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Alfonso Cuarón Kicked Off a Program Dedicated to Alain Tanner with the Screening of CHARLES MORT OU VIF at the 22nd FICM

Omar Sosa

With the aim of honoring the memory of a fundamental figure of Swiss cinema, the 22nd Morelia International Film Festival (FICM) presented the Alain Tanner Program.

The screening of Charles mort ou vif (1969, dir. Alain Tanner) was presented by acclaimed Mexican director Alfonso Cuarón and Daniela Michel, founder and director of FICM.

For Cuarón, the Swiss director has a strong influence on the way he perceives and makes films. “He is a filmmaker who had a great impact when I saw him as a teenager for the first time. So much so that my eldest son is named after one of his films: Jonas qui aura 25 ans en l'an 2000,” said Cuarón.

Charles, mort ou vif is the director's first fiction film where he presents several of the themes arising from the 1968 movement in Paris, which he was interested in developing in his filmography because he believed in the possibility of a new and better relationship between humans. “The main theme is the tension between society and the individual but also between melancholy and optimism. There is a very great tension in these forces,” Cuarón said of Tanner's filmography.

“For him, freedom is only understood through community,” he added. Cuarón commented that for Tanner, hope and the possibilities for real change are in the younger generations, in the future.

“Time is a very important part of his work, so much so that in this film the main character is a watchmaker,” said the Mexican director. To begin the screening, Cuarón thanked Ronald Chammah, the French filmmaker present in the theater, who made the screening of the Alain Tanner Program possible thanks to his work and interest in restoring Tanner's films.