Love on strike at the Grand Théâtre Lumière

In his thirty years of career, Radu Mihaileanu has won eighteen prizes. He is selected for the first time In Competition at Cannes with The Source an Oriental fable worthy of A Thousand and One Nights.

iEvery day, the village women climb up the mountain to collect water at the source with their yoke across their shoulder. It has been this way since the dawn of time, until the day that they decide to break the mould. From that moment they decide to withdraw all sexual favours and will carry on until things change.

In this imaginary village, far from all prejudice, Radu Mihaileanu packs the whole culture of the arab-muslim woman of the world. What is really her role? How does she live? A long period of documentation was necessary for the director of Concert and Va, vis et deviens in order to write his cinematographic fable. “We went to meet women from villages like ours: they told us a mass of stories. We made real friends, discovered a wealth of riches.”

The Source is an ode to women. It celebrates beauty and freedom, “it’s a cry of love from women to me saying, ‘love us and look at us!'” In the skin of his women we find Leïla Bekhti in the role of Leïla, who is at the origin of the village’s protest, accompanied by Hafsia Herzi, également vue en Compétition dans House of Tolerance.

T.K.

The Source is screened at 8.30am and 7pm in the Grand Théâtre Lumière