Michel Franco

Michel Franco (born August 28, 1979 in Mexico City ) is a Mexican filmmaker .

Life

Michel Franco started filmmaking during his studies. After various short films and commercials, he was invited to the side series Quinzaine des Réalisateurs in Cannes in 2009 with his feature film debut Daniel & Ana . The drama, based on real events, tells of the trauma of the eponymous siblings (played by Marimar Vega and Darío Yazbek Bernal ), who were kidnapped by a gang and forced to have sex together in front of the camera. Three years later, Franco received the main prize in the Un Certain Regard section for Después de Lucía, also in Cannes . The film is about the bullying and later rape of a 17-year-old girl by classmates as well as vigilante justice. Después de Lucía was submitted by Mexico in 2013 as an entry for the Academy Awards in the category Best Foreign Language Film , but was not shortlisted.

In 2014 Franco realized his third feature film A los ojos together with his sister Victoria . The drama is about a single mother and social worker who tries by all means to rid her son of his degenerative eye disease. With the exception of the main actress Mónica Del Carmen , the cast consisted of young amateur actors who lived on the streets. A year later, the film 600 Millas (2015) produced by Franco was presented at the Berlinale in the Panorama section and awarded as the best debut film. He also acted as the producer of the Venezuelan-Mexican film Caracas, a love of Lorenzo Vigas , who also won the Golden Lion at the 2015 Venice Film Festival .

Franco also became known to a larger international audience in 2015 for his first English-language feature film Chronic . The drama about a male nurse (played by Tim Roth ) who devotedly accompanies three terminally ill patients in the last weeks of their lives earned the filmmaker his first invitation to the competition at the Cannes Film Festival and praise from critics. The festival jury in Cannes awarded the film the script award . It was inspired by the close relationship between Franco's own terminally ill grandmother and her nurse. Film and lead actor Roth were later nominated for the American Independent Spirit Award . Despite this success, Franco returned to Mexico and Spanish-language cinema with the following, award-winning family drama Las hijas de Abril (2017). For the title role, the famous Spanish actress Emma Suárez was engaged, who is unexpectedly confronted with the pregnancy of her 17-year-old film daughter (played by Ana Valeria Becerril ).

With his dystopian film Nuevo Orden , which will premiere in September 2020 at the Venice Film Festival and will be presented at the Toronto International Film Festival in the same month , Franco wanted to draw a dystopia of the near future. Using this genre, he explores current topics, but without the obligation to remain true to reality. Franco names the dystopian film A Clockwork Orange by Stanley Kubrick as influences , but also other films and books such as 1984 or Alfonso Cuarón's film Children of Men .