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INDUSTRY France

Seven writers under the Groupe Ouest umbrella

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- The laureates of the 2015 Annual Selection are hard at work in Brittany, at the European Film Lab’s increasingly popular writing residency

Seven writers under the Groupe Ouest umbrella

Since Wednesday, the seven writers accepted during the Groupe Ouest’s 2015 Annual Selection have been hard at work during the second group session of writing support, which is spread over nine months. The initiative led by the Screenplay Lab aims to support a tricky phase in getting a project under way, and to provide backing for independent European cinema further upstream.

These objectives, which also fall within the Groupe Ouest’s close collaboration with European development platforms such as the Torino FilmLab and Cross Channel Film, have recently borne fruit, particularly with Son of Saul [+see also:
film review
trailer
Q&A: László Nemes
interview: László Rajk
film profile
]
by Hungarian director László Nemes (winner of the Grand Prix at Cannes), The Wakhan Front [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile
]
by Clément Cogitore (in competition on the Croisette, in the Critics’ Week), Melody [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Bernard Bellefroid
film profile
]
by Belgium’s Bernard Bellefroid, Adama [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile
]
 by French filmmaker Simon Rouby (presented this week at the Annecy Animated Film Festival) and Les innocentes [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Lou de Laâge
film profile
]
by Anne Fontaine (read the article – the screenplay for which was initiated and co-written by laureates Alice Vial and Sabrina B Karine).

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Featuring among the seven writers of the 2015 Annual Selection is Delphine Deloget with Finistère, a fiction feature-debut project revolving around a 17-year-old boy who has to contend with the social services taking his brothers and sisters into care, and who will fight to save his mother’s dignity. The filmmaker turned heads with the documentaries No London Today (presented by the ACID at Cannes in 2008, winner of the Regard Neuf Award at Visions du Réel and the New Cinema Award at Pesaro) and Voyage en barbarie (winner of this year’s Albert Londres Award and the Reporters Without Borders Award at the FIGRA). Her debut short fiction film, Le père Noël et le cow-boy, received the Quality Award from the CNC in 2013.

The other laureates of the 2015 Annual Selection are Iranian director Massoud Bakhshi with Yalda (his second feature project, following A Respectable Family [+see also:
trailer
film profile
]
, which was unveiled in 2012 in the Cannes Directors’ Fortnight), Fred Nicolas with Bandit rouge (read the article), Mali’s Soussaba Cissé with Château Rouge, and three writers who are penning their feature debuts: Italian filmmaker Alfredo Covelli with Tire!, Jean-Charles Paugam with La bonne chaleur de l’animal and Thomas Rio with War Machines.

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(Translated from French)

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