Conversations with cinematographers

A 2015 graduate of La Fémis film school, Balthazar Lab has worked on numerous music videos, commercials and short films. In 2022, he signed the photography for La Jauria, by Andrés Ramírez Pulido (awarded the Grand Prix de la Semaine de la Critique in 2022). At Cannes this year, he is part of the Un Certain Regard selection with September Says, Ariane Labed’s first feature.

With Planète B, filmmaker Aude Léa Rapin (Les héros ne meurent jamais, in 2018) offers us an ambitious tale of anticipation. Two dimensions - real and virtual - coexist in a paradoxical prison film where the inmates are placed in a very... summery atmosphere. Jeanne Lapoirie, AFC, and her gaffer Guillaume Ader were responsible for the cinematography of this plunge into a 15-year future where the government has devised new means of incarceration to counter a group of young activists bent on defending the planet. The director’s second film is presented out of competition as the opening film of Critics’ Week at the 81^st Venice Film Festival. (FR)

Set at the beginning of the “Yellow Vest” crisis in France, La Fracture, by Catherine Corsini, provides a behind-the-scenes look at the emergency room at the Hôpital Lariboisière in Paris. This is also a choral film, where a couple of women in the middle of a breakup cross paths with a truck driver injured by a riot police bullet and a public hospital nurse in the middle of a night of social upheaval. This retelling of a recent event is even more striking after the public health crisis which had a very hard impact on the French hospital system. Jeanne Lapoirie, AFC, was responsible for the film’s image. She has worked with the director on four films to date. (FR)

Jeanne Lapoirie, AFC, didn’t expect to bring the new film by the director of Basic Instinct to the screen, as her long career as a cinematographer had never brought her into contact with such a Hollywood legend. Jeanne Lapoirie discusses Benedetta, one of the most anticipated films of the 74^th annual Cannes Film Festival. (FR)

The career of cinematographer Jeanne Lapoirie, AFC, has been shaped by her relations with very different directors, from Téchiné to Valeria Bruni Tedeschi, Ozon to des Pallières, and Israeli directors Ronit and Sholmi Elkabetz. She designed the lighting on the first two films by Robin Campillo, Laurent Cantet’s set designer and editor. Her first feature-length film, The Returned, was made into an eponymous television series that has become a legend in both France and the United States. After directing Eastern Boy, Robin Campillo made his début at Cannes in the official competition with 120 Beats per Minute. (BB)

For her latest feature-length film, American director Sofia Coppola decided to make an adaptation of Tomas Cullinan’s novel The Beguiled, which tells the story of an enemy soldier’s unexpectedly imposing himself on a boarding school for young girls in the middle of the American Civil War. A remake (but not quite) of the earlier adaptation by Don Siegel in 1971 starring Clint Eastwood in the role of the soldier. For the new version, women are given the primary emphasis and make up a prestigious casting around the character of John Mac Burney (Colin Farrell). Philippe Le Sourd, AFC, was director of photography for this Louisiana-filmed movie. (FR)

Bergman Island is the seventh film by director Mia Hansen-Løve. This trip for cinephiles’ only location is the Island of Farö, where the Swedish master lived, filmed and has rested since his death in 2007. A pilgrimage portrayed on screen by the couple Tim Roth and Vicky Krieps; playing a couple of filmmakers that can only echo the one the director once formed with Olivier Assayas. Denis Lenoir, AFC, ASC, ASK, the faithful companion of both, discusses the particularities of this Scandinavian summer film with us. (FR)

After several projects about crime stories in Marseilles (La French, Bac Nord), director Cédric Jimenez decided to seize on a global news story: the hunt for the terrorist mastermind responsible for the Parisian attacks of November 13, 2015. Bringing together a star-studded cast, headed by Jean Dujardin (also in La French), this adaptation of the event, written by Olivier Demangel, immediately begins immersing viewers in the workings of the SDAT (Anti-Terrorist Subdivision of the French Police). This team’s methods and goals sometimes evoke those of the DGSI (French equivalent of the FBI), popularized by the series "Bureau"... To illustrate this race against time, Nicolas Loir, AFC, had to come up with a very flexible approach to filming, with two cameras, or even more, to capture these very intense moments during which national history is being made with each passing minute. (FR)

Directed by Laure de Butler ("Syndrome E" for TF1 or "Irrésistible" for Disney), the "37 secondes" series tackles an unsolved mystery dating back to January 15, 2004, the sudden sinking of the trawler "Bugaled Breizh" in international waters south of Lizard Cape. Solidly documented and filmed at the scene of the tragedy, this 6-episode series produced for the Arte Channel has been selected in French competition at this year’s Séries Mania. Benjamin Louet, who shot the images, talks to us about the filming process, where history and fiction coexist intimately. (FR)

After a diversion through England to shoot Firebrand, which was selected for the official competition last year on the Croisette, Karim Aïnouz returns to his homeland to direct Motel Destino, a colourful erotic thriller shot very close to his hometown of Fortaleza, Brazil. It marks the third collaboration between the director and cinematographer Hélène Louvart, AFC, aiming to (re)create the visual universe of an unusual place and to convey the human relationships that take place there, filled with humour and tension. For the second year running, Karim Aïnouz’s work has been selected for the Official Competition, at the 77^th edition of the Cannes Film Festival. (BB)

Cinematographer Hélène Louvart, AFC has worked with many French and foreign directors since the 1990s. With Murina, she has created the photography for Croatian director Antoneta Alamat Kusijanovic’s first feature film. This film has been selected in the Directors’ Fortnight at the 74^th annual Cannes Film Festival. (BB)

Hélène Louvart, AFC, signed off on the image of La Vie invisible, a Brazilian film presented at Un Certain Regard 2019. A story of two sisters that takes place from the 1950s to the present time. She tells us about her working relationship with Karim Ainouz, the director, and about their shared ambition to dare to create striking visual universes, and about how they learned to modulate that ambition so as to avoid being above the story and the characters, visually speaking. (FR)

The story of fidelity between Arnaud Desplechin and Irina Lubtchansky is being written here with their fourth collaboration on Roubaix, une lumière, which is in Official Competition at Cannes this year. The cinematographer recently finished work on the image of L’Homme fidèle, by Louis Garrel, and Julie Bertuccelli’s La Dernière folie de Claire Darling. (BB)

Some directors are regulars on the Croisette and Arnaud Desplechin is one of them, as this is his 7^th time at Cannes, this year with Ismaël’s Ghosts, the film chosen to open the 70^th annual Cannes Film Festival, and whose director of photography was Irina Lubtchansky.

In competition for the first time at Camerimage, Spanish director Juan Antonio Bayona (The Impossible, Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom and the Amazon series "Lord of the Rings") and his Uruguayan cinematographer Pedro Luque answered the audience’s questions after the screening of his new film, The Society of the Snow. (FR)