29/10/2003

There have been lots of complements paid to the British director Michael Winterbottom, whose feature film In this World is being released on 80 French screens from today, nine months after it won the Golden Bear at Berlin. The press gave the film such a positive welcome that it could lead one to think that the director could finally even go down well in France, where he’s never gone down well with the public up until now.

The newspaper “Le Monde’s” critic, “Libération”, defined the film as a “convincing geo-political drama”, and “Le Figaro” stressed the “strength of this true/false documentary”. Michael Winterbottom’s film about the odyssey of two young Afghans trying to reach Britain has seduced the French critics, even if its original digital form slightly bewildered some. Nevertheless this extraordinary media coverage is almost unheard of for a British director who’s not Ken Loach or Stephen Frears.
The film is being distributed by Haut et Court, and it will be the 6th non-national European film the Carole Scotta, Caroline Benjo and Simon Arnal’s company has released in France since October 2002. The list of films released include high quality works like Bloody Sunday [+see also:
trailer
film profile] by the British director Paul Greengrass (released in October 2002 in 60 prints, gaining an audience of 176,000), the French-Italian and Tajikistan co-production Angel on the right shoulder (February 2003-37 copies), the Swedish film Lilja 4 Ever [+see also:
trailer
film profile] by Lukas Moodysson (April 2003-28 prints), the Danish Open Hearts [+see also:
trailer
film profile] by Susanne Bier (April 2003-30 copies), and the Icelandic hit Noi the Albino by Dagur Kari (July 2003-45 copies). And now it’s Michael Winterbottom’s turn with his In this World, produced by Revolution Films, in collaboration with The Film Consortium, BBC Films, and with the British Film Council.

(Translated from French)