Max Richter has recently been working on the score for the sci-fi movie The Congress. The project reunites Richter with director Ari Folman who previously collaborated with the composer on the Academy Award-nominated animated documentary Waltz with Bashir. The film is an adaptation of the novella The Congress from sci-fi writer Stanislaw Lem (Solaris) and will be half live action and half 2D animation. Robin Wright stars as a struggling actress who is offered one last job by a major studio. They want to scan her body, own her image and likeness and use it anyway they want, with the catch being that she will never be able to act again. Paul Giamatti, Harvey Keitel, Kodi Smit-McPhee and Danny Huston are co-starring. The film isn’t expected to be completed before 2012 or 2013.
Richter also has a couple of movies opening this year. The French drama Sarah’s Key (Elle s’appelait Sarah) premiered at last year’s Toronto Film Festival and has been picked up for domestic distribution by The Weinstein Company. The film is directed by Gilles Paquet-Brenner and stars Kristin Scott Thomas, Melusine Mayance and Niels Arestrup. Scott Thomas plays an American journalist living in Paris. While she is researching the World War II Vel d’Hiv roundup of Parisian Jews by the French police, she stumbles on a terrible secret. Sarah’s Key is currently scheduled to open in the US on July 22, 2011. For more details on the project, visit the official movie website.
Also coming up for the composer is the romantic thriller Perfect Sense. David Mackenzie (Young Adam, Mister Foe, Asylum) directed the film starring Ewan McGregor, Eva Green, Connie Nielsen and Ewen Bremner. The movie follows the story of an epidemiologist who reemerges from an affair gone sour and encounters a peculiar patient who has lost his sense of smell. The film premiered at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, where it was picked up by IFC Films for domestic distribution. No release date has been announced yet.
Also expected to be released this year is the European drama Womb, which Richter scored last year. The movie directed by Benedek Fliegauf and starring Eva Green, Matt Smith and Lesley Manville also premiered at last year’s Toronto Film Festival and has been picked up by Olive Films for a theatrical release this year. Richter has also scored the French drama Impardonnables directed by Andre Techine and starring Carole Bouquet, Melanie Thierry and Andre Dussollier. The film is scheduled to open this summer in France. Finally, the documentary How to Die in Oregon, which premiered at Sundance also features a score by the composer. The movie about Oregon’s historic and controversial Death with Dignity Act, which legalizes physician aid-in-dying for some terminally ill patients is set to premiere on May 26, 2011 on HBO.
