– The Turkish filmmaker’s next film will be co-produced by the Franco-German channel, as will those by Bertrand Bonello, Anne Fontaine, the Larrieu brothers, Stéphanie Argerich and Iryna Tsilyk
Director Nuri Bilge Ceylan (© 2023 Fabrizio de Gennaro for Cineuropa – fadege.it, @fadege.it)
Arte France Cinéma’s first selection committee of 2026 (chaired by Olivier Père) has decided to commit to co-production and pre-purchase agreements for six projects.
Among them is Soleil Blafard by Turkish director Nuri Bilge Ceylan, winner of the Palme d’Or at Cannes in 2014 for Winter Sleep [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Nuri Bilge Ceylan
film profile] and a multiple award-winner on the Croisette (Grand Prix in 2003 and 2011, Best Director Award in 2008, Best Actress Award in 2023). His new film – for which casting is currently underway and filming is scheduled to take place from early June to late August in Turkey – will explore the distance that time and silence create between people, through a father-daughter relationship woven with love and weariness. The pitch? Sabri lives alone in the suburbs of Ankara. His daughter, who lives in Istanbul, invites him to spend a few days with her and her young son at her seaside holiday home. Once the initial joy of their reunion has passed, tensions begin to arise between them, eventually bringing long-buried resentments to the surface… The production is being led by the Paris-based company Memento.
Arte France Cinéma will also be backing Bertrand Bonello’s Santo Subito (read the article), which is currently in production and will be shot in Poland and Italy until mid-May, with a cast that includes Andrzej Chyra, Cezary Zak, Charlotte Rampling and Adam Bessa, alongside Mark Ruffalo.
Arte France Cinéma will also be backing The Grand Serpent, Anne Fontaine’s 20th feature film (winner of the Best Screenplay Award at Venice in 1997 for Dry Cleaning, in competition at San Sebastián in 2005 with In His Hands [+see also:
trailer
film profile], and also well-received at the 2016 Sundance Film Festival with Agnus Dei [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Lou de Laâge
film profile], among others). An adaptation of Pierre Lemaître’s novel of the same name, the film – which will be shot next winter – will be set in 1973 and follow a female hitman whose erratic behaviour is beginning to worry her employers. The cast will include Isabelle Huppert, Benoît Poelvoorde and Raphaël Personnaz. Production is being handled by F comme Film alongside La Company de la Seine (France) and Artémis Production (Belgium).
Also selected is La Foudre by brothers Arnaud and Jean-Marie Larrieu (news), a Nord-Ouest Films production set to begin filming in the spring, starring Hafsia Herzi, Arieh Worthalter and Sara Giraudeau. A loose adaptation of Pierric Bailly’s novel of the same name, the film will centre on Jeanne, a shepherdess in a wild valley in the Pyrenees. When she discovers that her school friend, Vickie, has been accused of murdering her neighbour, she sets out to find out more and finds herself drawn into an unexpected tale of passion…
Among the lucky few is also a debut feature film project: Kyushu Moon by Stéphanie Argerich, starring Italian actress Alba Rohrwacher as a recently divorced Swiss journalist travelling to the island of Kyushu to investigate male celibacy, a phenomenon that has become a cause for concern in a Japan facing a rapidly declining population. Her unexpected encounter with Moroto will shake her convictions to the core… This production by the French company Les Films du Bélier in collaboration with the Swiss company Intermezzo Films will be shot from mid-September to the end of October 2026.
Finally, Arte France Cinéma will support the animated documentary Red Zone by Ukrainian director Iryna Tsilyk (a Sundance award winner and Berlinale selection for The Earth Is Blue as an Orange [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Iryna Tsilyk
film profile]), a co-production involving Vivement Lundi ! (France), Moon Man (Ukraine) and a_BAHN (Luxembourg), which will depict a day in the life of the director, poet and filmmaker in Kyiv during wartime. The visual design has been entrusted to Flora Anna Buda (winner of the 2023 Palme d’Or for short film with 27).
As a reminder, Arte France Cinéma also support the next films from Andreï Zviaguintsev, Albert Serra, Kaouther Ben Hania, Pawel Pawlikowski, Ryûsuke Hamaguchi, Kornél Mundruczó, Mikhaël Hers, Hlynur Pálmason, Kantemir Balagov, Mia Hansen-Løve, Robert Guédiguian, Yann Gonzalez, Charline Bourgeois-Tacquet, Blerta Basholli, Élise Girard, Justyna Tafel, Zou Jing, Chabname Zaria, Marine Atlan, Jérémy Comte, Hu Wei, Vincent Le Port, Wesley Rodrigues, Masha Kondakova, Charlotte Le Bon, Philippe Lesage, Kateryna Gornostai, Diana Cam Van Nguyen, and the duo Romain Renard – Fursy Teyssier.
(Translated from French)
