12th Carte Blanche: Joël Chapron explores Eastern European cinema

Discover the choices of Joël Chapron, Officier des Arts et des Lettres and ambassador of the Festival Lumière, for this 12th Carte Blanche.

On the program:

Friday March 13
At 2:30pm: Screening of "BRIGHTON 4TH"(2021) by Levan Koguashvili (Georgia). Running time: 1h36 - Thriller - FIPRESCI Prize.
Exile, family, forgiveness. Former wrestling champion Kakhi always has his family in mind. This leads him to travel between his Georgian home and the Russian-speaking neighborhood of Brighton beach, Brooklin, to visit his son Soso. There, he discovers that Soso isn't studying medicine as he'd imagined, but working for a moving company and racking up $14,000 in debts to the local mob boss.

At 8:30pm: Screening of "LIMONOV, THE BALLADADE" by Kirill Serebrennikov (Russia). Running time: 2h18 - Biopic - Cannes 2024 selection - Based on the book by Emmanuel CARRERE. An extraordinary life. Revolutionary activist, dandy, rogue, butler or homeless, he was at once an enraged and bellicose poet, a political agitator and the novelist of his own greatness.

Saturday, March 14th
2:30pm: Round table discussion on "Filmer l'exil", moderated by Joël Chapron (reservation required).
At 5pm: Screening of "TRAVAIL AU NOIR" by Jerzi SKOLIMOWSKI (Poland). Running time: 1h38 - Comedy-drama - Screenplay prize Cannes 1982. The Shadow of Labor. A wealthy Polish man sends four compatriots on tourist visas to renovate his London house. It's a good deal for everyone. However, the work turns out to be more complicated than expected, prompting Nowak, the foreman, to behave like a real tyrant with his workers. What they don't know is how ingenious he is at providing them with food and materials, despite the small amount of money at his disposal. Meanwhile, a state of siege is declared in Poland. When Nowak hears the news, he decides not to tell his comrades...

7pm to 8pm: light refreshments (sandwiches and sweets)

At 8pm: Screening of "L'AMERIQUE DES AUTRES" by Goran PASKALJEVIC - Ex Yugoslavia (Servie / Bosnie) - Running time: 1h36 - Comedy-drama - Selection Directors' Fortnight 1995. The other face of America. L'Amérique des autres (Other People's America) depicts the tragicomic misadventures of two Mediterranean immigrants, Bayo and Alonso, two uprooted sentimentalists lost in a seedy corner of Brooklyn. Alonso is an excessive Latino, sensitive and charming. He is touching even when he verges on the grotesque, even when he recreates for his blind mother an impossible return to the village of her birth in Spain... With Bayo, we find the Slavic soul, the tragic sense of destiny, between laughter and tears. He's a proud, sensitive man who's been skinned alive. Both cultivate nostalgia in the shadow of Manhattan's skyscrapers: a rooster, a goat, a well, a stone table... Memories, traditions and mutual aid make up their daily lives, until the day Bayo's family arrives unexpectedly from Montenegro...