Film in Pictures: Gilles Marchand’s Black Heaven

In the interim, filmmaker Gilles Marchand stuck to his writing work supplying screenplays such as Lemming and Feux rouges for Dominik Moll and Cédric Kahn, but now wearing the director hat, Marchand will be returning to Cannes for the first time since 2003’s Who Killed Bambi? With Grégoire Leprince-Ringuet in the lead, and also starring Louise Bourgoin (La fille de Monaco) and Melvil Poupaud (Le refuge), Black Heaven, which receives a Midnight Screening slot and is among my tops in Most Anticipated Films list, merges real life and animation, much like how Marchand’s scripted L’Avion merged fantasy with real-life elements.

L’autre monde (Black Heaven) is co-written by Marchand and Dominik Moll, and is a coming-of-age story about a teenager seduced by the unlimited possibilities of the dark, virtual world of online gaming. Set during the Summer in the south of France. Gaspard (Leprince-Ringuet) divides his time between his friends and his girlfriend, Marion – but all this changes once his avatar named Gordon effectively turns Gaspard’s life upside down.