04/11/2011

On October 17, shooting got underway in Brussels on David Lambert’s film Hors les Murs (“Outside the Walls”), which traces the thwarted love of an unconventional couple, who are almost polar opposites but find common ground in music. Paulo is a pianist and he leads a well-ordered life with his girlfriend, a life on the right track. That is until he crosses paths with Ilir, a bass player of Albanian origin.

Despite the latter’s reluctance, Paulo is determined to fully savour their love-at-first-sight experience. But one day, Ilir doesn’t return. Confused, Paulo realises that his lover has been imprisoned. The prison walls, which separate them physically, gradually give rise to other tangible and intangible walls between the two men.

For the role of Ilir, Lambert has hired a rising star of young French cinema, Guillaume Gouix (pictured), whose magnetism we discovered in Jimmy Rivière [+see also:
trailer
interview: Teddy Lussi-Modeste
film profile] (and he has just finished shooting another debut Belgian film, François Pirot’s Mobil Home). Starring alongside him are Matila Malliarakis, whom viewers will discover on the big screen, after her small role in The Extraordinary Adventures of Adèle Blanc-Sec [+see also:
trailer
film profile] and Canadian actress Mélissa Désormeaux Poulin.

With Hors les Murs, Lambert wants to make a film where the characters love each other differently: not a militant film, but an intimate film, based on autobiographical elements, which aims to show an intense love between two men and their bodies, without forcing an artificial universality on viewers. Hors les Murs is a love story with a classic plot in three parts. The story of a youthful love affair, from which the souls and bodies emerge transformed, marked forever.

This is a first time on two counts, for it is the debut feature by Lambert, who made a name for himself with his short film Live A Bit Longer, and through his work as a screenwriter, in particular on Bernard Bellefroid’s The Boat Race [+see also:
trailer
interview: Bernard Bellefroid, directo…
film profile]. Moreover, it is also the first majority feature by Jean-Yves Roubin and his company FraKas, whose work we have recently discovered on co-productions including Delphine Gleize’s The Moon Child, and Virginie Despentes’s Bye Bye Blondie.

Co-produced by Canada’s Boréal Films and France’s Les Productions Balthazar, Hors les Murs has received backing from the Film and Audiovisual Centre of the Wallonia-Brussels Federation, Wallimage and the Tax Shelter.

(Translated from French)