Suecia / Costa Rica / Bélgica / Alemania
106
68th edition. October 21-28, 2023
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Mali, 1960. The youth of Bamako dance the twist to rock and roll music newly imported from the West and dream of political renewal. Samba, a young socialist, falls for spirited Lara during one of his missions to the bush. To escape her forced marriage, she secretly flees with him to the city. But Lara’s husband won’t let them be and the Revolution soon brings painful disillusions as they dream of a future together.
He was born in 1953 in Marseille’s district of l ’Estaque (France). In 1980 he made his directorial debut with ‘Last Summer’, codirected with Franck le Wita. For that shoot he surrounded himself with a group of friends, crew and actors led by Ariane Ascaride, Gérard Meylan and Jean-Pierre Darroussin who have accompanied him throughout his filmography. He is one of the founders of Agat Films and Ex Nihilo. The 44th Valladolid International Film Festival dedicated a full retrospective and a book to his complete work. The following year he obtained the Golden Spike for ‘The Town is Quiet’ and in 2002 he presented ‘Marie-Jo and Her Two lovers’ in Valladolid’s Official Section. In 2009 he returned to the contest with ‘Army of Crime’, which was awarded the Special Jury Prize and the prize for best screenplay; two years later, with ‘The Snows of Kilimanjaro’, he won the Silver Spike and the Audience Award at Seminci . In 2015, his film ‘Don’t Tell Me the Boy Was Mad’ was
screened in the Official Section.
