A jackpot. Created just two years ago, the new film production company Scala Films, led by Mélanie Biessy, arrives at 77e Cannes Festival with the first three films she co-produced, all selected: Spectators by Arnaud Desplechin (in special session), Mercy by Alain Guiraudie and It’s not me ! a self-portrait by Léos Carax (both screened as part of Cannes Première).
Read the article : Article reserved for our subscribers Cannes Film Festival: the selection for the 77th edition revealed
Add to your selections
From the outset, Mélanie Biessy warns that she remains first and foremost managing partner of the Antin Infrastructure Partners investment fund, which she created in 2007 with Alain Rauscher. A fund specializing in infrastructure financing (airports, highways, renewable energies, etc.) which has more than 250 employees between Paris, London, New York and Luxembourg.
It is precisely the success of this finance specialist that allows her to invest in cinema. Between 1 and 1.5 million euros per year intended to implement four to five films each year. Its cruising speed. “It’s private money that I bring to the service of art, which I don’t put into life insurance,” she says.
“Art-house films that are not smooth”
With her husband Frédéric Biessy, the two created La Scala Paris seven years ago, a performance hall built on the ruins of a forgotten café-concert from thee district of Paris. This project quickly spread with the opening of another room, La Scala Provence in Avignon where an artist residency gradually emerged, then a recording studio for the Scala Music label and more recently the Ecole Supérieure. arts of laughter. Forty creations and a million spectators on the clock.
Cinema is her business, her preserve. Mélanie Biessy reads the scripts alone, and does not hide the fact that her long-time friend, the producer Charles Gillibert, opened the way for her. Scala Films acts either as a co-producer or as a distributor in the various projects. The Intervista law firm negotiates its interests to best ensure revenue returns.
Read the interview with Jérémy Ferrari, comedian, and Frédéric Biessy, director of La Scala: Article reserved for our subscribers Jérémy Ferrari, comedian, and Frédéric Biessy, director of La Scala: “The appetite for humor is such that we need to start training people”
Add to your selections
Mélanie Biessy has a predilection for “arthouse films that are not smooth”. And gives creators, established or emerging, the time necessary to complete their project, from writing the script to the end of filming. She thus accompanies the dissident Russian filmmaker Kirill Serebrennikov who adapts The Disappearance of Josef Mengele, the novel by Olivier Guez about the flight of the Nazi doctor to South America at the end of the Second World War. This feature film is currently in post-production.
You have 16.13% of this article left to read. The rest is reserved for subscribers.
