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60x80.indd 1 6/05/08 16:51:11

Years after separating from his father’s sect, Daniel decides to return to the commune where he grew up. Daniel realises that the promise of immortality made to the sect’s followers, has in fact, become a reality through modern cloning techniques.

His father volunteers to be the first clone and Daniel replaces him. 25 generations later, Daniel25 has survived the cataclysms that have devastated the human race. He lives like a hermit in a high-tech, subterranean bunker protected from contamination. His sole companion is a dog. The satellite images he sees on his screens reveal the presence of a beautiful woman. Daniel25 can’t resist the impulse to follow her...

SynopsisFrance – 2008 – 95 min – 2:35 – Color – French

Michel Houellebecq Michel Houellebecq was born on the 26 February 1958 on the French island of Reunion. His father, a mountain guide and his mother, an anesthetist quickly lost interest in their son. He has a half sister born four years after him. At the age of six, he was given over to the care of his paternal grandmother, a communist, whose family name he later adopted. He lived in Dicy (Yonne), then in Crécy-la-Chapelle. He attended the Henri Moissan de Meaux boarding school and already at this early stage it was clear to his classmates that he had a special capacity for reflection and an ability to analyse things, an emotional detachment symptomatic of the completely extraordinary events he experienced for a boy of his age. There, he was given the nickname “Einstein”. When he was six, he discovered the writer H.P. Lovecraft, and undoubtedly empathized with the phrase “I never participate in what surrounds me, I am not at home anywhere”. For seven years he took preparatory classes prior to entering the French “Grandes Ecoles” system. In 1975 he registered at the Higher college of Agriculture. His grandmother died in 1978. In 1980 he obtained his degree in agricultural engineering: that same year he married his best friend’s cousin This marked the beginning of a period of unemployment. His son Etienne was born in 1981. Following his divorce, he spent time in psychiatric care due to several bouts of depression.

His literary career began at the age of twenty, when he also started to move in poetic circles. In 1985 he met Michel Bulteau, editor of the Nouvelle Revue de Paris who was the first to publish his poems; it’s the start of a long and enduring friendship. Michel Bulteau also asks him to write a book for the “Infréquentables” series which he has created for the publishing house le Rocher. This led to the publication, in 1991, of ”H. P. Lovecraft, contre le monde, contre la vie” (H. P. Lovecraft: Against the World, Against Life). He found employment at the French National Assembly as an administrative secretary. That same year saw the publication of “Rester vivant” (To stay alive) by la Difference publications, then in 1992, under the same editor he published his first collection of poems: “La Poursuite du bonheur” (The Pursuit of Happiness), for which he received the Tristan Tzara prize. This was also the year he met Marie-Pierre Gauthier.

In 1994, Maurice Nadeau edited “Extension du domaine de la lutte” (The Struggle Spreads, published in the UK as Whatever), his first novel, currently available in several languages, which made him known to a much wider audience. He made contributions to numerous publications (L’Aterlier du roman, Perpendiculaires - from which he was later banned, Les Inrockuptibles). Since 1996, Michel Houellebecq’s work has been published by Flammarion where Raphaël Sorin has been his editor. His second collection of poems, “Le sens du combat” (The Meaning of the Fight), obtained the Prix de Flore in 1996. “Rester vivant” (To stay Alive) and “La Poursuite du bonheur” (The pursuit of Happiness) were specially revised and published in a single volume in 1997. In 1998 he received France’s Grand Prix National Des Lettres Jeunes Talents for his entire body of work. In the same year both “Interventions”, a collection of chronicles and literary criticisms, and “Les Paricules Elémentaires” (Atomised) were published. The latter went on to win the Prix Novembre and has now been translated into 25 languages. In this year he also married Marie-Pierre.

In 1999, together with Philippe Harel he adapted “Extension du domaine de la lutte” (The Struggle Spreads, UK title Whatever ) for cinema, which Philippe also directed. He then published a new collection of poems entitled “Renaissance”. In the spring of 2000 he released a cd called “Présence humaine”, reading a number of his poems set to the music of Bertrand Burgalat. ”Lanzarote”, a collection of texts and photographs, was published by Flammarion in spring 2000. Michel Houellebecq lived for a time in a house fondly known as “The White House” in Cork, Ireland where he wrote a large part of his third novel “Plateforme” (Platform). He then later moved to Spain where, he wrote “La possibilité d’une île,” (The Possibility of an Island) which was released in France on the 31st August 2005 and almost simultaneously in Germany, Italy and Spain among others. It went on to win the Interallié prize in 2005. World Sales & Festival Bookings

