Camping du lac

"Something crazy happened to me that I want to tell you about," begins the voice of Eléonore Saintagnan in Camping du lac. It is almost summer and she is in need of the sea, but car trouble leaves the Franco-Belgian tourist stranded in the middle of Britain at a campsite around a lake. Legend has it that a monstrously large fish lives there, fulfilling the wishes of whoever catches it. While she waits, Eléonore observes the regular camp residents. What keeps them there anyway: the promise of a small miracle or the sense of community? Saintagnan is both the main character and director of this equally peculiar and poetic, but less vulgar version of Camping Cosmos. Her first (mid-length) feature film celebrates strange birds and cheerful folklore in a sincere and disarming way. Camping du lac won the Special Prize of the Cine+ jury at Locarno.

"Eléonore Saintagnan offers up a diary gradually overtaken by fiction to explore the founding narratives imbuing a land which awakens her imagination. (...) Her new film sees her associating reality with mythical tales and turning to hagiography as much as to folklore." - Cineuropa