In a year during which the Cannes Film Fest appears to have put its succession difficulties behind it, internecine wrangling has broken out at the sidebar Directors Fortnight.
Organizers announced last week that Pierre Reilhac, in charge of logistics at the sidebar since 1999, will replace outgoing Regine Hatchondo as managing director.
But Hatchondo, who was head-hunted for a more prestigious job at Paris City Hall's new film bureau, isn't the only recent departure.
After seven years as the sidebar's publicists, Florence Bory and Jean Charles Canu were told their services would no longer be required.
Highly miffed, the two fired off an open letter to the Societe des Realisateurs de Films, which created Directors Fortnight in 1968, accusing Marie-Pierre Macia of compromising the sidebar's independence since she took over as artistic director three years ago.
The two complained of a "real disagreement" over the direction in which the new management is taking Directors Fortnight.
Among their gripes, the two claim Macia's regime kow-towed to Paris mayor Bertrand Delanoe, Hatchondo's new boss at City Hall, during last year's Quinzaine, and offered its screening and press facilities to an "unworthy" film produced by Unifrance president Daniel Toscan du Plantier.
But Macia, who worked for the San Francisco Film Fest for a decade before her nomination at Directors Fortnight, blames her accusers of being motivated by revenge and of being "stuck in 1968."
The sidebar topper says she will name new publicists in plenty of time for the upcoming fest preparations.
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