Cannes 2011: Mihaileanu Draws from the ‘Source’ for Main Comp Selected Pic

Cannes Film Festival won’t be lacking in Romanian films/filmmakers this year. La Source des femmes, the 5th film directed by Radu Mihăileanu, was selected to the official competition, while Mitulescu’s second feature Loverboy was included in Un Certain Regard category. You’ll be able to read more about Cătălin Mitulescu’s film in future article, but among the surprise inclusions in this year’s Main Comp is indeed Mihăileanu’s latest pic. La Source des femmes is produced by two French companies: EuropaCorp (Luc Besson’s production company) and Elzevir Films, with Belgium’s Panache Prods. and Italy’s Indigo on board as co-producers. The screenplay was written by the director himself with the help of Alain-Michel Blanc, who also teamed up with Mihăileanu for his previous film, Le Concert – which was a real success, winning two Cesar awards and four Gopo awards.

Radu Mihăileanu is born on April 23rd 1958 and is the son of a Jewish journalist named Mordechaï Buchman. He changed his name into Ion Mihăileanu and started his career in the movie business writing, in 1965, the screenplay of Lucian Pintilie first feature – Duminică la ora şase (Sunday at six). In 1980, he left Romania for Israel and later he moved to France.

La Source des Femmes (The Source) is a comedy set in an isolated village, centered on a battle of the sexes, where women threaten to withhold sexual favors if their men refuse to fetch water from a remote well situated on a distant hill. The director explains that “I think we live in a male world where men make a lot of mistakes and the only hope for humankind are the women”.

Mihăileanu’s first feature, Trahir, was released in 1993 and won four awards at Montreal Film Festival. His second film was even more successful. Train de Vie – the story of a small Jewish village community that organizes a fake deportation train so that can escape the Nazis and flee to Palestine – grabbed two awards at Venice and the Audience award at Sundance. In 2005, he made Va, vis et deviens, which brought the Romanian director a Cesar award for Best Original Screenplay and three awards at Berlin. The 4th film of Radu Mihăileanu, Le Concert, was nominated for Golden Globe, received two Cesar awards but irritated most of the critics.