09/04/2008

Four majority French productions dominate the line-up of 11 new releases hitting French screens this Wednesday, with the largest print run for Philippe Harel’s comedy Les Randonneurs à Saint Tropez (“Walkers in Saint Tropez”).

Launched on 520 screens by TFM Distribution, this €14.94m Lazennec production starring the director, Benoît Poelvoorde, Karin Viard, Géraldine Pailhas and Vincent Elbaz, hopes to repeat the success of its predecessor, Hikers (1.4m admissions in 1996).

As for auteur films, viewers will have the chance to discover Robert Guédiguian’s thriller Lady Jane [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile] which is being launched by Diaphana on 120 screens. In competition at the latest Berlinale (see special report), the feature stars the director’s trio of favourite actors (Ariane Ascaride, Jean-Pierre Darroussin and Gérard Meylan) and was produced by Agat Films for a budget of €4.1m, with backing from France 3 Cinéma.

Guédiguian is already working on his next film: L'Armée du crime (“The Army of Crime”, see news).

Screened out of competition at the 2007 Venice Film Festival (see news), Amos Gitai’s French/German/Israeli/Italian co-production Disengagement [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile], starring Juliette Binoche, is being released on 38 screens by AD Vitam.

CTV International are launching a 10-print run of Jean-Pierre Limosin’s documentary Young Yakuza, which was unveiled out of competition at last year’s Cannes Film Festival.

Other releases include Sergei Bodrov’s Russian/German co-production Mongol (Metropolitan – 152 screens) and Mark Palansky’s US/German/UK feature Penelope (distributed by ARP Sélection) which will both compete for audiences alongside three US productions (includingThe Eye by French directors David Moreau and Xavier Palud), a Colombian film and a Canadian documentary.

On the industry side, the National Centre for Cinematography (CNC) has published on its website a study on distribution costs for French films: on average €720,000 per feature in 2006 for 191-print releases. There has been an increase in promotional costs (54.1%) whereas technical expenses (printing process and transportation of prints, etc) have decreased to 30.9% and PR costs have remained stable at around 15%.

(Translated from French)