Emilie Georges & Nils Tavernier present. France / / In colour /35 mm 1.85 / Dolby SRD. For downloadable images

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2 Emilie Georges & Nils Tavernier present France / / In colour /35 mm 1.85 / Dolby SRD For downloadable images INTERNATIONAL SALES MEMENTO FILMS INTERNATIONAL 40, rue de Paradis Paris Tél. : Fax : sales@memento-films.com

3 Once upon a time there was a kingdom where dancing was forbidden. Despite the ban and under the knowing and mischievous gaze of her little brother Solal, Princess Aurore happily seizes every occasion to dance. Influenced by a greedy and underhanded counselor, the King wants to marry Aurore to a rich Prince and save the kingdom from ruin. He organizes three balls to introduce Aurore to the world. But Aurore falls in love with a handsome and romantic painter. Obliged to choose between her love and her family she will follow her heart and mother's advice Never forget to dance,even when you feel sad.

4 Interview with You met Nils Tavernier at a time when you were co-directing a documentary together... It was a documentary about a woman who was living in - and survived - the kasbah of Casablanca : she managed to hold on to her self-respect while suffering greatly through that experience. It s the first time that I found myself behind the camera, but I never really had the intention of following that path. What I love most is telling stories through acting. What interests you about the world of Nils Tavernier? His passion for dance. I was really struck by this man who, while belonging totally to this time period, he is also completely taken by dance and the Paris Opera. I was very appreciative of the fact that he made it into a full story, as rare as ambitious, and not just a documentary. As soon as it has to do with a world I don t know, I m intrigued. I really felt like I was in a show. You like the genre of the fairy tale? I love it! In general, I like all fables and I find that you can get wonderful messages across in this imaginary world. I also like this way of telling a story that leaves a lot to the imagination and speaks to issues that people really face in daily life. What I don t like very much is when we are spoken to about daily life in a banal way. I much prefer tragedy to drama. I hate tragedies put together like headlines. I get the sense that ruins the story and makes them less universal. Your character is the mediator between the world of royal protocol and the world of dance, a space of freedom... I see myself completely in that facet of the character. I liked the idea of playing intermediary between reality and this other dimension transcended by the art of dance. I find something educational in it that I liked to pass to my children and others. I like passing that along because it allows you to leave reality. That s also the reason I like telling stories. Does wearing the costume help you get into character? Enormously! It s up to me then to try to get myself comfortable in my costume. I would also be happy playing Snow White s stepmother who transforms into a witch... Queen or witch, the essential thing is to like your costume and to really use it. That s all the work I did with costume designer Yvonne Sassenot de Nesle. The costume is essential to the actor, it s a fundamental part of their work. It dictates how you will act. It gives you a certain posture that you have to work with. If you marry your costume, you have less chance of acting poorly. 6 7

5 Interview with Aurore is a film that resembles you... I think so! Nils is the first name of a character in a story who doesn t like adults very much - and I think that I resemble him very much, despite my age and my rough demeanor! I made this film for children as I still consider myself as a child. The energy and the innocence of children is what I like about this film too. What attracted you to the fairy tale? The tale enabled me to have several layers to the story. I wanted, for example, to show how the king is destabilized by the evolution of his own daughter. At the same time, I wanted to tell an extremely accessible story of love - as accessible as the type of narrative style and choreography. It s a film about the freedom of expression. Aurore is a film about the purity of beings. I am surrounded by very pure people, people that I love and who interest me. There really isn t a moral in Aurore, but if there had to be one, it would be Follow your dreams and desires. All my documentaries have a direct relationship with political involvement: when I make a film about child slave trafficking, I do it in order to come to their aid. It took me a long time to accept the idea that I could direct an aesthetic piece that could also be a political act. For me, showing the purity and beauty in people is a political act in its way. The extraordinary discipline made evident by the dancers in your film Etoiles reminds one of the restricted life of the princess in Aurore. Indeed we can find the themes of my documentary because Aurore is a film about entrapment and dependence: it has to do with finding freedom within a nearly vicious framework. The direction resulted in using almost exclusively fixed optics. As for the characters, they all are taken by their own downfall: Aurore s trap of the desire for flamboyant freedom, the downfall of the queen who locks herself up and dies as a result of it, or the confinement of the king, trapped by birth and his role. How did you approach the decor and the costumes? From the beginning, I wanted a fusional unity between the various spaces. It s for this reason vegetation is found inside the castle. That is also why there is mist in the attic - the last place clouds can infiltrate - and where we see the vaporous aspect of clouds on fabrics. In the same way, the candlesticks and the chandeliers are covered with white fabric. The whole decor was conceived according to the colors of the costumes You borrow from several time periods... Yes, the architecture is sometimes Roman, sometimes Gothic, sometimes Renaissance! We filmed in the Ussé Château - early Renaissance style - which Perrault used as inspiration for Sleeping Beauty, as well as the Cistercian abbey of Royaumont... Music plays an extremely important role in the film. How did you approach this? It was not simply a matter of molding dance movements to the music, or vice versa. So I asked Carolin Petit to design the music with the choreographers to strike a symbiosis between movement and music. This work took nearly twelve months. 8 9

