Tout un hiver sans feu (2004)

User Rating:

7.3/10   

Director:

Greg Zglinski

Writer:

Pierre-Pascal Rossi (written by)

Release Date:

23 September 2005 (Poland)

Genre:

Drama

Plot:

Six months after losing their five years old daughter in a fire in the barn of their little farm, Jean...

Awards:

3 wins & 3 nominations

Cast

Aurélien Recoing	...	Jean
Marie Matheron	...	Laure
Gabriela Muskala	...	Labinota
Blerim Gjoci	...	Kastriot
Nathalie Boulin	...	Valérie
Antonio Buíl	...	Aquilino
Michel Voïta	...	Roger Mabillard
Gilles Tschudi	...	Assureur
Roland Vouilloz	...	Jojo
Bernard Kordylas	...	Chef d'atelier
Frédéric Landenberg	...	Dédé
Jorge Lopez	...	Ernesto
Jean-Marie Daunas	...	Félix
Mufide Rrahmani	...	Ana
Visar Qusaj	...	Visar

Also Known As:

All Winter Without Fire (Canada: English title) (festival title)
One Long Winter Without Fire (UK) (festival title)

Runtime:

Italy:88 min | Canada:90 min (Vancouver International Film Festival)

Country:

Switzerland | Belgium

Language:

French | Albanian

Color:

Color

Sound Mix:

Dolby Digital

Certification:

Switzerland:14 (canton of Zurich) | Belgium:KT | Switzerland:12 (canton of Geneva) | Switzerland:12 (canton of Vaud)

Company:

CAB Productions

Trivia:

Selected as the official entry from Switzerland in the Best Foreign Language Film for the 2006 Oscars.

Heartbreakingly beautiful

Beautifully shot, directed and acted, this is an understated but poignant exploration of grief and compassion. This quietly powerful story with its subtle, deep portraits of people's inner lives, their suffering and healing, is moving exactly because it avoids the traps of pushing the easy buttons and exploiting emotions in a simplistic way. And while the movie is slow and achingly sad at the beginning, it is by no means a "difficult" or "abstract" film to watch. The people, though they are clearly superb actors in a drama and not documentary subjects, are as earthy as they come, and they are real to the viewer in the way that great actors in a classic play are real (the main character brings to mind the great Bruno Ganz). The picture was shot in Switzerland, in a region I am myself familiar with, and the stark and beautiful landscape provides a wonderful metaphor for the foreground drama. However, this is not a particularly "Swiss" movie; rather, the characters are archetypes, and their drama is a universal drama, that is unfolding in many places and ways as we speak.