The second 2024 selection committee of Arte France Cinéma (directed by Olivier Père) has chosen to enter into co-production and pre-sales on four projects. Standing out amongst them is If Love Should Die by Mia Hansen-Løve which will dive into England, at the dawn of the French Revolution, following a poor and lonely young woman making her way through the ideals of the Lumières. This woman, whose last 12 years the film will retrace, is the visionary writer and philosopher Mary Wollstonecraft, whose journey and ideas resonate in surprising ways with the present moment.

This project will be the filmmaker’s ninth feature film after, amongst others, Father of My Children [+leggi anche:
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intervista: Mia Hansen-Løve
scheda film] (Un Certain Regard Special Jury Prize at Cannes in 2009), Goodbye First Love [+leggi anche:
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intervista: Mia Hansen-Love
scheda film] (Special Mention at Locarno in 2011), Eden [+leggi anche:
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intervista: Charles Gillibert
intervista: Mia Hansen-Løve
scheda film] (in competition at San Sebastián in 2014), Things to Come [+leggi anche:
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Q&A: Mia Hansen-Løve
scheda film] (Silver Bear for Direction at Berlin in 2016), Bergman Island [+leggi anche:
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intervista: Mia Hansen-Løve
scheda film] (in competition in 2021 at Cannes) and One Fine Morning [+leggi anche:
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scheda film] (2022 Directors’ Fortnight).

If Love Should Die will be produced by Caspian Films (UK), Les Films Pelléas (France), Mer Film (Norway), Our Films (Italy) and Mubi, with The Match Factory leading international sales. The shoot will take place in the UK, France, Scandinavia and Portugal in 2025.

Arte France Cinéma will also support Butterfly Jam, the third feature by Russian filmmaker Kantemir Balagov, much appreciated in Un Certain Regard in Cannes in 2015 and 2019 with Closeness [+leggi anche:
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scheda film] and Beanpole [+leggi anche:
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scheda film]. The script (co-written by the director with Marina Stepnova) centres on the difficult relationship between Pyteh, a 15-year-old boy, and his father, at the heart of the Kabardian (Caucasian Russian) community in Newark in the United States. Torn between his admiration for his father and his recent desillusions, Pyteh finds himself confronted with such violence that will force him to grow up faster than he’d wanted… Production on the film including its shoot will take place in France and in Newark from mid-september 2024, and will be led by Why Not Productions.

Arte France Cinéma will also co-produce La Gradiva, the first feature as director by French director of photography Marine Atlan (The Rapture [+leggi anche:
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intervista: Iris Kaltenbäck
scheda film], Summer Scars [+leggi anche:
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intervista: Simon Rieth
scheda film]), already noticed as a filmmaker in the Generation section of the 2019 Berlinale with Daniel [+leggi anche:
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scheda film]. Co-written by Anne Brouillet, the film, whose shoot is planned for spring 2025 in Naples, Torre del Greco and Pompeii, will follow a small group of French high-school students going on a school trip to Pompeii in order to discover its ruins and bodies petrified by Vesuvius in 79 BC. It’s in this ghost town that vertigo brutally seizes them. One after the other, James, Toni, Suzanne and their Latin teacher Mme Mercier let themselves be submerged by desire, anger and despair until they completely give in and lose it all… Directing the production are Les Films du Poisson with Italian outfit BiBi Films.

Another debut feature appears amongst the lucky selected projects: 49 Jours by Chinese filmmaker Hu Wei (who works a lot in France and who has notably been nominated for the Best Fiction Short Film at the 2015 Oscars with La lampe au beurre de Yak). Led by Les Films du Worso, his first feature whose shoot will unfold throughout the first trimester of 2025 in Paris and in the Grand Est region, will centre on a Chinese couple, divorced for 10 years, who come together again in Paris in order to organise the funeral of their only son. In this country that is utterly foreign to them, they are forced to once again live under the same roof. As they try to find the reasons that led to their son’s death, they are confronted with what they’ve always tried to escape: their past. The title 49 jours refers to the grieving period of Chinese funeral rites. It symbolises the seven cycles of seven days each. 49 days after the death, the dead can be reborn in a new form.

As a reminder, Arte France Cinéma is also supporting the upcoming films from Joachim Trier, Tarik Saleh, Kaouther Ben Hania, Albert Serra, Nadav Lapid, Walter Salles, Kleber Mendonça Filho, Dea Kulumbegashvili, Bi Gan, Emmanuel Mouret, Fernando Trueba, Lucile Hadzihalilovic, Hafsia Herzi, Emmanuel Finkiel, Hlynur Pálmason, Justyna Tafel, Diego Céspedes, Francesca Comencini, Karim Moussaoui, Mareike Engelhardt, Momoko Seto, Charline Bourgeois-Tacquet, Laura Samani, Chie Hayakawa, Chabname Zaria, Jérémy Comte, Louise Hémon and the duo Romain Renard - Fursy Teyssier.