Marché du Film follow-up: Pascal Laugier's MARTYRS
FOR 'MAKING OF' VIDEO & JPEGS, SEE THE BOTTOM OF THIS ARTICLE
From the Cineuropa article "Wild Bunch whips up sales frenzy at Cannes (2)" (June 7, 2007): "One of the films in production to sell well [at this year's Marché du Film was] Pascal Laugier's Martyrs, which will be distributed in France by Wild Bunch, and was sold to German-speaking Europe, Switzerland, Benelux, Greece, Italy, Romania, Scandinavia, the former Yugoslavia, Turkey, Brazil, Mexico, Peru, and Thailand."
The screenplay for Pascal Laugier's Martyrs was written by Laugier. The movie stars Mylène Jampanoï (Valley of Flowers) as Lucie, and Morjana Alaoui (Marock) as Anna. Wild Bunch (Exception Wild Bunch S.A.) is the international sales agent for it.
Here's a synopsis for Martyrs from Wild Bunch's website: "France. A night at the beginning of the 1970s. ¶ Lucie, a little girl missing for over a year, is discovered wandering by the side of a country road. ¶ Near catatonic, she can say nothing about what has happened to her. The cops quickly find the place in which she's been incarcerated - a disused slaughterhouse. Every indication is that she never once left the empty, freezing room in which she was imprisoned. ¶ Filthy, starving, dehydrated, the child's body nonetheless bears no traces of sexual abuse - this was no paedophile abduction, but something far stranger. ¶ What happened in that icy room? And how did Lucie escape? ¶ Lucie is hospitalized - slowly she learns how to live again, an enfant sauvage gradually returning to the real world. In the hospital, she meets Anna, another little girl, and a victim of terrible abuse at the hands of her family. In no time, they are inseparable. Anna takes charge of Lucie, like a mother. As for her kidnappers, the police are at a dead end. Lucie's ordeal remains a terrible mystery. ¶ One night, as Anna sleeps, Lucie hears an awful, rasping breathing. A vision appears: a body, naked, skeletal, tortured. Barely human. The apparition seizes her... ¶ 15 years later. A house, isolated in the middle of a forest. A family: Mum, Dad, two kids. A happy home. As they eat breakfast, there's a knock at the door. The father opens it to find a young woman, hollow-eyed and wraithlike and mad. In her hands, a rifle. 'Remember the little girl I once was?' She shoots him where he stands, enters the house, and locks the door... ¶ Minutes later, the family lie bloody. All dead. Lucie calls Anna, who tells her not to move, she'll be right there. In shock, Lucie hangs up. And then she hears it. That terrible, terribly familiar breathing..."
For more information on Martyrs, see ScreenAnarchy's fourth, third, second, and first articles on it.
Those who are interested in Martyrs may also wish to read the ScreenAnarchy articles on Xavier Gens' Frontier(s) (Frontières), Fabrice Lambot's Dying God, and Julien Maury and Alexandre Bustillo's Inside (À l'intérieur).
"'Martyrs': une visite" - Martyrs 'making of' video (downloadable 20.6 MB MOV file)
Martyrs production still #1 (44 KB JPEG)
Martyrs production still #2 (44 KB JPEG)
Martyrs production still #3 (44 KB JPEG)
Martyrs production still #4 (36 KB JPEG)
Martyrs concept art #1 (see above left - 164 KB JPEG version)
Martyrs concept art #2 (136 KB JPEG)
Martyrs concept art #3 (40 KB JPEG)
