AFC’s Conversations

With her 2^nd film, French director Julia Ducournau had to top the sensation she made at the 2016 Festival with Grave. She did indeed, with Titane, an even more radical work in which the main character’s trajectory borrows as much from the horror genre as from romance. Ruben Impens, SBC, who was also the DP on Grave, shares with us his method for "giving the viewer a good punch in the face". (FR)

With Serre-moi fort, his eighth feature film, Mathieu Amalric returns to the Croisette for the third time, where he won best director in 2010 for Tournée. Christophe Beaucarne, AFC, SBC, the faithful DP to many directors, has worked on almost all Amalric’s feature films. He has created a discreet and minimalistic lighting for this melodrama and has selected shots that are in perfect alliance with the plot. Serre-moi fort is part of the Cannes Première selection. (BB)

Jacques Audiard is what one might call a habitué of the Cannes Film Festival. Besides his Golden Palm Award for Dheepan, in 2015, he has presented most of his films at Cannes. This year, he is offering audiences a study based around the love relationships of four young people of different backgrounds, but who all live in the same neighborhood in Paris. A new choral film photographed in black-and-white by Paul Guilhaume, AFC. (FR)

Moneyboys is a first Taiwanese film, selected in Un Certain Regard at Cannes, which paints a sensitive and elegant portrait of a young Chinese male prostitute. Director CB Yi and cinematographer Jean-Louis Vialard, AFC, decided to work using long takes in a series of different locations, each of which was very carefully chosen, to literally build the ambience and the visual identity of this film. (FR)

Julien Poupard looks back with us on his experience on the shoot of La Croisade, a medium-length film (one hour), directed by Louis Garrel and selected this year in the new pop-up section Cinema for the Climate. (FR)

Like their other films, Tralala, by Arnaud and Jean-Marie Larrieu, is an eccentric poem in which Mathieu Amalric, their favorite actor, plays a homeless musician who is visited by religious passion. Filmed between Paris and Lourdes (their hometown), this film is also a musical comedy where the different songs are sung by the actors themselves. Jonathan Ricquebourg, AFC, was behind the camera, and traveled alongside the filmmaker brothers on their strange journey to a city deserted by its pilgrims because of Covid. (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)

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)

At the Grand Théâtre Lumière, Joachim Trier delivered the portrait of a woman over the course of seven years, from her graduation from university to her thirtieth birthday. This is The Worst Person in the World, played by the wonderful Renate Reinsve, surrounded by Herbert Nordrum and Anders Danielsen Lie, in fourteen tableaux (including prologue and epilogue) of a modern and touching romance. Danish cinematographer Kasper Tuxen, DFF, has teamed up on this project with his Norwegian neighbors to film this bittersweet love story. (FR)

Eric Dumont, AFC, began his career working on documentary films, and then he lit several of Stéphane Brizé’s films: La Loi du marché, En guerre, Un autre monde. He continues his eclectic career as cinematographer of Audrey Estrougo’s last film, Suprêmes, presented in the Official Selection (Midnight Session) at the 74^th annual Cannes Film Festival. (BB)

Author Emmanuel Carrère and cinematographer Patrick Blossier have known each other for fifteen years. They worked together on La Moustache, an adaptation of one of the writer’s novels. They also crossed paths on Les Revenants, a Canal+ television series directed by Fabrice Gobert and co-directed by Emmanuel Carrère. Today, they are working together on Ouistreham, an adaptation of a best-selling novel by journalist Florence Aubenas, which she wrote after spending six months with day laborers and jobseekers in Caen. (FR)

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)

Since her graduation from La Fémis in 1998, Crystel Fournier, AFC, has distinguished herself as a cinematographer mainly through her work on three of Céline Sciamma’s films (Naissance des Pieuvres, Bande de Filles, Tomboy). In the last few years, she has chiefly worked on foreign productions, including Great Freedom (Große Freiheit), the third feature film by German director Sebastian Meise (Stillleben, Outing), selected in the Un Certain Regard competition at the 2021 Cannes Film Festival. (MC)

Leos Carax is back in Cannes’s Official Competition nine years after Holy Motors with Annette, a sung-through film written and scored by the musical duo Sparks. Telling the story of a star couple (Adam Driver and Marion Cotillard) and their young daughter, Annette is Carax’s most spectacular work. The director’s faithful companion in arms since the medium-length movie Merde (2008), cinematographer Caroline Champetier, AFC, recounts here the making of Annette, whose every sequence was a technical and artistic challenge. (YT)

On the occasion of his being awarded a lifetime achievement award, Philippe Rousselot, AFC, ASC, answered questions from Jean-Marie Dreujou, Caroline Champetier, and Denis Lenoir. During their conversation, which was broadcast live on the 2020 Camerimage Festival’s online platform, they discussed the start of his career in France and abroad, including his work with Nestor Almendros. In keeping with his relaxed attitude and straight-talking approach, this recipient of three César awards and one Oscar delighted his colleagues with many memories from shoots and a discussion of the risks a DP sometimes has to take, and the opportunities he has to seize, on set. (FR)

Among the music videos in competition this year at Camerimage, one of them definitely gives light a leading role. "Good Luck", from the group Broken Bells tells the run away of a young boy who gets bored at home and starts meeting people who seem a bit like him, shining from inside. Andrew Droz Palermo tells us how this original music video was made. (FR)

Available on Amazon Prime Video, "Hunters" is one of the flagship programs of year 2020 for Jeff Bezos’ platform. Produced by Jordan Peele (Get Out), and written by David Weil, this 10-episodes series is a kind of homage to B cinema. The premise: a Nazi hunt in New York City in the 70’s, led by Al Pacino. Somewhere between extreme violence and humor. Fred Elmes, ASC, has lensed this pilot, picked up from the Fist Look - TV Pilots section at Camerimage 2020. (FR)