European Films

French actor-turned-director Gaël Morel’s fourth film as a director, Après Lui (lit. After Him), started shooting in Lyon last month. The film is headlined by French diva Catherine Deneuve, who recently was the president of the Venice Film Festival jury and currently graces French screens as an evil woman who is after Monica Belluci's child in the supernatural thriller Le concile de pierre (The Stone Council). Après lui deals with grief, mourning and friendship and casts Deneuve as Camille, a woman who sinks into a depression after losing her child in a car accident. The man responsible for the tragedy, Franck (Thomas Dumerchez), was her son's best friend and a strange friendship seems to develop between the two as Camille is unable to mourn.

Apres lui is Morel's fourth feature film as a director, after 1996's A toute vitesse (Full Speed), followed by Les chemins de l'Oued (Under Another Sky) in 2002 and Le Clan (Three Dancing Slaves) in 2004. 34-year old Morel began his career in 1994 with a role in André Techiné’s Les roseaux sauvages (Wild Reeds) and also directed the made-for-TV Premières neiges (The First Snow) in 1999.

His latest film is again co-written by author and cinéaste Christophe Honoré (who recently premiered his latest Dans Paris/Inside Paris), whose own three films as a director all have an undercurrent of mourning. Après lui has a budget of around €5 million and is being shot in seven weeks in Lyon and the Beaujolais region, as well as two days in the Portuguese capital Lisbon. Co-star Dumerchez made his debut in Morel's Le clan, and frequent collaborator Elodie Bouchez (who met Morel on the set of Roseax sauvages and also starred in his A toute vitesse and Neiges) is also part of the cast, as are Guy Marchand, Elie Medeiros and Luis Rego. The film will be released in France in the second half of 2007.

(sources: cineuropa.org, allocine; photo: Catherine Deneuve in Palais Royal! (c) Gaumont Columbia Tristar Pictures, 2005)