A desperate director, a powerless institution and a production company torn apart: these are the ingredients of a story that shook up the small world of cinema.
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It's an environment where, more than anywhere else in Luxembourg, everyone knows everyone, everyone works with everyone else and it's difficult to criticise someone you might work with in the future. In this closed environment, it's very hard to get people to talk, and it's easy to tell when a journalist is starting to 'poke around'.
Luxembourg cinema sector could not survive without subsidies from the Film Fund, the public institution that acts as the sector's top dog, judging the projects submitted to it and generously reimbursing the expenses allocated so that Made In Luxembourg can shine internationally. This is a clear commitment on the part of the government, and everything is transparent. To exist in the country, projects have to appeal to the Film Fund, which is ultimately the sole judge in the matter. But public funding isn't everything, and raising money abroad is also a constant preoccupation for local production companies, who have to contend with increasingly fierce international competition. All of this at a time when the independent film industry is struggling to find a place for itself in cinemas. Finding outside financing is often seen as a guarantee of quality for the Film Fund, but if others are betting on the film, the risk is divided and the chances of shining are multiplied.
Against this backdrop, artist Alain Tshinza is trying to keep his documentary project, Boxing Stories, alive and kicking by revealing a chaotic situation in the production company that took on his project. Different players are passing the quid, complaining to the police and calling each other names in a clearly poisonous atmosphere. It's hard to navigate when the versions differ so widely that even the Film Fund, which is supposed to be a neutral referee in this matter, gets confused. We had to ask twice whether the Boxing Stories project had been registered for production. A technical detail that made all the difference: the project had been registered in the Fund's software, but had not been validated by an executive producer. So it was submitted, but not validated. The devil is always in the detail.
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