6 Interview with How did you meet Nils Tavernier? Nils came to our School of Dance in search of someone to play Aurore. Later he wrote to me saying he wanted to meet me. He presented me with the project and I had to improvise right in front of Carolyn Carlson, which was a real test! Then I had to do a screen tests with text, and Nils told me right away that I had landed the role! Everything happened very quickly since there was only one month between my meeting with him and the moment he told me that I was going to play Aurore. How did you prepare for the role? Nils helped me a lot: he discussed the character so much with me, I ended up feeling like I really knew her. I also sensed that Aurore was like me since I am as passionate about dancing as she is. Dancing has really helped to teach me self-discipline and has given me a better understanding about what it takes to be an actress. Weren t the period costumes too constraining? The costumes for the ball were very heavy to wear. When I sat on the throne, I felt it less, but when I had to dance the minuet it was rather difficult. The dress was too tight on me, it was too hot, I was tired... It s in situations like this too, that dancing has given me so much, such as the ability to build up physical resistance. Your character evolves quite significantly through film. Everyone notices it on stage. I felt myself like I was evolving throughout the shoot. I also found it interesting that Nils shot more or less in continuity. That helped me a lot because my character and I evolved together. Little by little I understood my character better and I really sensed that I was feeling more and more at ease with the fairy tale universe. What left the biggest impression on you? The Butoh sequence. I wasn t prepared for it at all, and frankly I found that dance sequence terrifying. I was opposite the dancer while the camera was filming my emotions, and I found that very trying. On the other hand, I thought that I would be intimidated by the camera being there, but thanks to Nils, I soon forgot about it and felt much more confident. Carole Bouquet and François Berléand were also always very reassuring

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8 Born in 1965, Nils first played in Les Enfants Gâtés (The Spoiled child) (1977), before appearing as a supporting actor in Bertrand Tavernier s films and in Claude Chabrol (Une affaire de femmes) and Milos Forman s films (Valmont). Nils Tavernier is best known for his short films and documentaries. Among others, he directed Etoiles, a documentary about the dancers of the Paris Opera Ballet, in which he shared with us his passion for dance. The film was released in the cinemas in 2001 in approximately 10 countries. Nils Tavernier has directed lately a documentary called The Life Odyssey for France Télévisions, which hit the best audience of the year in the documentary section. Carole Bouquet made her film debut sharing the title role of Luis Bunuel s That Obscure Object of Desire in 1977 with Angela Molina. She is probably best remembered to American audiences, as the James Bond girl Melina Havelock opposite Roger Moore s 007 in For Your Eyes Only (1981). Throughout the 1980s and 90 s, she concentrated on feature work in her native France (in few films of note until for example, Bertrand Blier s Too Beautiful for You 1989); the exception was a cameo role in the Francis Ford Coppola Life Without Zoe segment of the anthology film New York Stories (1989). Her most celebrated role of the 90 s was as the character Carole Bouquet in Michel Blanc s Dead Tired (1994; released in the US in 1995). Carole Bouquet is also known internationally as the model for Chanel Number 5 perfume. SELECTIVE FILMOGRAPHY 2005 THE LIFE ODYSSEY / Documentary DESIRE AND SEXUALIT Y IN FRANCE / Documentary LES PASSAGERS IMMOBILES (a refugee camp in Azerbaijan) / Documentary LE BIDONVILLE DES NUAGES (a squat in Phnom-Penh) / Documentary CHILD TRAFFIC (slave children in the Ivory Coast) / Documentary ETOILES Out in the cinemas in March 2001 (Pyramide). Sold to more than 10 countries. SELECTIVE FILMOGRAPHY 2005 HOUSEWARMING by Brigitte Rouhan 2004 L ENFER by Denis Tanovic NORDESTE by Juan Solanas 2003 RED LIGHTS by Cédric Khan 2001 BLANCHE by Bernie Bonvoisin 1992 TANGO by Patrice Leconte 14 15

