France,
2003, 117 min
Shown in 2004
CREDITS
- dir
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Abdellatif Kechiche
- prod
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Jacques Ouaniche
- scr
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Abdellatif Kechiche, Ghalya Lacroix
- cam
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Lubomir Bakchev
- editor
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Ghalya Lacroix, Antonella Bevenja
- cast
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Osman Elkharraz, Sarah Forestier, Sabrina Ouazani, Nanou Benhamou
- source
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WORLD SALES Films Distribution, 6, rue de l’Ecole de Medecine, F-75006 Paris, France. FAX: 33-1-53-10-33-98. EMAIL: info@filmsdistribution.com.
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COMMENTS
Abdellatif Kechiche in person.
OTHER
“I wanted to show a different way of looking at kids in the projects,” Abdellatif Kechiche says of this courageous teenage romance, one of the few films set in Paris’ vast housing estates that thankfully doesn’t mention drugs and violence, and one of the Berlin Film Festival’s most-discussed films. Teenager Abdelkrim, known as Krimo to his friends, has the usual inexpressive shrugs and studied cool of any boy his age, but a crush on Lydia opens his eyes to other interests, like the theater piece in which she’s starring. Convincing a friend to give him the lead role opposite her, Krimo won’t let his inability to express his feelings, or the tangled 18th-century French dialogue he must memorize, from getting in the way of his blossoming love. Filmed in extreme closeups, but with the kid’s gloomy surroundings constantly framed behind them, Kechiche uses his cast’s raw energies and particularly inventive levels of slang-peppered speech to delve into the everyday life of the projects, one far truer than the usual stories of gangs and shootouts. He writes, “These suburbs are so stigmatized that it seemed almost revolutionary to set a story here that wasn’t about drugs or girls shrouded in veils.”
FACTOID #14
The longest film at the Festival, Sátántangó directed by Béla Tarr, screened in 1995. This Hungarian black comedy clocked in at 435 minutes (just over seven hours).
