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The Girl From the Estuary

When life gets tough, Marnie makes things up.

synopsis

Small town Brittany, it is the peak of summer. Misfit Marnie (10) struggles to fit in. When things get tough, she takes refuge in her over-active imagination. She is teased constantly at summer ballet class and her mum has had more than enough of her chaos. She tries to conform – but it is all swimming upstream. Her mum snaps and takes off with a lover. Marnie is upset but then discovers Nathalie on an estuary bank, a cool English girl, injured in a car crash. She is on the run and Marnie hides her out in her house. She is everything Marnie wants to be – hip, cosmopolitan – and what is more, she totally gets Marnie. She celebrates her oddness and encourages her to be herself. She teaches her how to dance, how to be cool. She helps Marnie to have confidence and make new friends. Life improves tremendously, even her big brother’s crowd start to think she’s ok. But as Nathalie recovers she becomes increasingly dangerous and drags Marnie into her mischief - desperate to hatch a plan of escape whatever the costs.

Director’statement

like to tell stories that no one would expect to hear - where characters shift into unexpected moods, do inappropriate things or behave irrationally - because in real life nothing is really controlled or rational. When I think of Marnie and her capacity to deal with feelings of abandonment and love, I wonder if the essence of being human is about being an outsider. Constantly pushing the limits to find a meaning for existence, trying to find what lies beyond family, society, refusing to do things the way they should be done. The film will closely follow Marnie who finds refuge in creating the illusion that she is loved. She creates a world where there is no boundary between reality and fantasy. Elements of magic realism will allow me to push the story emotionally, illustrating the constantly shifting nature of Marnie’s reality. I will alternate between playful sequences and darker, more poetic moments, playing with elements of film noir that will move the story forward around the enigmatic character of Nathalie, who keeps nudging Marnie into a more dangerous and intriguing world. I will craft this film using my “magic” tool box of low budget visual effects, animation and hybrid techniques to push the film’s aesthetic into a sensorial experience. Using rich cinematography to elucidate Marnie’s internal turmoil, her drift and her resilience, as well as her relationship to the present. Every detail: the colours, lighting, composition and sound, will be essential to support the performance of my actors, and deliver a faithful vision of my main character’s experiences and impressions.

TFL PROGRAMME:
FeatureLab 2015
Discover more details here:
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TFL Catalogue 2015

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