09/06/2015 - The upcoming films of Olivier Assayas, Davy Chou and Rayhana Obermeyer will also be co-produced by the film branch of the Franco-German chain

The third selection committee for 2015 of Arte France Cinéma (headed up by Olivier Père) has chosen to co-produce and pre-purchase four projects. One of these is Rester Vertical [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Alain Guiraudie
film profile] by Alain Guiraudie. This will be the 5th feature film of the filmmaker after No Rest for The Brave [+see also:
trailer
film profile] (Directors’ Fortnight 2003), Time Has Come [+see also:
trailer
film profile] (2005), The King of Escape [+see also:
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film profile] (Directors’ Fortnight 2009) and Stranger by the Lake [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Alain Guiraudie
film profile] (which won the award for Best Director in the Certain Regard section at Cannes in 2013). With production once again in the hands of Sylvie Pialat and Benoît Quainon for Les Films du Worso, filming for Guiraudie’s new opus should start in September in Lozère, the marshes of Poitier and Brittany. The storyline is still under wraps, with the filmmaker only letting on that “the film will be set deep in the heart of France” and that he came up with the film “with the aim of making the implausible plausible, the impossible possible and to go on a long journey close to home, to bring elsewhere closer and escape around the street corner.”

Arte France Cinéma will also be backing Personal Shopper [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Artemio Benki
interview: Olivier Assayas
film profile] by Olivier Assayas (see article). Announced at the Marché du Film at Cannes, this English-language project will star the young American actress Kristen Stewart (who won a Cesar for Best Supporting Actress this year for her role in Clouds of Sils Maria [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Charles Gillibert
interview: Olivier Assayas
film profile]) and will be filmed in Paris at the end of this year. Produced by Charles Gillibert for CG Cinéma, the film will centre around a ghost story on the margins of the fashion world, borrowing from supernatural thriller codes and mixing spiritualism and omission to capture the fear and desire for ghosts, in an ultra-contemporary and materialistic world. Les Films du Losange will distribute the film in French theatres and MK2 will handle international sales.

Arte France Cinéma’s selection also includes two projects for debut fictional feature films. Davy Chou, who gained notoriety for his documentary Le Sommeil d’or [+see also:
trailer
film profile] (discovered at the 2012 Berlinale), is currently working on Diamond Island, which tells the story of a young man who leaves his village to go and work on a megalomaniac architectural project and permanent building site on an island off the coast of Phnom Penh, meant to symbolise the Cambodia of tomorrow. This project (which will be produced by Aurora Films, Vycky Films and Anti Archive) already won the Arte International prize last year at the Busan International Film Festival.

Arte France Cinéma will also be supporting A mon âge, je me cache pour fumer, the first feature film of Algerian filmmaker Rayhana Obermeyer, which will be produced by KG Productions, Blonde Productions and Battam Films. The adaptation of a piece of theatre by the same name written by the director, the film will be a tragicomedy about nine woman of different ages and backgrounds in a hammam in Algiers during the dark years of Islam: nine fates spanning rebellion, dreams and submission…

For the record, Arte France Cinéma is also supporting the upcoming films of Bruno Dumont, Sergeï Loznitsa, Bertrand Bonello, Arnaud des Pallières, Mia Hansen-Løve, Mikhaël Hers, Paul Verhoeven, Alessandro Comodin, Mehmet Can Mertoglu, Whit Stillman, Kiyoshi Kurosawa, Samuel Maoz, Mohamed Diab, Axelle Ropert, Caroline Deruas, Nicolas Pariser, Sacha Wolff, Jacques Tardi, Michael Dudok de Wit, Jean-François Laguionie, and sisters Delphine and Muriel Coulin.

(Translated from French)