Burning Ghost

Juste wanders the streets of Paris looking for people only he can see. He collects their last memory before helping them into the afterlife.

One day Agathe, a young woman, recognizes him. She belongs to his previous life. She is alive and he is a ghost. How will they manage to love each other and seize this second chance?

Premiered at Cannes Film Festival 2019 in the ACID Selection. Winner of the  2019 Prix Jean Vigo for a debut film.

2019 / 104 mins / in French

Original Title: Vif-Argent

For the best part of twenty years, Stéphane Batut has assembled the cast of movies, on behalf of filmmakers with a wide range of backgrounds and worlds: Mathieu Amalric, Sharunas Bartas, Xavier Beauvois, Serge Bozon, Thomas Cailley, Laurent Cantet, Claire Denis, Arnaud Desplechin, Nicole Garcia, Alain Guiraudie, Cédric Kahn, the Larrieu brothers, Noëmie Lvovsky, Jean-Marc Moutout, Jacques Nolot, Bruno Podalydès, Axelle Ropert, Riad Sattouf, Claire Simon, Joann Sfar, Frèdèric Videau, Nadav Lapid, Paul Verhoeven, and more besides.

Four years studying film at Paris University VIII under the benevolent and alert eye of Jean-Henri Roger and the steely gaze of Philippe Arnaud were a perfect opportunity to make shorts but, curiously enough for someone who has encountered so many actors, fifteen years later, Stèphane’s first films were documentaries (Le Chœur in 2007, Le Rappel des oiseaux in 2014). Most likely because he learned from watching directors at work that fiction and documentary feed off each other.

Stephane’s aim is to capture the fable, the myth of a chance encounter on the street, like in literature, discovering freedom and the unpredictability of the world. Burning Ghost is his debut feature

Filmography

2019 Burning Ghost

2014 Le rappel des oiseaux (Documentary Short)

A beautifully made minor-key tone poem about love, loss and death, Burning Ghost (Vif-Argent) marks a promising second turn at the helm for French casting director Stéphane Batut, who has worked on such movies as Stranger by the Lake, Let the Sunshine In, Le petit lieutenant, Tip Top and Paul Verhoeven’s upcoming Benedetta.

Jordan Mintzner, Hollywood Reporter

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