HOLY TOUR (LA GRAND-MESSE)
Friday September 27 – 4:10 pm – Truffaut Theatre
(Screening ends at 5:20 pm)
Los Angeles Premiere | France / Belgium | 2019 | Documentary | 70 min | In French with English subtitles |
Directed by: Méryl Fortunat-Rossi, Valéry Rosier
Written by: Méryl Fortunat-Rossi, Valéry Rosier
Cinematography: Méryl Fortunat-Rossi & Valéry Rosier
Film Editing: Julie Naas
Produced by: Emmanuel Georges, François Ladsous (Supermouche Productions), Benoît Roland (Wrong Men)
International Sales: Be for Films
There are the fans and then there are the addicts, the fanatics… the diehard cycling freaks! Holy Tour follows a group of lifelong Tour de France devotees over the course of ten days, as they park their campers on the treacherously steep Col d’Izoard, a mountain pass in the Alps at 7,743 feet above sea level, and await the big day when their favorite cyclists will whiz by in a flash. All seniors, with maybe a little too much time on their hands, they are nevertheless ardent disciples on this annual pilgrimage, anxiously awaiting the moment when the 2017 racers will finally cross that notoriously make-or-break stretch of road. The lighthearted documentary offers a quirky, sweet, often funny, and very idiosyncratic look at their devotion to what is unquestionably the world’s most prestigious and challenging bicycle race.
French director Méryl Fortunat-Rossi and Belgian director Valéry Rosier first met as students at the Institute of Broadcasting Arts in Belgium, and subsequently co-directed E411, their first short, in 2007. They reunited in 2012, as cowriters on the documentary Silence Radio, which won the Golden FIPA award in Biarritz. Rosier was honored with the 2012 Kodak Short Film Discovery prize at Cannes for his film Sundays, then went on to direct Parasol, his first feature. Meanwhile, Fortunat-Rossi directed several shorts on his own, snagging the 2015 Magritte Cinema award for Best Short for his film The Black Bear. Their shared passion for cycling, people and offbeat stories inspired them to collaborate, once again, on Holy Tour.
Presented in association with:
Be for Films
