Monthly Archives: March, 2012

"Despite the one-dimensionality of its anti-patriarchal theme (appeasing the knee-jerk expectations of European film fest audiences), the Dardennes avoid cheapening the story with ideological smugness, achieving an emotional resonance without easy sentimentality."

The Dardenne brothers’ neo-realist fable captivates

We threw you a batch of photos of Laurence Anyways last week, and earlier today Quebec's daily La Presse nabbed the first look at the poster (see below - I'll look in finding a better high res pic shortly) and the much anticipated trailer which features Melvil Poupaud in an all-encompassing lead role and what appears to be strong supporting female characters which bridges actresses from Quebec and France. Click on the screen cap below to see the trailer.

In the seven previous editions (with 2007 being the best crop of films with noteworthy titles such as Bertrand Bonello's De La Guerre, Michelangelo Frammartino's Le Quattro Volte, Semih Kaplanoglu's Milk, Ciro Guerra's The Wind Journey, João Pedro Rodrigues' To Die Like A Man and So Yong Kim's Treeless Mountain), L’Atelier has been a pivotal stop for new auteurs in world cinema finding some coin. And while this doesn't carry the same weight as Rotterdam, so far the ratio is 72 for 115. Among the 15 projects selected this year we find find the likes of Dutch helmer Marco van Geffen (pictured) who gave us last year's Among Us (Locarno, TIFF), docu helmer Mahmoud Al Massad (Sundance's Recycle) and a foursome of filmmakers who've workshopped their nascent projects at the well-regarded Torino Film Labs. Here's the list below:

"In Pavilion, Sutton quietly watches Max and his friends and though the results are subtle, at times too subtle, they’re more often revealing; the kids often say very little, but in their blank stares they say a lot. He observes the kids and lets them interact freely, lets them be themselves, and in so doing captures the enormity of the tiny wins and losses that make up teenage life."