11/04/2011

Shooting has wrapped on Cédric Jimenez and Arnaud Duprey’s debut feature, the thriller Paris Under Watch. Centred on a terrorist attack in a Paris railway station and the hunt for the culprits by a hacker, the film is also a condemnation of sorts of the misuse of video surveillance.

Starring Mélanie Doutey (A Spot of Bother [+see also:
trailer
film profile]; twice nominated for the Best Female Newcomer César in 2003 and 2006) and Olivier Barthelemy (The Burma Conspiracy [+see also:
trailer
film profile], Our Day Will Come [+see also:
trailer
film profile]), the cast also includes Francis Renaud (to be seen on screens this autumn in Olivier Marchal’s Le Gang des Lyonnais), Féodor Atkine, Arsène Mosca, Valérie Sibilia and Urfé Koupaki.

Scripted by Audrey Diwan and the two co-directors, the film opens in Paris on the eve of the presidential elections, just after a huge terrorist attack at the Gare Austerlitz. The government accuses Islamists.

But a computer hacker who considers himself an anonymous law-upholder carefully studies images of the explosion and tracks down, from a distance, the trio responsible for the crime, in particular a young couple (Doutey and Barthelemy). Using the city’s surveillance cameras, he spies on and manipulates them. In the process, he realises that the truth can have many faces.

Produced by Jimenez for Le Cercle, Paris Under Watch has received co-production support from Direct Cinéma and Lorette Productions, pre-acquisitions from Canal +, Ciné Cinéma and Direct 8, and backing from Sofica Coficup.

DistriB Films will release the title in French theatres and international sales are being handled by Films Distribution.

(Translated from French)