November 1st: THE STRANGE COLOR OF YOUR BODY'S TEARS (Cattet & Forzani, 2013)

A man's wife goes missing, and cryptic clues lead him to investigate the mysterious neighbors and hidden places in his apartment building.

Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani are both French by birth, but met in Brussels, Belgium. Partners personally as well as professionally, they made a series of short films before their 2009 feature debut Amer brought them international attention for its stylistic nods to the classic Italian giallo films of  director Dario Argento and his contemporaries. Made on a very low budget, the filmmakers recorded a lower-quality version by themselves before shooting the actual production with actors.

After a contribution to the horror anthology film The ABCs of Death, the couple managed to secure funding for a script they had been working on since 2002. Written into the screenplay were a number of musical cues from the aforementioned 1970s films, including works by Ennio Morricone.

While Amer was shot on location in Forzani's hometown area in the south of France, for their follow-up they returned to their current city of residence in Brussels, and was a France-Belgium-Luxembourg co-production.

Similar to their previous works, dialogue in the film is minimal, and perhaps for that reason (or a tribute to the common practice in 1960s-70s Italian moviemaking), the scenes were shot without sound, with all of the effects and voices recorded during post-production.

The Strange Color of Your Body's Tears premiered at the Locarno Film Festival in Switzerland, and also showed at the Toronto International Film Festival, Austin Fantastic Fest, and other horror festivals around the world. It received mostly favorable reviews.

For the 5th Magritte Awards bestowed by Belgian film professionals, it received 4 nominations, including best costume design, best production design, best sound, and won the award for its cinematography by Manuel Dacosse.

Running time is approx. 100 minutes.