Having turned heads with his short films (Bonne nuit, Dimanches) and his first fiction feature film - the intriguing and hypnotic Parasol [+leggi anche:
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scheda film] (the winner of the Amiens Festival’s Audience Award) – not to mention his documentary work (Silence Radio and Holy Tour [+leggi anche:
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scheda film], the latter co-directed by Meryl Fortunat-Rossi), Valéry Rosier is returning to the Brussels International Film Festival where Holy Tour scooped the Audience Award back in 2018. This time around, he’s presenting his second fiction feature, Rano, which is co-directed by Farellia Tahina Venance (her first directorial effort) and is being unveiled as a world premiere within the National Competition.

In Madagascar, people believe in mermaid and water spirits. A somewhat lost young woman called Macha has left Belgium behind to be with her mother living in Madagascar. She seems to be waiting for something without really knowing where her future lies. By day, she takes tourists out looking for whale sharks. But when the evening comes, she forgets herself in Malagasy nights out. We soon learn that Macha is grieving for a stillborn child which has left a gaping absence in her life. On the other side of the island, Franco leaves his home in search of the father he’s never known, his mother having now passed away. The two of them unwittingly come together, their concentric trajectories finally overlapping and water providing an ideal meeting place. A veritable spiritual quest opens up before them, and diving into the depths of the ocean also sees them embarking on a more inwards-focused exploration, probing the recesses of their past and their traumas.

Macha and Franco are lost, together. In Malagasy, rano means water, and water guides them on their journey, opening up to the spirit world. There’s no need for a shaman or any other kind of middleman here, it’s the ocean that takes charge. For each of them, grief is an ordeal composed of different phases, but it primarily requires that we acknowledge our suffering and that we name what’s absent. It’s a spiritual and a personal journey taking the form of an adventure, with the same scale and impact. The audience, meanwhile, is treated to a sensory experience, soothed or shaken by the sound of water which is omnipresent throughout the film. Macha is played by young Belgian actress Mara Taquin, previously seen in Guillaume Nicloux’s The Baby, Emmanuel Marre and Julie Lecoustre’s Zero Fucks Given [+leggi anche:
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scheda film], and Christophe Hermans’ The Hive [+leggi anche:
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scheda film], which has likewise been selected for BRIFF’s National Competition. She’ll appear alongside a cast composed of non-professional actors, including the highly convincing Francodris Mananjara playing Franco. To help shoot Rano, Valéry Rosier received support from the Centre du Cinéma’s Lightweight Production Fund, which is primarily geared towards supporting hybrid films unconstrained by commercial formats. As viewers, we feel both the documentary substance of the film, in how it brings the island to life, and its experimental freedom, in how it foregrounds the presence of water in different forms and mirrors current-like rhythms.

Rano was produced by Wrong Men, which previously produced Parasol and Holy Tour, and which is also producing Valéry Rosier’s upcoming movie, Parkings, which was shot in the autumn and is toplined by Corinne Masiero and Philippe Rebbot (read our article).