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CANNES 2012 Market

MPM Film aims to score

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- With La Sirga at the Directors’ Fortnight, the French company’s international sales department has a great trump in its hand.

Launched last autumn under the leadership of the experienced Pierre Menahem (formerly with Celluloid Dreams), the international sales department at MPM Film (a production company set up in 2007 by Marie-Pierre Macia and Juliette Lepoutre) has chosen well, once again. After Brazilian-Argentinian-French co-production Historias by Julia Murat, awarded in 25 international festivals and sold to over ten territories (including the United States), MPM has now cleverly hedged its bets on La Sirga [+see also:
film review
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film profile
]
by William Vega, a first feature co-produced by Colombia, France, and Mexico that has made its way to the Directors’ Fortnight at the 65th Cannes Film Festival (from May 16 to 27).

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Doubly awarded at the recent Rencontres Cinémas d’Amérique Latine in Toulouse (read more) with the Cinema in Construction and Ciné+ awards, La Sirga will now compete for the Caméra d’Or, and should allow Pierre Menahem to do good business at the festival’s Film Market.

La Sirga tells the story of a young woman who has fled a massacre in her village and finds refuge with her uncle, in a hostel on the shores of a majestic lake in the high plateaus of the Andes. There, she tries to rebuild her life but the return of her uncle’s son, and his possible link to the armed factions, will throw her into what she dreads the most.

"The film is as mysterious, spellbinding, and elegant visually, as it is deeply political and highly metaphorical about Colombia’s traumas, with violence constantly felt throughout but never exploding on screen," says Pierre Menahem. "Young director William Vega has chosen to address conflict through this tale imprinted with a magic realism similar to that of Borges or García Márquez, rather than to tackle urban violence in a more head-on, hyperrealist manner. His mastery in directing and the maturity of his point of view immediately convinced us that we were dealing with a real filmmaker. The beauty of the film, its characters, and its landscapes were the final elements in convincing us of his potential with distributors of auteur films."

Produced by Contravia Films, La Sirga was co-produced by Burning Blue (Colombia), Ciné-Sud Promotion (France), as well as Film Tank and Puntoguionpunto (Mexico).

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(Translated from French)

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