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2008 Festival Feature Films (March 28-30)

Thanks to French actor Philippe Torreton and German director Volker Schlöndorff, the VCU French Film Festival is proud to present the North American premiere of Ulzhan

director Volker Schlöndorff screenwriters Jean-Claude Carrière in cooperation with Volker Schlöndorff producers Régis Ghezelbash, Tasbolat Merecenov, Svetlana Novak starring Philippe Torreton, Ayanat Ksenbai, David Bennent, Maximilien Muller running time 1 h 35 min although not rated, parental guidance suggested for viewers under 13

Synopsis

A man named Charles leaves his native France for Kazakhstan. His initial impression is surprise; history has moved faster than he thought. His unexpected meeting of Ulzhan changes his path and his life.

director
Volker Schlöndorff

actor
Philippe Torreton

actress
Ayanat Ksenbai

actor
David Bennent

Director's note

The quest for ultimate meaning, the search for a mythical place at the end of the world. The desire to flee and disappear when faced with an overwhelming grief — all this can appear quite pathetic, esoteric bordering on the ridiculous, but when the character is embodied by an actor as down-to-earth as Torreton and the country he crosses as real as Kazakhstan, this metaphysical quest can be presented as a very personal, indeed poetic, tale.

The ruins he visits are not archaic by their architecture, but only by the suffering to which they bear witness: the gulags where Lev Kopelev and Solzhenitsyn were interned.

The deserts aren’t deserts because of climate alone, but because more than 500 atomic bombs were tested there. The death of the Aral Sea was decided by men just as indifferent to the sufferings of nature as nature is to the sufferings of the men she contemplates from the high splendor of the snow-capped mountains.

Our traveler would like to shut his eyes to all these images of grandeur and misery, but he can’t help these images burning his retina, or, through the lens, our negative.

Nothing is neutral, he will perceive everything. Two guides will help him on his journey — one a storyteller and merchant of words, the other inevitably feminine, enigmatic and silent. The relationship that unites these three characters must be inspired by Beckett, never psychological, always realistic, opaque and impenetrable, sometimes poetic, sometimes lunatic. Their words, like their meeting, do not mean much. They are nothing but life’s passing, which can be so meaningful provided no meaning is sought, as the traveler will discover.

A picaresque adventure film, made up of very real episodes, rich in mood and faraway locations, rendered in direct, raw photography, will explore one of the last blank spots on our minds’ world map — Central Asia.

Berlin, June 1, 2006
Volker Schlöndorff