‘Gagarine’ Star Alseni Bathily Joins Linda Lô’s Buzzy ‘Lucky Girl’ From France’s Maneki Films (EXCLUSIVE)

variety.com:

John Hopewell Chief International Correspondent Alseni Barthily, who headed Cannes 2020 main competition breakout “Gagarine” is set to star in “Lucky Girl,” the feature debut of Linda Lö set up at France’s Maneki Films, which is shaping up as one of the buzz titles at the Marrakech Festival’s 2024 Atlas Workshops.

Selected in the Workshops’ Projects in Development showcase, “Lucky Girl,” also written by Lô, begins during a vacation in Bordeaux, where Lili, 4, and her brothers, aged 9 and 20, are left to their own devices when their flamboyant mother returns without them to Gabon to run her restaurant- discotheque.

Depicted in three acts – as a little girl, teen and young woman – Lili grows into Linda, determined to make her mother proud and reconnect with her African heritage. “‘Lucky Girl’ is inspired by Lô’s own experience when, as a very young girl, along with her older brothers, she unwillingly migrated to France while their Cameroonian mother stayed in Gabon.

Expanding on Lö’s short “We Had Fun” in its ambition, scale and fantasy tropes, “Lucky Girl” underscores a new cinema at the Atlas Workshops projects that bucks traditional social drama. “Following Lili at three different ages allows me to make a story of a great magnitude that revisits three decades on three continents,” Lö told Variety. “Even when success and happiness are found, I believe many migrants never totally recover.