Paris-based Tomsa Films will co-produce Andrei Epure’s first feature “Don’t Let Me Die.” The company, created in 2018, is also behind Laura Samani’s acclaimed Cannes Critics’ Week premiere “Small Body” and documentary “Zaho Zay.”
“Don’t Let Me Die” follows the consequences of a woman’s death in front of her apartment building. Her neighbor, Maria, is interrogated by the police and eventually takes charge of the funeral. She finds herself entangled in a maze of bureaucracy as she tries to escape the feeling that she is being haunted.
Produced by Alexandru Teodorescu and Ana Gheorghe of Bucharest-based production company Saga Film, the project has received production funding from the Romanian CNC and is about to apply for financing in France. At the moment, production is scheduled to start at the beginning of 2024.
“I was riding the bus one day and some strangers were talking about a Romanian journalist who was found dead after two weeks in her flat. I was witnessing an impromptu eulogy between a few bus stops,” said Epure, noting his film will “explore the anguish of passing away in complete indifference.”
“This is a story of alienation, describing the ghostly territories we inhabit, where the ordinary becomes mysterious and the foreign familiar. I am looking for images, camera movements and sounds that embody not only the way we look at death but also the way death looks at us.”
Tomsa Films’ Thomas Lambert has been busy at Locarno this week, presenting two projects at Alliance 4 Development, a Locarno Pro’s co-development program for film projects from Austria, France, Germany, Italy and Switzerland
In Vero Cratzborn’s “Molecules,” two twin sisters have to fight for their bond as one starts to suffer from a degenerative disease.
“They are like ivy around a tree. When they try to separate, blood spurts,” observed Lambert, talking about the story where “the rescuer is a tragic hero and devotion and sacrifice give power but have a terrible cost.”
He will also co-produce Stéphane Riethauser’s “Orpheus” with Switzerland’s Véronique Vergari (Luna Films), about a controversial relationship between a choreographer and his much younger dancer.
“The project has a great aura since it has been developed at Cannes’ Résidence du Festival this year,” said Lambert about “Don’t Let Me Die,” a continuation of Epure’s short “Interfon 15” which premiered at Cannes’ Critics’ Week in 2021.
“Mixing dark comedy and horror, it will be a disturbing debut feature film that will invite the audience to a dialogue between the dead and the living.”
