François Dupeyron died at the age of 65. He was a social and daring filmmaker – Télérama.fr

François Dupeyron died at the age of 65 following a long illness, will we learned this Thursday, February 25, 2016 with his family. He had made a dozen films, including “Funny place for a meeting”, “The House of officers” or “My soul healed by you.”

it was a lookout. Sensitive, lucid, why not combative. François Dupeyron died today at the age of 65, following a long illness. From him, we will keep the memory of a social filmmaker says otherwise conscious of others, especially the losers, the excluded, the battered life. Social but not necessarily realistic: most of his films side with the dream or storytelling, how to escape a little bit to the prison daily

This was the case of his latest film. My soul healed by you (2013), strongly defended in our pages. The story of an epileptic giant with gentle eyes (remember Grégory Gadebois), both with and overwhelmed by his gift of healing, which wants to change his life and who is overtaken by his fate. Around him in a harsh Midi mobile home, away postcards, quite flustered or ailing people, the sick, a moving alcoholic beautiful (Céline Salette) … The picture was black but pierced by rays sun.

the pessimism Dupeyron was still energetic, still tense towards the thrilling hope. A heart that beats (1990), that was also the title of a film of it, feverish but misunderstood. A strong and heartbreaking love story against the backdrop of Barbès and Pigalle, with Dominique Fraysse, his partner in life.

He started in the political struggle – the same one he pursued all his life, in his way, experimenting different modes of production and distribution of films. While student Idhec (film school, forerunner of Femis) Dupeyron had been very active in Cinélutte, collective of filmmakers (comprising among others Jean-Pierre Thorn and Richard Copans), from May 68, realized good number of shares and workers’ strikes in the 70s.

A priori, he turns his back on it all, with his first feature-length fiction film, strange place for a meeting (1988), served by two monsters sacred, Catherine Deneuve and Gerard Depardieu. A motionless adventure, bizarre and bold, on a highway rest area, which already reflected the taste for fantasy Dupeyron, the sleepless nights, attractions against nature. This attempt, unusual, which certainly marks the birth of a filmmaker, is also to share in his work. Subsequently, especially after the failure of Machine (1994), adapted from a novel of Belleto, Dupeyron is surrendering the big budgets, putting less on stars, recruiting more discreet actors (as Eric Caravaca the faithful present in four of his films).

in 2001, he differs with the officer’s Ward , beautiful film about a broken faces of room-1914- 1918. Dupeyron do nothing sweetens the ravages of war, while revealing a different kind of war, intimate, from the depths: the men apart, faced with shame, self-hatred. How to escape the death instinct? How to return to life when everything seems cooked, finished? This has been the central issue of his film, sincerely, deeply attached to the human, whether breeder Cevennes ( What is life? ), mother of famile black ( Help yourself and heaven will help you ) or clandestine Kurdish (in Inguélézi ).