Land of Madness

Colour, 35 mm
France, 2009, 90 min
IP – International premiere
Section: Documentary Films in Competition

Synopsis

"The great-grand-nephew of the great grandfather of my great-great-grandmother one day took a pickax to kill the village mayor, his wife, and the forester who was guilty of having moved his goat ten yards away. It provided me with a good starting point... There have been other similar occurrences in the family.” Thus writer-director Luc Moullet on his latest feature film, in which he analyzes the unusually fecund occurrence of psychological disorders and their attendant misconduct during the past century in a remote southern French region at the base of the Alps. Does a connection exist between a rudimentary thyroid gland, isolation, or the abundance of religious sects and the most multifarious kinds of murder and suicide? Blessed with an infectious obstinance and his characteristic dry humor, Moullet studies the causes and consequences of a phenomenon that falls into the so-called pentagon of madness.

About the director

Luc Moullet (b. 1937, Paris) was a passionate film fan even as a boy. At age 18 he began writing for Cahiers du cinéma, and there he met Truffaut, Godard, Rivette, Chabrol, and Rohmer. He has written essays on Luis Buñuel, Fritz Lang, and King Vidor. Several shorts at the beginning of the 1960s led to his first feature, Brigitte et Brigitte, in 1966. To date he has turned out 38 movies in a wide variety of styles and genres (comedy, adventure, erotica, detective, road movie, and western), which are united by a single phenomenon – their creator’s passion for the comic. After a 40-year hiatus, Moullet returned to Cannes’ Directors’ Fortnight section with his latest film Land of Madness.