Cannes Film Festival 2024

Vingt Dieux, the first feature film by Louise Courvoisier, a graduate of the first CinéFabrique class, has been selected for Un Certain Regard. At Cannes in 2019, the Cinéfondation had rewarded the director by awarding First Prize to her short film Mano a mano. Cinematographer Elio Balézeaux, who also graduated from the CinéFabrique in 2019 - and who has since worked as cinematographer on documentaries such as Sébastien Lifshitz’s Madame Hoffman - was responsible for bringing Vingt Dieux to life. In the text below, he talks about their work together on the film, which is also his first feature-length fiction.

Part experimental film, part documentary, part fantasy, Camila Beltrán’s Mi Bestia portrays a young girl transitioning from childhood in 1990s Bogotá. Sylvain Verdet shot the images for this first original feature film, having previously collaborated on Beltrán’s short film Pacifico Obscuro four years prior. Mi Bestia has been selected at ACID. (FR)

Josée and I have a "little history", as she likes to remind me, since she was on the jury that validated my diploma at "La Fémis" [French Film School, NDLR]. She followed my early work as a cinematographer in the years that followed, and here we are, eleven years later, on the phone, her shooting in London, me in Paris, talking about her collaboration with Thierry de Peretti. (LB)

Writer, director and photographer Agathe Riedinger, a graduate of the École Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs de Paris (ENSAD), directed two short films before embarking on the production of her first feature-length film, Diamant Brut. She explores the same themes as in her short films: denouncing the overload of societal norms for women and thus addressing the question of female emancipation. Noé Bach, AFC, worked with the young director to bring this ultra-modern story to life visually. He offers an exhilarating contemporaneity of the framing and texture that meticulously complements the script. Diamant Brut is the only debut film selected for the Official Competition at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival. (BB)

Sophie Fillières’ filming of Agnès Jaoui, who plays Barberie Bichette in Ma vie, ma gueule (My Life, My Mouth), tells the story of a woman in her mid-fifties. Her loyal collaborator, Emmanuelle Collinot, shot the director’s last film before she died just a few weeks after shooting ended. The pitch of the film "how to deal with oneself, with death, with life in short..." particularly resonates for Ma vie, ma gueule, which opens the 2024 Quinzaine des Cinéastes. (BB)