27th CINEMANIA FILM FESTIVAL
NOVEMBER 2 TO 21, 2021
CINEMANIA UNVEILS ITS CLOSING FILM
LOST ILLUSIONS BY XAVIER GIANNOLI
AS WELL AS OTHER FILMS
CINEMANIA Film Festival has announced that Xavier Giannoli’s LOST ILLUSIONS will close its 27th edition on November 14 at Montreal’s Imperial Cinema. Presented both as a world premiere and in competition at the Venice Film Festival, this adaptation of Honoré de Balzac’s novel stars Cécile de France, Vincent Lacoste, Jeanne Balibar, Gérard Depardieu, Benjamin Voisin and Quebec’s Xavier Dolan. Another highly anticipated novel adaptation, HAPPENING by French director Audrey Diwan, based on Annie Ernaux’s memoir, was just awarded the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival, will also be part of the program. Furthermore, CINEMANIA announces the creation of a brand-new section dedicated to competition among French documentaries.
LOST ILLUSIONS will close the 27th edition of CINEMANIA on Sunday, November 14 at Montreal’s Imperial Cinema. For his 8th feature film after The Apparition (2018), Xavier Giannoli brings together a five-star cast. This scathing tragedy adapted from a classic French novel portrays an ambitious young poet in a society riddled with corruption.
France, 1800s. Lucien, a young unknown poet, leaves his native province to try his luck in Paris. Left to his own devices, he discovers the behind-the-scenes world dedicated to money and false pretenses. A human comedy where everything can be bought or sold, literature like the press, politics like feelings, reputations like souls. He will love, suffer, and survive his illusions.
Distributed by Les Films Opale, LOST ILLUSIONS will be released in Quebec on January 21, 2022.
HAPPENING by Audrey Diwan
The festival will also present HAPPENING by Audrey Diwan, winner of the Golden Lion at the 78th Venice Film Festival. In this highly topical work, the filmmaker portrays a young French woman (Anamaria Vartolomei) who must find the courage to talk about her pregnancy and her desire to end it in 1963, when the Veil law authorizing abortion had not yet come into force.
Inspired by Annie Ernaux’s autobiographical novel, the story follows the footsteps of a very young woman who decides to have an abortion in order to finish her studies. It is also the story of France in 1963, of a society that condemns women’s desires, and sex in general. The simple and hard trajectory of those who decide to act despite the law.
Distributed by Maison 4:3, HAPPENING will open across the province in 2022.
A new competitive documentary section
CINEMANIA will host a brand-new section dedicated to competition among French documentaries and presented in collaboration with the Planète+ channel. The jury for this competition, composed of 6 young professionals, will oversee awarding the Best Documentary Planète + Prize worth $2500 to one of the eight filmmakers in the selection. Among the eligible titles, in addition to Charlotte Gainsbourg’s JANE BY CHARLOTTE previously announced, we find : Didier Eribon’s adaptation of his essay RETURN TO REIMS (FRAGMENTS), presented at the Directors’ Fortnight and narrated by Adèle Haenel; Aïssa Maïga’s environmental film ABOVE WATER, presented in the “Cinema for the Climate” section of the last Cannes Film Festival; WE by Alice Diop, which plunges into the director’s childhood in the Parisian suburbs (Encounters Prize at the Berlinale 2021); VEDETTE by Patrice Chagnard and Claudine Bories, which follows Vedette, a cow who is queen of the alpine pastures and agricultural competitions (selected at ACID Cannes); the docu-drama AN ZÉRO : HOW LUXEMBOURG DISAPPEARED by Myriam Tonelotto and Julien Becker; LADIES OF THE WOOD by Claus Drexel, a guided tour of the Bois de Boulogne in Paris alongside its sex workers; LA DISPARITION by Jean-Pierre Pozzi, an investigation by cartoonist Mathieu Sapin into the decline of the French Socialist Party on the fortieth anniversary of the election of François Mitterand; THEIR ALGERIA, a chronicle of the chaotic life of a retired immigrant worker couple directed by Lina Soualem.
The 27th edition of CINEMANIA will take place from November 2 to 14 in Montreal and from November 2 to 21 online across Canada
