email print share on Facebook share on Twitter share on LinkedIn share on reddit pin on Pinterest

PRODUCTION / FUNDING France

Arte France Cinéma to co-produce Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s About Dry Grasses

by 

- Upcoming films from Mia Hansen-Løve, Quentin Dupieux and directing duo Mina Mileva - Vesela Kazakova will also be co-produced by the cinema branch of the Franco-German channel

Arte France Cinéma to co-produce Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s About Dry Grasses
Director Nuri Bilge Ceylan

The 4th selection committee for 2020 of Arte France Cinéma (headed by Olivier Père) has chosen to engage in the co-production and pre-buying of four projects. Standing out among them is About Dry Grasses [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Nuri Bilge Ceylan
film profile
]
 from Turkish director Nuri Bilge Ceylan, winner of Cannes’ Palme d'Or in 2014 with Winter Sleep [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Nuri Bilge Ceylan
film profile
]
and awarded several times on the Croisette (Grand Prix in 2003 and 2011 with Uzak and Once Upon a Time in Anatolia [+see also:
trailer
film profile
]
,  winner of the Best Director award in 2008 with Three Monkeys [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Zeynep Ozbatur
film profile
]
). The film, set to be shot next year in Turkey and starring Deniz Celiloglu, Merve Dizdar and Musab Ekici, will centre on Samet, a young and single school teacher finishing his mandatory service in an isolated village in Anatolia, while hoping to be assigned in Istanbul. When he does not get the transfer he was hoping for, he loses all hope of ever escaping the grim life he seems bogged down in. But his encounter with Nuray, herself a teacher like him, might allow him to overcome his dark thoughts and worries… Production is handled by Memento Films Production (France), NBC Film (Turkey), Komplizen (Germany) and ATMO (Sweden).

(The article continues below - Commercial information)

Arte France Cinéma will also support Un beau matin, which will be Mia Hansen-Løve’s eighth feature film. The cast of this production, which will bring together Les Films Pelléas (France) and  Razor Film (Germany) and is set to begin filming in summer 2021, will include Léa Seydoux, Pascal Greggory, Nicole Garcia and Melvil Poupaud. The story centres on Sandra who often visits her father, Georg, who suffers from a neurodegenerative disease. As she and her family set off on a real obstacle course through hospitals and retirement homes to try and find a safe place for Georg, Sandra unexpectedly runs into Clément, an old friend she had lost touch with and whom she soon begins a passionate yet uncertain relationship with...

Also supported by Arte France Cinéma is Quentin Dupieux’s Incroyable mais vrai (read the news), which is currently filming. Production is handled by Atelier de production and the film brings together Alain Chabat, Léa Drucker, Benoît Magimel and Anaïs Demoustier.

Also among the selected few is Women Do Cry [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Mina Mileva, Vesela Kazakova
film profile
]
from Bulgarian duo Mina Mileva - Vesela Kazakova (who come from the documentary world and were well received in competition in Locarno in 2019 with their first fiction feature Cat in the Wall [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Mina Mileva, Vesela Kazakova
film profile
]
). Handled by the companies Ici et Là Productions (France) and Activist38 (Bulgaria), the film which is now filming until late November brings together Iossif Surchadzhiev, Maria Bakalova, Ralitsa StoyanovaKatia KazakovaBilyana Kazakova and Vesela Kazakova herself. The script sees the balance of a family of women, all revolving around a strict father, shaken by the announcement of Sonja’s seropositivity.  Against a background of emotional pressure and hidden feelings, the female family circle joins forces to face their despair and pushes three sisters to reconnect with their father, in a Bulgarian society which does not know the word “gender” and where domestic violence is the norm.

For the record, Arte France Cinéma is also lending its support to upcoming films from Leos Carax, Asghar Farhadi, Ursula Meier, Claire Denis, Alain Guiraudie, Miguel Gomes, Joachim Trier, Nadav Lapid, Jonas Carpignano, Kirill Serebrennikov, Abderrahmane Sissako, Mathieu Amalric, Lisandro Alonso, Tarik Saleh, Mikhaël Hers, Arnaud and Jean-Marie Larrieu, Louis Garrel, Jan P Matuszyński, Albert Serra, Julia Ducournau, Thierry de Peretti, Arthur Harari, Leyla Bouzid, Charline Bourgeois-Tacquet, Aurélia Georges, Alice Diop, Hafsia Herzi, Dinara Droukarova, Vincent Le Port, Régis Sauder, Thomas Balmès, Chen Bo Yilin, Dror Moreh, as well as to animated films by Florence Miailhe and Pierre Földes.

(The article continues below - Commercial information)

(Translated from French)

Did you enjoy reading this article? Please subscribe to our newsletter to receive more stories like this directly in your inbox.

Privacy Policy