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PRODUCTION France

Louis-Ferdinand Céline for Emmanuel Bourdieu

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- The director is in Belgium shooting a film about an incident that took place during the French author’s exile in Denmark; Céline is played by Denis Lavant

Louis-Ferdinand Céline for Emmanuel Bourdieu
Actor Denis Lavant

Since 25 February, Emmanuel Bourdieu has been in Brussels shooting his fourth feature film: the Franco-Belgian co-production Louis-Ferdinand Céline [+see also:
trailer
film profile
]
. Having won the Jean Vigo Prize in 2001 with his medium-length film Candidature, Bourdieu then went on to direct Green Paradise (2004), Poison Friends [+see also:
trailer
film profile
]
(winner of the Critics’ Week Grand Prix at Cannes in 2006) and Intrusions [+see also:
trailer
film profile
]
(2007), all the while juggling this with his job as a screenwriter. On top of that, he won the César Award in that category in 2009 for A Christmas Tale [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile
]
by Arnaud Desplechin, with whom he also worked on the script for My Sex Life… or How I Got into an Argument, Esther Kahn and Léo, en jouant "Dans la compagnie des hommes".

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For his new directorial opus, Emmanuel Bourdieu has assembled a cast including Denis Lavant (nominated for the César Award for Best Actor in 2013 for Holy Motors [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Leos Carax
film profile
]
), Géraldine Pailhas (nominated for the César Award for Best Supporting Actress in 2014 for Young and Beautiful [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: François Ozon
film profile
]
), Philip Desmeules, Johan Leysen, Rick Hancke and Marjke Pinoy.

An adaptation of The Crippled Giant by Milton Hindus (published in 1951), the story written by the director together with Marcia Romano (a regular collaborator with the filmmaker who has also recently co-written the upcoming Emmanuelle Bercot movie, La tête haute, among others) immerses the audience in 1947 Denmark, where Céline is in exile with his wife following the allied victory and lives under the threat of a criminal conviction in France for having collaborated with the Nazis. He then meets a Jewish American author who wants to write a biography of someone…

Produced by Jacques Kirschner for Paris-based outfit Jem Productions, Louis-Ferdinand Céline is co-produced by France 3 Cinéma, Orange Studio and Belgium’s Be Films. Having been pre-purchased by Canal+, the feature will be filmed entirely in Brussels, scheduled to wrap at the end of the first week of April, with Marie Spencer serving as DoP. Distribution in French theatres will be handled by Paradis Films, while international sales are the responsibility of Orange Studio for the time being.

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(Translated from French)

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