synopsis
It is Autumn. In a Corsican fishing village, Léna and her daughter Myrtille join Manuel in Aurora’s old house, Aurora has just passed away. She was Manuel and Tim’s mother. Tim, who was Léna’s partner, drowned in Thailand a few years before. Léna and Manuel have come to tidy and empty the house before it is sold. The first night, during a game of hide and seek, Léna meets up with Tim’s ghost once again, an activity she has often engaged in since his death. Léna is the only one who can see him. As the house is emptied, Myrtille uncovers a world of childish beliefs, Manuel tries to face up to the situation, Léna and Tim get closer to one another.
The emptier the house gets, the more the present and past merge together, and the climate slides into an uncanny Summer. One evening, they visit a travelling circus with friends. During a magic trick, there is a power cut; Léna and Tim enter the magician’s box and end up in Thailand. There, everything is mixed up - past, present, future, heat, cold. Will Léna and Tim manage to lay their love down in its final resting place? Will they return to Corsica? Will Tim ever accept his own death?
script & intention
I wish to make a film, which is funny and melancholic, where we shall mourn the loss of a love affair (Léna), of life itself (Tim) and of the fragile limits between reality and the imaginary. The guiding line that dominates and zigzags through the whole work is born from a confrontation between Léna, the film’s heroine, and the other characters. Léna explores the boundaries between past and present by questioning her relationship to time, to memory and to what it could mean for her to be present in the world, in the here and now.
This film speaks of death, but especially of life, as I believe that it is impossible to conceive of life itself without accompanying this with a meditation on death. The film is built around blocks of time – its central axis being the house that must be emptied - juxtaposed with each other, where the spectator perceives fragments of the character’s lives and constructs their story. These atmospheric episodes, when placed end to end, bring structure to the narrative and form a play on memory itself – the memory of the characters, but also our own. This is a film where surreal presence rubs shoulders with real presence, as well as documentary footage. It is a serious yet lighthearted work, representing different attitudes to belief, magic and to the ability cinema has to represent these phenomena.
In Le Camion (The Truck), Marguerite Duras says that “everything is in everything, all the time. It is a misconception to separate the past from the present and future”. With Jon Fosse, “the present is like a corridor where the past and the future swap places”, I share this vision. Le Vent des Ombres attempts to project an experience of this corridor, notably using the sea cave as an analogy and through other channels too. Léna is constantly moving down this corridor, constantly questioning it, as the present gets mixed up with the past and future. Within this frame, we are also subjected to a strange feeling, a juxtaposition of different eras, as if our perception has become disordered; with different time spans cropping up in our heads like random thoughts. Everything is therefore in everything; life, memories of life, and fragments of the afterlife move forward together. All these times are played out in the present tense, just like death, which belongs to our experience of the living, otherwise we would not be able to apprehend it. The spectral power of the movies is ideal for touching upon these themes as it forms the backdrop upon which we reactivate the past and our own memory.
budget & financing
Independencia was created towards the end of 2010; its original aim was the publication of books on film in the widest sense of the word, an activity run by Cyril Neyrat, film critic and professor at HEAD Geneva. The company decided very soon to branch out into movie production with the creation of a production entity run by Valentina Novati, and finally decided to also distribute films.
With Le Vent des Ombres, our aim is to produce exactly the type of cinematographic art I wish to preserve and share with our audiences – films, which are challenging, inventive and that represent a strong definition of Cinema itself.
For me, this is the most important point: sharing a common idea of what Film should be, what Film will become - thanks to Christelle’s films.
I expect to produce this film in line with a resolutely European strategy. This is in part because this film has received interest from several European producers, but also because I believe that nowadays, it is important to distance ourselves from a strategy that depends on a too high domestic focus, and we therefore plan to set up a network of European partners with whom to work on our different projects.
As for our budget, though it may seem high at first glance, it encompasses the cost of a cast we presume to be high (at least for the parts of Tim and Léna), and the fact that Christelle wishes to have a long time available for the actual shooting of the film. As we all know, at the movies, time is money too. We wish to obtain some French state institutions (the CNC, one Regional Fund), and some channel (Ciné +, Canal+ and maybe France Télévision) as well as European backers (Eurimages, and the local institutions of our European partners).
distribution & sales
With this project, our idea is to create a work that is aesthetically challenging yet accessible - a film for a wide, international audience.
We have not yet secured a firm commitment from a French distributor or from an international sales agent, despite strong interest, and this is primarily because we wish to have a very advanced version of this project available before sending it to prospective partners.
The international potential of Christelle’s film is expressed through several key elements:
Le Vent des Ombres (possible English title: Shadow’s Wind) aims to be a European co-production, funded by several different countries; this will contribute to laying down the groundwork for international recognition.
We wish to use a cast, which will appeal to a worldwide audience. Christelle would therefore like to select a well known actress for the part of Léna; this will give the film greater visibility.
We wish to ensure that Le Vent des Ombres is a presence at many European film festivals, just like Christelle’s other films (most of which have been presented at festivals) with our sights set on the most prestigious ones. We therefore wish to collaborate with an international sales agent who is ready to support us in our choice of festivals.
As soon as we obtain initial feedback on the domestic front, we plan to elaborate and finalize our strategy with our European co-producers; our plan for now is to sign with a French distributor and an international sales agent well in advance, as this will help with the funding of the film.