The ARTE France Cinéma committee got behind a trio of works (we expect all these these to be featured in Cannes next year) — two that were on our radar and a first fiction oeuvre by China-Chicago filmmaker already versed in the docu-sphere. After receiving Eurimages coin support last month, Unclenching the Fists‘ Kira Kovalenko is prepping for a fall shoot for Heavens Don’t Care. To be filmed in Yerevan, Armenia, this follows a family whose life unfolds between celebrations and work, moments of joy and melancholy, and a series of quiet disasters, as everyday existence reveals its tenderness, resilience and fragility.
We reported on The Wild Goose Lake‘s Diao Yinan being in the works on a new thriller – we now have a title and proper longline. Currently filming, Red Snow follows Lin Feng, whose wife is brutally murdered on their wedding night in the dead of winter; as the police investigation stalls, he launches his own search for answers, leading him onto the trail of a meticulous and elusive serial killer.
The third project, we find Chinese filmmaker Shengze Zhu who is only days away from commencing production on A Distant House Smokes on the Horizon. Set during a sweltering summer day in a small Chinese town where three school dropouts drift aimlessly through the streets dreaming of escape; broke, desperate and weighed down by personal struggles, their wandering gradually leads them toward a reckless robbery that turns an otherwise ordinary day into an eruption of violence. Sirat‘s Andrea Queralt is a producer on the project. ARTE France Cinéma Managing Director Olivier Père will help produce on all three projects.
