Nice distribution for Libre Garance!, a first feature film bringing together Lolita Chammah, Grégory Montel and Laetitia Dosch in a solar and political film, anchored in the early 80s. To see at the cinema this Wednesday.
What is it about ?
It’s summer 82. Eleven-year-old Garance lives in a remote hamlet in the Cévennes where her parents are trying to lead an alternative life. When two Italian activists rob a nearby bank, things go wrong. This event turns the life of Garance and her family upside down…
Lolita Chammah, Grégory Montel and Laetitia Dosch in a solar and political film
Libre Garance!, at the cinema this Wednesday, is the first feature film by Lisa Diaz. Noted with short and medium-length films, selected in several French and international festivals, including Eva would like, her last medium-length film, awarded the Audience Prize at the Côté Court festival in Pantin.
For this first feature film, Lisa Diaz surrounds herself with a nice cast: Grégory Montel (Ten percent), Lolita Chammah (Copacabana), Laetitia Dosch (Young woman, Irreducible) and the young Azou Gardahaut-Petiteau, 13 years old, which is the first role in the cinema.
Garance is the heroine of this film, giving pride of place to childhood and adventure. “There is the adventure dimension of small bandits, a desire to think outside the box. When I was a child, I was very fond of Mark Twain. This smuggling aspect of the film is my way of staying on the side of childhood to tell a political story. Everything is told from the point of view of a child in search of an understanding of the adult world. Politics seen from childhood has something poetic about it, it is the imagination that transforms everything”, underlines Lisa Diaz in the press kit. “Garance reinvents what she sees and hears, and she tells other stories. She takes us on the side of the tale“.
There is something poetic about politics seen from childhood, it is the imagination that transforms everything.
In addition to childhood poetry, Libre Garance! plays on summer sensations. “Summer, especially when you are a child, seems immense. We dream of adventure. We dream of things happening to us. It seems infinite, free. Garance and her group of friends feel that this season opens up a whole host of possibilities, including boredom!“, indicates Lisa Diaz.
The film takes place in the early 80s and wants to focus on the political legacy of that time. “What did the generation of the 70s, who hoped for a lot, bequeath to the next generation? This question of political transmission interests me. It was posed in a double way at that period, between those who experienced the movement of the return to nature; and the last fires of the armed struggle embodied in the film by the Italian activist. What does this question in terms of hope? Where is utopia? It’s this moment of change in the early 80s that I wanted to tell within a family on the left, which is asking questions about their commitment. (…) What do we bequeath to our children? How can we imagine a utopia today? How to get out of capitalism?“, raises the filmmaker through the subject of his film.
Libre Garance!, with Grégory Montel, Lolita Chammah, Laetitia Dosch and Azou Gardahaut-Petiteau, is on view this Wednesday.