Silex Films » Archive

Jungle

A film by Louise Mootz

Synopsis

“Jungle” paints the intimate portrait of a tight knit group of Parisian women in their twenties as they wholeheartedly barrel through their colourful lives across Paris’ northern arrondissements.
A cliché-crushing portrait of true Parisiennes, living in a concrete jungle that screams “liberté, égalité, sororité” from the rooftops.
Louise Mootz's first film was selected at IDFA and received Best Mid-length international documentary at Visions du Réel Festival 2020.
JUNGLE is part of the Best Documentary Short official selection at César 2022.

Broadcast

Available online worldwide here on-tenk.com/fr/p/jungle until April 4, 2022

Partners

Presented by Binge Audio & Le Coeur sur la table

Awards

SHORTLISTED FOR THE DOCUMENTARY SHORT AWARD AT FRENCH CESAR 2022

BEST INTERNATIONAL DOCUMENTARY AT VISIONS DU REEL FESTIVAL 2020
Awards ceremony speech from the Jury (Manuel Abramovich, Pedro Fernandes Duarte et Simone Späni) :
"This film follows a group of women, friends and artists through their everyday joys and struggles with an impressive intimacy. A group who lives by their own norms and represents their own image of gender and culture by denying the usual societal gaze. Female and body empowerment, queer and cross-cultural. A film that challenges the system. Shot with a freedom, and energy, and an unexpectedness that defies the norms of filmmaking. A Paris which we've never seen represented on screen like this and which we'd like to see more of. A truly queer and feminist film with an unusual urgency."

Benoît Hické's opinion (Tënk.fr) :
"This intense film offers us a delve into the daily lives of a group of friends from northeastern Paris (a zone located between the Stalingrad and Gambetta quarters). It tears down frontiers, in a great cinematographic gesture. Through these blinding capsules of life, Louise de Mootz succeeds in offering a great film on the colours of life, on the night and the energies that run through them. She also successfully invents a colorimetry that embraces all the nuances, the collisions, the laughs and the tears, in this often raw Commedia dell’arte to which Bonnie, Dounia, Solveig, Héloïse and Lila surrender. A band of girls, sometimes wise to the world, always moving, who read "Masculine Domination" by Pierre Bourdieu, as they buzz around other girls and boys in bursts of laughter, or who struggle to conceal their profound sensitivity and fragilities, under their blue wigs. Behind this vivid documentary in contact with the streets of Paris, there is a reflection on the road to adulthood, on family, on sisters and, more particularly, on the capacity of cinema to render the very essence of life."

Technical film summary

Directed by : Louise Mootz
Edited by : Louise Mootz, Cécile Husson
Production : SILEX FILMS -  Priscilla Bertin & Judith Nora  // FRENZY PARIS - Elsa Rakotoson & Cédric Barus
Genre : Documentary
Length : 51 min

Casting

DÜNYA
LILA
HÉLOÏSE
BONNIE
SOLVEIG

Festival selections

Visions du Réel 2020 (Switzerland)
IDFA 2020 (The Netherlands) - Best of Fests
Film Festival Assen 2021 (The Netherlands)
Biografilm Festival 2021 (Italy)
Beat Film Festival 2021 (Russia)
ZagrebDox 2021 (Croatia)
Beldocs IDFF 2021 (Serbia)
Filmfest Sundsvall 2021 (Sweden)
EQUIS Festival 2021 (Ecuador)

Press review

“Un documentaire cash, un cri féministe, la naissance d’une réalisatrice viscérale. (…) un geste de cinéma spontané mais déjà impressionnant formellement (…) une ode à l’amitié féminine” Faustine Kopiejwski, LES INROCKS “Une plongée trash et rafraichissante dans la jeunesse d’aujourd’hui” TÉLÉRAMA “Rythmé, dynamique, à la construction libre et imprévisible comme ses héroïnes, ce documentaire montre des vrais corps, de vraies femmes qui assument leurs désirs et leurs pulsions.” Chloé Bergeret, NUMÉRO “Une mise en scène virtuose et une esthétique puissante. (…) Intense.” Faustine Kopiejwski, CHEEK MAGAZINE “Puissant” Titiou Lecoq “Un grand film sur les couleurs de la ville, sur la nuit et sur les énergies qui les traversent (…) Il abolit bien des frontières, dans un grand geste de cinéma” Benoît Hické “L’amour réinventé” Mariana Agier, SOROCINÉ “D’une énergie exaltante et d’une authenticité crue” Naomi Titti, LE COEUR SUR LA TABLE “[Jungle] déborde d’une énergie complice, propre à sa génération.” Marine Guillain, 20MIN.CH ” “Jungle,” (…) looks pretty confident, lifting the lid on Louise Mootz’s gaggle of brash, sexually assertive BFFs” John Hopewell, Jamie Lang, VARIETY

“Louise Mootz’ electric debut film is everything we love in a documentary… immersive, surprising, real and raw. (…) Open-minded, outspoken, liberated and full of life, theirs is a distinctly modern and urban outlook shared through intimate love confessions to camera, conversations at late night afterparties in smoke-filled apartments and exclaimed during mischievous street-lit escapades. Loud, unruly and unfolding across Paris’ northern arrondissements, “Jungle” is a refreshing antidote to Parisian clichés and the exhilarating dose of reckless joie de vivre that 2020 has left us all craving.”, DOC WEEKLY

TRAILER (French w/ English subtitles)

AWARDS CEREMONY SPEECHES FROM THE JURY AND DIRECTOR LOUISE MOOTZ AT VISIONS DU REEL FESTIVAL 2020 (in French)

EXTRACTS (in French)