You may know French director Laurent Slama from his Netflix debut feature Paris Is Us, an immersive street movie about a young woman (Versailles‘ Noemie Schmidt) walking around Paris that he presented under the pseudonym Elisabeth Vogler. Or you may have seen his second feature, A Second Life, which world premiered at Tribeca and follows a young woman (Titane‘s Agathe Rousselle) with a hearing impairment looking to secure a steady job as the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris kick off.
If you enjoyed either, or both, including all those real people and locations featured in them, thanks to the creator’s DIY guerrilla approach, Slama has his eyes on a new project in his trademark style coming for you.
He revealed that he is working on a new feature during a Q&A after a screening of A Second Life late on Tuesday at the 59th edition of the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival (KVIFF) where it received its European premiere.
Describing it as “a thriller in Paris shot in the same way,” meaning “this kind of shooting where you don’t know if these are real people or actors.” He added: “It’s a hostage movie.” He didn’t mention any actors and told THR that “it’s untitled” at this stage.
Laurent Slama, second from the right, at a Karlovy Vary festival Q&A (Courtesy of Georg Szalai)
Asked about his name change as a filmmaker, Slama explained: “It is like marking the end of this period [of my filmmaking]. And I wanted to also use my mother’s name now. And now I can move onto a new [stage].”
The Elisabeth Vogler name was a nod to the name of the character Elisabet Vogler, a well-known stage actress who suddenly stops speaking, portrayed by Liv Ullmann, in Ingmar Bergman’s Persona.
A Second Life also stars Alex Lawther, Suzy Bemba, and Jonas Bachan. THR‘s review of the movie highlighted: “A Second Life manages to avoid most of the clichés of your touristy Paris-set drama, all while using the City of Lights to its fullest.”