| La Faute à Fidel | |
|---|---|
Blame it on Fidel poster |
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| Directed by | Julie Gavras |
| Produced by | Sylvie Pialat Mathieu Bompoint |
| Music by | Armand Amar |
| Cinematography | Nathalie Durand |
| Editing by | Pauline Dairou |
| Distributed by | Koch-Lorber Films |
| Release date(s) | September 10, 2006 (France) August 3, 2007 (USA) |
| Running time | 99 minutes |
| Country | France / Italy |
| Language | French |
Blame it on Fidel (French: La Faute à Fidel) is a 2006 French drama film directed by Julie Gavras.
Contents |
A 9-year-old girl, Anna de la Mesa (played by Nina Kervel), weathers big changes in her household as her parents become radical political activists in 1970-71 Paris. Her Spanish-born lawyer father Fernando (played by Stefano Accorsi) is inspired by his sister's opposition to Franco and by Salvador Allende's victory in Chile; he quits his job and becomes a liaison for Chilean activists in France. Her mother (played by Julie Depardieu) a Marie Claire journalist-turned-writer documenting the stories of women's abortion ordeals, supports her husband and climbs aboard the ideological bandwagon. As a result, Anna's French bourgeois life is over. She must adjust to refugee nannies, international cuisine and a cramped apartment full of noisy revolutionaries.
The film covers an array of philosophy and ideology - everything from Communism to Catholicism to Greek and Asian mythology - which Anna must reconstruct from confusion into her own set of beliefs. As she negotiates her way through this ideological maze and ultimately internalises her parents' well-meant (albeit ad-hoc) objectives, she must deal with stereotyping, misinformation, the potential hypocrisy of ideology and the potentially false hope of idealism.
Blame it on Fidel won the MPA's Michel D'Ornano Prize for a promising first French film.
The film had its New York City premiere on August 3, 2007.