Maltese premiere for micro-budget French cult film tomorrow

The French 'guerilla' film Donoma will have its Maltese premiere next Wednesday, with a one-off screening at The British Legion Bar, Melita Street, Valletta - forming part of the Kinemastik Film Club.

Directed by Paris-based French-Haitian auteur Djinn Carrenard, the film is a rapid-fire journey into the heart of Parisian sub-cultures, presenting a kaleidoscope of relationships and conflicts, zooming in on the country's young immigrant population.

Blackly comic and tragic in turn, the unvarnished production makes for a heady spectacle - so much so that, following Carrenard's foray into micro-budget filmmaking, Donoma was sold to French-German channel Arte, and received support from the Cannes independent film wing 'L'ACID'.

In a review of the film, The Hollywood Reporter commented on how Carrenard's film depicts a raw and realistic vision of contemporary Paris, in all of its bustling variety.

'As the stories progress, the many conversations, têtes-à-têtes and shouting matches reveal how relationships must forever stand the test of each lover's personal baggage - which, in today's multicultural Paris, is one highly marked by both ethnic origin and the social divide.'

Matthew Connolly of Slant Magazine comments on the film's dynamic structure, saying that 'Carrenard's deft interweaving of his various plot strands sticks with you. The slowly revealed connections between characters is less a neat mosaic than a knotty web, with many threads left intriguingly blowing in the breeze'.

Among the cast of Donoma are Sékouba Doucouré and Laura Kpegli - both of whom were in Malta over the past year to appear in the local film production Simshar. The rest of the cast includes Derou-Bernal, Salome Blechmans, Vincente Perez, Matthieu Longatte, Delphine II, Laetitia Lopez and Marine Judeaux.

The screening will start at 20:45. Entrance is free to Kinemastik members, against a €1 donation for the rest. For more information, log on to www.kinemastik.org.