20/02/2006

A few days before the French Césars, Jacques Audiard’s The Beat My Heart Skipped [+see also:
trailer
film profile] last night won the BAFTA for Best Film Not In The English Language. This victory at British cinema’s annual awards follows the Best French Film award at the end of January from the French Critics’ Syndicate and the five honours from the Etoiles de la Presse.

With ten nominations, The Beat My Heart Skipped appears to be the big favourite for this year’s César ceremony on February 25. With a budget of €5.3m, the film was produced by Pascal Caucheteux of Why Not Productions, with support from France 3 Cinéma (€900,000) and pre-sales from Canal + and CinéCinéma. Starring Romain Duris, the film garnered a million admissions in France last year (distribution UGC) thanks to a lengthy 35-week run in theatres.

Screened in competition at the 2005 Berlin Film Festival and sold internationally by Celluloid Dreams, The Beat My Heart Skipped was released last year in Holland on July 21, in Germany on September 22 (Concorde), in the UK on November 4 (Artificial Eye), in Austria and Italy (BIM Distribuzione) on November 11, in Denmark on November 18 and in Sweden on January 13, 2006 (Non Stop). It will also be released in Norway on March 10, in Poland on March 24 and in Hungary on May 4.

Audiard is attracting a great deal of interest from film buffs, who are looking forward to his next project, Le Prophète (lit. "The Prophet"), the screenplay of which is almost complete and which should begin shooting at the end of this year. Co-produced by Why Not and Chic Film, the film traces the rise through the criminal ranks of a young orphan of North African origin, who has only known a prison life and who will become, with the help of the Corsican mafia and an influential imam, the "godfather" of all of France's immigrant suburbs.

(Translated from French)