17/10/2024 - The impact of current conflicts, geographical trends and the birth of projects: the director of the Montpellier Mediterranean Film Festival walks us through the 46th edition

The director of Cinemed - the Montpellier Mediterranean Film Festival for the past ten years, Christophe Leparc (also general secretary of the Directors' Fortnight since 2008) discusses the 46th edition (see the article), which will unfold from 18-26 October.

Cineuropa: What is the impact of the enduring conflict at the East of the Mediterranean basin on cinematic production?
Christophe Leparc: We’ve received quite a few Palestinian short films and projects, and we will be screening Mahdi Fleifel’s To a Land Unknown [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Mahdi Fleifel
film profile] in competition, and the documentaries No Other Land [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Basel Adra, Yuval Abraham
film profile] and Journey into Gaza as premieres. Paradoxically, there’s been a quantitative drop in Israeli submissions, and their quality hasn’t really been up to par either. Therefore, Cinemed will be presenting few Israeli films this year, except for one short and one project, without this being our intention since our selection is based on the quality of the works without ever giving in to censorship or self-censorship, whatever the country of origin of the films. We can only observe that Israeli cinema isn’t in great shape at the moment while in Lebanon, for instance, there are many very interesting projects and many recent shoots (the fiction feature debut by Cyril Aris, the second feature by Nadim Tabet, etc). Besides, it looks to me as though filmmakers from the Middle East have managed, thanks to professional encounters at festivals, such as the Cinemed Meetings but also Djeddah, Doha, etc., to find production partners for their projects to get made. By contrast, we know that the culture ministry of the current Israeli government is very careful about the nature of projects it will support. There’s also a kind of dismay amongst Israeli filmmakers that perhaps weighs on their inspiration. All of this is very delicate and these conflicts go beyond us. What we can do is allow all these auteurs to keep expressing themselves, present their films and their projects, and always favour dialogue despite what is happening and which is terrible.

After growing in power over several years at big festivals, it seems that cinema from south of the Mediterranean is running out of steam a little. Is this part of a cycle?
Morocco remains rather dynamic, which is why we are dedicating a focus to its young cinema this year, because many of its directors are between their first and second features, such as Meryem Benm’Bareb who just finished shooting Behind the Palm Trees (see the article), Sofia Alaoui, Yasmine Benkiran or Ismaël El Iraki who’s preparing his second feature. There’s such an abundance in Morocco because there’s a certain financing stability from the National Cinema Centre and a sensitivity of European co-producers regarding these young iconoclastic filmmakers who don’t hesitate to make genre codes their own. In Tunisia, it’s a little more complex since the politics favouring cinema keep changing, but the big talents such as Mehdi M Barsaoui, whose film Aïcha [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile] we are presenting in competition, still manage to emerge. The problem, even though Sofia Djama is preparing her second feature, for instance, is Algeria, which is very unstable regarding cinema, which makes film financing delicate. So globally, this year is undoubtedly a cyclical trough for South Mediterranean cinema because many projects are currently being realised.

Your fiction competition reflects the great diversity of Mediterranean cinema. What tendencies have you noticed?
This year, we saw many interesting Turkish films in particular, and we selected Life by Zeki Demirkubuz in competition and Fidan by Aycil Yeltan in the Panorama section. We’re also very happy to have a Greek film in competition with Meat [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Dimitris Nakos
film profile] by Dimitris Nakos, because that hadn't been the case for a long time. But we were a little bit disappointed by films from the former Yugoslavia and by Egyptian productions, amongst others.

Two competition films (Aïcha and Panopticon [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: George Sikharulidze
film profile]) went through the pitching meetings at the Cinemed Meetings. From a development aid grant, the Du Court au Long projects, to the second edition of the Cinemed & Aflamuna meetings for Arab projects: the offer is very vast for potential partners.
It’s a virtuous cycle. We partnered with Aflamuna to give Arab film projects an entry door on the European industry because there’s interest from professionals. They have more proposals beyond those of the Aid fund and they can meet the auteurs, who also get more chances to start their projects. It’s a dynamic that proves very positive. And our specificity of being at the birth of projects is now well recognised: people know they will discover things at the Cinemed Meetings. We meet talented people here that we didn’t know yet and whom it will be interesting to follow.

(Translated from French)