1st Look: Julie Bertucelli’s The Tree

We have our first look today at a couple of stills from Julie Bertucelli’s The Tree – a sophomore feature that puts an end to that seven-year drought since Bertucelli’s deeply affecting first film Since Otar Left (the grandmother-mother-daughter three-way tale of Georgian women lead by a 90-year-old mother inside the unpromising future of the former Soviet republic). As you can see below, that is Antichrist‘s Charlotte Gainsbourg once again bemused by the presence of a tree.

Adapted from Judy Pascoe’s novel Our Father Who Art in a Tree, this tells the story of a family in mourning after the death of the patriarch. Dawn (Charlotte Gainsbourg) and Peter (Marton Csokas) live together with their children in a suburban neighbourhood in Australia. In the middle of their luxuriant garden stands the kids’ favorite playground : a massive Moreton Bay Fig tree, whose branches reach high towards the sky and roots stretch far into the ground.

Filmed in Australia, I’m predicting that this will receive its world premiere in Cannes, the same lieu where Since Otar Left received its start and received the Critics’ Week Grand Prize.