NEW YORK -- The Fox & the Child, Luc Jacquet's follow-up to his monster hit documentary March of the Penguins, has been acquired for U.S. distribution by Picturehouse.
Jacquet's fable combines narrative storytelling with docu footage to tell the tale of a young girl who follows a fox into the woods outside her home. Based on Jacquet's experiences as a child, the English-language film will use an adult female narrator to relate the events as her childhood story.
Picturehouse president Bob Berney said that because there is very little onscreen dialogue, he may hire a well-known actress to provide the voiceover and shoot her in new scenes for the feature.
The $13 million-plus feature began principal photography last March in France, Italy and Romania after some initial nature shoots, and the filmmakers hope to complete it in time for this May's Festival de Cannes. The Bonne Pioche film is produced by Yves Darondeau, Christophe Lioud and Emmanuel Priou, the team behind Penguins.
Jacquet used a combination of real foxes and a trained fox to work with the young star, Bertille Noel-Bruneau.
Jacquet's fable combines narrative storytelling with docu footage to tell the tale of a young girl who follows a fox into the woods outside her home. Based on Jacquet's experiences as a child, the English-language film will use an adult female narrator to relate the events as her childhood story.
Picturehouse president Bob Berney said that because there is very little onscreen dialogue, he may hire a well-known actress to provide the voiceover and shoot her in new scenes for the feature.
The $13 million-plus feature began principal photography last March in France, Italy and Romania after some initial nature shoots, and the filmmakers hope to complete it in time for this May's Festival de Cannes. The Bonne Pioche film is produced by Yves Darondeau, Christophe Lioud and Emmanuel Priou, the team behind Penguins.
Jacquet used a combination of real foxes and a trained fox to work with the young star, Bertille Noel-Bruneau.
- 3/13/2007
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
NEW YORK -- Bonne Pioche, the Oscar-winning production team behind March of the Penguins, is focusing on the journey of another flock of birds in the rockumentary Amen Birdmen: Across the Atlantic, chronicling a French band's trek toward success across the U.S. Producers Yves Darondeau, Christophe Lioud and Emmanuel Priou and helmer Yannis Mangematin recently have begun tracking the band Amen Birdmen for a year as they tour the states. The production has garnered unrestricted access to the band's activities as they meet with record executives, publishers and DJs along the way. "In a country where even french fries are ridiculed, does a French rock band even stand a chance?" Darondeau said of the humorous English-language docu.
- 3/13/2006
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
PARK CITY -- The man behind last year's biggest Sundance success story, March of the Penguins director Luc Jacquet, said that his follow-up will be The Fox & the Child, a project combining nature documentary footage and a fictionalized story. Penguins producers Yves Darondeau, Christophe Lioud and Emmanuel Priou, along with producer Bonne Pioche, Will Shepherd the $13 million-plus film, scheduled for a yearlong shoot beginning in March and aiming for a December 2007 completion date. Production will take place in France, Italy and Romania. "Fox" centers on a young girl and her friendship with the eponymous animal. An adult female narrator will relate the tale as a memoir of her childhood.
- 1/22/2006
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
What is it about the emperor penguin and its home in the bitterly inhospitable terrain of the Antarctic that makes us stare slack-jawed with wonder? Surely this is one of nature's oddest creations. This creature, a bird actually, is both comical and noble in appearance. Once it leaves its natural home in the coastal sea, the penguin must struggle to accomplish any task on the icy land. Yet the stoic, resolute heroes and heroines of Luc Jacquet's March of the Penguins captivate the viewer.
Warner Independent, which acquired the French documentary at this year's Sundance Film Festival, has added a new Alex Wurman score and an English-language narration by Morgan Freeman for the American market. (The film opened Jan. 26 in Paris.) Gone is the gimmick of actors providing dialogue for the penguins. Instead the American release reverts to the purity of the birds staring at each other or gazing silently on their precious chicks, leaving the viewer to intuit the emotional context. Wurman's upbeat music is a major plus, attentive to the humor and gravity of penguins' traditional mating ritual.
Jacquet insists upon viewing this almost suicidal ritual as a "love story." The anthropomorphic approach might put off a biologist, but who can deny the close bond between mates necessary to produce and protect a single egg or the agony suffered by a parent when a chick is lost?
After filming in 16mm over a daunting 13 months in conditions that only can be imagined, the director and his editor, Sabine Emiliani, shape the footage into a compelling tale of survival, an annual race against time on which the survival of the species itself depends. When the birds turn 5, they leave behind the relative safety of the food-filled sea as the polar winter descends each March. They trek single-file for more than 70 miles on their feet or sliding on bellies to their traditional breeding ground. Here males and females pair off. (The film never tells us what happens to those without a mate.)
