Messer im Herz
In the summer of 1979, Paris-based filmmaker Anne is a producer of third-rate gay porn. After her editor and lover Lois leaves her, she tries to win her back by shooting her most ambitious film yet with her trusted, flamboyant sidekick Archibald. But when one of her actors is brutally murdered, Anne gets caught up in a strange investigation that turns her life upside-down.
Messer im Herz is a noir/slasher thriller in the world of Parisian homosexual pornography in the 1970s. A producer of gay films (the magnetic and masculine Vanessa Paradis) is put to the test: her love affair with Loïs (Kate Moran) – a relationship born in the editing room – is in danger and a serial killer is systematically killing her actors. The talented Yann Gonzalez plunges us into the strong, dark and attractive colors of transgression and obsessions. He depicts a visual and human underground world that absorbs and reflects so much reality and regenerates it with imagination. His provocative and visionary atmospheres do not lack irony, they are full of references to a certain genre cinema and overlays that are amplified by a hypnotic and modern soundtrack. There’s also a cameo by Bertrand Mandico that symbolically embraces this world and the visual act that accompanies it.
Maria Cera
About the Director
After getting a degree in Art History by the UAB (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona), and having coursed a master in Cultural Management in 2000, Elena Trapé entered the ESCAC (Escola Superior de Cinema i Audiovisuals de Catalunya) determined to be a film director. In 2004 she graduated in Cinema Direction with the project I don’t want the night, her first short film, for which she received several awards. Pyjamas (2008), was her second short film (Gijon Film Festival, Valencia Cinema Jove festival, etc.) The downfall was her first TV film, shooted in summer 2008 and nominated on the best TV film category at the 2009 Gaudi’s awards. In 2010 her first feature film, Blog, was released at the San Sebastian International Film Festival (Zabaltegi Section) winning the Otra Mirada Award and nominated as Best Breakout Director at the CEC Prizes (Circle of Cinematographic Critics). She has recently directed the documentary Palabras, Mapas, Secretos y Otras cosas, about the cinema director Isabel Coixet, premiered in Malaga Film Festival 2015. Professionally she combines the development of her own fiction projects and the advertisment direction in different production companies. Distances is her second feature film project.
