Top 100 Most Anticipated Films of 2017: #3. Abdellatif Kechiche’s Mektoub is Mektoub

Mektoub is Mektoub

Director: Abdellatif Kechiche
Writer: Francois Begaudeau

French Tunisian filmmaker Abdellatif Kechiche stormed Cannes in 2013 with his controversial fifth film, Blue is the Warmest Color. Kechiche has been one of the most notable French language auteurs since his excellent 2005 film Games of Love and Chance, which swept up four Cesars (including film and director), a feat he repeated in 2007 with The Secret of the Grain. Following his Palme d’Or win in 2013 (an award he shared with lead actresses Lea Seydoux and Adele Excharopoulos) there was considerable controversy surrounding producers and payment, as well as the well-publicized squabble between the director and actresses. Since then, Kechiche has courted several projects, including a Marilyn Chambers biopic and a project known as Ineffable Love. In 2014, Gerard Depardieu was announced as being attached to an adaptation of Francois Begaudeau’s (The Class, 2008) novel La Blessure, a project which stalled during production. In October 2016, news broke of Kechiche resuming the project under a new title, Mektoub is Mektoub, a tale about a young screenwriter who returns home to Tunisia and experiences first love at the same time a producer agrees to finance his first film. But when the producer’s wife takes a noted interest in the screenwriter, the young man must choose between love interests. It seems Depardieu is no longer attached and further details and plot and cast have been kept under wraps.

Cast: NA

Production Co./Producer(s): Quat’sous Films, France 2 Cinema, Pathe, Bianca Films.

U.S. Distributor: Rights Available.

Release Date: Consider Kechiche to be a shoe in for the 2017 Cannes main competition as the project began filming in secret in early September, 2016.

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