bdellatif Kechiche has an unique ability to connect new and old, European and African, sexuality and classicism: the Tunisian-French actor, film director and screenwriter broke almost all the rules of the film industry - in a realistic and poetic way. Hungary's Jameson CineFest (September 12-22) honours him with a retrospective with the screening of four great movies. He made his directorial debut in 2000 with La Faute à Voltaire (Blame it on Voltaire). Then he directed Games of Love and Chance (L'Esquive), which won a César Award for Best Film and Best Director. He presented The Secret of the Grain (La Graine et le mulet) at the Mostra in Venice for which he was awarded the Special Jury Prize, such as later the Louis Delluc Prize and others César Awards for Best Film and Best Director, while the 2010 Black Venus (Vénus noire) was also premiered in Venice.
Blame it on Voltaire is an interesting experience about the social phenomenon of immigration. Everybody that feel intolerance for those who come in our countries in search of a little dignity should take a look at this story of people who live to the edge. The Games of of Love and Chance shows a group of teenagers of the Paris suburbs practice a performance of a Marivaux play .Abdelkrim, or Krimo (Osman Elkharraz) falls in love with Lydia (Sara Forestier).In order to try to seduce her, he accepts the role of Arlequin and joins the rehearsal. But his timidness and awkwardness keeps him from participating in the play as well as succeeding with Lydia. The Secret of the Grain stars Habib Boufares as an ageing immigrant from the Maghreb whose ambition to establish a successful restaurant as an inheritance for his large and disparate family meets sceptical opposition from the French bureaucracy. Black Venus is a story of Saartjie Baartman, who left her native South Africa with her master, Caezar, to expose her caged body to the audiences of London’s freak shows. Free and enslaved all at the same time, the "Hottentot Venus" became an icon. Supported by the Budapest French Institute.
