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French director Guillaume Maidatchevsky, in Paris on March 11th.
Photo: AFP / VNA / CVN |
Director of wildlife documentaries for France 2, France 5 or National Geographic, Guillaume Maidatchevsky signs his first fiction, which is aimed at a family audience, urged by his children, who wanted to know more about the reindeer of Santa Claus .
"My son, who was four years old at the time, thought the reindeer were flying like Santa's, and Aïlo + is the real life of Santa's reindeer, and they do not all fly!" , he jokes with AFP.
The film, accompanied by a commentary read by children's singer Aldebert, tells the first year of life of Aïlo, a small reindeer, since birth. He shows his awakening to the wild world, in beautiful landscapes, often snow-covered, and his fight for survival, in a nature populated by dangers, where coexist wolves, bears, wolverines, polar foxes or ermines.
In total, Guillaume Maidatchevsky and his team spent 150 days filming in Norway and Finland, bringing back 600 hours of rush, and decided to follow a particular reindeer that was born right next to them.
"As the female who gave life to this little reindeer stayed very close to us from the start, she passed on the trust to her little one", says the director. "We were able to create a relationship with Aïlo where he did not take care of us, we were an integral part of his flock".
In this film, which follows this reindeer but also the other animals that revolve around him, "I wanted to be interested not in the species I followed but in the characters", he said.
"To marvel first"
If Guillaume Maidatchevsky first wrote an 80-page script, with his story in mind, he then had to adapt to the images brought back each week, and rewrite his film according to them.
"I knew that the screenplay was going to explode because I film alive, an animal that is not impregnated, trained, who is not an actor"he explains. "It's not a documentary, it's a story, a tale, but everything is credible, I do not lie to the child," adds the filmmaker, who says to join the vein of Jean-Jacques Annaud The Bear.
"What he's going to see in the film, maybe there are still months and months to see that, but it exists in nature," continues Guillaume Maidatchevsky, who takes the opportunity to discuss in his film environmental issues, but in a discreet way, refusing to "to be moralistic". "If we want to protect we must first marvel", believes there.
Success in Finland, first country where he left on December 21st, Aïlo: an odyssey in Lapland, French-Finnish co-production mainly French, has exceeded 100,000 entries, and was for several weeks number one at the box office.
He was also well received by critics. For the everyday Helsingin Sanomat, "you have to be cynical enough not to be touched by the charm of Aïlo and other wild animals".
"Aïlo the reindeer of Posio (Municipality of Lapland, Ed) will soon conquer the world ", writes the newspaper Ilta-Sanomat.
Guillaume Maidatchevsky's feature-length film has become the most-watched French film of the last fifteen years, and the second-biggest hit of all time in Finland for a French film, just behind The fabulous destiny of Amelie Poulain, according to data provided by Gaumont, co-producer of the film.
"I was rather worried, because the reindeer, there is still a lot there, and I told myself they knew," stresses Guillaume Maidatchevsky. "But it worked.
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