Lionel Baier’s ‘Continental Drift (South)’ Brings Europe’s Growing Pains to Cannes

variety.com:

JD Linville Swiss filmmaker Lionel Baier (“Stealth,” “Longwave”) has completed the third movement in his sweeping film tetralogy concerning Europe with “Continental Drift (South).” The film, which debuts at the Cannes Directors’ Fortnight, sees Baier shifting his focus southward to Sicily in 2020, just prior to the COVID-19 pandemic and deep within the European migrant crisis.Isabelle Carré (“Remembering Beautiful Things,” “Mademoiselle Else”) plays Nathalie Adler, who has been dispersed to a migrant camp in Catania, Sicily ahead of a visit from Macron and Merkel only to find her pugnacious son Albert, played by Canadian Théodore Pellerin (“Genesis,” “My Salinger Year”) working against her interests as an activist.

The film, which is produced by Bandita Films with RTS and Les Films du Losange handling sales, strikes a balance between political satire and heartfelt drama, as Nathalie and Albert push and pull, magnetic at the edges of their estrangement.

Europe cleverly serves as both vibrant backdrop and catalytic metaphor as the pressure builds around parallel narratives.Variety spoke with Baier ahead of the film’s world premiere at Cannes.“Continental Drift” is the third in a collection of four films you’re making with Europe as a central theme.

Can you talk about the way this collection came about?When I began the first film, it was a film about my family. My family comes from Poland, and I decided to go there to make a kind of “eastern Western” because Poland had just become part of the European Union in 2006.