17/10/2023 - First clapperboard for the Belgian filmmaker’s new feature, produced by Versus Production, Les Films Pelléas and Savage Film, shooting in Japan

Director Guillaume Senez and actor Romain Duris on the set of Une part manquante

This Monday began the shooting of Une part manquante (A Missing Part), the new film from Belgian filmmaker Guillaume Senez, which will continue until 3 December in Japan, between Tokyo, Sagami Bay and Yokohama. The filmmaker reunites with Romain Duris, with whom he had already made his second feature. Noticed in 2016 with Keeper [+see also:
film review
trailer
making of
interview: Guillaume Senez ­
interview: Kacey Mottet Klein
film profile] (selected in Locarno and Toronto and Grand Jury Prize in Angers), Guillaume Senez had teamed up in 2018 with the French comedian for the heartbreaking Our Struggles [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Guillaume Senez
film profile], selected in Critics’ Week in Cannes and winner of 5 Cinema Magritte awards, including that of Best Film and Best Director. Across his films, Senez explores the question of fatherhood: teenage fatherhood in Keeper, solo fatherhood in Our Struggles, and refused fatherhood in this new film.

Une part manquante paints the portrait of Jay. Every day, he drives through Tokyo behind the wheel of his taxi looking for his daughter Lily. Separated for 9 years, he’s never been able to get custody. Just when he’s stopped hoping to see her again and is about to return to France, Lily comes into his taxi, but doesn’t recognise him… Guillaume Senez therefore returns to his favourite themes and also explores an aspect of Japanese culture that remains little known in the West, namely that many divorces lead to the almost complete rupture of bonds with one of the two parents, especially when that parent is a foreigner.

Playing Jay, Romain Duris will be mostly carrying the film on his shoulders and will again play a father facing adversity, as he can be seen doing currently in French cinemas in The Animal Kingdom [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Thomas Cailley
film profile] (we will also soon see him in another Belgian film, La nuit se traîne by Michiel Blanchart, as well as in Daaaaaali! [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile]). At his sides, in the role of Lily, the young Mei Cirne-Masuki, but also French actress Judith Chemla (seen last year in Simone, a Woman of the Century and The Sixth Child [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile] amongst others, and currently starring in the Canal+ series Of Money and Blood [+see also:
interview: Xavier Giannoli
series profile].

Guillaume Senez is working for the first time with Belgian producer Jacques-Henry Bronckart, for Versus Production, who is currently in post-production on Olivier Masset-Depasse’s new film, The Price of Money: A Largo Winch Adventure (read the news) and who just presented in Venice, San Sebastián and Namur the first feature from Delphine Girard, Through the Night [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Delphine Girard
film profile].

Une part manquante is co-produced by Les Films Pelléas (France) and Savage Film (Belgium), in partnership with the Centre du Cinéma et de l’Audiovisuel de la Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles, RTBF, VOO and Be tv, Proximus, the Federal Belgian Government Tax Shelter and the Inver Tax Shelter, the Flanders Audiovisual Fund and O’Brother Distribution. In France, the film benefits from the support of the CNC, France 2 Cinéma, OCS, Disney+, Haut et Court Distribution, and Soficas Indéfilms, LBPI and Cinécap. Executive production in Japan is handled by Mam Film, and international sales by Be For Films. The film will be distributed in Belgium by O’Brother Distribution and in France by Haut et Court Distribution.

(Translated from French)