‘The Cry Of The Guards’ By Claire Denis.
French auteur Claire Denis had mentioned in March 2022 that she believed “Both Sides Of The Blades” would be her final film amid the COVID-19 pandemic. But, Last year she revealed that she finished writing a new feature, set in Africa. The film is titled “The Cry of the Guards”. Suzanne Lindon and Andrew Litvack co-wrote the film which will shoot next year.
Riley Keough and Matt Dillon in “The House That Jack Built”
Denis earlier gave a vague description of the plot and noted that it centered on “four main characters, three men and a woman.” In September, Matt Dillon (The House That Jack Built), Riley Keough (Logan Lucky) and Isaach de Bankole were announced to be part of the cast. The “third man” is not confirmed yet.
Premise: Set on a construction site in Senegal, as project supervisor Horn (Dillon) is welcoming his young partner Leone (Keough) into the hut he shares with his young and impetuous engineer Cal, a black man called Alboury (Bankole) appears outside the railings surrounding their quarters. Inflexible, hovering like a ghost in the darkness, he is determined to stay there until they return the body of his brother to him, who was killed on the site.
After contemplating retiring after “Both Sides of the Blades”, Denis went on to complete “Stars at Noon”, and she ended up releasing two films in 2022, both winning prizes at Berlin and Cannes. Last year in an interview with The Guardian, Denis revealed she finished writing a new feature (pending rework) and that she was going to start location scouting in that month in Cameroon.
Speaking to Screen Daily in Qatar in March, Denis said the working title for the new film was “The Fence”, and that production is expected to begin in January in Senegal. However, she stated that she didn’t seem satisfied enough with the script, and rewrites might be in order: “The script, I know it’s solidly built; there is something I could trust easily. But I realized since December, I have described them, I know the way they look, I could even describe their clothes. But there is something missing, I don’t know them enough, I realize they are still characters. I have to do corrections because I’m not sure about locations until today. One person is missing in the cast, so I might have to rewrite some parts.”
Denis is arguably, France’s most globally-acclaimed active director and she still only has this one Cesar nomination to her name. That means no directing nods for “35 Shots of Rum”, “Beau Travail”, “The Intruder” and “White Material”.
French critics haven’t been as enthusiastic about Denis over the years. It’s been more than 20 years since one of her films reached that elusive 4.0 score on AlloCine (since 2002’s “Vendredi Soir”), However in U.S.A., she’s an absolute legend with the arthouse crowds in New York and Los Angeles.
