WORLD CINEMA PRODUCED BY FRANCE SERIES
Each year, several films around the world are developed, produced or co-produced by French producers: COLCOA dedicates an evening to these films to highlight the support of French industry to World Cinema.
2016 program is made of three very anticipated films from Tunisia, Morocco and Argentina, all scheduled on Wednesday, April 20 in the Truffaut Theater. Don’t miss this high profile series at COLCOA and be the first to make the buzz!
Wednesday April 20 - 5:30 pm – Truffaut Theater
AS I OPEN MY EYES (A Peine j’ouvre les yeux)
Drama, musical • France • West Coast Premiere
It’s the summer of 2010, the eve of the Arab Spring. Tunisia heaves under the ever-watchful regime of dictator Ben Ali; revolution is in the air. Exuberantly breathing in that air is Farah, a bright high school grad eager to explore the fresh possibilities of young adulthood. Her mother, Hayet (renowned singer Ghalia Benali), is pressuring her to go to medical school, but Farah has more intriguing offers. She’s the singer in an underground band, and dabbling in matters of love and sex with fellow musician, Bohrene. Farah’s fearless feminist stance and the band’s lyrics challenge the status quo, so when Hayet receives a warning from an old friend in the Interior Ministry, she is determined to make Farah understand the very real dangers of her growing political convictions. A bittersweet coming of age drama, not only for its impetuous protagonist, but also for Tunisia, a country coming of age after its own rebellious spree ended without the freedoms that many of its youthful protesters had hoped for. Co-written and directed by Leyla Bouzid
Wednesday April 20 - 8:15 pm – Truffaut Theater
MUCH LOVED
Drama • France • West Coast Premiere • >17
Following its unveiling at the 2015 Cannes Film Festival, this glossy, Marrakech-based drama about women making ends meet by selling their bodies has been banned in Morocco and cast members have been attacked on the streets. Loubna Abidar is magnetic as Noha, who at 28, is the matriarch of a group of upscale call girls who live together as a family of sorts. Case-hardened by life, Noha’s only vulnerability is her judgmental mother. Soukaina, on the other hand, still harbors romantic sentiments for a penniless suitor who can only observe the object of his affection from a distance. Randa, the youngest and most modern, could learn a lot from Noha, if only her growing attraction to women weren’t eroding the mentorship. We follow their precarious lives as they negotiate the hypocritical macho posturing, the sexual repression, and the deeply entrenched double standards that mark Moroccan society, and perhaps by extension, much of the Arab world. Written and directed by Nabil Ayouch.
Wednesday, April 20 – 10:30 pm – Truffaut Theater
EVA DOESN’T SLEEP (Eva ne dort pas)
Drama • Los Angeles Premiere • After 10 Series
Part hagiography, part ghost story, this visionary drama featuring Gael García Bernal and Denis Lavant chronicles the epic 25 year journey of a corpse. Not just any corpse, mind you, but that of the beloved champion of working-class Argentines, Eva Perón, whose tragic death at the age of 33 prompted a spectacle of public grief that lasted for weeks. Fetishized in death, the bizarre-but-true fate of Perón’s cadaver becomes a metaphor for a nation haunted by a broken dream of social justice and unity. Told in elliptical chapters, we meet the official state embalmer whose task to prepare his “masterpiece” for permanent public display leads to some rather unnervingly intimate situations. Then there’s a pair of soldiers whose mission to smuggle the “Sleeping Beauty” out of the country gets sidetracked by certain, less respectful preoccupations. Like a piece of stolen art, her mystique grows, until the new military junta decides to put a dead person at the top of the list of people to be permanently disappeared. Written and directed by Pablo Agüero.