9 The three balls were created by three major choreographers, and dancers in France today. Almost all the dancers belong to the Paris Opera Ballet (including Etoile dancers) thanks to the support of Brigitte Lefèvre, director of Dance in Paris Opera Ballet. CAROLYN CARLSON Dancer in the Alwin Nikolaïs company for seven years in New York, Carolyn Carslon is invited in the 70 s in the Paris Opera Ballet by Rolf Liebermann as a choreographer-star dancer, where she creates the Group of theatrical researches of the Opéra de Paris. She created in 1999 the Atelier de Paris. She received numerous prices among which The Victory of Musique for Signs in 1998, the Knight s badge of the Legion of Honour in She created more than 70 choreographies presented all over the globe. KADER BELARBI (1st Ball) Etoile Dancer at Paris Opera Ballet. Kader Belarbi enters the dance school of Paris Opera Ballet in 1975, and begins dancing to dance for Paris Opera Ballet at the age of 18. He is promoted Etoile after the Noureev representation of the Sleeping Beauty. He has also created 20 choreographies. He received the Nijinski Price in 1989, he was appointed Arts & Letter Chevalier in 1994, and he received the National Order of Merit in YUTAKA TAKEI (2nd Ball) Yutaka Takei s been dancing in Carolyn Carlson company since He also works also with young choreographers such as Pantxika Telleria. He has also developping its own experience of choreographing in France, Italy, and Japan, and he created his own company in 2002 Forest Beast. YANN BRIDARD (3rd Ball) First Dancer in Paris Opera Ballet. Yann Bridard enters the dance school of Paris Opera Ballet in 1983, and begins dancing to dance for Paris Opera Ballet in He turns out First Dancer in 1996, and is cast in various creations. In June 2003, he creates his first choreography shown for the first time in the Bastille Opera

10 The Queen Aurore The King Solal The Paintor The King advisor The Prince Abdallah The Prince of Neufchatel The Prince Thang Kai CAROLE BOUQUET MARGAUX CHATELIER FRANÇOIS BERLÉAND ANTHONY MUNOZ NICOLAS LE RICHE THIBAULT DE MONTALEMBERT KADER BELARBI YANN BRIDARD YUTAKA TAKEI Director NILS TAVERNIER Script NILS TAVERNIER, MARJOLAINE NONON, MARC QUENTIN & JEAN COSMOS. Director of Photography ANTOINE ROCH Costumes YVONNE SASSINOT DE NESLE Set designer EMMANUELLE DUPLAY Sound FRANÇOIS SEMPÉ, EMMANUELLE LALANDE & CHRISTIAN FONTAINE Editing FLORENCE RICARD Music CAROLIN PETIT Producer EMILIE GEORGES - LA CINEFACTURE Co-produced by FRANCE 2 CINEMA With the support of ILE-DE-FRANCE REGION, CANAL +, TPS, CNC, QUINTA International Sales MEMENTO FILMS INTERNATIONAL 18 19