Film Synopsis
Grieving photographer Carlota Cortés arrives back in Spain after a two-year hiatus, a solo world tour during which she took no photos. On the same day, her agency offers her a photo essay. Her anguish worsens when she discovers the theme: her journey.
Info box
Title: The journey
Length: 26 min
Genre: Experimental
Country of Origin: France
Completion Date: 2022
Director: Max Belmessieri
About the Director
After obtaining an Engineering degree in 1991, Max Belmessieri was hired by an electronics firm. During his tenure there he developed the “export” range of terrestrial television transmitters, allowing himself time to travel abroad, particularly in Africa.
In 1995, he launched his career in cinema, assumed the mantle of assistant director, and collaborated in particular on films by Francis Girod. During this time he frequently participated in scouting natural settings for films. From 2008, he became a location scout and honed his critical process toward the film set. To date he has collaborated on more than eighty productions for feature films and television series.
At the same time, he has written several screenplays, including “La Peau de l’Autre” (The Other’s Skin), his first feature-length screenplay and based on the murder of Rwandan President Juvénal Habyarimana which led to the genocide of the Tutsis.
Since 2016, he has been teaching location scouting in a high-level film school. With his students, he developed an innovative concept: the “five dramatic springs” of movie sets.
In 2021, he completed the last version of “Personne Ici” (Nobody Here), a short 35mm film and his very first solo production.
Between 2016 and 2020, every summer, he shoots in Super-8 with his wife Charlotte Denis. The major experimentation with these films is that they have no story at the time of filming, their eventual script being dictated by the footage at the time of editing. We could define this unique genre as “self-found footage”. The first film in a trilogy of this type is entitled “Un Castillo en España” (A Castle in Spain), and was completed in April of 2021. About the following two films, “El Viaje” (The Journey) was finished in 2022 and “Una Nube” (A Cloud) is in editing.
Max Belmessieri lives and works in Paris, France.