24/03/2011

Four debut feature film projects were selected in March by the advance on receipts committee of the National Film and Moving Image Centre (CNC). Standing out among them is Yann Coridian’s Promenade de Santé (“A Healthy Stroll”), which will be produced by Tonie Marshall for Tabo Tabo Films. Expected to star Yvan Attal (César Best Actor nominee in 2010 for Rapt and currently shooting Lucas Belvaux’s One Night) and Marina Hands (soon to be seen in Claude Miller’s Watch While They Dance and Patricia Mazuy’s Girls’ Sport), the film is scheduled to shoot next summer.

Scripted by the director and Sophie Fillières, Promenade de Santé centres on 41-year-old François, who leaves psychiatric hospital after a breakdown. Still fragile and destitute (he has no apartment, no job, no more money and is kept at a distance by his close relatives), he suffers a relapse and is hospitalised again. When he is released, all he can think about is winning back the love of his life, Anna.

Pascal Deux’s Odyssea, produced by Jean-Christophe Barret for Alliance de Production Cinématographique. Co-written by the director and Marion Doussot, the film traces the investigation by an undercover sociologist into subcontracting on France’s shipyards, as his research brings him into close contact with Bulgarian workers employed by an Italian contractor.

The third feature selected by the CNC is Des Pas Sur la Neige (“Footprints in the Snow”) by Marc Chevrie. The Capricci Films production is about the difficult homecoming of a young French soldier who is haunted by the tragedies he witnessed during his UN missions in Bosnia in 1995.

Finally, the pledge of an advance on receipts was also made to US director Steve Faigenbaum’s documentary Detroit, Mes Fantômes (“Detroit, My Ghosts”, TS Productions), which will focus on the decline of a city that once symbolised the American dream and is today practically in ruins.

(Translated from French)