11/02/2005 - The 55th Berlin Film Festival opened yesterday on the racist bunch of Man to man, a French and English coproduction directed by Régis Wargnier starring Joseph Fiennes and Kristin Scott Thomas

The 55th Berlin Film Festival opened yesterday on the racist bunch of Man to man, a French and English coproduction directed by Régis Wargnier starring Joseph Fiennes and Kristin Scott Thomas.
The director, a master in melodrama (Indochine, Une femme française , Est Ouest), presents this time a very stylish, politically correct anthropological drama based on the true story of a Pygmea who committed suicide in New York after being forced away from his country. In the film, Joseph Fiennes, a Scottish anthropologist from the 1870's, goes on a mission in the heart of Africa where he captures two Pygmeas, specimens of a race unknown until then, and brings them back with him. They will be reduced to the condition of circus freaks.
Social conflict, family relationships, and professional envy, are in the background, but for the critics who have seen the film, the most striking feature is the fantastic presence of Lomama Boseki and Cecile Bayiha, the two Pygmeas, for the first time on the screen.

(Translated from Italian)