Winner of multiple awards in Cannes (C.I.C.A.E. Award, FIPRESCI Prize, Label Europa Cinemas, SACD Prize) along with major wins for Best First Film via the César Awards, Louis Delluc Prize and French Syndicate of Cinema Critics), French filmmaker Thomas Cailley is finally setting up shop for his sophomore film and he has three marquee talents to work with. Financial support news tells us that he lassoed Adèle Exarchopoulos, Romain Duris and the up-and-comer Paul Kircher (who recently completed Christophe Honoré’s Le Lycéen) for a project that has a whiff of War Games and Planet of the Apes. Produced by Nord-Ouest Films’ Pierre Guyard, production is set for May, so this will be looking at the Croisette for a 2023 premiere. In our review of the film, Nicholas Bell said “this romantically inclined drama that subverts its conventions by playing around a bit with gender norms, its winning protagonists make this strangely and unpredictably funny film quite charming. Its original title, Les Combattants literally means The Fighters, which would have been much preferred to the horrid English language surrogate.”
Gist: Written by Thomas Cailley and Pauline Munier, the story takes place two years after humans first start showing signs of mutating into animals. Society is adapting to, taking charge of and trying to treat these “creatures” in specialized facilities. But one such convoy gets caught up in an accident and the Creatures disappear into the countryside…
Worth Noting: His debut film also landed Cesar awards for Best Actress (Adèle Haenel) and Most Promising Actor (Kévin Azaïs).
Do We Care? Mark this as one of the most an anticipated 2nd films for 2023.
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).