As the weather worsens, the female produces a single egg. In a delicate juggling act that often fails, the female must transfer the egg to the male for safeguarding on the top of his feet and beneath a fold of warm flesh and feathers. The egg cannot otherwise survive as the temperature drops to 80 below and winds can exceed 100 mph. Starved and exhausted, the females trek back to the sea to fill their bellies for the newborn. Meanwhile, the males huddle together, going 125 days without food, waiting for the eggs to hatch and their mates to return with food. Many females do not return, falling victim to the exhausting march or predators such as the leopard seal.
If and when the females do return and a chick has survived -- both are big ifs -- it is now the famished fathers' turn to stagger back to the sea for food. This cycle continues until the young can make the journey to the coast and take their first dive into the Antarctic waters. Surprisingly, at least to those who buy into the "love story," the family unit now breaks apart. The young penguin might never see its parents again, and parents rarely mate a second winter.
Jacquet's crews, filming underwater and in a white wasteland that looks like a frozen Monument Valley, get amazingly close shots of the birds battling the elements. Only at the end credit roll do we glimpse the crew in action, clumsily setting up their tripods and being observed with curiosity by the penguins. Perhaps the film is a love story, after all. What else can explain the dedication of these crazy French filmmakers?
MARCH OF THE PENGUINS
Warner Independent Pictures
Warner Independent and National Geographic Features films present a Bonne Pioche production in association with Wild Bunch
Credits:
Director: Luc Jacquet
Narration: Jordan Roberts
Based on a screenplay by: Luc Jacquet, Michel Fessler
Producers: Yves Darondeau, Christophe Lioud, Emmanuel Priou
Executive producer: Ilann Girard
Directors of photography: Laurent Chalet, Jerome Maison
Music: Alex Wurman
Editor: Sabine Emiliani
Narrator: Morgan Freeman
MPAA rating: G
Running time -- 80 minutes...
Warner Independent, which acquired the French documentary at this year's Sundance Film Festival, has added a new Alex Wurman score and an English-language narration by Morgan Freeman for the American market. (The film opened Jan. 26 in Paris.) Gone is the gimmick of actors providing dialogue for the penguins. Instead the American release reverts to the purity of the birds staring at each other or gazing silently on their precious chicks, leaving the viewer to intuit the emotional context. Wurman's upbeat music is a major plus, attentive to the humor and gravity of penguins' traditional mating ritual.
Jacquet insists upon viewing this almost suicidal ritual as a "love story." The anthropomorphic approach might put off a biologist, but who can deny the close bond between mates necessary to produce and protect a single egg or the agony suffered by a parent when a chick is lost?
After filming in 16mm over a daunting 13 months in conditions that only can be imagined, the director and his editor, Sabine Emiliani, shape the footage into a compelling tale of survival, an annual race against time on which the survival of the species itself depends. When the birds turn 5, they leave behind the relative safety of the food-filled sea as the polar winter descends each March. They trek single-file for more than 70 miles on their feet or sliding on bellies to their traditional breeding ground. Here males and females pair off. (The film never tells us what happens to those without a mate.)
As the weather worsens, the female produces a single egg. In a delicate juggling act that often fails, the female must transfer the egg to the male for safeguarding on the top of his feet and beneath a fold of warm flesh and feathers. The egg cannot otherwise survive as the temperature drops to 80 below and winds can exceed 100 mph. Starved and exhausted, the females trek back to the sea to fill their bellies for the newborn. Meanwhile, the males huddle together, going 125 days without food, waiting for the eggs to hatch and their mates to return with food. Many females do not return, falling victim to the exhausting march or predators such as the leopard seal.
If and when the females do return and a chick has survived -- both are big ifs -- it is now the famished fathers' turn to stagger back to the sea for food. This cycle continues until the young can make the journey to the coast and take their first dive into the Antarctic waters. Surprisingly, at least to those who buy into the "love story," the family unit now breaks apart. The young penguin might never see its parents again, and parents rarely mate a second winter.
Jacquet's crews, filming underwater and in a white wasteland that looks like a frozen Monument Valley, get amazingly close shots of the birds battling the elements. Only at the end credit roll do we glimpse the crew in action, clumsily setting up their tripods and being observed with curiosity by the penguins. Perhaps the film is a love story, after all. What else can explain the dedication of these crazy French filmmakers?
MARCH OF THE PENGUINS
Warner Independent Pictures
Warner Independent and National Geographic Features films present a Bonne Pioche production in association with Wild Bunch
Credits:
Director: Luc Jacquet
Narration: Jordan Roberts
Based on a screenplay by: Luc Jacquet, Michel Fessler
Producers: Yves Darondeau, Christophe Lioud, Emmanuel Priou
Executive producer: Ilann Girard
Directors of photography: Laurent Chalet, Jerome Maison
Music: Alex Wurman
Editor: Sabine Emiliani
Narrator: Morgan Freeman
MPAA rating: G
Running time -- 80 minutes...
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