Seule à mon mariage (Alone At My Wedding) chosen in Cannes ACID selection
Seule à mon mariage (Alone At My Wedding), a Belgian film by Marta Bergman, will be part of the ACID filmmakers’ programme (Association pour le Cinéma Indépendant et sa Diffusion) at the Cannes International Film Festival. Produced by Frakas Productions, the film’s main actors are the young Romanian Alina Serban and the Belgian Tom Vermeir who had a lead role in Felix van Groeningen’s Belgica.
Alone At My Wedding is the first feature-length fiction film by Bergman, a graduate of Institut Supérieur des Arts (INSAS), the Belgian film school. The Bucharest-born director is known for her documentary films, in which she has explored Romania, and more specifically, the Roma communities.Her documentaries have been shown at prestigious festivals such as Visions du Réel and the Leipzig Film Festival.
The film is the story of Pamela, a young Roma who is insolent, spontaneous, funny, and different from the other women in her community. She is a single mother living with her grandmother and her little girl in a small hut where the three of them share a bed.The film examines how she can reconcile the needs of her two-year-old daughter and her dream of freedom. Pamela embarks on a journey into the unknown, breaking away from the traditions that suffocate her. “Lapin, pizza, amour”. All she has are three words in French and the hope that marriage will change her and her daughter’s destinies.
Alina Serban, born into a Roma family in Romania, plays the role of Pamela.She is an actress and director, and studied drama in Bucharest, then at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA) in London and the Tisch School of the Arts in NewYork. Alina Serban is very committed to the cause of the Roma community and made her name in the theatre world with her one woman show, I Declare at My Own Risk, which she both wrote and performed, including at many European theatres.
For 25 years, ACID has been presenting a parallel programme at the Cannes Film Festival, comprising around 10 films, which it then supports until after their release. Some 15 filmmakers, members of ACID, choose the programme, which includes French and foreign features, fiction and documentaries, selected from several hundred submissions from all over the world. Each year, ACID filmmakers accompany some 40 feature films to over 400 independent cinemas and festivals, cultural venues, and universities in 20 countries.
The following films have been shown in the Cannes ACID programme: Kaouther Ben Hania’s Challat of Tunis, Olivier Babinet’s Swagger, Serge Bozon’s L’Amitié, Alain Gomis’s L’Afrance, Ursula Meier’s Strong Shoulders, Yolande Moreau and Gilles Porte’s When the Sea Rise, and Justine Triet’s Age of Panic.