News

After winning France’s top literary award, Jean-Baptiste Andrea’s novel “Watching Over Her,” a decade-spanning epic romance, is set for a screen adaptation.

Muriel Sauzay and François Ivernel, two former top-level executives at French major Pathé, won a bidding war to secure rights to the Goncourt-prizewinning book from the publishing house L’Iconoclaste.

“Watching Over Her” already ranks as one of the best-selling Goncourt winners in the prize’s 121-year history, having sold over 700,000 copies to date. The book has so far been translated into 34 languages, and will soon published in English by Atlantic Books. “Watching Over Her” has also received the Fnac Novel Prize and recently snatched up the Grand Prix des Lectrices Elle. Sauzay’s banner Maremako and Ivernel’s outfit Montebello will be developing the screen adaptation and are currently assembling a creative team.

Set against the backdrop of political turmoil in 20th-century Italy, “Watching Over...

The Cineuropa folks have highlight three action-genre projects we’ll now be keeping tabs on and which have benefitted from some coin from the Cnc folks. The screenplays for La vraie vie by Marie Monge, Arco by Ugo Bienvenu and Trompe la mort by Rocco Labbé have been selected. Here is the low down on the three projects.

La vraie vie – Marie Monge

Prod: Cinenovo’s Julie Viez / Sailor Films’ David Pierret

Based on Adeline Dieudonné’s novel of the same name, this revolves around Billie who protects her little brother Gilles from the violence in their family by using her vivid imagination to tell him stories, which act as ramparts against reality.…...

The Film Selection Committee is backing 56 new projects and supporting talents hailing from domains such as music (Baloji) and literature (Thomas Gunzing and Adeline Dieudonné). The Belgian Minister of Culture has just announced the results of the first 2020 session of the Wallonia-Brussels Federation Film and Audiovisual Centre’s Film Selection Committee. Exceptional circumstances call for exceptional measures, and so the hearings for this first session of the year were held remotely, while it was also possible to send submissions for the second committee 100% online. Among the 56 projects receiving backing are feature films by multidisciplinary talents such as musician Baloji, who has already helmed several short films, and whose feature debut, Augure, produced by Eve Commenge for Anonymes Films, is receiving production support. Meanwhile, Thomas Gunzig and Adeline Dieudonné, two key figures in the Belgian French-language literature scene, have been granted writing support for their joint project Le...