The Immortals, by Caroline Deruas and produced by Laurine Pelassy receives Media support.
Laurine Pelassy, mentee in the 2nd edition of EWA Network's Mentoring Programme, has achieved Creative Europe Single project support for her project The Immortals, to be directed by Caroline Deruas.
It is the first time her production company Les Films de la Capitaine receive such support. The film will be starred by Lena Garrel, Yoanna Bolzli and Niels Schneider and will be distributed in France by Tandem.
Written by Caroline Deruas, Maud Ameline, Victoria Kaario and Jihane Chouaib
So far they have received financial support from Media and CNC development funds; SUD Region screenwriting and development funds, Centre Region / CICLIC screenwriting fund, City of Nice fund; Meetings of coproduction of Les Arcs European Film Festival (2016), Luxembourg Meetings of coproduction (2019) and attended the Screenwriting residence of Moulin d’Andé (2017).
The shooting is planned for autumn 2021
Synopsis
Charlotte and Liza are 17. Their characters are as opposite as complementary. They cross side by side their joyful adolescence, and share their desire of men as their future project. But a tragedy arises that separates them and Charlotte is left alone, on the path of adulthood, with dreams for two.
The producer, Laurine Pelassy
Laurine Pelassy founded her own company in 2012 Les Films de la Capitaine to produce movies offering an attractive and inquisitive vision of life. She establishes strong relationships with talented young director in order to lead them make the step from short to feature films.
At the beginning, she produced Thomas Bardinet’s feature An imaginary adolescence of Nino Ferrer, Grégoire Graesslin’s short film Helix Aspersa (International Competition « Pardi di Domani», Locarno Film Festival, 2014) as well as the creative documentary of Léo Ponge, In Search of Bigfoot which travelled all over the world and was screened by Planète+ TV.
In 2017, she produced Idir Serghine’s medium length film Cross (Special Mention of the Distribution Jury at the Brive Film Festival, 2018) and Léo Ponge’s short film Memoria.
In 2018, she produced the short films Breathless by Stéphanie Doncker and The immortals of Caroline Deruas, both in late post-production.
In 2019, she produced Suleiman's It must Be Heaven, which competed for the Palme d'Or in Cannes.
The Director
Caroline Deruas directed short films with avery successful trajectory in festivals : Starfish was selected by the Directors' Fortnight, The Fire, the Blood, the Stars by the Locarno Film Festival and won the Great Prize of Bilbao Film Festival and Children of the Night won the Silver Leopard at the Locarno Film Festival and was released in cinema in 2012.
Caroline Deruas was also a pensioner at the Villa Medicis, set for her first feature film Daydreams, released in 2017 by Les Films du Losange and presented in Locarno Concorso Cineasti del presente. Caroline Deruas also worked with the French directors Valéria Bruni-Tedeschi, Yann Gonzalez, Romain Goupil and Philippe Garrel with whom she co-wrote A Burning Hot Summer, Jealousy, In the Shadow of Women and Lover for a day.
Director’s note
We were seventeen, we lived in a small and wealthy city in the South of France, two teenagers quite privileged who shared dreams of cinema. We weren’t mature and not highly educated but extremely curious about everything. We wanted to bite life and hope, and we always looked at the future because the present seemed meaningless. We had great expectations, were ready to land in the real life definitively. When I touched the ground, my best friend was not by my side anymore. She was caught by the bad fate. Elisabeth was seventeen when she died.
I have often thought about making a film about our friendship, her desired life brutally amputated, and about how guilty I felt afterwards. But I couldn’t find the joy of living that was ours. I couldn’t find the right distance. It was twenty years ago... Today, I can look back to this episode of my life because my own daughter is a teenager. By mixing her adolescence with mine, I was able to invent a new one and give to this story the romantic dimension that I wanted.