“This Life of Mine,” the seventh and final feature by the late screenwriter and director Sophie Filliers, opened at this year’s Directors’ Fortnight and today won the SACD Editors’ Favorite French Language Feature of the France Writers Guild. favorite gift
In the film, Barbie, once a devoted mother and companion, faces the reality of middle age as she turns 55. Following a classic three-act structure, the film progresses from comedy to tragedy to epiphany, at times playing with the absurd.
SACD executive Anne Villacèque said: „This year, we had to decide from a particularly eclectic selection. Choose between the novel and the poem, the right-handed and the left-handed, grandiose or more modest films. We chose whose heart beats the strongest and continues to follow us after watching it. We moved.
„A daring, subtle, unpredictable film, as its director likes to say, the culmination of a work full of contradictions and side steps,” he added. “A film that walks clumsily, but always bravely, along the edge of the abyss, planting piles of tiny white pebbles in its path like so many magical formulas. Against the darkness of the world, this lonely, fleeing female dog in the early morning gray. Oops! Baff! Yukoo! This is Sophie’s last battle cry, her vidicum for eternity, and her best joke. On behalf of my fellow filmmakers at SACD, I am very proud and announce our favorite film 'This Life of Mine’ by Sophie Filliers.
Filliers began shooting „This Life of Mine” in late June last year, wrapped up in late July and went to the hospital the next day. Less than a month later, at the age of 58, she passed away.
Post-production was overseen by his children, actors Agathe and Adam Bonitzer, with regular notes that their mother would send him home from the hospital when it became clear to him that he would never finish the project.
talking with Variety Ahead of this year’s festival, „Anatomy of a Fall” director Justin Tritt, in which Filliers had a small part in the film, spoke about how a fellow filmmaker’s work influenced her: “Seeing Sophie’s work for the first time gave me a feeling. A tone I don’t recognize can be found in French cinema. He pointed to a new way of making films that dealt with the difficulties of everyday life. That is very unusual and very reassuring.
New this year, Directors introduced the Fortnite People’s Choice Award. At the end of each screening, viewers rated their favorite films. After all the votes were cast, the Audience Choice Award went to Matthew Rankin’s surrealist film “Universal Language”. The film tells several seemingly disparate stories set in an eerie setting „somewhere between Tehran and Winnipeg.”
The new Audience Award comes with a €7,500 ($8,100) purse and is supported by the Chantal Akerman Foundation.
In a review of the movie “Universal Language”. Variety is Peter Debruge wrote: „The concept may not be intuitive, but the cross-cultural humor certainly appeals in this singular satire, which unfolds where French and Farsi are the official languages.”
Prior to this Directors’ Fortnight Award, its biggest prizes were awarded by sponsors in Europe (Europa Cinemas label) and France (SACD’s prize). Sent to gifts.
Sold by Best Front Forever and picked up by Oscilloscope Laboratories for the US, „Universal Language” was produced by Metafilms Productions.