24/10/2023 - We met with the French producer as he chatted about Onur Yagiz’s project and the current state of play in his company Baxter Films

Created in 2015 and steered by Pierre-Louis Garnon, the Parisian production company Baxter Films is attending the 45th Montpellier Mediterranean Film Festival, where it will pitch Onur Yagiz’s project Fatih for the Development Grant event taking place within the Cinemed Meetings (read our news).

Cineuropa: What was it about the project Fatih that won you over?
Pierre-Louis Garnon: Onur Yagiz is a French-Turkish director who I’ve been working with for ten years. We’ve made three short films together. When we first met, I was studying at La Fémis. He took part in the "Equal Opportunities" workshop and we clicked pretty quickly. I really like his way of seeing things, his inventiveness, and he has real film opinions, which is what really interests me. He started out by directing two dramas, and his third short, Fatih le conquérant, was an arthouse comedy about the French-Turkish community, which he knows by heart because it’s his community, and which is hardly ever depicted in French fiction and even less in comedy form. The project Fatih follows along the same lines, with sincerity, honesty and depth. His short film helped him to find his actors, find the right tone, and now, with ease and real pleasure, I’m exploring what the feature film we’ve been working on for six months might look like. It tells the story of Fatih, a 24-year-old bachelor who is faced with two problems. Firstly, his parents, whom he and his sister Leyla are still living with, and who want to see him swiftly married to a girl from the French-Turkish community. And he’s also losing his hair. What should he do? We’re currently writing the first draft and, all being well, we’re hoping to shoot in 2025.

How would you describe Baxter Films’ editorial line, which has five feature films under its belt (Willy 1^er [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile], Teddy [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile], Year of the Shark [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Ludovic and Zoran Boukherma
film profile], White Paradise [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile] and Juniors [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile])?
I’ve produced a few hybrid films, notably by brothers Ludovic and Zoran Boukherma and by Hugo P Thomas, but I’ve got no editorial desire to limit myself to those. It was actually the fact of supporting authors which led me towards this mix of genres. White Paradise was more of a "classic", single-genre film. It all depends on what authors want, and future films will no doubt be less hybrid. What I’ve wanted to do from the outset is to produce arthouse films which stand out, but which also appeal to the widest audience possible, especially young people. It’s not always an easy thing and it’s always a gamble, especially with young audiences who are hard to lure into French cinemas to watch French films. But most of the authors I’ve worked with have been under 35. We need young talent and fresh blood in France and I’m proud to fly that flag with lots of first feature films which are often continuations of short films we’ve made together. Then you have to convince distributors, who are the corner stone of funding. It’s not always easy, but it makes us develop better ideas, better scripts.

What other projects are underway for Baxter Films?
Next year, we’ll be filming Le monde trop grand (working title), the first feature film to be directed by Anthony Bajon, who wrote the screenplay with Olivier Torres. We’re producing this film revolving a football coach, who’ll be played by Karim Leklou, together with Les Films Velvet. Zita Hanrot, Zinedine Soualem, Ophélie Bau and Birane Ba will also feature in the cast. We’re also in the early stages of writing the second feature film by Guillaume Renusson (White Paradise), which will be a realist genre film with a socialist heart, once again co-written by the director and Clément Peny, and which Baxter Films are also producing in league with Les Films Velvet. Baxter Films are also working solo on the development of two debut feature films: a comedy by Olivia Baum, which is nearing the end of the writing phase, and a slightly noir and violent detective movie set in the world of classical music, directed by Jérôme Genevray (who co-wrote The Swarm [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Just Philippot
film profile]).

(Translated from French)