Films Boutique buys rights to Woodworth and Brosens’ La Cinquième Saison

by Aurore Engelen

17/07/2012 - International sales agency Films Boutique has just acquired the rights to Jessica Woodworth and Peter Brosens (photo)’s latest film, La Cinquième Saison (lit. “The fifth season”). After Come As You Are [trailer], it’s the second Flemish film to have been bought by the Berlin-based agency, who are also in charge of sales for another Belgian film, David Lambert’s Beyond the Walls [trailer, film focus], that was awarded during the last Critics’ Week in Cannes. La Cinquième Saison is the last film in a trilogy about the contentious relationship between man and nature. The first instalment, Khadak [trailer, film focus], whisked the audience off to the Mongolian steppes to follow Bagi, a nomad horseman, whose flock had mysteriously been decimated by a plague. The second instalment, Altiplano [trailer], set in the Peruvian Andes, raised concern about a mercury poisoning.

Woodworth and Brosens returned to Belgium for this third and last film in the trilogy. While their experience in documentary filmmaking had previously led them to film the stunning landscapes of the far-flung countries they had visited, they returned to their own land for their latest film. This was literally their land, as they shot the film in the Belgian village of Condroz where they own a guesthouse. La Cinquième Saison evokes a time of climatic derailing, never-ending winter, spring that never arrives, disappearing bees, cows that no longer produce milk, and impending famine. Instead of blaming the heavens, the village’s inhabitants find themselves some other people to blame: a man who was just passing by with his disabled son.

Shot last spring, La Cinquième Saison is produced by Bo Films and Entre chien et loup in Belgium, Molenwiek Films in the Netherlands, and Unlimited in France, with the support of the VAF, the CCA, the NFF, and Eurimages. The film is set to be released next autumn, when it will distributed in Belgium by Imagine Film.

(Translated from French)