Focus on French Cinema - French Film Festival of Greenwich

2009

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	Genre: DRAMA - HISTORY
	Director: Jean-Paul Salomé
	Screenplay: Jean-Paul Salomé and Laurent Vachaud
	Director of photography: Pascal Ridao
	Cast: Sophie Marceau (Louise) Julie Depardieu (Jeanne) Marie Gillain (Suzy) Déborah François (Gaëlle)
	Running time: 1hr 58min Production: France, 2008 Distributor:TFM Distribution ›› OFFICIAL WEBSITE

Les Femmes de l'Ombre
Female Agents

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Introduction by Carolina Sanin of Cinema Studies at Purchase College
Q&A with actress Sophie Marceau

Female Agents is inspired by the true story of Lise Villameur, a member of the French Resistance who worked for the Special Operations Executive agency (SOE) created by Winston Churchill during World War II. The film follows the story of a group of women organized by expert sniper Louise Desfontaine (Sophie Marceau), who joins the SOE after witnessing her husband’s execution. Louise is given the mission of rescuing a British geologist who was captured during the Normandy invasion, and she and her all-female team must use every possible tactic and ruse in order to liberate the agent before the Germans succeed in extracting crucial intelligence from him.

Interview with the director :
Your starting point was one woman’s true story, but you chose to recount the adventures of a fictional group of women. Why?
JPS: Filming the portrait of a single woman with supporting roles gravitating around her didn’t interest me because, beyond dealing with women’s heroism, I wanted to show the mutual support between women that existed in this violent context. A group of characters enabled me to show different facets of the war, different reactions to a single situation.

“Female Agents lacks fashionable cynicism and views the war as a just cause fought by brave, self-sacrificing people.” – Philip French, The Observer ( London)

“ A World War II true story never told in theater” Première

Jean-Paul Salomé, director
He decided to be a film director when he was eleven, but it wasn't until after he had obtained a high school science diploma that he stopped studying and began training with Claude Lelouch, on his movie The Ins and Outs. After two documentaries, selected for many festivals, and three TV dramas, he shot his first feature film, Girls with Guns (1994). Female Agent is his second film with Sophie Marceau, after “Belphegor, Phantom of the Louvre” .

2008 Les Femmes de l'ombre (Female Agents)
2004 Arsène Lupin
2003 Bonne nuit (short)
2001 Belphégor - Le fantôme du Louvre (Belphegor, Phantom of the Louvre)
1998 Restons groupés
1993 Les Braqueuses (Girls with guns )

Sophie Marceau, actress ›› Biography

Julie Depardieu, actress
Julie Marion Depardieu is a French actress who has appeared in a number of successful movies (“Podium”, “A Very long engagement”…) Gérard Depardieu’s daughter, and Guillaume Depardieu’s sister - all film actors.
She won three César Awards : Best Supporting Actress and Best Young Actress in “La petite Lili” by Claude Miller, in 2004 ; Best Supporting Actress in, Un Secret, also by Claude Miller in 2008.
Absolutely crazy about music, she directed in 2008 her first opera “ Les Contes d’Hauffman” at the Vaux le Vicomte castle, the castle which inspired Louis XIV to build Versailles.

Marie Gillain ›› Biography