ACID, or Association du Cinéma Indépendant pour sa Diffusion, was born in the early 1990s from a simple observation: many films loved by their peers do not find their place in traditional distribution circuits. The association continues to work to circulate less visible films and strengthen the link between creation and audiences. This year, thirteen filmmakers watched hundreds of films to program nine of them. Among them are six first feature films, and as every year, attention was paid to films without distributors. In the selection, there is notably the documentary “La Détention” by Guillaume Massart, the punk fiction “Living Twice, Dying Thrice” by Karim Lakzadeh, “Mauvaise étoile” by Lola Cambourieu and Yann Berlier, and the animated film “Blaise” by Dimitri Planchon and Jean-Paul Guige. Through humor, fiction, or attention to detail, the filmmakers show the dysfunctions that run through our societies.
Pauline Ginot, general delegate of ACID, reflects on the eclecticism in programming: “It’s a kind of small miracle that happens annually, which I can’t really explain, especially since the committee is never the same. We don’t have a single direction, yet there is something that emerges over the years at ACID that is extremely strong. I can only salute a kind of overall cohesion that is formed, a kind of wheel that moves forward, which I can’t really explain mathematically. Afterwards, of course, we systematically try to focus on documentaries, seek out animation proposals, look for first and second feature films. At ACID, we are also very attentive to films made with very little money. So when we talk about little money, the numbers I’m going to give may scare the general public. But we often talk about films under 3 million, which are obviously huge sums in absolute value, but in cinema, they are actually small budgets. We pay very close attention to these films. [ellipsis] We are really here to promote the distribution of films that need it. And that’s why we work on these films with smaller budgets because often, the matching between a film’s budget and its future distribution are linked in France.”
