MONTPARNASSE BIENVENÜE (Jeune Femme)

Saturday, April 28 – 5:25 pm – Truffaut Theatre

L.A. Premiere | France | 2017 | Comedy, Drama | 97 min | In French with English subtitles

Directed by: Léonor Serraille
Written by: Léonor Serraille
Cinematography: Emilie Noblet
Film Editing: Clémence Carré
Original Score: Julie Roué
Produced by: Sandra da Fonseca, Bertrand Gore, Nathalie Mesuret (Blue Monday Productions)
Cast: Laetitia Dosch (Paula), Gregoire Monsaingeon (Joachim), Souleymane Seye Ndiaye (Ousmane)
International Sales: Be for Films

Laetitia Dosch is a freewheeling dynamo as Paula, the impulsive, maddening, headstrong, endearing heroine of Montparnasse Bienvenue, writer/director Léonor Serraille’s unflinching, picaresque character study of a “young woman” of our times. Paula no sooner arrives in Paris, when she’s immediately dumped by her long-term, off-screen lover — a state she is loath to accept. Now virtually homeless, she wanders the streets of the city, crashing with friends, aimlessly adrift, furiously improvising from one moment to the next… and utterly determined to survive.

A native of Lyon, Léonor Serraille is a graduate of the La Fémis film school’s screenwriting program, and holds a master’s degree in comparative literature from La Sorbonne. She previously wrote and directed the short film Body (2016). Her first feature, Montparnasse Bienvenue — like Chantal Akerman’s 1975 breakout feminist masterpiece Jeanne Dielman — was shot with a 100% female crew. The film debuted in the Un Certain Regard section at Cannes in 2017, where it nabbed the coveted Caméra d’Or, the festival’s award for best first feature film. The film was also honored, at the 2017 Deauville Film Festival, with the Prix d’Ornano-Valenti for best -first film from a French director, an award sponsored by the Franco-American Cultural Fund. The film has also been nominated for César Awards for Best First Film and Most Promising Actress.

Presented in Association with: Be for Films, FACF, SACEM

COLCOA Series: French NeWave 2.0