21/10/2024 - Salome Dewaels plays the heroine in the third fiction feature by the Belgian filmmaker, produced by Stenola Productions and co-produced by KG Productions

Today, 21 October, marks the start of the shoot for the third fiction feature by Belgian director Micha Wald, L’Ile de la demoiselle (lit. “The Island of the Young Lady”), in Brittany.

Wald made a name for himself in 2004 with his short film Alice and I, which was selected for the Cannes Critics’ Week and was subsequently screened at other festivals. In 2007, he released In the Arms of My Enemy [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile], a historical film that was set in the mid-19th century, on the plains of Central Europe, and which was also selected for the Critics’ Week. Two years later, the helmer made the offbeat comedy Simon Konianski [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Micha Wald, director of Sim…
film profile]. He also co-wrote Cavale [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile] by Virginie Gourmel and is active as a producer, most notably for the film Adieu Sauvage [+see also:
film review
interview: Sergio Guataquira Sarmiento
film profile] by Sergio Guataquira Sarmiento, which won the Magritte Award for Best Documentary last year.

Lying somewhere between witchcraft trial and survival story, L’Ile de la Demoiselle is an ambitious historical drama, set in the 16th century – more specifically, in 1542, the year Jacques Cartier embarked on his second mission to Canada. Pregnant by another man than her husband-to-be, the captain of the expedition, young Marguerite de la Rocque, is abandoned on a desert island off the coast of Newfoundland with the man who raped her and her female companion. She will spend two years there, somehow overcoming hunger, the bitter cold, despair and madness.

To step into the shoes of Marguerite, the filmmaker had his heart set on promising young Belgian actress Salomé Dewaels, who came to the attention of the general public and the film industry in Lost Illusions [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Xavier Giannoli
film profile], which earned her nominations for the César and Magritte Awards for Most Promising Actress, and who was glimpsed earlier this year in Headwind. She will be playing opposite young French actor Louis Peres (who turned heads in Honey Cigar [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Kamir Aïnouz
film profile] and For Night Will Come [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Céline Rouzet
film profile]) as well as Candice Bouchet (who was also among the cast of Lost Illusions and was recently in All to Play For [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Delphine Deloget
film profile]) and Alexandra Lamy (in this year’s The Green Deal), who will play the Queen.

L’Ile de la demoiselle is being staged by Anton Iffland Stettner and Eva Kuperman for Stenola Productions. The film is being co-produced by Czar (Belgium) and Alexandre Gavras for KG Productions (France), and as things stand, it has secured backing from the Wallonia-Brussels Federation Film and Audiovisual Centre, RTBF, Proximus, BeTV, Shelter Prod, the CNC, the Brittany region, Canal+, Ciné+ and Creative Europe – MEDIA. The international sales will be overseen by Pulsar Content, while the French distribution will be handled by The Jokers. The shoot, which kicks off on 21 October, will wrap on 10 December, and will take place in both Brittany and Brussels.

(Translated from French)