Directed by Charles Nemes, « Au Bistro Du Coin » (somewhere between the « bar down the street » and the « local pub ») is a comedy taking place – most obviously – in a bar, with all its regulars. Written by Fred Testot and Brigitte Tanguy, readapted by Lionel Dutemple (who also writes for the very popular French political satire TV show Les Guignols de l’Info), the film brings life to a whole range of high-colored characters though a string of short stories entangling and crossing their ways along the same day.

The storyline plots the efforts of the people of the neighborhood to set up a show in aid of the homeless, also the perfect excuse to create scenes of inflamed discussions, light-hearted rows and unlikely friendships.

Above all, the particularity of this film is its simultaneous release… in 7 languages: French, but also Breton, Alsatian, Picard, Corsican, Creole, and Occitan. Producer Sébastien Fechner explains how this approach owes a lot to Fred Testot, one of the authors, who is originally from Corsica: Very soon we thought it would be fun to have our film dubbed in Corsican, and from one thing to another, we thought « Why not in Breton? And Alsatian? Picard? Occitan? Etc. » Eventually these few ideas we thought were a little crazy brought together some of what our partners had in mind, so we just decided to go for it. Now the film is about to be released simultaneously in six regional languages as well as French, which forced us to postpone the release so we could finalize each of the different versions.

But what sounds easy in words isn’t necessarily easy in real life. First, each version cost 90,000€, and finding that kind of money for a film in regional languages in times of financial crisis has been everything but easy. Then they had to create dubbing networks for the languages that didn’t have them, train people, set up studios… and redo the credits adding 300 new names!

Here at Sorosoro we’d be most curious to find out what you language lovers think of this original initiative…