Working with his usual partners at Digital District and with plenty of VFX still to fine-tune, Michel Hazanavicus is currently hard at work on the post-production of his 10th feature film (which he hopes to have finished by next spring): a silent, colour fantasy film entitled The Third Hand.

For the record, the filmmaker has previously presented four films in competition in Cannes (The Artist, whose Best Actor Award led to five Oscars, The Search, Redoubtable and the animated film The Most Precious of Cargoes) and Final Cut in the festival’s opening slot.

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Standing out in the cast are François Civil (nominated for the César Award for Best Actor for Beating Hearts and twice in the supporting category, and also set to be seen in Secondes chances and Dumas: Diable noir next year), Bérénice Bejo (the winner of the Best Actress Award at Cannes and nominated for the César Award for Best Actress for The Past, awarded the César for Best Actress and nominated Best Supporting Actress at the Oscars for her part in The Artist, seen last week in Toronto’s Primetime line-up, toplining the Alice series), Rebecca Marder (nominated for the César Award for Most Promising Actress, recently at her best in The Stranger and set to appear next year in Immortelle, Les quatre rendez-vous de Françoise and Chercher la fille) and Michel Fau (nominated for the César Award for Best Supporting Actor for Marguerite and The Great Arch).

Written by the director (who was nominated for the Best Original Screenplay Oscar and César for The Artist, and a further four times for the Best Adaptation César) and Thomas Cailley (nominated for the César for Best Original Screenplay for Love At First Fight and The Animal Kingdom), based on the eponymous novel by Arthur Dreyfus, the story takes us back to Verdun in 1916. Paul Marchand, a young French soldier, is wounded in battle. He wakes up in the laboratory of a mad scientist, who has grafted a German hand onto his abdomen...

The Third Hand is being produced by Florence Gastaud and Michel Hazanavicius for Les Compagnons du Cinéma with the support of Patrick Sobelman, in co-production with France 3 Cinéma and StudioCanal (with the latter handling distribution in French cinemas). Pre-purchased by Canal+, Ciné+ OCS and France Télévisions, the feature film is also backed by Greece’s Haris & Co., the CNC’s advance on receipts, the Île-de-France region, Pictanovo (Hauts-de-France region) and the SOFICA company Cofimage. Cinematography was handled by David Chambille (a César winner in his category for Nouvelle Vague), while the score will be composed by Alexandre Desplat (a two-time Oscar winner, and nominated a further ten times). International sales are handled by Goodfellas.