Cowboy opens Namur
The 22nd Namur International Film Festival, which is taking place until October 5 (see news), opens this evening with Benoît Mariage’s new feature Cowboy.
After his highly acclaimed bittersweet comedy The Carriers Are Waiting, followed by maternity drama The Missing Half, Mariage’s third feature is a social comedy of sorts, where he meets up again with his partner Benoît Poelvoorde, who starred in his first film and in the short Le Signaleur. Both will be present this evening at Namur, their native city.
Based on an event that took place in Belgium in 1980, when a left-wing militant took hostage of a bus that he led towards the headquarters of the national television station, where he aimed to give a speech on the social inequalities of his country,Cowboy is about a has-been journalist, who, wanting to be in the spotlight again, attempts an unsuccessful reconstitution of a similar event.
Also starring Gilbert Melki, Julie Depardieu, Bouli Lanners, François Damiens, Jean-Marie Barbier, Philippe Nahon and Olivier Gourmet, through its main character Mariage’s third film deals with in the director’s words "these fears that often provoke immature behaviour" and offers an interesting role for Poelvoorde, whose powerful tragic expression has scarcely been exploited up to now on the big screen.
Produced by Dominique Janne for K2 Productions with RTBF, RTL-TVI, in co-production with K-Star (a French subsidiary of K2) and UGC Images, <Cowboy was backed by the Centre du Cinéma de la Communauté française de Belgique, Wallimage, CNC and Canal +, and received tax shelter funding through Scope Invest.
Sold internationally by UGC , who will handle its French release, Cowboy is slated for a December release on Belgian screens through Belga Film.
(Translated from French)
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