HOTEL HARABATI
aka DE PARTICULIER a PARTICULIER

Year: 2006
UK: Soda Pictures
Cast: Helene Fillieres, Laurent Lucas, Anouk Aimee, Anthony Roth Costanzo, Julie Gayet, Sabine Haudepin, Husky Kihal, Charlotte Clamens, Melchior Nolte, Romain Alonso, Ines Alonso, Thibaut Nolte, Erwan Marinopoulos, Evelyne Istria, Yves Barnouin
Director: Brice Cauvin
Country: France
Language: French (English subtitles)
UK: 95 mins
UK Release Date: 7 December 2007 (Limited Release - London, ICA)
UK Distributor
ICA

Synopsis

While a young French couple, Philippe (Laurent Lucas) and Marion (Helene Fillieres), are waiting to catch a train from Paris to Venice, they pick up a bag left behind by a polite, vaguely Middle Eastern man. Inside, they find neatly bound bundles of foreign currency; on the tag, it reads 'Hotel Harabati.'

On the spur of the moment, they decide not to go to Venice (though they tell their families and friends they did); but when Marion collects her film from the developer's, the reel is inexplicably filled with shots of canals, vaporetti, crowded piazzas ... and suddenly, terrifyingly, their whole world seems to have turned upside-down.

A surreal string of events is set in motion. As reality blurs, the couple start to grow apart. Marion leaves Paris with the children and Philippe takes refuge with a young man that he meets. Until eventually he is compelled to try and find Hotel Harabati...

Nothing is quite what it seems in this strange, shivery drama that really gets under your skin, with a wonderful lead performance from young French star Laurent Lucas. HOTEL HARABATI as shot on location in Paris and Syria during November 2004 until January 2005.