06/02/2004 - The festival’s first day has a distinctly European flavour: the international competition opened with presentations of Daybreak by the Swede Bjön Runge and Too Much Information by Patrice Leconte, with Sandrine Bonnaire

The first day of the 54th Berlinale, saw two of the many European films starting the race for the Golden bear: there were screenings of Daybreak by the Swedish director Bjön Runge, produced by Auto Image and the French film Too Much Information by Patrice Leconte, produced by Alain Sarde in collaboration with Canal Plus, amongst others.

Daybreak is 43-year-old Runge’s fourth feature film and it has gone down very well at home, where it was voted Best Film of the Year. This is a choral piece with a pessimistic touch and claustrophobic feel to it, where three different situations unfold in bizarre, and sometimes dramatic ways, over the period of just one single night: "I was fascinated by the idea of showing the lives of these people in the middle of the night and their ability to overcome their dramas" said the director. In spite of the low budget, the director managed to assemble a cast of famous Swedish actors, including Pernilla August: “I deliberately tried to make them play characters that were completely different to the ones which made them famous".

15 years on from Monsieur Hire (1989), Patrice Leconte is back working with Sandrine Bonnaire again. This time she’s the star in this comedy of errors, where she plays a woman who mistakes a financial adviser for a psychiatrist, thus starting a subtle game of seduction. "Even before the film confirmed, I was immediately gripped by the screenplay written by Jerome Tonnerre, who collaborated with Truffaut" says Leconte. After being applauded by the press, he said he was grateful, but added: "maybe this will make me unpopular with reporters, but I have to admit that on the whole I make films for the public and so I was particularly happy at the reaction to the film’s premiere in Lyons a few days ago".

(Translated from Italian)