Interview: Laure de Clermont-Tonnerre – Mustang | 2015 January Screenwriters Lab

Having grown up on film sets and gradually making the move from in front of the camera, to a space where appears to have found her voice, the 2015 Sundance Film Festival saw Laure de Clermont-Tonnerre premiere her short Rabbit (which serves as a prototype for the feature), win the 2015 Sundance Institute/NHK Award and workshop her screenplay at the January Screenwriters Lab. Fast-forward to last year, with financing in place, the filmmaker began filming her debut feature Mustang in late October with Connie Britton, Matthias Schoenaerts, Gideon Adlon, Josh Stewart, Jason Mitchell and Bruce Dern in tow. Our convo gives you a sense of where she was coming from and the snowball effect of creating her short debut Atlantic Avenue and meeting the likes of Brady Corbet and Mona Fastvold.
Eric Lavallée is the founder, CEO, editor-in-chief, film journalist and critic at IONCINEMA.com (founded in 2000). Eric is a regular at Sundance, Cannes and TIFF. He has a BFA in Film Studies at the Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema. In 2013 he served as a Narrative Competition Jury Member at the SXSW Film Festival. He was an associate producer on Mark Jackson's This Teacher (2018 LA Film Festival, 2018 BFI London). In 2022 he served as a New Flesh Comp for Best First Feature at the 2022 Fantasia Intl. Film Festival. Current top films for 2022 include Tár (Todd Field), All That Breathes (Shaunak Sen), Aftersun (Charlotte Wells).
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