05.25.2023

"It's Raining in the House" awarded at the Critics' Week!

The prestigious Critics' Week of the Cannes Film Festival unveiled on Wednesday 24th May the list of winners of its 62nd edition. Among the films awarded this year, there is Paloma Sermon-Daï's movie, "It's Raining in the House", which won the French Touch Jury Prize.

For her first time on the Croisette, Belgian director Paloma Sermon-Daï received the French Touch award from the jury of the 62nd edition of the Semaine de la Critique for her film It's Raining in the House.

This is the director's first fiction feature film after her documentary Petit Samedi. Paloma Sermon-Daï was born in Namur, Belgium in 1993. She graduated in Image from the Haute Ecole Libre de Bruxelles. Her final school project film Makenzy was selected at Visions du Réel in 2017. In 2020, she directed her first feature-length documentary, Petit Samedi. The film premiered at the Berlinale Forum 2020 and won numerous awards, including the Bayard d'Or at the Namur International Francophone Film Festival, the Prix Diagonales at the Premiers Plans Angers Festival, the Best Documentary Award at the Athens International Film Festival, and the Magritte for Best Documentary. Il pleut dans la maison is her first fiction feature film.

One hot and stormy summer by a touristic lake, seventeen year old Purdey and her younger brother Makenzy walk the line between experiencing adolescence, finding love and fending for themselves. While Purdey works as a cleaner in a hotel complex, Makenzy earns some money by robbing tourists. Left to their own devices, they must learn to support each other in a surprisingly tender journey that chronicles what feels like the last summer of their youth.

The film is produced by Michigan Films, with the support of the Centre du cinéma de la Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles in co-production with WIP (Wallonie Image Production), RTBF (Belgian Television), Proximus and Shelter Prod, Taxshelter.be and ING, and the Tax Shelter of the federal government of Belgium.

Also noteworthy was the presence, for the first time on the Croisette, of the duo Ann Sirot & Raphaël Balboni to present their highly awaited second feature film The (Ex)perience of Love.

Ann Sirot and Raphaël Balboni form a duo of fiction author-directors. Since their beginnings, they have built a hybrid and atypical cinema, which relies on very spontaneous acting, a sustained rhythm in jump cuts and an organic narrative construction, elaborated with many filmed experiments. Madly in Life, their first feature film, was crowned with seven Magritte awards and rewarded in numerous festivals. The (Ex)perience of Love is their second feature film.

Rémy and Sandra are unable to have a child as they suffer from “Past Love Syndrome.” In order to be cured, they only have one solution: they have to sleep once again with each and every one of their past lovers.

The film is again produced by Hélicotronc, with the support of the Centre du Cinéma de la Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles, Taxshelter.be, ING and the Tax Shelter of the federal government of Belgium and with the participation of the Brussels-Capital Region.

International sales are handled by Be For Films and will be distributed by Imagine Film Distribution. Note that the film will open the National Competition of the BRIFF - Brussels International Film Festival (June 27 - July 5). Hélicotronc also produced Emmanuelle Nicot's first film, Love according to Dalva whose impressive international career began in May 2022 at Cannes, in the context of the same Critics' Week. Praised by the European and international press, the film was released in theaters in France and Belgium last March.

Also noteworthy is the presence of the film Vincent Must Die by Vincent Castang, a minority co-production between GapBusters and Frakas Productions.

Since its creation in 1962 by the French Union of Film Critics, the Semaine de la Critique has been dedicated to discovering young talents, highlighting first and second feature films. Julia Ducournau, Benoît Poelvoorde, Cesar Diaz, Jacques Audiard, Alejandro González Iñárritu, Ken Loach, François Ozon, Valérie Donzelli, Jeff Nichols, and Rebecca Zlotowski are among the directors who were discovered at the Semaine de la Critique.