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Bouli Lanners and friend in Les Premiers, les Derniers which opens Premiers Plans Festival in Angers tonight (22 January)
Photo: Kris Dewitte
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The fourth feature by Bouli Lanners, the Belgian director, writer, and actor, opens the 28th Premiers Plans Festival tonight (22 January) in Angers with an out of competition slot but in the presence of Lanners and one of his co-stars Michael Lonsdale, a Bond baddie from Moonraker days.
The festival in the Loire valley, devoted to first films from all over Europe and including both features and shorts as well as script-writing workshops, will have its opening soirée supported by the Fondation Gan for Cinema whose funds are used to support scripts and projects by new talents. The guests of honour include Phlippe Delerive, president of the Fondation, Dominique Hoff, its managing director, Jérome Clément, the event’s president and Claude-Eric Poiroux, the artistic director.
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Premiers Plans Festival poster
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Lanners’ fourth feature film, Les Premiers, Les Derniers (literally The First, The Last) deals with family ties as two characters hit the road to create a kind of ragtag family with their fellow travellers along the way.
Described as a “contemporary western”, the writer-director follows the journey of Gilou and Cochise (Lanners and Albert Dupontel), two bounty hunters in pursuit of mysterious fugitives, although they may be seeking something completely different…
The cast also includes the Quebecois actress Suzanne Clément (who has appeared in Xavier Dolan’s films), young Belgian actor David Murgia, Serge Riaboukine, Michael Londsdale and Max Von Sydow, among others.
The Festival lasts for ten days (from tonight until 31 January) and will screen 31 films and shorts as well as retrospectives devoted to veteran director Alain Cavalier, the late Czech icon Milos Forman (One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest features on the poster), and the Russian director of Leviathan, Andreï Zvïaguintsev. In addition there will be themed spotlights on Icelandic productions, young rebels in cinema from François Truffaut’s The 400 Blows onwards and how film-makers are dealing with the migrant situation. Vincent Lindon (best actor at Cannes last year for The Measure Of A Man) will accompany Cavalier for the screening of Pater, and also be present for his new film The White Knights, in which he plays the head of a charity trying to rescue 300 children from the civil war in Chad. It was directed by Belgian Joachim Lafosse.
French film-maker Arnaud Desplechin heads up the competition jury, returning to the Festival where his first feature La Vie Des Morts was awarded a prize in 1991. Desplechin who will be assisted by other professionals including actress Laetitia Casta, admitted that his jury duty has been limited to two occasions - one time at the start of his career at a film event in Nantes and then at Venice under the presidency of Quentin Tarantino, an experience he described as “marvellous.”
Claude-Eric Poiroux noted that the selectors had had to watch more than 2300 submitted titles, which indicated the health of first-time creators in Europe.
Next weekend Louis Garrel (who made his debut film, Two Friends, last year) and producer Anne-Dominique Toussaint will meet the public for a session organised by the Fondation Gan.
