Les Armateurs, Melusine Productions and Close Up Films present THE SWALLOWS OF KABUL A film by Zabou Breitman & Eléa Gobbé-Mévellec With the voices of Simon Abkarian, Zita Hanrot, Swann Arlaud, Hiam Abbass 1h21 / Animation / France / 1.85 / 5.1 photos and clips can be downloaded at www.wolf-con.com/download INTERNATIONAL INTERNATIONAL SALES PRESS CELLULOID DREAMS WOLF Consultants Paris Address : 2, rue Turgot, 75009 - Paris Cannes Address : 7 Croisette, Entrance 16 rue
[email protected] des Belges, 3rd floor, #302 phone +49 157 7474 9724 Website : http://www.celluloid-dreams.com/ SYNOPSIS Summer 1998 - Kabul under Taliban rule. Zunaira and Mohsen are young and in love. Despite the daily violence and misery, they hope for a better future. One day, a foolish gesture causes life to take an irrevocable turn. INTERVIEW WITH ZABOU BREITMAN AND ELÉA GOBBE-MÉVELLEC What was the origin of this project? Zabou Breitman : In 2012, the producer Julien Monestiez came to see me with a script adapted from Yasmina Khadra’s novel The Swallows of Kabul and the production house Les Armateurs, the producers of The Triplets of Belleville and Ernest & Celestine, agreed to make an animation film out of it. Was it an interesting project for me? Yes - indeed the idea had enormous appeal, but only on the condition I could do it my way. This mean the characters would have to be carried by the actors’ performances, instead of having the actors work in service of of pre-determined gestures or expressions. From the start I said: “This is going to need to be extremely well acted.” And not just well spoken - the characters’ movement, rhythm, and breath had to all hit the right notes.