Cinema

Cécile de France
Hubert Sauper. Darwin and the documentaries

Despite what her name might suggest, Cécile de France hails from Belgium. Born in Namur in 1975, this young woman left her own "flat country" and came to France to learn her trade as an actress. And she has truly won over her adopted land, since after barely twenty films she has become one of the most popular actresses in France.
In L’Auberge espagnole [Pot Luck] (2002) and Les Poupées russes [Russian Dolls] (2005), by Cédric Klapisch, she is perfect in the role of a gruff and radiant lesbian. In Irène (2002), by Ivan Calbérac, she plays a touching and self-confident thirty-something, ineptly searching for the man of her life.
Cécile de France is so popular in the French cinema that in 2004 the Cannes Festival gave her the task of hosting its prestigious opening and closing ceremonies: the public are won over by her good nature, and she is also multilingual and able to ad lib in several languages. An "unforgettable" memory for the young Cécile, who is today so much "de France" that she has just settled in the Montmartre district.

Cécile de France won the Romy-Schneider prize in 2005.

Pierre Siankowski, journalist on the arts weekly Les Inrockuptibles

It’s not every day that a documentary takes the cinema by storm. It’s an even riskier enterprise if the film is about the human and ecological disaster caused by the export fishing industry in Tanzania. Nevertheless, this is the gamble that paid off for Austrian Hubert Sauper, the talented director of Le Cauchemar de Darwin [Darwin’s Nightmare], which was released in March 2005. The film, produced amongst others with French funding, brought in an audience of 360,000 in seven months, sparking off much debate and increasing awareness in the press and in public opinion on the damaging effects of certain aspects of globalisation.

Sauper, a student at the University of Vienna, came to Paris in 1994 at the age of twenty-eight to complete his doctoral thesis on three film directors, including French director Cyril Collard (Les Nuits fauves) [Savage Nights]. He then decided to settle in France. "Public interest in art-house cinema and the financial support provided by the State through the CNC (France’s national centre for the film industry) mean that my work is valued much more highly in France than elsewhere," he says. "Furthermore, Paris is a centre of gravity for people from all over the world working in film. I know that sooner or later everyone will pass through there. It’s an excellent place for maintaining contacts."

Barbara Oudiz, journalist