03/05/2006

 [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Dominique Barneaud
interview: Laurent Achard
film profile]Le dernier des fous, the second feature by Laurent Achard won this year’s Jean Vigo Prix yesterday. The jury, made up of former winners, critics and exhibitors, bestowed the award to a film that "showed some weaknesses, was awkward at times and overly long" yet nevertheless displays "passion and talent”. Achard joins previous winners such as Claude Chabrol, Maurice Pialat, Alain Resnais, Jean-Luc Godard and, more recently, Olivier Assayas, Claire Devers, Cédric Kahn and Jérôme Bonnell.

Produced by Agat Films & Cie in co-production with Rhône-Alpes Cinéma and Belgian outfit Versus Production (10%), Le dernier des fous is the screen adaptation of the novel The Last of the Crazy People by Timothy Findley.

Featuring a cast that includes Julien Cochelin, Annie Cordy and Pascal Cervo, the film is set in the present, in the French countryside during summer. Martin, 11, sees his family fall apart on his parent's farm: His mother lives shut up in her room, his older brother is an alcoholic and their father, controlled by the grandmother, is a mere powerless spectator in the family's break-up. The situation will end tragically.

The €2m film received an advance on box office receipts from the Centre National de la Cinématographie (CNC), as well as funding from the Centre du Cinéma de la Communauté française de Belgique (€145,000).

Screened at the Rotterdam Cinemart in 2005, the film was not sold to a single broadcaster in France and Achard bemoaned last year in a French weekly TV magazine that between his debut feature (Plus qu'hier, 1998) and his second, "broadcasters are no longer taking any risks. I would never have been able to make my shorts or my features without the help of the Centre national de la Cinématographie and the regional funding bodies".

Le dernier des fous, which will be released in France on November 8 by Ad Vitam, is being sold internationally by Films Distribution.

(Translated from French)