Marie-Ange Luciani, the uncompromising producer of “Anatomy of a fall”

2023-08-20 06:00:44

“Granny and her oilcloth”, is it indicated in the caption of the photo. On October 1, 2022, between a call to participate in the Estates General of Cinema and the front page of the magazine French film, dedicated to the “reconquest” tricolor cinema and where only white men appear, producer Marie-Ange Luciani, 44, posted a snapshot of her grandmother on her Instagram account.

Sitting at her kitchen table, the old lady seems to be pointing to one of the patterns unfolding on her tablecloth, slipped between a pink flower and green foliage: a golden branch, whose shape and color draw exactly… the Cannes award. « Toile Palme d’or ! », notes one of the comments, between the heart emojis and the “Kisses to Granny”.

The image naturally arouses far fewer remarks than the previous one on French Film, which has 147 and most of which boo a cover from which parity and diversity are absent. However, if there were only one photo left from the past year on Marie-Ange Luciani’s Instagram feed, it would undoubtedly be “Granny and her oilcloth”.

Director Justine Triet, awarded the Palme d’Or at the end of May for her film Anatomy of a fall, in which she dissects the relationship within the couple after a suspicious death (in theaters August 23), alludes to it in front of a few Parisian happy few gathered on June 26, on the occasion of a preview screening: she evokes joking about the premonitory nature of the snapshot of Granny, causing laughter in the room. Like the others, Marie-Ange Luciani laughs. But the producer, very attached to her Corsican roots, learned on the island to respect the signs. Everyone can have fun with the anecdote, nothing will erase the golden branch heralding glory under the finger of the grandmother, eight months before the Cannes festival.

Radioscopy of contemporary society

At the head of Films de Pierre, the production company founded by Pierre Bergé that Marie-Ange Luciani bought a year after the businessman’s death in 2017, the Corsican forties has established herself in the independent production of auteur films. With titles that form a corpus attesting to his commitment, like an x-ray of contemporary society: 120 beats per minute (2017), by Robin Campillo, et The Red Island (2023), the latest feature from the multi-award-winning director, is her. Arthur Rambo (2021), de Laurent Cantet, ou Sibyl (2019), by Justine Triet, again her.

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