11/06/2014 - The CNC will also be backing the feature debuts by Joyce A Nashawati, Guillaume Massart, and duo Paul Calori and Kostia Testud

Four feature-debut projects have been accepted during the second 2014 session of the CNC’s first advance-on-receipts committee. Standing out among the titles is Mercenaire [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Sacha Wolff
film profile] by Sacha Wolff, handled by 3B Productions. A graduate of the La Fémis school, where he directed three short films (Les aventures secrètes de l'Ordre, Does it Make a Sound? and Retour), the filmmaker himself wrote the screenplay for his feature debut, which tells the story of a young New Caledonian of Wallisian heritage, Soane, who has come to try his luck as a professional rugby player in mainland France. He is a Frenchman without actually being considered one, a foreigner everywhere he goes and unable to feel at home anywhere; he will have to fight against everyone, but especially against himself, in order to gain the recognition he is missing, in a world that offers no opportunities for success unless one is prepared to compromise all one’s principles. Interestingly, this project won the Emergence award in 2012 (where it was sponsored by Bruno Dumont). 

A promise of an advance on receipts was also made to Canicule [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile] by Joyce A Nashawati. The director (who attracted considerable attention with the short films Permission, La morsure and Le parasol) has set her story in Greece as it buckles under an apocalyptic heat wave. The main character, Ashraf, a solitary foreigner, descends into a destructive state of paranoia when a police officer takes away his residence permit. The feature, produced by Pierre Menahem and Juliette Lepoutre for MPM Film (Movie Partners in Motion Film), in co-production with Greek outfit Blonde SA (Fenia Cossovitsa), is set to begin production at the end of the summer.

The CNC will also support Le silence des machines by Paul Calori and Kostia Testud, a project that went through the Angers Workshop and is backed by the Gan Foundation. The two former La Fémis students wrote the screenplay, which focuses on the opposition shown by workers at a luxury shoe factory when they are faced with the threat of outsourcing and a redundancy scheme. Xavier Delmas is handling production for Loin derrière l'Oural.

Lastly, an advance on receipts will go to the feature documentary project I Paisani by Guillaume Massart (produced by Triptyque Films).

(Translated from French)