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"Let The Corpses Tan" takes Silver Méliès at Strasbourg

"Let the Corpses Tan" (c) Michelangelo Marchese

Saturday September 23th, Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani’s much-awaited third feature film, Let the corpses tan (Laissez bronzer les cadavres), won the Silver Méliès at Strasbourg Fantastic European Film Festival.

This award automatically qualifies the film for the Golden competition.

The Golden Méliès is an award from the European Fantastic Film Festivals Federation. It rewards the best fantastic or sci-fi film. Each of the nine members of the federation attributes each year a Silver Méliès to one of the films in competition. 

Let the corpses tan premiered in Locarno early August and has just been shown in Toronto. It will now perform amongst others at the Festival du Nouveau Cinéma in Montréal (with a retrospective of Cattet and Forzani’s works), the London Film Festival and the Festival of Sitgès.

Previous features by Cattet and Forzani Amer and The strange coulours of your body’s tears rounded up a feminine-masculine giallo diptych about desire. This is a change of scenery from Let the corpses tan, a free and loose adaptation of the eponymous 1971 novel by Jean-Patrick Manchette and Jean-Pierre Bastid, which should delight the amateurs. 

The Mediterranean summer: blue sea, blazing sun....and 250 kg of gold stolen by Rhino and his gang! They had found the perfect hideout: an abandoned and remote hamlet now taken over by a woman artist in search for inspiration. Unfortunately, some surprise guests and two cops compromise their plan: the heavenly place where wild happenings and orgies used to take place turns into a gruesome battlefield....Relentless and mind-blowing. 

Cast: Elina Löwensohn, Stéphane Ferrara, Bernie Bonvoisin, Michelangelo Marchese, Marc Barbé, Marine Sainsily, Hervé Sogne, Pierre Nisse, Aline Stevens, Dorylia Calmel, Dominique Troyes and Bamba Forzani Ndiaye.

Produced once again by the duo Eve Commenge - Anonymes Films (Belgium) - and François Cognard - Tobina Film (France) - the film received support from the Centre du Cinéma et de l’Audiovisuel de la Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles, Canal+, Ciné+, BeTV, BNP Paribas Fortis Film Finance, the Belgian Tax Shelter, Wallonia and the Government of the Brussels-Capital Region, the Collectivité Territoriale de Corse and the Corsica Pôle Tournages, and the Pays de la Loire Region in partnership with the French National Centre for Cinema (CNC). Let the corpses tan is distributed internationally by Bac Films. It will be released on 18 October in France (Shellac Distribution and in Belgium early 2018.

The Strasbourg European Fantastic Film Festival is a major French platform for fantastic cinema, and one of Europe’s most comprehensive genre events. The Festival’s main focus is on new productions of international fantastic films, but also included are sections for thrillers, noir films and black comedies, and for video games and virtual-reality cinema. The Festival also hosts multiple film revivals, a sign of its firm commitment to cinema heritage.

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