Ghost Town Anthology (Repertoire des villes disparues)
For his eleventh feature film, French-Canadian auteur Denis Côté adapts the first novel by Laurence Olivier (a Montreal literature professor, not the esteemed and deceased British thesp) Repertoire de villes disparues as Ghost Town Anthology. Starring Robert Naylor (of Wim Wenders’ 2015 film Everything Will Be Fine) alongside a supporting cast of Josée Deschênes, Jean-Michel Anctil, Larissa Corriveau, Diane Lavallée and Rémi Goulet, the project was produced by Ziad Touma of Couzin films and was part of the Frontieres Buyers Showcase in Cannes 2018. Locarno provided Côté with his first major platform, where he won an award for 2005’s Drifting States, returning in 2007 with Our Private Lives and winning Best Director for 2008’s All That She Wants and another Best Director win for 2010’s Curling. He returned to the Locarno competition in 2017 with his documentary A Skin So Soft. In 2009, Côté premiered Carcasses in the Directors’ Fortnight at the Cannes Film Festival and competed in Berlin with 2013’s Vic+Flo Saw a Bear (winning the Alfred Bauer Award) and again in 2016 with Boris Without Beatrice.
Gist: When a resident from the desolate Irénée-les-Neiges, which has a population of 215, dies in an accident during the winter, there are no witnesses. The residents refuse to acknowledge the death, which results in an emotional fugue state for those who had been close to him and the event. In the aftermath, strangers begin to appear in the town, but no one seems to know who they are.
Release Date/Prediction: Côté shot through February and March in the Montérégie region in Quebec, where the film is scheduled to be released theatrically in February 2019. Côté will be competing a third time for the Golden Bear at the 2019 Berlin International Film Festival.
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