THE SEARCH

Los Angeles Premiere • Drama • France, 2014

DCP • 1.85 • Dolby 5.1 • Color • 149 min

Directed by: Michel Hazanavicius

Written by: Michel Hazanavicius

Cinematography: Guillaume Schiffman

Film Editing: Anne-Sophie Bion, Michel Hazanavicius

Produced by: Thomas Langmann et Emmanuel Montamat (La Petite Reine)

Cast: Bérénice Bejo (Carole), Annette Bening (Helen), Maksim Emelyanov (Kolia), Abdul Khalim Mamutsiev (Hadji), Zukhra Duishvili (Raïssa) 

International Sales: Wild Bunch

 

This heartfelt follow-up to the Oscar winning The Artist tells the intersecting stories of four lives ripped apart by the second Chechen war of 1999. Bérénice Bejo portrays Carole, an NGO worker compiling a UN report on the worsening humanitarian crisis. She crosses paths with Hadji, a traumatized ten-year-old refugee and offers him shelter in her apartment. When the boy refuses to speak, she seeks help from wizened but exasperated Red Cross official Helen, played by Annette Bening, without realizing that Helen has been in touch with Raïssa, a young woman combing the embattled countryside in search of her younger brother. Meanwhile, Russian 20-year-old, Kolia, chooses military service to evade a minor drug offense, and is brutalized in a boot camp that’s little more than an assembly line for killing machines. An epic nod to post-WWII “rubble films”, The Search comes together with an ingenious twist of fate and a powerful shout of moral indignation.

 

After achieving international acclaim with his light and lyrical The Artist, Academy Award winning writer/director Michel Hazanavicius turns his eye to decidedly darker matters, adapting Fred Zinneman’s 1948 film of the same name featuring Montgomery Clift as a GI helping a young Auschwitz survivor find his mother in the ruins of Berlin. Those who know Hazanavicius from his irreverent spy spoofs OSS 117: Cairo Nest of Spies (COLCOA 2008 and 2015), and OSS 117: Lost in Rio (International Premiere COLCOA 2009), may not recognize this more serious side of the filmmaker, yet already in 2004 he had co-written the documentary Rwanda: History of a Genocide. Through his associations with that film, he met André Glucksmann, one of the first French writers to sound the alarm about the problems in Chechnya. Hazanavicius began his career writing skit comedy for the popular Saturday Night Live style French TV show, “Les Nuls” on Canal Plus.

 

Quotes:

“…there is no denying the film's sincerity of purpose and its power to move and outrage.”

– Richard Mowe EYE FOR FILM

 “… an earnest rejection of the horror of war.”

– Peter Bradshaw THE GUARDIAN

“…stirring and undeniably well made.”

– Justin Chang VARIETY