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A few months later, just a week before Tabu’s Hollywood premier, Murnau’s car careered off a California road at high speed, killing him instantly.
He was 42. Murnau’s curse was complete and still today inspires the craziest theories about the director and his films.
With swagger in his Faust, Murnau had attacked Satan head-on. But everyone knows that you should never bet your head on the Devil.
HD- 52'- Produced by Illégitime Défense
Murnau - In the Shadow of Nosferatu
JF Thibault
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In July 2015 in the Berlin suburb of Standorf the grave of the famous movie director, Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau was desecrated.
The filmmaker’s skull was decapitated with a knife and purloined away.
The skull was never found.
The international triumph of Nosferatu opened Hollywood’s doors to the director that gave him a blank check for his next movie.
There, Murnau created his masterpiece in 1927, Sunrise, which would foster a number of disciples among filmmakers, including François Truffaut, who called it the most beautiful movie in the world. Considered one of the most promising of Hollywood’s directors because of Sunrise’s success, Murnau set out for Polynesia in 1931 to shoot Tabu, a strange, symbolist film. The shoot was littered with accidents, and Murnau, having moved sacred stones for the sake of the movie, drew the ire of the Maoris who predicted a violent and imminent death for him.
The movie would seal the director’s fate.
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The Diary of Lula
J. Bourgarel
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Built like a thriller, this documentary will adopt the narrative codes of fiction films, with flashbacks, twists and turns, all of which have really marked the life of Lula... and his country. Constantly oscillating between democracy and dictatorship, Brazil is now again at the crossroads. And Lula finds himself once again as the symbol of this permanent back and forth between authoritarian and liberal regimes, between poverty and prosperity, between regression and progression. His programmed victory in 2022 thus appears to be the climax of an exceptional destiny that embraces all the contours of Brazil's history: its advances, its retreats, its hesitations, its about-faces... A history that will find its place as a parable of all the countries today threatened by "liberal" regimes leaning more and more towards dictatorship.
HD – 52’ – Produced by Illégitime Défense
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Maurice Chevalier - A Straw Hat in Hollywood
B.Tessier
Maurice Chevalier was a giant of French song. His career covered six decades. But he was also one of the very few French artists to succeed in American motion pictures. And even more: at the beginning of the 30’s, he was the King of Hollywood and the most well-paid artist in the world. With hisirresistible French accent and legendary straw hat, through movies directed by Ernst Lubitsch, Billy Wilder and Vincente Minnelli, he epitomized the French man: debonair, flirtatious, charming, sophisticated. An incredible career crowned in 1959 by a Honorary Academy Award.
HD – 52’ – Produced by Illégitime Défense
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Best arts & culture Pitch 2020
The Mayor
S. Shah Povia & P. Curzi
The rise of Italian fascism today proves that Italy has never come to terms with its past. The mayor Giorgio Frassineti wants to create the first ever museum on fascism in Predappio, Mussolini’s hometown and fascist pilgrimage destination, to counter this uncomfortable legacy. Through other examples like Spain and the affair of Franco’s tomb, this documentary is an opportunity to trigger a reflection on the collective memory of a nation and on what it means to deal with the legacy of a dictator. This project makes a particular sense today as populisms and nationalisms are rising again worldwide.
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HD – 90’ & 52’
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A French Enclave in Jerusalem
V. Berda
Very few people know that France is ruling over a little piece of land in Jerusalem. For centuries indeed, the French flag has been flying over 4 enclaves: St Ann Church, the Tombs of the Kings, the Church of the Pater Noster on the Mount of Olives and Abu Gosh, a Benedictine monastery. Through this, France is leading an active and yet fragile foreign policy in the Near East and particularly in the Holy City. This Christian presence together with the Vatican, the Greek Orthodox and the Armenian Church seems to bring balance to the always-on-the-verge-to-explode situation. This documentary is a journey through time, art, religion and politics.
HD – 52’ – Produced by Illégitime Défense – Available End of 2022
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Charlie Parker - Bird Songs
J-F. Thibault
For the 100th anniversary of Bird’s Birth, Jean-Frédéric Thibault proposes us a new film on music, after the acclaimed Gershwin, the American Classic completed in 2018. Who was behind the tormented Charles Parker, one of the geniuses of Jazz, who died at age 34. Who was Bird, immortalized by the amazing Forest Whitaker?
A man of sorrow who never could overcome the loss of his daughter.
A man haunted with inner monsters that ended up overwhelming him.
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HD – 52' – Available Now
Mohammed VI - The limits of Power
Vanina Kanban
On July 23rd this year King Mohammed VI of Morocco will celebrate twenty years since his ascension to the throne. It's time to assess these two decades of absolute power and draw a portrait of the man once nicknamed "the king of the poor" but also railed against as "the king of cash". In a country of 36 million people where illiteracy continues, where rebellion rumbles because of persistent poverty and where general freedom is still limited.
