PRODUCTION / FUNDING Belgium / Luxembourg / France
Emmanuelle Devos and Daniel Auteuil starring in Joachim Lafosse’s Un silence
- The Belgian director is reuniting two leading figures in French film for his tenth feature, steered by Stenola Productions
Filming wrapped several days ago on Joachim Lafosse’s tenth feature film, Un silence [+see also:
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Since the early days of his career, Joachim Lafosse has crafted an intimate brand of cinema, notably scrutinising dysfunctional aspects of romantic or family circles and probing our flaws and contradictions. More so now than ever before, the intimate is political. We don’t know much about the story of Lafosse’s new movie, but the title does provide an answer as to the subject of the film. As the director confided to us: "The film mainly focuses on the idea of speaking out, which we talk about a lot these days. With Un silence, I want to try to show why silence is still so powerful, despite the important place given to this beneficial right. I want to try to show and explain why it’s so difficult to speak out."
Joachim Lafosse is notably returning to one of his earlier films, Private Lessons [+see also:
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interview: Jacques-Henri Bronckart
interview: Joachim Lafosse
film profile], which was selected for Cannes’ Directors’ Fortnight in the whole other time of 2008. The film explored the ways in which an adult trapped a teen in a controlling and abusive situation. At the time, many people tended to judge victims before even thinking about judging perpetrators, in turn forcing the director into "a frightening silence": "this silence fed into my writing, I’ve been going over these issues for more than six years. Once again, I’ve drawn inspiration from a real event, as I was able to do with Loving Without Reason [+see also:
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interview: Joachim Lafosse
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In order to do so, Lafosse has once again joined forces with a large number of names from his usual artistic team, notably director of photography Jean-François Hensgens, who he’s collaborating with for the 7th time, and production designer Anna Falguères. The team came together on set for two weeks of rehearsals before filming, which allowed the actors to "get comfortable on set", so as to explore "the complexity of the characters and situations, to ensure they find the right nuance, to avoid any temptation towards Manicheism. To take the time to understand and to explain, because accuracy takes a long time."
As with his last film The Restless [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Joachim Lafosse
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interview: Joachim Lafosse
film profile] and to Giornate degli Autori - for the first time - with Keep Going [+see also:
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interview: Joachim Lafosse
film profile]. Un silence is produced by Anton Iffland Stettner and Eva Kuperman on behalf of Stenola Productions (Belgium), by Jan Thiltges for Samsa Film (Luxembourg), and by Antonino Lombardo for Prime Time (Belgium). In terms of French production, the filmmaker is collaborating with Régine Vial and Alexis Dantec on behalf of Les Films du Losange, who distributed Lafosse’s earlier films. The firm will also be handling international sales and distribution in France of Un silence, which is set to be distributed by Cineart in Belgium and the Netherlands, and by Samsa Film in Luxembourg.
(Translated from French)
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