15/09/2005

Of the two million people who are sold every year in the world, 200,000 are women, 15,000 of which are Polish. This terrible statistics inspired Franco de Peña the film Masz na imię Justine ("Your name is Justine"), in competition at the Gdynia Polish Film Festival.
The Venezuela-born director, who graduated from the Lodz Film School and won many prizes in 1998 with the documentary L'Avenir des illusions, depicts the afore-mentioned drama through five true stories involving five girls (two from Poland, one from Lithuania, one from Albania and one from Ukraine) who settle in Berlin and become the victims of a prostitution mafia. Within this general context, Peña focuses on Mariola (Anna Cieślak), a 18-year-old girl who is so madly in love that she follows Artur (Rafał Maćkowiak, seen in Billboard by Łukasz Zadrzynski and Amok by Natalia Koryncka-Gruz). Her romantic expectations do not last long, since she is immediately sold to Niko (Arno Frisch, the actor of Haneke's Funny Games and Benny's video) for whom she starts working the streets.
br> 'This is a bitter movie indeed, but I could not have made it a romantic comedy, could I? I wanted to point at a problem in a realistic way. Hence the documentary-quality of my film; it allowed me to emphasize a painful and tragic reality,' says the director.
The script, supported by the Cinéfondation of the Cannes Film Festival, was written by Franco de Peña , Tomasz Kepski, and Chris Burdza. The DoP was Arek Tomiak, whose work on this movie has just earned him a prize for the Best Artistic Contribution at the Montreal World Film Festival. The claustrophobic atmosphere which refers to slavery is owed the artistic director Christina Schaffer (Girl with a Pearl Earring, by Peter Webber).

This million euro film was produced by Opus Film and the Luxembourg company Hémisphères, in collaboration with TVP, Canal+ Polska, Eurimages, the Polish Ministry of Culture and the Luxembourg Film Fund. The national distribution shall be handled by Studio InterFilm.

(Translated from French)