Fatima

Winner of Best Film at this year's French César awards.

Fatima lives on her own with two daughters to support: fifteen-year old Souad, a rebellious teenager, and eighteen-year old Nesrine, who is about to start medical school.

Fatima hasn’t quite mastered French and this, in turn, becomes a source of frustration in her daily interactions with her daughters. Both are her pride and joy, what drives her, and a constant source of worry. To ensure the best possible future for them, she works odd hours as a cleaning woman, until one day, she falls down the stairs.

While on sick leave, Fatima begins to write everything that she has not been able to express to her daughters in French in her native Arabic.

Official Selection, Directors' Fortnight, Cannes Film Festival

Best Film, French Césars 2016

Best Young Actress, French Césars 2016

Best Adapted Screenplay, French Césars 2016

Prix Louis Delluc

After completing his studies in French Literature at the University of Aix-Marseille, he began to work as an assistant director for Jacques Demy (Trois places pour le 26), Leos Carax (Mauvais sang) and René Allio (Un médecin des Lumières).

In 1984 he directed his first short film, titled La Jeunesse. After a couple of short films and documentaries for television, his encounter with the maverick French producer Humbert Balsan led to the production of his first feature-length fiction film, L’Amour (1989, Perspectives du Cinéma award at Cannes). Humbert Balsan went on to produce his next five films. In 2005, he founded Istiqlal Films with Yasmina Nini-Faucon.

Working for both cinema and television and often with non-professional actors, Philippe Faucon’s film credits as a writer–director include: Sabine (TV, 1992), Mes dix-sept ans (tv, 1996), Muriel fait le désespoir de ses parents (1997), Les Étrangers (1999), Samia (2000), Grégoire peut mieux faire (TV, 2001), La Trahison (2005) and the accliamed Dans la vie (2007). He has also directed a number of TV series episodes.

In 2015, his film Fatima was screened in the Directors' Fortnight section of the 2015 Cannes Film Festival. Fatima was awarded the Louis Delluc Prize for Best Film, the César Award for Best Film and for Best Adaptation, as well as the César for most promising actress for Zita Hanrot.

Although little known in the UK, Philippe Faucon’s films and TV series have won critical and public acclaim in France for their engagement in the world we live in and their poetic and subtle approach to the stories, subject matters. The release of Fatima in the UK and Ireland will hopefully help to bridge this gap.

Filmography

1989                        L’Amour

1992                        Sabine

1995                        Muriel fait le désespoir de ses parents

1996                        L’amour est à réinventer (TV series, one episode: ‘Tout n’est pas en noir’)

1996                        Mes dix-sept ans (Being Seventeen) (TV)

1999                        Samia

1998                        Les Étrangers (Strangers) (TV)

2002                        Grégoir peut mieux faire (TV)

2004                        La Trahison (The Betrayal)

2007                        Dans la vie

2008                        D’Amour et de révoltes (TV series, four episodes: ‘L’Enfant de l’utopie’, ‘De Woodstock aux désillusions’, ‘Road to San Francisco’, ‘La Fin des sixties’)

2010                        La Désintégration (The Disintegration)

2015                        Fatima

'This poignant slice-of-life dramedy proves as modest in length (78 minutes) as it is generous in rueful insight and emotional complexity...'

Justin Chang, Variety

'Fatima adds another trim chapter to Faucon’s catalog of social dramas with its affecting, highly focused story of a hard-working first-generation Moroccan mother, Fatima, and her two teenage daughters in Lyon.'

Nicolas Rapold, Film Comment

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