In Case I Never Win the Golden Palm

Taking the adage, “Write what you know,” to absurd extremes, French Jewish writer-director Renaud Cohen (whose last feature film, Once We Grow Up, opened the 21st SFJFF in 2001) has made a self-referential comedy about— get ready—a French Jewish film director who hasn’t made a film in more than a decade. When we first meet the hapless, underemployed Simon Cohen— played by (who else?) the director himself—he has started attending a support group for ex-filmmakers, struggling to kick their addiction to moviemaking. After losing a bet to a friend, he shaves his head, only to discover a strange cranial lump that may or may not mean his life is ending. On the way to an existential crisis—Can he ever make another film? Will he never win the top prize at Cannes?—he bucks the advice of skeptical collaborators and goes into production on the only film he knows he can make: the one about the life he is living. This gentle satire, featuring actors as their real-life counterparts, has a self-effacing indie-film whimsy, playing like a nebbish cousin of Truffaut’s Day for Night.

Renaud Cohen, 36 years old, made nine short features and documentaries before writing and directing ONCE WE GROW UP, his first feature film. Cohen earned a masters degree in Chinese language and civilization in 1988 and, in 1992, he graduated from France's most prestigious film school, the FEMIS, with a degree in film directing. From 1996-1999, he directed three documentaries about life in contemporary China, including LES PETITS PAINS DU PEUPLE (THE PEOPLE'S CAKE, 1999), which was broadcast on the French-German television channel ARTE. Cohen has won several awards, including a special jury prize at the Edinburg Film Festival for his film REFLECTIONS OF A BOY. ONCE WE GROW UP opened at more than a dozen theatres in the Paris metropolitan area and received excellent reviews from Le Monde and Cahiers du Cinema.