CRITICS WEEK – SPECIAL SCREENING
Filmmaker, photographer, creator of installations, director, Clément Cogitore is unclassifiable, never where you expect him and it doesn’t matter. The only thing that matters is that he has made the image his playground from which he makes the most of it, using everything that the contemporary era has at his disposal. And this for the sole purpose of telling stories – a way for him to survive the impossible mourning of childhood. Exploring this vast domain in all directions, that’s what suits him, preserves him from boredom and, it must be admitted, succeeds for him.
Since his debut, awards have rained down on everything he touches, starting – to stick to the cinema – with his first feature film Neither heaven nor earth, an experimental war film bordering on the fantastic, selected at Cannes Critics’ Week in 2015 and nominated the following year for the Césars in the “first film” category. Follows a documentary, braguino (2017), also crowned with several international awards. After pranks at the theater and at the opera (The gallant Indies) and in museums, Clément Cogitore is back at the cinema, and on the Croisette, with a new feature film, Drop of gold. Which is presented in a special screening (out of competition), at Critics’ Week.
There again, a success, a film which gathers, surprises on a ground which one believes familiar, a district of the 18and district, in Paris. More precisely: la Goutte-d’Or, adjoining Barbès-Rochechouart where the filmmaker has lived for a long time, which he knows well and which he gives the pulse of in a vibrant, strange, dark and sometimes comic way from stories to sleep tall . Because it is this – stories, unbelievable tricks – that the film sets in motion and that its central character, Ramses (Karim Leklou), trades in, dream and consolation swindler, charismatic crook who earns his living thanks to his alleged gifts as a medium.
exploring the world
The competition on the market being fierce, Ramses has developed a very ingenious system (of which we will not divulge anything) which has enabled him to build a solid reputation in terms of clairvoyance. Individually, or in a group, we jostle in his office, in order to collect his consolation prize on the small and big miseries of life. The other mediums are irritated by this success, let it be known, the tension rises. But Ramses has other worries. Once is not custom, subject to an incredible true vision which led him to the discovery of an abandoned corpse, here he is drawn into a story which puts him to grips with a gang of disreputable kids from Tangier who , them, do not let themselves be told. The guy may be smart, but this time the case is beyond him.
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