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I read An Old Mistress late, just five or six years ago. The novel gripped me immediately. Beyond the fanciful, romantic tone, there was a sense of raw emotional truth, an analysis of passion in all its irrationality and a delectation in its intoxicating dizziness that, instead of fleeing it, made you want to be […]

For her tenth feature, “Anatomie de l’enfer”, Catherine Breillat has decided to adapt her own novel, “Pornocratie”, published in France by Denoël. Rocco Siffredi is once more working with the director of “Romance” and shares billing with a newcomer in the director’s world, Amira Casar. She plays a suicidal young woman and we witness her […]

I was eager to make Un parcours algérien and I loved making it for three main reasons. Firstly, Algeria has held – and continues to hold – an important place in my personal life. I have always felt – and still feel – a great deal of admiration and respect for the people of Algeria, […]

How did this project come about? Jean-François Lepetit : This may surprise you: Un Parcours algérien was born in Acapulco in the year 2000. Hervé Bourges had been invited by Daniel Toscan du Plantier as part of the Unifrance delegation to an event designed to promote French cinema in Latin America and in which I […]

Les Noces Barbares is your third film and your third adaptation. What attracted you to Yann Queffelec’s novel ? It deals with evil and the lack of love, a situation that I find difficult to bear. When I come across it, I want to talk about it to bring such things out into the open […]

"I don’t claim to possess the truth. I try to follow my instinct. The narrative and the actors are the elements that interest me the most in the cinema. The form comes later. While I was writing the screenplay with my friend Serge Frydman, we often talked about our admiration for Fitzgerald, his description of […]

Director’s declaration of intent. Between cinéma vérité and a luxurious production, between a short film and a big-budget spectacular, retain the urgency and empiricism of one and profit from the budget of the other. Le Brasier has travelled along the razor’s edge. I have found the notes that I wrote following my first day of […]

Why have you made a film about the battle of Dien Bien Phu ? Dien Bien Phu is a defeat. The most important French military defeat overseas since Montcalm lost Quebec in 1759. I have no taste for defeats. I am all too familiar with the feelings of shame, humiliation, bitterness, despair and also cowardly […]

When I first read Mario Soldati’s novel, Il Maestro, I quickly fell in love with the story. It seemed to offer a whole range of possibilities. It allowed me to tackle important and serious themes such as remorse, guilt, confession, betrayal and friendship but to tackle them in a different way compared to my other […]

Where did the idea for this story come from? Male prostitution is rarely shown in the cinema, or only in a toned down way. I wanted to create a narrative using the East-West relationship but by avoiding the economic and political aspects and focusing instead on the psychological and cultural impact, the effects of civilization, […]