UGC International bets on Coco Chanel

by Fabien Lemercier

10/05/2007 - With the 48th Cannes Film Market (May 16-26, 2007) less than a week away, UGC International is getting ready to present a packed line-up of 15 titles by directors such as Danièle Thompson, Kryzsztof Zanussi, Claude Miller, Noemie Lvovsky, Richard Berry and Barbet Schroeder.

Saïd Ben Saïd and Eva Diederix’s team will start sales on a much coveted project – a biopic on Coco Chanel, directed by Thompson and produced by Eskwad and UGC Images. However, the director – currently preparing her new film Le Code – could be beaten to the mark by William Friedkin and producer Claudie Ossard, who plan on shooting Coco & Igor at the end of 2007. The film will star Marina Hands (Cesar for Best Actress with Lady Chatterley) as the famous fashion designer in love with Russian composer Igor Stravinsky.

UGC International will have no shortage of business opportunities at Cannes, with several of the outfit’s films in post-production, such as Italian/French co-production Black Sun by Polish director Kryzsztof Zanussi, starring Valeria Golino as a woman seeking revenge who discovers the identity of her husband’s murderer. Other market screenings include Raphaël Fejto’s L'Age d'Homme ... maintenant ou jamais, starring Romain Duris (out September 12), Noemie Lvovsky’s L'ami de Fred Astaire [trailer] (see article), Cedric Anger’s Le tueur (see news), and in Claude Miller’s Un secret [trailer] (see article), which unsurprisingly is absent from the competition.

UGC’s robust line-up features Jacques Malaterre’s Ao le dernier Néandertal (debut feature by the director of hit TV series Homo sapiens and L'Odyssée de l'espèce), Richard Berry’s La petite fille de Monsieur Linh, starring Jean Reno, set to begin shooting at the end of the summer, Barbet Schroeder’s Inju, with Benoît Magimel in an adaptation of Edogawa Ranpo’s Japanese thriller, scheduled to begin its shoot in the autumn and James Huth’s Lucky Luke, which could see Jean Dujardin working again with the Brice de Nice [trailer] director in 2008.

Other UGC titles include debut feature Il y a longtemps que je t'aime... by novelist Philippe Claudel, starring Kristin Scott Thomas, Charles Berling and Elsa Zylberstein (filming soon to begin); Pascal Bonitzer’s Le Grand Alibi, an Agatha Christie adaptation featuring Nicole Garcia, André Dussollier and Lambert Wilson; and Philippe Haim’s spy film Secret Défense, starring Gérard Lanvin, Mélanie Laurent, Nicolas Duvauchelle, Rachida Brakni and Simon Abkarian.

The diverse line-up also includes La Domination Masculine by Belgium’s Patric Jean.

(Translated from French)