14/03/2022 - The young Belgian director moves onto features with a kind of sequel to her short film Une soeur, selected for the Oscars in 2020

Actress Veerle Baetens (© Michiel Hendryckx)

The young Belgian director Delphine Girard is about to start shooting her first feature film, Quitter la nuit [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Delphine Girard
film profile] (provisory title: Le plus vivant possible), on 23 March between Brussels and Tubize. She will be reunited with three characters she knows well from her short film Une soeur, which was a great success at festivals, culminating in her participation in the Oscars in February 2020.

In Une soeur, we crossed the destinies of three characters brought together in spite of themselves by an attack: a man, a woman, and another woman on the other end of the line, who takes the emergency call from the first. Quitter la nuit finds them again and wonders about their future. During a party that goes wrong, Dary assaults Aly, Aly calls the police, Anna takes the call. In the aftermath of that night, they must face the echoes of this violence that changed all three of them. Aly tries to get on with her life and minimise the effects of the attack on her life. Dary tries to tell himself a version of events he can live with. Anna decides she wants to remain part of the story. What would justice and repair mean?

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Delphine Girard is back with her excellent cast. Veerle Baetens (the heroine of The Broken Circle Breakdown [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Felix van Groeningen
interview: Felix Van Groeningen
interview: Felix Van Groeningen
film profile], who won the Magritte for Best Actress two years ago for Mothers' Instinct [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Olivier Masset-Depasse
film profile], who will soon be starring in Singing Jailbirds [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile] by Étienne Comar and who is working on her first film as a director, When It Melts [+see also:
film review
interview: Veerle Baetens
film profile]) plays Anna. Opposite her, Aly is played by Selma Alaoui (who has been very active in the theatre, and who finds her first major film role here) and Guillaume Duhesme (seen recently in Sentinelle or Welcome to the Jungle [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile]) plays Dary.

The director also reunites with her cinematographer Juliette Van Dormael, and a large part of her technical team, notably Eve Martin for the art direction and Damien Keyeux for the editing.

As with Une soeur, the film will be produced by Versus Production (Belgium) and co-produced by Haut et Court (France), Colonelle Films (Canada) and The Reunion (Belgium).

(Translated from French)