Tribute to James Gray !

It all start­ed with a visu­al, sen­so­ry and emo­tion­al shock when an icy wind orig­i­nat­ing from Brighton Beach, a Russ­ian-speak­ing area in New York, blew on the Nor­mandy coast, thir­ty years ago. In Sep­tem­ber 1994, the screen­ing of LITTLE ODESSA at the Deauville Film Fes­ti­val was a rev­e­la­tion: that of an unknown direc­tor, bare­ly 25 years old, who, by throw­ing his first film into the vio­lence of a snowy Brook­lyn neigh­bor­hood, already demon­strat­ed all the tal­ent of a born filmmaker.

In just eight fea­ture films, James Gray has since estab­lished him­self as one of the most impor­tant direc­tors and screen­writ­ers of his gen­er­a­tion. A mod­el of integri­ty and artis­tic intran­si­gence, he con­tin­ues to posi­tion him­self on the bor­der between inde­pen­dent cin­e­ma and Hol­ly­wood stu­dios, occu­py­ing a spe­cial place in the con­tem­po­rary cin­e­mato­graph­ic landscape.

Although he has nev­er hid­den his admi­ra­tion for Fran­cis Ford Cop­po­la and the paint­ings of Edward Hop­per, James Gray remains above all one of the most Euro­pean Amer­i­can authors. A great admir­er of the New Wave, read­i­ly cit­ing Chabrol, Bres­son and Vis­con­ti as ref­er­ences, but also the lit­er­a­ture of Dos­toyevsky and the plays of Shake­speare, the film­mak­er inter­weaves exis­ten­tial­ist dra­mas. Whether they delve into the Ama­zon jun­gle (THE LOST CITY OF Z), ven­ture into space (ADASTRA) or remain uncon­di­tion­al­ly linked to the city of New York, his fea­ture films alter­nate gen­res, rang­ing from film noir (THE YARDS, WE OWN THE NIGHT) to the peri­od film (THE IMMIGRANT), through romance (TWO LOVERS), to con­struct a refined work, as inti­mate as it is melancholy.

Like the young main char­ac­ter of ARMAGEDDON TIME, his most per­son­al project to date, James Gray has always cho­sen to fol­low a life of free­dom and cre­ation. Thir­ty years after hav­ing award­ed him the Inter­na­tion­al Crit­ics’ Prize for LITTLE ODESSA, the Deauville Film Fes­ti­val there­fore wished to pay trib­ute to this great name of the sev­enth art. On this occa­sion, James Gray will be in Deauville for an excep­tion­al encounter. His entire fil­mog­ra­phy will also be screened dur­ing the festival.

Trib­ute to James Gray !