Fanny Ardant, special guest of the TIFF 2018

     Fanny Ardant returns to Romania as a special guest of the Transilvania International Film Festival (May 25-June 3, Cluj-Napoca).
The 17th edition of Romania’s largest and most important film event features a section dedicated to the great French artist, Close-up Fanny Ardant, which consists of two exceptional roles selected from among the over 100 played by her, alongside two films directed by Ardant herself. At the TIFF closing gala held on June 2nd, at the National Theater in Cluj, Fanny Ardant will recieve the Transilvania Lifetime Achievement Trophy.
In over 40 years of career, Fanny Ardant conquered the world, playing not only in France, but also in Spain, Italy, England, Israel, germany, Switzerland and lat but not least, Hollywood. She worked with important directors like Claude Lelouch, Alain Resnais, Costa Gavras, Volker Schlondorff, Michelangelo Antonioni, Sydney Pollack, Franco Zeffirelli, or Ettore Scola, and played alongside Gérard Depardieu, Vittorio Gassman, Jean Rochefort, Danielle Darrieux, Catherine Deneuve, Harrison Ford and Cate Blanchett, Penelope Cruzor Jean-Louis Trintignant and many others.

One of the most important collaborations for Ardant was working with legendary French New Wave director Francois Truffaut, who also became her life partner. 
After seeing her play in the TV series Les dames de la côte, Truffaut decided to cast her alongside Depardieu in The Woman Next Door/La femme d'a coté (1981); the film brought her first nomination to the César Awards. Two 

years later, the actress` name was again on the short list of nominations, for playing the part of Barbara becker, the secretary-detective, in Truffaut`s last film, Finally, Sunday/(Vivement Dimanche). This noir comedy, nominated at the BAFTA Awards for Best Foreign Film, will be seen at TIFF this year.
In 2009, Ardant makes her directorial debut with Ashes and Blood / Cendres et sang, which was included in the official selection of the Cannes Film Festival. The screenplay written by Fanny Ardant herself is based on a short story written by Ismail Kadare and it depicts a woman`s drama, forced to raise her three children alone, after her husband`s being murdered. Co-produced with Libra Film, the film was 90% shot in Romania, with an international cast that includes Romanian actors like Adrian Păduraru, Ion Besoiu, Răzvan Vasilescu, Tudor Istodor and the late Olga Tudorache. The TIFF screening is dedicated to this great actress which left us last year..
The other film directed by Fanny Ardant and presented at TIFF is Stalin’s Couch  / Le divan de Stalin(2016), an adaptation of the eponymous novel by Jean-Daniel Baltassant, which looks at the last days of the Soviet leader through the story of a young artist commissioned to make a monument dedicated to Stalin.
 One of Ardant’s most recent and daring appearances on the big screen is the 2017 Locarno premiere Lola Pater (dir. Nadir Moknèche, 2017). Fanny Ardant easily plays the part of a transsexual woman who makes peace with her son, she had abandoned during the transition.

     Details: www.tiff.ro