But "M6", as he is known in Morocco, is also a progressive, reforming the family code, modernizing the constitution and transforming the economy, he has made numerous innovative decisions.
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HD – 52' – Available now
Milan Kundera - The Unbearable Weight of History
Jarmila Buzkova
An internationally renowned writer and a repeat nomineefor the Nobel Prize for Literature, Milan Kundera is an intriguing personality. Through his literary output, this documentary dives into the world of an author whose fiction is able to reveal the cruelty of history and, as a keen observer, relate the ways of the human psyche, a worthysuccessor of Franz Kafka. These first two talents are complemented by two others that are particular to him, i.e. humor and charm. By focusing on universal issues about human existence and individual responsibility, Kundera’s work is both timeless and immediate for us all.
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HD – 52' – Available now
A Baby for Hope
Stéphanie Thomas - Arnaud Xainte
Cesar is afflicted with Fanconi’s anemia, a disorder giving him a life expectancy of 17 or 18 years. Only a bone-marrow transplant from a compatible donor will add, at best, 25 years to his life, giving rise to the hope that a cure for the condition might be found in the meantime. But no one in the family is compatible. Having always wanted a third child, his parents have decided to turn to in-vitro fertilization. Through this incredibly humane story, we will address the issues of bio-ethics, the genetic manipulation connected to the process and the worries and dysfunctions affecting families facing such a rare disease.
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HD – 70' & 52' – Available now
Nuclear Power - A Solution for the Planet?
Ghislaine Buffard
The decline of the nuclear power is a planetwide trend. Of the 400 working reactors in the world, half will be shut down within 20 years. Following the Fukushima disaster, in Europe Germany gave up on nuclear energy and will close its last plant in 2022. Belgium, Switzerland and Spain will follow suit by abandonning the atom. France, the most nuclear country in the world with 70% of its electrical energy coming from the atom, made an historic swerve in 2020 by retiring Fessenheim, the oldest of its nuclear plants, and 12 other reactors of the remaining 56 will be closed by 2035. What if the clean atom were a smoke-screen? It is true that the nuclear production of electricity emits very little CO2, but does that make it ecologically sound?
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HD – 52' – Produced by SEPPIA FILM and distributed by Illégitime Défense Available now
Alexandre Dumas - The Flamboyant
Arnaud Xainte & Jean-Frédéric Thibault
Alexandre Dumas is one of the most prolific authors of the 19th century. With a great sense of romance and action, he is at the center of a writing workshop producing true sagas at an almost frenetic rhythm. Reinventing the French history, he is a real show-runner, instilling energy in his characters and situations, often inspired by his own life. Between fiction and reality, this documentary recounts the life of a Renaissance Epicurean lost in the 19th century, an author who made generations of readers dream of his Musketeers who are now part of the common heritage of humanity.
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HD – 90 & 52' – Available now
Updated - Bachar Al Assad – Master of the Chaos
Antoine Vitkine
Doing a portrait of Bashar Al Assad, the smartly turned out dictator, talking about his career, getting into his head and understanding what he wants and where he comes from means getting interested in a man who has a partial hold on our fate. Daech, international Jihadism, chaos in the Middle East and the refugee crisis: all of these challenges that have an impact on us converge, at least partly, in Damascus.
This documentary has been updated to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the Syrian war. 20 new minutes.
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HD – 70 & 52' – Available now
Roger Corman - The Pope of pop cinema
Bertrand Tessier
Roger Corman authored fifty movies and produced four hundred.
He has been called the king of B movies, the pope of pop cinema.
He ventured through every so-called “minor” genre: noir, western, sci-fi, fantasy, and horror. Through his impressive filmography, Corman laid the foundations of what was to be known as “pop culture”.
In this documentary, it’s Corman himself who tells his own story, counterpointed by a number of interviews with the directors he trained and inspired: Quentin Tarantino, Ron Howard, James Cameron, Martin Scorsese, Joe Dante…
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HD – 52’ Produced by California Prod - Illégitime Défense/Carlotta Films – 2021 – Available now
Official Selection Santa Barbara International Film Festival 2022
Robert Le Vigan - An Actor in the turmoil of WW2
Bertrand Tessier
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Robert Le Vigan was an iconic supporting actor of the French cinema: poetic, hallucinated, unclassifiable -so French. This is not a documentary about motion picture. During WW2, Robert Le Vigan collaborated with the nazis. Sentenced to ten years in prison at the end of the war, he ended his life in exile at Tandil, Argentina. Around an interview unrealeased and archives unpublished, this documentary tells through the portrait of an actor the dark side of the history of France : the rising of antisemitism, the cooperation with the Third Reich, the artistic life during the german occupation, the marionette government of Sigmaringen, the cleanup after the Liberation, etc.
HD – 52’ Produced by California Prod - Illégitime Défense/Carlotta Films – 2021 – Available now
