Today, 21 October, marks the start of the shoot for the third fiction feature by Belgian director Micha Wald, L’Ile de la demoiselle (lit. “The Island of the Young Lady”), in Brittany.

Wald made a name for himself in 2004 with his short film Alice and I, which was selected for the Cannes Critics’ Week and was subsequently screened at other festivals. In 2007, he released In the Arms of My Enemy [+leggi anche:
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scheda film], a historical film that was set in the mid-19th century, on the plains of Central Europe, and which was also selected for the Critics’ Week. Two years later, the helmer made the offbeat comedy Simon Konianski [+leggi anche:
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intervista: Micha Wald, regista di Sim…
scheda film]. He also co-wrote Cavale [+leggi anche:
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intervista: Sergio Guataquira Sarmiento
scheda film] by Sergio Guataquira Sarmiento, which won the Magritte Award for Best Documentary last year.

Lying somewhere between witchcraft trial and survival story, L’Ile de la Demoiselle is an ambitious historical drama, set in the 16th century – more specifically, in 1542, the year Jacques Cartier embarked on his second mission to Canada. Pregnant by another man than her husband-to-be, the captain of the expedition, young Marguerite de la Rocque, is abandoned on a desert island off the coast of Newfoundland with the man who raped her and her female companion. She will spend two years there, somehow overcoming hunger, the bitter cold, despair and madness.

To step into the shoes of Marguerite, the filmmaker had his heart set on promising young Belgian actress Salomé Dewaels, who came to the attention of the general public and the film industry in Lost Illusions [+leggi anche:
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intervista: Xavier Giannoli
scheda film], which earned her nominations for the César and Magritte Awards for Most Promising Actress, and who was glimpsed earlier this year in Headwind. She will be playing opposite young French actor Louis Peres (who turned heads in Honey Cigar [+leggi anche:
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intervista: Kamir Aïnouz
scheda film] and For Night Will Come [+leggi anche:
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intervista: Céline Rouzet
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intervista: Delphine Deloget
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L’Ile de la demoiselle is being staged by Anton Iffland Stettner and Eva Kuperman for Stenola Productions. The film is being co-produced by Alexandre Gavras for KG Productions (France), and as things stand, it has secured backing from the Wallonia-Brussels Federation Film and Audiovisual Centre, RTBF, Proximus, BeTV, Shelter Prod, the CNC, the Brittany region, Canal+, Ciné+ and Creative Europe – MEDIA. The international sales will be overseen by Pulsar Content, while the French distribution will be handled by The Jokers. The shoot, which kicks off on 21 October, will wrap on 10 December, and will take place in both Brittany and Brussels.