Rendez-Vous with French Cinema, the annual French film festival, hosted by the Film Society of Lincoln Center and UniFrance, that showcases contemporary French filmmaking, announced the complete lineup for the 24th edition. The festival will run February 28 to March 10, 2019 at the Walter Reade Theater in New York City.
QING FENG DE WEI DAO / BREEZE[/caption]
The French film, Les Météorites / Meteorites and the Chinese film, Qing Feng De Wei Dao / Breeze, complete the New Directors selection at the 66th edition of the San Sebastian Film Festival.
A graduate from La Fémis, Romain Laguna (Montpellier, France) has directed the short films À trois sur Marianne (2012), Run (2013), Bye Bye mélancolie (2014) and J’mange froid (2015). His first feature film, Les météorites / Meteorites, focusses on a 16 year-old girl who is spending the summer in a town in the South of France and works in a theme park.
Kun Yang, from a small city in the South-West of China’s Yunnan province, studied film directing at the Beijing Film Academy. Qing Feng De Wei Dao / Breeze, his first feature film, revolves around a man’s homecoming journey from Yunnan to the town of his birth.
These two productions join the New Directors selection, which also includes the following titles: Oreina (The Deer, Koldo Almandoz), La camarista (The Chambermaid, Lila Avilés), Apuntes para una película de atracos (Notes for a Heist Film, Elías León Siminiani), Serdtse Mira / Core of the World (Nataliia Meshchaninova), Ama Doren / Hold my hand (Ismet Sijarina), Un om la locul lui / A Decent Man (Hadrian Marcu), Para la guerra (To War, Francisco Marise), Boku wa Iesu-sama ga kirai / Jesus (Hiroshi Okuyama), Julia y el zorro (Julia and the Fox, Ines María Barrionuevo), Der läufer / Midnight Runner (Hannes Baumgartner), Neon Heart (Laurits Flensted-Jensen), The Third Wife (Ash Mayfair) and Viaje al cuarto de una madre (Journey to a Mother’s Room, Celia Rico Clavellino).
This section, forming part of the Festival’s commitment to upcoming film talents, is a platform that lends visibility to their films. The last three winners of the Kutxabank-New Directors Award have been released in Spain: Le nouveau / The New Kid (2015), Park (2016) and Le semeur / The Sower (2017).
LES MÉTÉORITES / METEORITES
ROMAIN LAGUNA (FRANCE)
Nina, a 16-year-old girl, dreams of adventure. Meanwhile, she spends the summer between her village in the south of France and the theme park where she works. Just before meeting Morad, a teenage boy from an Algerian family living in the nearby council houses, Nina sees a meteorite falling from the sky which it seems only she can see… like an omen.
QING FENG DE WEI DAO / BREEZE
KUN YANG (CHINA)
Having left Yunnan, his native city, Yu Zhao moved to Beijing, where he has lived for more than thirty years. Since his retirement, his only occupation has been helping his son in the house and looking after his grandson. When Yu Zhao returns to Yunnan with the intention of starting a new life, he finds that things, his relatives, friends and loves of the past are no longer the way he remembered them. Everything has become colder and more routine. The people he knew now have their own lives and the dream of a new love disappears too. Gradually Yu Zhao realises that Yunnan is no longer his true home, and he decides to return to Beijing.