21/10/2022 - We talked to the director of the Montpellier Mediterranean Film Festival, whose 44th edition takes place from 21 to 29 October

Director of the Montpellier Mediterranean Film Festival for the past eight years, Christophe Leparc (who is also Secretary General of Cannes’ Directors' Fortnight since 2008) discusses the 44th edition (read the news) which begins today.

Cineuropa: Did the past two years of pandemic have consequences for film shoots in the Mediterranean basin and for the volume of films submitted to the festival? 
Christophe Leparc: It is difficult to offer a very precise analysis, but what is certain is that the system of co-productions with France has not stopped, and has encouraged something very positive at the level of production and showed an ability to overcome obstacles, at least in terms of financing. This year, we have films from Tunisia, Lebanon and Morocco, among other countries, and the quality is here, but these films managed to get made because they were co-produced. For example, we find the expected titles in our competition of nine fiction features, those that were in the works and spotted in co-production markets. Moreover, we have received a lot more short films than usual, 800 instead of the standard 600. The same goes for documentaries and for the projects that have applied for the Development Assistance Grant and for the new Cinemed & Aflamuna/Beirut DC professional meetings: they are very impressive in terms of creative abundance. There is no lack of inspiration at all from auteurs. 

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Have you noticed changes about films’ genres?
We see a confirmation: there’s a greater tendency with auteurs not to consider a film’s genre as something secondary; on the contrary, they take hold of the codes of genre cinema, in order to transmit their own message and tell their own stories. The Last Queen [+see also:
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interview: Damien Ounouri
film profile] by Adila Bendimerad and Damien Ounouri is a perfect example: a costume film, with the pirate Barbarossa and with fight scenes. It’s the same thing with the humour in Dirty, Difficult, Dangerous [+see also:
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interview: Wissam Charaf
film profile] by Wissam Charaf, and with Ashkal [+see also:
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film profile] by Youssef Chebbi, which starts like a thriller to evoke the situation ten years after the Arab Spring revolution. It’s very interesting to see this appropriation of the codes of genre cinema to tell all kinds of stories in the Mediterranean basin.

Regarding the festival’s industry section, the Cinemed Meetings, you’ve added to the usual programme (Development Assistance Grant, Du Court au Long, Talents en court, residencies, workshops, etc.) a new initiative: the Cinemed & Aflamuna / Beirut DC meetings.
Aflamuna already organises the Beirut Cinema Platform and we have decided to associate ourselves with them because our strengths complement each other. Their network in Arab cinema in general is much more developed than ours and they are real experts in that area. Meanwhile, we have the ability to gather professionals, particularly producers, around auteurs and around the seven projects selected by Aflamuna. It is clearly a virtuous circle, since as soon as this new programme was announced, we received even more demands from professionals for this year’s Cinemed Meetings, because it enriches our offer. This also allows us to open our doors to documentary projects. 

Festivals such as yours are currently meet with real popular success. But what of their impact on viewership in cinemas later, outside of festivals?
I really believe in the power of an event-like screening to make audiences return to cinemas. The first necessity is to make audiences return to cinemas. If that happens during a festival, just because they want to see jury presidents Rachida Brakni and Éric Cantona, that’s also good, because they’ll realise later that seeing a film in the cinema is much better than on the small screen. It’s also important to associate the cinemas of the town with the festival, for event-like premieres like Our Ties [+see also:
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film profile] by Roschdy Zem or Lost Bullet 2 by Guillaume Pierret, shot in the region and released on Netflix in November, and which we will screen. It’s an opportunity to make people who otherwise wouldn’t have come to the cinema do exactly that, and to make them realise by themselves that it is infinitely better to see the film on the big screen. All of this will contribute, I hope, to a return to cinemas, even beyond the festival. 

(Translated from French)