Initiated by Marianne Dumoulin and Jacques Bidou (the directors of JBA Production now based in Catalonia) and by Chantal Marchon (president of the Jean Vigo Institute), the first edition of Massa Mare will take place in Perpignan from 15-18 June 2024 as part of the 59th Confrontation Festival.

Born of the observation that daring cinematic propositions often require advice and support to reach completion, this French-language workshop has selected six films at the editing stage whose directors will benefit from on-site consultations with experts (for editing, sound, music, technical and legal questions, production, and distribution).

A jury (composed notably of actor Denis Lavant and Catherine Bizern, general delegate of the Cinéma du Réel festival and artistic director of Ceci Moulin d’Andé) will award prizes to accompany the projects beyond the workshop according to each of their needs (pre-sales, residency, editing consulting, legal and production consultation, post-production services, support for musical composition…).

Featuring amongst the selected projects is Les Beach Boys by Lebanese filmmaker Dima El-Horr (who partook in Toronto Discovery in 2009 with Every Day Is a Holiday [+leggi anche:
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scheda film]), which is anchored on the Beirut corniche and follows Réda, Adel and Qassem, three men with bodies marked and tanned by the sun, shy and moving, united by their disillusionment – a dive, in the literal and figurative sense, into the limbo of urban solitude in yesterday’s and today’s Lebanon, produced by French outfit Mareterraniu Productions with Lebanese company Orjouane Productions.

On the fictional side, Une longue distance, the first feature as director from French editor Guillaume Lillo, a hybrid fiction mixing found and new footage that unfolds as a sea movie on a cruise boat, starting with a curse of family suicides and the urn of a Perpignan grand-mother whose ashes Alex must spread on the Spanish coast. A Le Refuge Films and Baldanders Films production.

Four other documentaries are on display: Goma trop c’est trop from Congolese filmmaker Elise Sawasawa (who looks back at the tragedy of Kivu North - a production by her compatriots of Molakisi Films with JBA Production and Cameroon outfit Tarra Group), Le Chien Cerbère by French-Spanish filmmaker Bruno Tarrius (a decryption of the unsaid, between family unit and toxic relationships, over three generations of men - a Daisy Day Films production), La gueule de l’ogre by French-Iranian director Mahsa Karampour (a story of siblings and exile told on the backgammon table board - produced by Les Films du Bilboquet) and Les graines que l’on sème by filmmakers Yasmine Lara Beau, Ali Khedr and Adeline Gonin, who are French-Malagasy, Syrian and French respectively (which centres on a farm on the Bekaa plain in Lebanon where a collective defends food sovereignty around wheat and bread - produced by Buzuruna Juzuruna with the Rosa Luxembourg Foundation.

Here is the full list of projects taking part:

Les Beach Boys - Dima El-Horr (France/Lebanon)
Production: Mareterraniu Productions, Orjouane Productions

Une longue distance - Guillaume Lillo (France)
Production: Le Refuge Films, Baldanders Films

Goma trop c’est trop - Elise Sawasawa (DRC/France/Cameroon)
Production: Molakisi Films, JBA Production, Tara Group

Le Chien Cerbère - Bruno Tarrius (France)
Production: Daisy Day Films

La gueule de l’ogre - Mahsa Karampour (France)
Production: Les Films du Bilboquet

Les graines que l’on sème - Yasmine Lara Beau, Ali Khedr, Adeline Gonin (Lebanon/Germany)
Production: Buzuruna Juzuruna, Rosa Luxembourg Foundation