THE LAST SHOT

full length film (90 min) 35 mm colour

Directed by Benoît Peeters

Festivals of Locarno, Cairo, Cottbus, Brussels…

The story of a man who wanted to forget his life

and to whom another man comes to recount it...

Virgil, a young Roumanian film maker, arrives in Paris with his little camera. He has come to follow the trail left by his fellow countryman, the famous writer Constantin Dolinescu, who, after numerous books and several years in prison, has exiled himself in France with the idea of making a film. But this project had turned into a fiasco ; the script was revised endlessly, one producer remplaced another, and Dolinescu himself, incapable of directing the actors, completely fell apart.

Virgil uncovers all these escapades little by little, via interviews with the parisian intelligentsia: Pierre Arditi, Erik Orsenna, Jean-Michel Jarre, all of whom were involved in the affair. But as to the fate of Dolinescu, nobody can - or will - say anything. And Virgil adds a strange sort of fervour to the quest - implying strongly personal reasons for his actions.

It is finally Sonia, the leading lady of the unfinished film, who enables him to track down the writer. But from then on, the search and its filming are revealed as nothing more than pretexts, obscuring family dramas, complex romantic attachments, not to mention several broken lives. Virgil, having come to make a film about someone else, has succeeded in telling his own story.

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