The Secret of the Grain

Le graine et le mulet

(France, 2007, 151 mins)

35mm

Selected Filmography:  

EXEC PROD: Pierre Grunstein
PROD: Claude Berri
SCR: Abdellatif Kechiche
CAM: Lubomir Bakchev
EDS: Ghayla Lacroix, Camille Toubkis
Cast: Habib Boufares, Hafsia Herzi, Farida Benkhetache, Abdelhamid Aktouche, Bouraouïa Marzouk

Winner of the César (the French Oscar) for Best Film, Best Director, Best Original Screenplay and Most Promising Actress, Tunisian-born Abdellatif Kechiche’s (L'esquive) multi-layered and hugely absorbing new film also captured the Special Jury Prize and the International Critics' Prize at the Venice Film Festival.

"[A] brilliant film depicting North African immigrants in Sète, a crumbling port town in southern France. Its protagonist is a weary, divorced, impoverished 60-year-old shipyard worker whose fractured family comes together around his dream of opening a floating restaurant based on his former wife's culinary specialty, fish couscous. The film, which explores generational differences and psychological baggage within this extended family of émigrés, is an extraordinarily rich and human ensemble piece, filmed in a rough documentary style that draws you to the bosom of this boisterous clan to a degree that few movies ever do. Following L'esquive, Mr. Kechiche's second film, which also won four Césars including best picture in 2005, it establishes him as a major player in world cinema."--Stephen Holden, The New York Times

“A deeply involving tragicomedy, combining warmth with an unexpected level of complexity, and delivering a fiercely unsentimental commentary on the sexual politics of family and food... There is a fluent, persuasive intelligence at the heart of the movie..."--The Guardian

VIFF acknowledges the support of the Consulate General of France in Vancouver  in presenting the Spotlight on France.

       

Sponsored By:

L'express du pacifique

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