Night Shift
French director Anne Fontaine continues to be a perennial presence in 2020 with her seventeenth feature, Night Shift (formerly titled Police). Produced by Jean-Louis Livi and Philippe Carcassonne and lensed by Yves Angelo (a seven time Cesar nominee, who won three times for 1989’s Nocturne Indien, 1991’s Tous les matins du monde, and 1994’s Germinal), Fontaine has assembled a quartet of notables to headline her latest, including Virginie Efira, Omar Sy, Payman Maadi and Gregory Gadebois. Fontaine has become an increasingly prolific director over the past thirty years, competing in Venice in 1997 with Dry Cleaning, a festival she returned to in Horizons in 2017 with Reinventing Marvin (which won the Queer Lion). In 2005, she competed in San Sebastian with Entre ses mains, and in Locarno in 2001 with How I Killed My Father (she also premiered 2008’s The Girl from Monaco at the festival). Although best known internationally for 2009’s Coco Before Chanel, Fontaine, a four-time Cesar nominee, premiered 2016’s The Innocents (our interview) at Sundance and 2019’s White as Snow scored a North American premiere in Tribeca.
Gist: Based on a novel by Hugo Boris, Night Shift focuses on three Parisian police officers charged with driving a stranger back to the border. However, Virginie (Efira) realizes their prisoner will most likely be killed upon return to his country and so goes about attempting to convince her fellow officers to release him.
Release Date/Prediction: Fontaine filmed Night Shift in early 2019. We predict a return to Berlin Film Festival showing since the theatrical release in France is scheduled for April of 2020.
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