lorna’s Silence [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Arta Dobroshi
interview: Arta Dobroshi
interview: Jean-Pierre et Luc Dardenne
interview: Olivier Bronckart
film profile]), Corsica (where he shoots the series Mafiosa) and Italy. The film is being released on four screens by Cinéart.

This week also sees the release of four French films. These include Alexandre Charlot and Franck Magnier’s Imogène McCarthery [+see also:
trailer
film profile], with a role tailor-made for Catherine Frot; Claire Denis’s latest film, White Material [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile], co-written by Marie Ndiaye; Gustave Kerven and Benoît Délépine’s Mammuth [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Gustave Kervern, Benoî…
film profile], starring a brilliant trio of Belgian actors (Benoît Poelvoorde, Yolande Moreau and Bouli Lanners), alongside cult couple Depardieu-Adjani; and Philippe Van Leeuw’s bold and sensitive debut film The Day God Went Away, about the Rwandan genocide (produced by France’s Liaison Cinématographique and Les Films du Mogho, and Belgium’s Artémis and Minds Meet).

Finally, there is a limited release for Kat Steppe and Nahid Shaikh’s Flemish documentary Bedankt en Merci, about working-class cafés in the north of the country, those places of refuge, meetings, exchanges and solidarity, which are slowly disappearing, along with their owners.

(Translated from French)