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FESTIVALS France

Nights with Theodore, a surprise selectee in Toronto

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- Sébastien Betbeder’s second feature film, featuring Agathe Bonitzer and Pio Marmaï, is to be unveiled in the Canadian festival's Discovery section

Among the many French titles selected for the Toronto Film Festival in full swing since yesterday (read more) is one film whose production was kept very quiet: Sébastien Betbeder’s Nights with Theodore [+see also:
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film profile
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.

This second feature by the filmmaker first revealed in Locarno in 2007 with Nuage [+see also:
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film profile
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is to be screened tomorrow in the festival’s Discovery section. The cast is to feature newcomers Agathe Bonitzer (well-reviewed in Berlin for Coming Home [+see also:
film review
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]
and soon to appear in Under the Rainbow and La religieuse) and Pio Marmaï (A Happy Event [+see also:
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interview: Rémi Bezançon
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]
, Alyah [+see also:
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), as well as Fabrice Adde, Sarah Le Picard, Emmanuel Sety, and Natalie Boutefeu.

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Written by the director, the screenplay starts off at a party in a Parisian flat. Theodore meets Anna. Later in the night, while walking through Paris, they decide to climb the fence of Buttes-Chaumont Park. There, they will share their first night together. They will continue to come back until this strange attraction begins to separate them.

Nights with Theodore caught the Toronto selection committee’s eye during a screening session organised by Unifrance this summer.

"It’s a fair selection, a bit of a fairytale for us and a great occasion to ensure our work is recognised," the film’s producer Frédéric Dubreuil (Envie de Tempête Productions) told Cineuropa. "Sébastien Betbeder has a real universe, an elegance, and a singularity that are quite unusual, that some may even not like, but that make him stand out among other storytellers. With him, even if this may seem exaggerated, I feel like I’m producing today’s Truffaut.”

The film is the first feature to be produced by the outfit after 22 shorts over about ten years.

"Since the Toronto selection was announced, I have received many offers from French distributors and international sales agents. We are negotiating, but first I want the film to be screened in Canada in the best conditions because its length [1 hour 07 minutes] makes it quite unique. And we already have [another] project on the go with Sébastien, Deux automnes, trois hivers [“lit. “Two autumns, three winters”], for which we will start production this autumn."

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(Translated from French)

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