| Paris, Je t'aime | |
|---|---|
Theatrical release poster |
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| Directed by | Various |
| Produced by | Emmanuel Benbihy Claudie Ossard |
| Written by | Various |
| Starring | Various |
| Music by | Various |
| Distributed by | La Fabrique de Films (France) First Look Pictures (USA) Maple Pictures (Canada) |
| Release date(s) | 21 June 2006 |
| Running time | 120 minutes |
| Country | France |
| Language | French |
| Budget | $13,000,000 (estimated)[1] |
| Box office | $17,471,727 |
Paris, Je t'aime (French pronunciation: [pari ʒə tɛm]; Paris, I love you) is a 2006 anthology film starring an ensemble cast of actors of various nationalities. The two-hour film consists of eighteen short films set in different arrondissements. The 22 directors include Gurinder Chadha, Sylvain Chomet, Joel and Ethan Coen, Gérard Depardieu, Wes Craven, Alfonso Cuarón, Nobuhiro Suwa, Alexander Payne, Tom Tykwer, Walter Salles and Gus Van Sant.
The film premiered at the 2006 Cannes Film Festival on 18 May, opening the Un Certain Regard selection.[2] It had its Canadian premiere at the Toronto Film Festival on 10 September and its U.S. premiere in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania on 9 April 2007.[3] First Look Pictures acquired the North American rights, and the film opened in the United States on 4 May 2007.
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Initially, twenty short films representing the twenty arrondissements of Paris were planned, but two of them (the XVe arrondissement, directed by Christoffer Boe, and the XIe arrondissement, by Raphaël Nadjari) were not included in the final film because they could not be properly integrated into it. Each arrondissement is followed by a few images of Paris; these transition sequences were written by Emmanuel Benbihy and directed by Benbihy with Frédéric Auburtin. Including Benbihy, there were 22 directors involved in the finished film.
The 18 arrondissements are:
Julio Medem was attached to the project for a long time. He was supposed to direct one of the segments, but this finally fell through because of scheduling conflicts with the filming of Caótica Ana (2007).
Paris, je t'aime is the first feature film to be fully scanned in 6K and mastered in 4K in Europe (as opposed to the normal 2K). Encoding the image took about 24 hours per reel (at Laboratoires Éclair).
As the film is a collection of shorter segments, there were many producers attached to the project.
Following the success of Paris, je t'aime, a similarly structured film, New York, I Love You, focusing on life in that city, premiered at the 2008 Toronto Film Festival and was released in a limited number of theatres in 2009.
The Cities of Love website states that there are 3 more movies in the series to be released. They include Rio, Eu Te Amo, Shanghai, 我爱你 and Jerusalem, I Love You. All 3 films will follow the same style with no fewer than 10 short films using their respective city as the main unifying character. The films are slated for release around 2010-2013.