05/01/2007

Five debut projects by female directors were selected at the last session of 2006 held by the first CNC advances on receipts committee.

The projects include Cendres et sangs (lit. “Ashes and Blood”), the debut feature directed and co-written by well-known actress Fanny Ardant, who will also star in the film that is due to start lensing in August-September 2007. It will be produced by Princes Films, the company of director Tony Gatlif, who directed the actress in Pleure pas my love (1988).

The advances on receipts committee also selected Des poupées et des anges (lit. “Dolls and Angels”) by Nora Hamdi (a Flach Film production). The film is the screen adaptation of her first novel about a teenager living in miserable conditions who revolts in a chauvinistic environment in a cité outside Paris with a violent father, friends as unhappy as her and an older sister with troubled ambitions.

Other films granted CNC support include Sabrina by Marie Dumora (Quark Productions), A B’A Mey by Sarah Bouyain (Athenaise) and Ursula Meier’s Home, a co-production between Switzerland (Box productions), Belgium (Need productions) and France (Archipel 35). The latter project, which recounts the loss of identity of a family living on the edge of a new motorway, has already been granted scriptwriting funding from the Communauté française de Belgique and won an award from the Fondation Beaumarchais.

Véronique Cayla, CNC Director General, also allocated advances on receipts to five films: €400,000 to Un homme perdu (lit. “A Lost Man”) by Lebanese director Danielle Arbid (MK2 Productions), €420,000 to Emmanuel Mouret’s Un baiser s'il vous plait (see news November 30, 2006), €400,000 to Christophe Honoré’s Chansons d’amour (Alma Productions) and €150,000 each to two documentaries: Poussières d’école by Malek Bensmaïl (Unlimited) and Un homme ou une femme (lit. “A Man or a Woman”) by Luc Leclerc du Sablon (Les Films Français).

(Translated from French)