Rivière | Hugues Hariche

[BluBonnet]

Pensive Locarno Title ‘Rivière’ Drops Trailer, Poster

Ahead of its Locarno Festival world premiere, sales agent Outplay Films (“León”) has dropped an international trailer and poster for coming of age drama “Rivière,” an earnest take on adolescence and the way youth negotiates trauma.

“Riviére,” the debut feature of Hugues Hariche, will bow in the Festival’s Cineasti del Presente strand which highlights first and second feature-film debuts from emerging directors, sometimes uncovering exceptional talent. It follows Manon (Flavie Delangle), 17, as she abruptly returns to her hometown of Belfort, France in an attempt to reconcile with her estranged father. Near-orphaned by circumstance, she blends effortlessly into the scenery, taking up with local teens at the neighborhood ice rink. They maneuver their traumas with nuance while hockey and figure-skating act as vehicles that portray the script’s tensions, never the film’s primary focus.

Manon is determined to make it as a professional ice hockey player.

“I love sports, but I wasn’t interested in just making a sports movie. I’m more interested in relationships, especially during the teenage years,” Hariche told Variety. “ I use sport because it’s a good base to build a story. It’s very visual. So I don’t have to have these kids in a room, or something like that. I put them outside and in a rink and that gave me many tools to play with, building the story around that.”

Produced by Switzerland’s Beauvoir Films, producer of Berlinale Encounters double winner “The Girl and the Spider” and co-producer of Cannes Special Screening “Marguerite’s Theorem,” “”Rivière” is co-produced by Paris-based Les Films D’Argile (“Olho Animal”) with Swiss distribution rights handled by Outside The Box.