︎

The Ugly one

1 h 41, 2013
︎︎︎ PRESS KIT • TEASER • MUBI

Winter, Beirut. On a beach littered with cans washed up from the sea, Lili and Michel meet. Or perhaps they know each other from before… As they struggle to piece together the fragments of an uncertain past, memories emerge: an act of terrorism, an explosion and the disappearance of a child, Elena.

Woven throughout these fragments is the deep voice of a Japanese narrator who recounts his own experience of a weeping Beirut, and his 27 clandestine years fighting alongside the Palestinians as a member of the Japanese Red Army. His voiceover shapes Michel and Lili’s story, their fate dictated by the enigma created for them by this narrator who turns out to be legendary Japanese New Wave filmmaker Masao Adachi.

Set adrift, Michel and Lili search for themselves, navigating a sea delineated by the memories of Adachi the “ex-terrorist,” the screenplay he is spelling out for them, and the camera of the French director, Éric Baudelaire, whose film breaks away from the narrative instructions dispatched by Adachi from Tokyo.
With
Rabih Mroué (Michel)
Juliette Navis (Lili)
Masao Adachi (the narrator)
Manal Khader (Maria)
Fadi Abi Samra (Salim)
Rodney El Haddad (Khalil),
Hassan Mrad (Khaled)
Saleh Mohamed Daoud (the man in Shatila)
A film by
Éric Baudelaire
Based on a story told by
Masao Adachi
Screenplay
Éric Baudelaire
Laure Vermeersch
Rabih Mroué
Image
Claire Mathon
Sound
Philippe Welsh
Jean Holtzmann
Editing
Stéphane Elmadjian
Cécile Frey
Artistic collaboration
Éleonore Mahmoudian
Laure Vermeersch
Siska
Set Design
Nanou Ghanem
Costumes
Béatrice Harb
Production Manager
Guillaume Lefrançois
Line production
Orjouane Productions・Sabine Sidawi, Jinane Dagher
Production
Poulet-Malassis Films・Éric Baudelaire
With support from
Audi Talents Awards
Fondation Nationale des Arts Graphiques et Plastiques
CNC・DICRÉAM
Kadist Art Foundation
Beirut Art Center
DCP
1:2.35
5.1 sound
Japanese, Lebanese, English and French with English/French subtitles
DISTRIBUTION
LUX (UK)
FESTIVALS
Locarno Film Festival
DocLisboa
Dubai International Film Festival 
IFFR
Courtisane Festival
REVIEWS
The Anabasis & The Ugly one, Adam Kleinman, Art Agenda, January 2014
A Dirge to Love and Militancy, Jim Quilty, The Daily Star Lebanon, December 2013 
Locarno, palmarès sans tache, Bruno Icher, Libération, August 2013  
MORE RESOURCES
Q&A Film Society Lincoln Center, Rachael Rakes, Éric Baudelaire, Art of the Real, 2014





Poulet-Malassis Films 
c/o Éric Baudelaire studio
41 bis quai de la Loire, Atelier 304
75019 Paris FRANCE

info @ pouletmalassis . com