Mathieu Vadepied‘s Father & Soldier has been selected as the Un Certain Regard opener. A film that we had slotted for a release in 2023 will indeed cap off what will be twenty selections and will have some big shoes to fill if we compare it to last year’s (other war-themed film) Onoda: 10,000 Nights in the Jungle.
Vadepied’s sophomore film began filming sometime in September and this becomes his second film to be featured on the Croisette – his debut film La Vie en grand was the closing film for the Critics’ Week section in 2015. Vadepied was a cinematographer on Jacques Audiard’s Read My Lips and would would get to work with the star (and producer) of this film with the hugely popular The Intouchables – he was the cinematographer there as well.
The story opens during the First World War, in 1917, in the French colony of Senegal. Sy stars as Bakary, a father who enlists in the army to stick by Thierno, his 17-year-old son, who was recruited against his will. Together, father and son must fight the First World War in the trenches in France. Thierno is ready to sacrifice his life to fight for France, a country he knows little about. His father, meanwhile, sets off to protect him at all costs.
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).
