In Utero: Hafsia Herzi Toplines Iris Kaltenbäck’s “Le Ravissement”

To be seen next year in Mektoub, My Love: Canto Due and Stéphane Demoustier’s Ibiza, the always busy Hafsia Herzi leads a quartet of players in a new directorial debut that might be worth keeping tabs on. A short filmmaker and La Fémis grad, Iris Kaltenbäck will have Herzi, Alexis Manenti, Nina Meurisse and Younès Boucif to work with on Le Ravissement. Cineuropa reports that production began this week and will move into mid November. Marianne Productions’ Alice Bloch (The Heroics) and MACT Productions’ Thierry de Clermont-Tonnerre (yes part of the filmmaker family) are producing. Marine Atlan (Summer Scars – read review) is the cinematographer.

This centers on Lydia, a young 30-something with a brilliant career as a midwife. But her love life is a disaster. Just as she tries to recover from a painful breakup, her best friend Salomé announces she is pregnant and asks her to be her midwife. When Lydia re-crosses paths with Milos, a lover from a one-night stand, she is holding Salomé’s baby in her arms, and declares the child to be theirs. Although initially disbelieving, Milos embraces fatherhood, and Lydia locks herself in her lie, even as she risks losing everything…