Creator

Xavier de Lauzanne

Xavier de Lauzanne is a French documentary director whose film The Perfect Motion follows the Cambodian royal ballet.

Xavier de Lauzanne is a French documentary director and producer whose film The Perfect Motion (2023) traces the history of the Royal Ballet of Cambodia.[1][2] He began filming in 1999 and in 2000 created the production company Aloest Productions around his first documentary, Retour sur la RC4.[1][3] His other films include Le Seigneur de Darjeeling, D'une seule voix, Les Pépites and a trilogy on life after the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq that begins with 9 jours à Raqqa.[1][3]

Early work

De Lauzanne studied at a hotel management school and then organized hospitality training for disadvantaged young people in Martinique, Vietnam and Cambodia.[4][1] From 1996 to 2000 he worked at the Hoa Sua school in Hanoi.[5] He helped create the Sala Baï hotel and restaurant school in Siem Reap.[1] He bought his first digital camera in 1999 and later trained formally in filmmaking.[4]

Films

His early films include Hanoï entre deux 14 juillet and Retour sur la RC4, about French veterans of the Indochina War returning to Colonial Route 4 in Vietnam. He founded Aloest with François-Hugues de Vaumas.[1] Pour un sourire d'enfant aired on France 5 in 2002.[1] Le Seigneur de Darjeeling (2006) won the Grand Prize at Agricinéma and the World Agriculture Prize.[1][6]

D'une seule voix (2009) follows Israeli and Palestinian musicians brought together for a tour in France. It won best documentary awards at festivals in Palm Beach and Houston and the Grand Prize at Évreux.[6][1] Les Pépites (2016) tells how former child waste-pickers at the Stoeung Meanchey landfill in Phnom Penh received schooling through the work of the French couple Christian and Marie-France des Pallières. It opened in France on December 14, 2016, drew more than 220,000 viewers in theaters and won the best documentary award at COLCOA.[6][5][1]

After the defeat of the Islamic State, he began a trilogy on reconstruction in Syria and Iraq. 9 jours à Raqqa, about Leila Mustapha, the young Kurdish mayor of Raqqa, and the writer Marine de Tilly, with music by Ibrahim Maalouf, was selected for Cannes in 2020 and released in France on September 8, 2021.[1][4] En toute liberté (2023) follows Radio Al-Salam, and Mossoul Campus was announced in 2025.[1] As of 2023 he had made more than ten documentaries, five of them for cinema release.[7]

The Perfect Motion

The Perfect Motion is known in French as La Beauté du geste and in Khmer as Tep Hattha (ទេពហត្ថា).[1][8] The project began when Prince Sisowath Tesso, who worked with Princess Norodom Buppha Devi on the royal ballet, approached de Lauzanne after Les Pépites.[8] De Lauzanne wrote the film with Pierre Kogan, who also worked with him to produce it.[7][2] He has said they wanted a film "that captures both the beauty of Cambodian classical dance and the incredible drama of its recent history."[2]

The film interweaves the creation of Metamorphosis, Princess Buppha Devi's final production, with the history of Cambodian classical dance at the royal court since 1906, when the sculptor Auguste Rodin drew Cambodian dancers visiting France.[2][7][9] That year the troupe performed outside Cambodia for the first time, during King Sisowath's visit to France and the colonial exhibition in Marseille. While researching the film, de Lauzanne found archive videos from 1985 of Van Savay, a leading dancer of the Royal Ballet, teaching its movements in a makeshift camp.[9][10] The film took five years to develop, from the first idea through production.[2] It runs about 90 minutes and was made by Aloest Films and Bonne Pioche Télévision.[7]

The film premiered in Phnom Penh on March 26, 2023, with King Norodom Sihamoni attending, and opened in Cambodian theaters on April 1, 2023, dubbed in Khmer.[1][8] It was one of the first feature documentaries, and by some accounts the first, to receive a nationwide theatrical release in Cambodia.[1][8] Educational guides in French, English and Khmer were produced with the organization SIPAR.[8] It screened at the Asian Civilisations Museum in Singapore on October 22 and 29, 2023, during the Asia-Europe Cultural Festival, and opened in France on March 13, 2024.[7][1]

Works


See also

References

  1. ↑ 1.00 1.01 1.02 1.03 1.04 1.05 1.06 1.07 1.08 1.09 1.10 1.11 1.12 1.13 1.14 1.15 Xavier de Lauzanne, French Wikipedia
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 Phnom Penh Post, Khmer ballet documentary debuts April 1 (2023)
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 The Perfect Motion, official film site
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 Echo Studio, 9 Days in Raqqa
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 Cineworx, Les Pépites press kit (2016)
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 Film-documentaire.fr, Xavier de Lauzanne filmography
  7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 7.2 7.3 7.4 Asia-Europe Foundation, Asia-Europe Cultural Festival 2023 brochure
  8. ↑ 8.0 8.1 8.2 8.3 8.4 Le Petit Journal Cambodge, La Beauté du geste: l'histoire du ballet royal du Cambodge
  9. ↑ 9.0 9.1 Krousar Thmey, Memory and transmission of Khmer classical dance
  10. ↑ Krousar Thmey, Les enjeux de mémoire et de transmission de la danse classique khmère
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This page was last edited on 26 September 2026, at 23:42.