Diamant Noir
Arthur Harari
Pier Ulmann lives hand to mouth in Paris, between building sites and petty thefts for Rachid, his only “family”. His life catches up with him the day his father is found dead in the street, after a long decline. The bête noire of the rich family of diamond dealers based in Antwerp, he has nothing left, apart fro the story of his banishment by the Ullmans and a bitter thirst for revenge. Pier is invited to Antwerp by his cousin Gabi to renovate the offices of the prestigious Ulmann company. Rachid's advice is simple: “Go there to have a look around, and to take stuff”. But a diamond has many facets…
With : Niels Schneider, August Diehl, Abdel Hafed Benotman, Han-Peter Cloos, Raphaële Godin, Raghunath Manet, Jos Verbit, Guillaume Verdier, Hilde Van Mieghem
Screenplay : Arthur Harari, Vincent Poymiro, Agnès Feuvre
Image : Tom Harari
Sound : Ivan Dumas, Pieter Deweirdt, Alek Goosse
Editing : Laurent Sénéchal
Screenplay : Arthur Harari, Vincent Poymiro, Agnès Feuvre
Image : Tom Harari
Sound : Ivan Dumas, Pieter Deweirdt, Alek Goosse
Editing : Laurent Sénéchal
Production : © LFP-Les Films Pelléas / Savage Film / Frakas Productions / France 2 cinéma / Jouror Productions
Distribution: Ad Vitam Distribution
Distribution: Ad Vitam Distribution
Born in Paris in 1981, Arthur Harari studied cinema at University. He made several short and medium length films, including La Main sur la gueule in 2007, which won several awards including the Grand Prix at the Brive Festival and the Lutin Award for the best short film, and more recently Peine perdue, Grand Prix for short films at the 2013 Festival Entrevues de Belfort. He is also occasionally an actor (La Bataille de Solférino by Justine Triet in 2013). Diamant noir is his first feature.
Diamant noir is a story of family vengeance, in an environment which surprisingly has never been the central focal point of a fiction film: the diamond quarter in Antwerp. Discovering this environment was the starting point, since I found there an unexpectedly rich source of material, combining cosmopolitanism and complex families stories, sagas of capitalism and craft, and above all a passion for a genuinely fascinating object: diamonds. I used this realistic material to try and make a fully rounded, novelistic film using the conventions of a genre film right through to its tragic resonances. The film noir is an an excitant way of depicting simultaneously a specific reality and a tragic individual story. I chose to root this story in the framework of a family, it is because the question of the mythical imagination, which I am fascinated in, is central to it. Each family is embodied in a story which has something of the mythical for those that inherit it. Seen from this angle, a family is not a closed cell, looking no further than its own codes and neuroses. On the contrary, it maintains a passionate and complex relationship to the world. For Pier Ulmann, the film's hero, the myth he has to struggle with is as much an alienation as a potential force. It is this struggle, combining blindeness and deliverance, that I wanted to present in Diamant noir.
Diamant noir is a story of family vengeance, in an environment which surprisingly has never been the central focal point of a fiction film: the diamond quarter in Antwerp. Discovering this environment was the starting point, since I found there an unexpectedly rich source of material, combining cosmopolitanism and complex families stories, sagas of capitalism and craft, and above all a passion for a genuinely fascinating object: diamonds. I used this realistic material to try and make a fully rounded, novelistic film using the conventions of a genre film right through to its tragic resonances. The film noir is an an excitant way of depicting simultaneously a specific reality and a tragic individual story. I chose to root this story in the framework of a family, it is because the question of the mythical imagination, which I am fascinated in, is central to it. Each family is embodied in a story which has something of the mythical for those that inherit it. Seen from this angle, a family is not a closed cell, looking no further than its own codes and neuroses. On the contrary, it maintains a passionate and complex relationship to the world. For Pier Ulmann, the film's hero, the myth he has to struggle with is as much an alienation as a potential force. It is this struggle, combining blindeness and deliverance, that I wanted to present in Diamant noir.