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Somebody Told Me About Carla Bruni

Client: Isis Productions for France 2, Sundance Channel & Naïve

A film profile of one of the most famous women on the planet.

London based Isis Productions garnered exclusive and intimate access to the supermodel turned musician turned First Lady of France, Carla Bruni-Sarkozy. The resulting film is a candid and striking portrait of a woman admired and revered for her beauty and dignity, but largely unknown on a personal level outside her inner circle.

From Carla herself and family members we learn about her privileged yet fraught childhood and adolescence. Carla’s mother was a successful concert pianist in the 1970s while her father, an industrialist, was also a composed and director of the second biggest opera house in Italy.

We see the woman behind the front pages and learn how she, the youngest of three children born into a very wealthy family – and a woman who despite her stunning looks never felt attractive. She is an intellectual with a great love of literature and language, and yet she often lacked confidence.

The film tells the story of the key events of her life, and the effects they had on her; the death of her brother and the shocking deathbed revelation of her father and she is candid about her inner demons.

The story of her work as a supermodel is also covered and how, during that time of her life, Carla discovered what she had always known deep down, that she was a musician and wanted, even needed, to make music. At the age of thirty-five, she became a successful singer, with her very first record selling over two million copies across the globe.

And then, in November 2007 she met and fell in love with the freshly elected President of France, the most charged political figure of that country for many years, and seemingly overnight, became the First Lady of France.

Her newfound, iconic position, with its attendant responsibilities and the intense glare of the World’s media daily upon her, could threaten to undermine lesser women. Here, against a background of the recording of Carla’s third album, entitled “Comme di de rien n’était” (‘As if nothing ever happened’), leaks of which have got gossip columns around the World’s tongues wagging, we get an exclusive audience with this enigmatic woman.

With a stellar cast of interviewees, new performances of her songs and privileged access to Carla at her home, at her family home in the South of France and at the Elysée Palace, this is the first and only film to show Carla Bruni – the girl, the woman and the First Lady.

Featuring

MARIANNE FAITHFULL, BERTRAND DE LABBEY, VINCENT PEREZ, DOMINIQUE ISSERMAN, VALERIA BRUNI TEDESCHI, FRANÇOISE HARDY, JULIEN CLERC, DOMINIQUE BLANC FRANCARD, MARISSA BRUNI TEDESCHI, PATRICK ZELNIK, JOHN GALLIANO

DIRECTOR