The Croisette Hour

The Croisette Hour

The Deauville Amer­i­can Film Fes­ti­val fos­ters a silent and secret dia­logue that flows between film­mak­ers from the Cannes Film Fes­ti­val and the Unit­ed States. The festival’s val­ues of trans­mis­sion and shar­ing are reflect­ed in this selec­tion. For the fourth con­sec­u­tive year, Deauville wel­comes the Cannes Film Fes­ti­val with three films.

Mar­co Bel­loc­chio (with KIDNAPPED) ranks among such tow­er­ing film­mak­ers as Ing­mar Bergman and Andreï Tarkovsky for­got­ten each year for the Palme d’Or, for lack of awards jury dis­cern­ment. It wasn’t until 2021 that Thier­ry Fré­maux per­son­al­ly grant­ed Mar­co Bel­loc­chio an hon­orary Palme d’Or. In Aki Kaurismäki’s FALLEN LEAVES (2023 Jury Prize), a love of effects-free cin­e­ma meets a love that is still pos­si­ble for human­i­ty. Where­as Thomas Cailley’s THE ANIMAL KINGDOM is a vir­tu­ous les­son in liv­ing amid our differences.

Thier­ry Fré­maux, Gen­er­al Del­e­gate of the Cannes Film Fes­ti­val, will be in Deauville to present these works.

Bruno Barde, Fes­ti­val Director

KIDNAPPED by Mar­co Bellocchio

In 1858, in Bologna’s Jew­ish quar­ter, the Pope’s sol­diers burst in on the Mor­tara fam­i­ly. They’ve come to take away their sev­en-year-old son, on the Cardinal’s orders. The child was bap­tized in secret by his wet nurse as a baby, and papal law is indis­putable: he must receive a Catholic edu­ca­tion. The shat­tered par­ents will do every­thing they can to get their son back. Sup­port­ed by lib­er­al Ital­ian pub­lic opin­ion and the inter­na­tion­al Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty, the Mor­taras’ strug­gle quick­ly takes on a polit­i­cal dimen­sion. But the Church and the Pope refuse to give back the child, in order to estab­lish their increas­ing­ly ten­u­ous power…

FALLEN LEAVES by Aki Kau­ris­mä­ki

Two soli­tary indi­vid­u­als meet by chance one night in Helsin­ki, and each tries to make the oth­er into their first, only and last lover. Their path toward this com­mend­able goal is ham­pered by the man’s alco­holism, the loss of a phone num­ber and igno­rance on both sides of the oth­er person’s name and address. Life tends to put obsta­cles in the way of those seek­ing happiness.

THE ANIMAL KINGDOM by Thomas Cail­ley

In a world fall­en prey to a wave of muta­tions grad­u­al­ly trans­form­ing cer­tain peo­ple into ani­mals, François does every­thing he can to save his wife, afflict­ed by this mys­te­ri­ous mal­a­dy. As the region becomes pop­u­lat­ed by new kinds of crea­tures, he brings Émile, their 16-year-old son, on a quest that will alter their exis­tence forever.