The Cinematheque

France

“Kahn explores contradictions [through] wry irony … A droll social comedy that interrogates the cost and chaos of the creative process.”

Wendy Ide, Screen International

This entry by Cédric Kahn (Wild Life, EUFF 2015) in the film-about-filmmaking genre is a high-energy comedic gloss on the snares of industry work, starting with the compromises and hypocrisies of international co-production financing. Simon is making a film about a worker’s strike. When his film’s production partners abandon the project mid-shoot, the crew considers taking a page out of the fiction they’re enacting to solve the real-world indignity they’re being subject to. Can Simon truly disagree with their tactical response? Denis Podalydès, last seen starring in Arnaud Desplechin’s Deception, plays the stressed-out director, while cinematographer Patrick Ghiringhelli (The Night of the 12) captures the metafictional madness.

In French with English subtitles