EXCLUSIVE: Reel Suspects boards On the Edge

 

French outfit Reel Suspects, headed up by Matteo Lovadina, has just acquired the international sales rights for On the Edge by Belgium’s Guérin van de Vorst and Sophie Muselle. The sales will kick off at the 39th Mar del Plata Festival (21 November-1 December), an Argentinian event that constitutes Latin America’s only A-list festival, where the film will be world-premiered in competition.

The film follows in the footsteps of a self-willed and idealistic young woman called Alexia, a trainee nurse who arrives at a closed ward of a psychiatric hospital, where she meets head-nurse Joëlle who teaches her all she needs to know about the profession. Alexia finds herself moved by angry Beline, a 20-year-old patient who doesn’t think she should be there. Despite Joëlle’s warnings to keep a distance from patients, Alexia grows close to Beline and fully invests herself in getting her out.

The filmmakers’ aim with this project is to question the conditions in which psychiatric patients are admitted, cared for and treated. Desperately overworked care teams often struggle to provide adequate support, prioritising the most urgent cases and finding themselves wrestling with ethical and emotional dilemmas. Psychologist, playwright and director Sophie Muselle has been exploring “madness” for many years now, orchestrating stage shows and writing workshops in league with mental health service-users. When Guérin Van de Vorst (to whom we owe The Faithful Son [+], released in 2017) came across her work, he sought to devise a fiction film with Muselle which would tackle these topics.

The lead role is entrusted to young Belgian actress Mara Taquin, whose phone hasn’t stopped ringing since her discovery in Belgium via the hit series Public Enemy and in France via The Specials, having appeared in The Hive, Zero Fucks Given and The Sitting Duck , and soon in La Petite and Matins.

La Vocation will be produced by Benoît Roland on behalf of Wrong Men, who also supported Guérin Van de Vorst with his first feature film. The movie’s Belgian partners already include Proximus, VOO & Be TV, RTBF, and Casa Kafka Pictures, with the film also enjoying backing from the Wallonia-Brussels Federation Film and Audiovisual Centre.

Wrong Men are currently firing on all cylinders, notably on account of their double selection in Cannes, via Baloji’s debut feature film Omen in the Un Certain Regard section (where the work nabbed the New Voice Award) and Claude Schmitz’s The Other Laurens  in the Directors’ Fortnight. Wrong Men have also just produced Valéry Rosier’s latest film (see above), as well as developing first feature films by Alexe Poukine and Jean-Benoît Ugeux, to name just two, staying true to their auteur-centric policy.