Editor

55th Berlin International Film Festival
Berlin - Official Selection Opening Night - In Competition

MAN TO MAN -(FRANCE-UK)by RÉGIS WARGNIER (Indochine, Est-Ouest)

CAST ATTENDING BERLIN:
JOSEPH FIENNES (Luther, Shakespeare in Love), KRISTIN SCOTT-THOMAS (Four Weddings and a Funeral, The English Patient), IAIN GLEN (Gorillas in the Mist), HUGH BONNEVILLE (Notting Hill), LOMAMA BOSEKI, CÉCILE BAYIHA

1870. Young Scottish doctor Jamie Dodd and adventuress Elena van den Ende journey into the dark heart of unexplored Equatorial Africa in search of the origins of Mankind. Returning to Edinburgh with two captured pygmies, Toko and Likola, dreaming of glorious posterity, Jamie immerses himself in the study of these 'missing links'.

But the pygmies' mute presence drives a wedge between him and his colleagues, who consider Toko and Likola nothing more than living specimens. Jamie comes to acknowledge his captives as intelligent, sentient fellow beings, provoking scorn and eventual exclusion from the scientific community.

Cruelly exhibited at Edinburgh Zoo, the pygmies are condemned to a bleak future of humiliation and degradation.

Jamie's decision to help them costs him career, friends and love: he embarks on a crusade that seems doomed to defeat. But Toko and Likola prove to be extraordinary allies.

From their silent, sacred union, they draw the strength to defy their enemies. Can the rightness of a cause - the battle for liberty and truth - be enough to overcome the arrogance of men who, in the name of all-powerful science, would deny others their very humanity?

DIRECTOR'S BIOGRAPHY

Régis Wargnier began his cinema career in 1972 as assistant director on Michel Deville's "La Femme en bleu" (The Woman in Blue) and Francis Girod's "Le Grand frère" (The Big Brother) and "Le Bon plaisir". In 1986, he made his first full-length feature, winning the César for Best First Film for "La Femme de ma vie" (Women of My Life), in which he painted the portrait of a violinist in the grips of alcoholism.
After "Je suis le seigneur du château" (I'm The King Of The Castle), Wargnier embarked upon the historical epic "Indochine", which won the Oscar for Best Foreign Film in 1993 and gave Catherine Deneuve the César for Best Actress. Deneuve worked with Wargnier again in 1999 in "Est-Ouest" (East-West), alongside Sandrine Bonnaire and Oleg Menshikov. The film followed "Une femme française" (A French Woman), which starred Emmanuelle Béart as a woman whose husband was imprisoned during World War II.