{"id":636525,"date":"2026-10-20T18:02:11","date_gmt":"2026-10-20T18:02:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/636525\/"},"modified":"2026-10-20T18:02:11","modified_gmt":"2026-10-20T18:02:11","slug":"only-what-we-carry-team-sets-trafalgar-with-fanny-ardant-danny-huston","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/636525\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Only What We Carry’ Team Sets ‘Trafalgar’ With Fanny Ardant, Danny Huston"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tFresh off the festival run of \u201cOnly What We Carry,\u201d <\/a>the offbeat indie drama starring Quentin Tarantino, actor-producer Liam Hellmann<\/a> is making his feature directorial debut with \u201cTrafalgar,\u201d led by an international ensemble including Fanny Ardant<\/a>, \u00c9lodie Bouchez, Danny Huston<\/a> and Stacy Martin.<\/p>\n

\n\tNow in post-production, \u201cTrafalgar\u201d reteams Hellmann with producer Charles Benoin, his partner on \u201cOnly What We Carry,\u201d which premiered at Tribeca and played at the Deauville American Film Festival last month, with cast members Simon Pegg and Sofia Boutella in attendance.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe pair have taken an even bigger gamble with \u201cTrafalgar,\u201d assembling a high-profile cast for a film shot in just 12 days, with no conventional screenplay and a \u20ac1.3 million budget. Instead of a script, the actors worked from a seven-page outline, drawing on their own family experiences to shape the dialogue and characters.<\/p>\n

\n\tInspired by Hellmann\u2019s own family, the film follows a young man raised in a household dominated by women who sets out to find the father he has never known. But the reunion takes an unexpected turn when he discovers that he must settle his father\u2019s debts, forcing him to raise \u20ac80,000 in just one week. His dysfunctional family rallies to help him, eventually plotting a robbery. Ardant plays the grandmother, Bouchez the mother, Martin the sister, Huston the estranged father, Lou Lampros the girlfriend and Khaled Alouach the best friend.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tLiam Hellmann and Danny Huston in \u201cTrafalgar\u201d <\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWhen I met Liam six years ago, he immediately told me about \u2018Trafalgar.\u2019 Little by little, the project began taking shape as something very personal and close to Liam\u2019s real life and his family situation. But at 21, regardless of where you come from, there was almost no chance of getting a film like this made as a directorial debut,\u201d says Benoin, who is producing via his company Atlas Pictures. \u201cThen we made \u2018Only What We Carry,\u2019 and that gave us the momentum to take on \u2018Trafalgar.\u2019 I told Liam, \u2018We can do it!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tHellmann says he went through roughly 60 versions of the screenplay before abandoning the idea of a conventional script altogether. He eventually settled on a four-page outline \u201cbuilt around situations and ideas,\u201d which expanded to seven pages after he met with the actors and asked them to share stories about their own families.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWe all have slightly crazy families. Every actor came in with things from their own family and added them to the film,\u201d Hellmann says.<\/p>\n

\n\tThat approach helped Hellmann win over actors who might otherwise have been reluctant to sign on to such an unconventional project.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cBy letting everyone bring something personal, we managed to attract all these actors,\u201d Hellmann says. He recalls meeting Huston over lunch in London and asking him about his relationship with his father. \u201cHe told me anecdotes that he eventually ended up telling in the film.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tDanny Huston in \u201cTrafalgar\u201d <\/p>\n

\n\tThe actors also helped shape their characters before cameras rolled. Hellmann met several times with Bouchez, who plays his mother, to develop their on-screen relationship.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cLiam sat down with \u00c9lodie like four times before filming. He asked her, \u2018How do you see your relationship with your son?\u2019 The idea was to create something halfway between what \u00c9lodie wanted to communicate as a mother and what Liam wanted to communicate as a son,\u201d Benoin says.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWe took what we\u2019d discovered was possible with \u2018Only What We Carry\u2019 and pushed it further. With \u2018Trafalgar,\u2019 Liam really wanted to push the actors out of their comfort zones,\u201d Benoin explains, citing inspirations ranging from the Coen brothers to Pedro Almod\u00f3var and C\u00e9dric Klapisch in the depiction of family dynamics.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe production brought together French, British and Italian crews, with Italian cinematographer Vladan Radovic, camera operator Leonardo Kurtz and costume designer Fabienne Menguy among the key collaborators.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe film was financed primarily through private investment, alongside French tax-credit support. Its executive producers include Alan Ganansia, Th\u00e9odoros Ornithopoulos, Alain Heinz, Vivianne Vidal de la Blache, Delphine de Causans, Gaspard Madec, Manuel Millet and Orama.<\/p>\n

\n\tRather than relying on the traditional French financing model, which typically involves a mix of broadcaster investment, distributor advances and public subsidies, Hellmann and Benoin turned primarily to private investors, including \u201centrepreneurs from outside the film industry looking to diversify into cinema and support emerging filmmakers.\u201d The pair had already tested this approach on \u201cOnly What We Carry,\u201d and Benoin said it gave them greater flexibility and allowed them to move quickly into production, a key advantage to secure the cast. <\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIf we\u2019d told Tarantino or Gainsbourg to come back in seven months, they might not have been able to block out six days,\u201d Benoin said, referring to their experience on \u201cOnly What We Carry.\u201d \u201cThe urgency is part of what attracts the actors. Either they want to be part of making the film happen, or they don\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe unconventional financing structure did not prevent the filmmakers from securing a traditional theatrical distributor. J\u00e9r\u00f4me Hilal\u2019s French distribution company Zinc boarded \u201cTrafalgar\u201d before the full cast was assembled and will release the film in French theaters.<\/p>\n

\n\tFor Hellmann, \u201cTrafalgar\u201d is also a response to what he sees as an increasingly standardized filmmaking landscape.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI think there are a lot of films that look alike today, with the same structures because everyone knows exactly how everything works,\u201d he says. \u201cWith this film, we accepted from the beginning that we had no control because there was no script. It\u2019s about a dysfunctional family, and the film itself is dysfunctional.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tFanny Ardant in \u201cTrafalgar\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Fresh off the festival run of \u201cOnly What We Carry,\u201d the offbeat indie drama starring Quentin Tarantino, actor-producer…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":636526,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[151295,156,312013,312014,409,111,139,69],"class_list":["post-636525","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-danny-huston","tag-entertainment","tag-fanny-ardant","tag-liam-hellmann","tag-movies","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/636525","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=636525"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/636525\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/636526"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=636525"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=636525"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=636525"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}