European Films

French cult writer and polemicist Michel Houellebecq is currently shooting his first film as a director, based on one of his own controversial novels. La possibilité d'une île (The Possibility of an Island) is the story of a man called Daniel25 who lives in the fourth millenium and who is a clone of man who was part of a sect that created clones more attuned to outliving religious and nuclear wars, famines and the devastating results of climate changes. The socio-political science-fiction story stars French actor Benoît Magimel (La demoisselle d'honneur/The Bridesmaid) as Daniel and is currently in production in Spain, where shooting started on April 30 and is scheduled to continue through June. Locations include Lanzarote, Huelva, Jaén, Almería, Benidorm and the Ciudad de la Luz studios in Alicante.

La possibilité d'une île is made on a €6.37 million budget and like much of Houellebecq's work is both critical of society as a whole and obsessed with the direction mankind is taking and the uses and abuses of sex. Only last year, the similarly themed though largely contemporary Elementarteilchen (The Elementary Particles/Atomised), the German-language adaptation of Houellebecq's biggest bestseller to date, hit the screens. That film was directed by Oskar Roehler and starred Moritz Bleibtreu, Franka Potente and Martina Gedeck. In La possibilité d'une île, Magimel will joined by Patrick Bauchau, Andrzej Seweryn and Ramata Koite. No possible release date has been fixed for the Franco-Spanish co-production, though given the scope of the project a 2008 release seems likely.

(source: cine y tele; photo: Benoît Magimel in Les années campagne, (c) Les Films Ariane)