EXCLUSIVE: Here’s your first trailer for German director Kilian Riedhof’s drama You Will Not Be Hateful to Me based on the true story of a man’s quest to rebuild his life without hatred after his wife was killed in the 2015 Bataclan attack in Paris.
The Locarno Film Festival 75th Edition will present the film in French at a Piazza Grande Screening.
The work is based on the bestselling novel of the same name by French journalist Antoine Leiris, recounting his journey as he rebuilt his life and that of his young son following his wife’s murder alongside 89 other people in a terror attack on the Bataclan concert hall in Paris on November 13, 2015.
Leiris’s story garnered attention in France and internationally after he posted an open letter on Facebook to his wife’s killers, saying: “On Friday night, you stole the life of an exceptional being, the love of my life, the mother of my son, but you will not have my hate.
The film was produced by Toni ErdmannJanine Jackowski and Jonas Dornbach are the team at Komplizen Film, a German production house. They co-produce with Haut Et Court and Frakas Productions. Beta Cinema sells internationally.
Pierre Deladonchamps plays Antoine and Camélia Jordana, the wife, with other cast members including Zoé Iorio, as the child, Christelle Cornil, Thomas Mustin and Anne Azoulay.
You Will Not Be Hateful to Me is Riedhof’s second feature after the 2013 German hit Rejoin the Track.
Riedhof recounted how he was introduced to Leiris’s book by an aunt: “I read it all in one go and was deeply moved. Moved as rarely before after reading a book. Perhaps because Antoine’s life circumstances before the attack are so close to my own – my daughter is almost the same age as Melvil. The next day I told my co-authors Jan Braren and Marc Blöbaum about the story during a brainstorming session. Firstly, I was going to read them a few paragraphs, and ended up reading the whole book. They had tears in their eyes. That’s when we knew we had to do this.”