13/04/2021 - The director is also part of the cast of this Christmas in July production that will be sold by Le Pacte, together with Louise Bourgoin, Martine Chevallier and Laurent Poitrenaux

Actor-director Thomas Salvador and actresses Louise Bourgoin and Martine Chevallier

The first clapperboard will slam on 3 May on La montagne [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Thomas Salvador
film profile], the second feature from Thomas Salvador after the well-received Vincent [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile] (in the New Directors competition at San Sebastián in 2014 and nominated for the 2016 Best Feature Debut Lumières award). The director will also head the cast, flanked by Louise Bourgoin (nominated for the 2009 César award for Most Promising Actress for La fille de Monaco [+see also:
trailer
film profile], also well-received in I Am A Soldier [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Laurent Larivière
film profile], The White Knights [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Joachim Lafosse
film profile], Miss and the Doctors [+see also:
trailer
film profile] and in the series Hippocrate), Martine Chevallier (winner of the 2021 Lumières award for Best Actress and nominated for the César award in the same category for Two of Us [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Filippo Meneghetti
film profile]; soon in La Menace and Le bal des folles) and Laurent Poitrenaux (recently in Non Fiction [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Olivier Assayas
film profile]; soon in La place d’une autre).

Written by Thomas Salvador and Naïla Guiguet (selected in the Cannes Film Festival’s Critics’ Week promotion programme Next Step 2020), the script centres on Pierre, a forty-year-old Parisian on a business trip to Chamonix. Overwhelmed by the beauty of the mountains, he abandons his life on flat land, sets himself a tent high in the mountains and decides never to come down again. Having become an "inhabitant" of the mountain, he witnesses the collapse of a large rock wall, and discovers among the rubble some strange, luminous creatures…

It is worth noting that the director is familiar with the environment of the mountain, having directes in 2004 the documentary short film Dans la voie in which he followed a mountain climber and guide as he climbed a rock wall in the Alps.

Produced by Julie Salvador for Christmas in July (already a partner on the director’s feature debut), La montagne is co-produced by Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes Cinéma. Pre-bought by Canal+ and Ciné+, the feature also benefits from the support of the advance on receipts from the CNC, of the Gan Foundation for Cinema and of the Cinéventure and Cinémage Soficas. Filming will take place from 3 May to 5 July in Chamonix and the Mont-Blanc massif with Alexis Kavyrchine (winner of the 2021 César award in his field for Bye Bye Morons [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile] and nominated in 2019 for Memoir of War [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Emmanuel Finkiel
film profile]) as director of photography. French distribution and international sales will be handled by Le Pacte.

For the record, Christmas in July currently has in post-production Summer Frost [+see also:
trailer
film profile] by Laetitia Masson.

(Translated from French)