Luàna Bajrami was born in Kosovo in 2001, and lived there until the age of 7, before arriving in France with her family. After studying theater and obtaining a baccalaureate with honors a year in advance, we started to see her in films like Portrait of the girl on fire or The Event, French auteur films recognized here or abroad. And at only 21 years old, she signs her first film as a director, The hill where the lionesses roarthe story of three young women in a Kosovar village who try to escape the weight of a very masculine society and dream of luxury, elsewhere, and freedom:
“It’s something that slept inside me for a long time, but suddenly came out. Talking about youth, about young “lionesses”, in Kosovo, was a latent desire and the writing was done very very quickly. There was still an idea, so not the precise story in itself, which had been there for a good four or five years, she explains. I have a cousin in Kosovo with whom we grew up together and spent time, and there was this duality, French youth and Kosovar youth, who on this hill had the same doubts and the same ambitions, but we didn’t live in the same context.”
“It is a country which is in contradiction between an Americanization which has been very rapid, since the war and the protectorate of the United Nations, and a very strong Albanian culture. It was a big inspiration for this film.”
Luana Bajramiat franceinfo
The film is bright, strong, feminist, the actresses, mostly beginners, have a lot of presence and are very believable. The soundtrack, with rock and pop from the Balkans, is perfect too. Luàna Bajrami explains that she was well educated with filmmakers like Céline Sciamma or Audrey Diwan:
“I think I was touched by the causes they wanted to defendshe says. But I was first touched by the people they are, I fell in love with them before falling in love with their project, and vice versa. And that’s what led me to these films, which were very significant in my career and made me grow.”
The hill where the lionesses roar had been presented at the last Cannes Film Festival, at the Directors’ Fortnight. We will find Luàna Bajrami in the opening film of the next festival, in a few days, the comedy of zombies Z (like Z) by Michael Hazanavicius.
Soldiers who return from a conflict traumatized and unsuited to their country or to everyday life, this subject has of course been treated many times in Anglo-Saxon cinema, mainly, but not very much in France, and this is the ambition of Sentinel South directed by Mathieu Gerault. Here the soldiers are returning from Afghanistan, after a disastrous clandestine operation, there is also talk of opium trafficking.
In the two main roles, that of the two brothers in arms, we find Niels Schneider, extraordinary here with a thick physique, a dented face, and a way of speaking reminiscent of that of the military. And Sofian Khammes, more and more present in the cinema, also excellent, was amazed by the performance of his partner:
“I knew he was a very good actor, he explains. But I took a big slap. Not only because he interprets his role extremely well, but also because he is in front of me, I watch him work, I think back to his filmography and I say to myself “OK he did this, this and this, but he is also able to do that! When I was on the set, I saw him saying to myself “wow, it’s very very strong what he does. And me if I’m interesting in certain scenes, it is also because I have a partner who throws heavy on the side.”
India Hair and Denis Lavant complete the cast of a hard-hitting film, not always believable, but panting and violent. The representation of peripheral French areas, impersonal and sad, also reminiscent of a battlefield, is also particularly successful.
A Persian “Little miss sunshine”
A car speeding towards who knows where, in the middle of splendid Iranian landscapes, with a heterogeneous crew. Either a family: an irresistible kid, a worried mother, a father with his leg in plaster and the eldest son who drives without opening his mouth or almost: this is the program of the film “Hit the Road”, our third and last advice from the week, directed by Panah Panahi, son of another director, Jafar, author among others of “Taxi Tehran”. A film full of black humor and poetry.