If the upcoming blockbuster season is already seeming a bit bleak, not to worry, because some acclaimed arthouse auteurs are already hard at work on their next projects…
Mia Hansen-Løve ("Eden," "Goodbye First Love") is putting together "L’Avenir" ("Things To Come"), which will star Isabelle Huppert. There are not many plot details at the moment, except that the picture will be “the portrait of a philosophy teacher." No word yet on when it might film. [Cineuropa]
Following his very well received TV series "P’tit Quinquin," Bruno Dumont seems to have a fire lit under him. Last fall he lined up "Jeanette," a musical about the childhood of Joan of Arc, and now he’s got "Ma loute" cooking. Set in 1910, the film will tell the oddball tale of the Bréfort family, in which all the males are cannibals, and what happens when their appetites have caused the disappearances of middle-class residents of Lille, Roubaix and Tourcoing. Now toss in a police force trying to solve the case and a romance between eighteen-year-old Ma Loute Bréfort and the upper-class Billie Van Peteghem, and you have a movie we want to watch right now. [Cineuropa]
Acclaimed Romanian director Cristian Mungiu ("4 Months, 3 Weeks & 2 Days," "Beyond The Hills") will start shooting his next film, "Fotografii de familie" ("Family Photographs"), within the next six months. “It’s a story which is linked to where I am in life now” he said. “It’s about compromise, parenting and children and understanding this relationship between what you say to your children and what they see you doing. It’s set in Romania again. People are always asking me if I’m going to make an English-language film, but I want to make personal projects about things that I know.” [Screen Daily]
Abderrahmane Sissako, director of the Oscar nominated "Timbuktu," is currently mulling over two potential projects. “I was already working on a project before Timbuktu about the relationship between China and Africa, and I’ve also had a proposition to adapt Amin Maalouf’s ‘Leo the African,’ which I’m very interested in,” he said. The latter "is inspired by 15th century figure al-Wazzan, a Muslim forced to flee his Spanish birthplace of Granada as a child during the inquisition. He went on to become an ambassador for the Moroccan Sultan of Fez, travelling the Mediterranean basin and Africa for his work, even visiting Timbuktu, a thriving centre for trade and learning at the time." Two interesting propositions, but Sissako won’t be making a decision until the end of the year. [Screen Daily]