22/08/2011

Winner of Emergence in 2009, young Belgian director Dominique Laroche’s film Bici (pictured) is among the five debut feature film projects selected this summer by the advance on receipts committee of the National Film and Moving Image Centre (CNC). Production is being handled by Paris-based company Hold Up Films, which enjoyed success this year with Tomboy [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Céline Sciamma
film profile].

Co-scripted by Laroche and Marc Vermeersch, the film centres on plump 20-year-old Bici, a singer in a rock band who is in love with her best friend Vince, also the group’s guitarist. Sometimes they lose control and end up spending the night together, but Bici has never dared confess her feelings to him.

Everything changes when beautiful and adorable Anita arrives in Vince’s life. Bici realises what she is losing, and with her usual weapons (cynicism and eccentricity), she tries to oust the unwanted intruder. When she realises she won’t manage it, she prefers to throw it all away and lets her band fall apart, even though they’re on the brink of success.

The CNC also selected Christophe Cousin’s Deux Temps, Trois Mouvements (“Two Times, Three Movements”), which will be produced by La Vie est Belle Films Associés. In it, Victor, the unwilling witness of a teenager’s suicide, tries to understand this act, a process which will help him ease the pain of his father’s death a year earlier.

Cousin is particularly honoured because he co-wrote another screenplay selected by the advance on receipts committee: Passer l’Hiver (“Spending Winter”), adapted from Olivier Adam’s short story collection of the same name. The film, which will be directed by its co-screenwriter, Aurélia Barbet, is piloted by Pickpocket Productions.

Finally, two documentary projects received the pledge of an advance on receipts: Laëtitia Carton’s J’avancerai Vers Toi Avec les Yeux d’un Sourd (“I Will Move Towards You With the Eyes of A Deaf Man”, Kaléo Films) and Régis Sauder’s Etre Là (“Being There”, Shellac Sud).

(Translated from French)