18/09/2025 - The producer behind Léonor Serraille’s three films and Leyla Bouzid’s first two movies has already co-produced Pauline Loquès’ Nino via her new company

Producer Sandra da Fonseca (© Stefanie Loos)

Sandra da Fonseca is turning a new page in her career. After many years spent at Blue Monday Productions where she started out as a production assistant before climbing the ladder to producer, she’s now striking out on her own with Belleville Production. Under the banner of Blue Monday, she notably produced Léonor Serraille’s three films: Montparnasse Bienvenuë [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Léonor Serraille
film profile] (awarded Cannes’ Caméra d’Or trophy in 2017), Mother and Son [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Léonor Serraille
film profile] (in competition in Cannes in 2023) and Ari [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Léonor Serraille
film profile] (selected in competed in Berlin this year). Her back-catalogue also includes Leyla Bouzid’s first two films: As I Open My Eyes [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Leyla Bouzid
film profile] (the winner of the Audience Award and Europa Cinemas Label in Venice’s 2015 Giornate degli Autori) and A Tale of Love and Desire [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile] (acclaimed on the Croisette in Critics’ Week 2022).

Belleville Production has already co-produced (beneath the radar) two films in league with Blue Monday Productions: Nino [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Pauline Loquès
film profile] by Pauline Loquès - which won Théodore Pellerin the Best Newcomer Prize during Cannes’ Critics’ Week back in May, and which was released in French cinemas yesterday by Jour2Fête - and the 55-minute medium-length feature The Strike, by Gabrielle Stemmer, which is world premiering this weekend in the San Sebastian Film Festival’s Zabaltegi-Tabakalera section. This collage-film co-produced by INA and Ciclic tells an intimate and political story which shatters the heterosexual model through a blend of archival footage and a reading of Ovidie’s text, La Chair est triste hélas, which revolves around a sex strike.

"I don’t commit to many projects. I need to be swept away by the power and human qualities of women directors. But also by the need for the films that they’re offering, and their being rooted in the modern world," Sandra da Fonseca stressed to Cineuropa.

Belleville Production’s immediate future will involve Léonor Serraille’s upcoming film, which is soon to enter into the funding phase and is scheduled to begin shooting in autumn 2026. Other projects, still under negotiation, are likewise in the pipeline.

(Translated from French)