Celluloid Dreams2 rue Turgot, 75009 Paris, FranceT : + 33 (0) 1 4970 0370 F : + 33 (0) 1 4970 0371sales@celluloid-dreams.com www.celluloid-dreams.com

CastDaniel 1, Daniel 25 Benoit Magimel The Prophet Patrick BauchauEve Ramata Koite Slotan Andrzej Seweryn

CrewDirector Michel Houellebecq Screenplay Michel Houellebecq 1st assistant Director Hubert EngammareExecutive Producers Éric Altmayer, Nicolas AltmayerLine Producer Philippe DelestDirector of Photography Jeanne LapoirieArtistic Director Katia WyszkopSound Engineer Antonio RodriguezEditior Camille CotteCasting Brigitte MoidonProduction Companies Mandarin Cinema Morena Films Black Forest Films, WAT Productions, ARTE France/WDR, Lagardere Studio 37 Michel Houellebecq Ltd.

PRODUCER’S STATEMENT

Our first meeting with Michel Houellebecq took place in 2002, during the course of which we acquired the movie rights for “Elementary Particles”. At the time we were already ardent fans Michel Houellebecq’s work and convinced that cinema could strongly re-establish the overwhelming and desperate vision of humanity which characterizes this major novel.

The film didn’t see the light of day for a number of reasons. The French film, we have to clarify, as “les Particles” was eventually adapted into a German film by Oscar Roelher, selected at the Berlin Film Festival and successfully released in Germany with more than 800 000 admissions.

One of the consequences of this episode is that Michel Houellebecq wrote his novel “La possibilité d’une île” (The Possibility of an Island) with the view to adapting it for cinema and in the knowledge that he would direct it himself. Another consequence of this was that our desire to work with Houellebecq was reinforced. During the several months that we were working on the film together we were able to get to know the author and the man behind the persona. We were touched by the extreme thoroughness of his work and his determination to make cinema the logical continuation of artistic work.

Since his first book, (“Extension du domaine de la lutte”, already brought to the screen by Philippe Harel in 1999), Houellebecq has developed a body of work whose visionary and provocative themes have brought him considerable success and an international renown unlike any other contemporary French writer.

With “La possibilité d’une île” (The Possibility of an Island), he continues to explore the theme of the potential extinction of mankind, with his unique style which combines a terrific sense of humour with poetic sensitivity. But, unlike “Particles”, he is not simply content at observing the general flux and frustrations caused by western civilization, he discusses the possibility of a future for humanity in concrete terms.

Houellebecq is not caught up in the present time: he thinks about the long term by fulfilling hypotheses which the present era has just begun to grasp: the transformation of the planet through climatic and technological change, the arrival of cloning as a means of reproduction of the human race etc.

Daniel 25 is one of the survivors in this future world where all traces of human life have disappeared. He lives alone without need or suffering. He constantly reminds himself of ‘his’ previous life by reading the life stories of his predecessors and in particular that of the very first Daniel and his meeting with Marie.

The film tells in parallel the stories of Daniel1 and Daniel25 how this future could have begun and what it could lead to, twenty-five generations later... Up until the moment when he discovers the existence of another survivor on the surface of the earth...

It is therefore not only a science-fiction film, but also a Michel Houellebecq film, a film which brings together a great team of actors with Benoît Magimel at the top of the bill, renowned artistic contributors and associates.

Eric & Nicolas Altmayer

DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT

Before becoming a book, The Possibility of an Island was a collection of impressions stemming on the one hand, from my experiences of living alone in a desert-like place with my dog, and on the other, from some Spanish landscapes which irresistibly presented the world as I imagine it would look like after the human race has been wiped out. The visual aspect was present from the start. This is why it seemed natural for me to direct the film adaptation of my book myself.

Science fiction has for a long time been predicting a dark future for humanity and has, for some years been becoming dangerously more credible. For example: ethnic and religious wars leading to nuclear conflicts; uncontrollable epidemics, and above all, environmental catastrophes on a never-before seen scale.

A more original idea is that a small community survives and overcomes these difficult times, sheltered from the destruction which surrounds it but at the same time retaining human knowledge (a bit like monastic communities did in the Middle Ages, during wars and great epidemics).

More alone than any hermit has ever been, Daniel25 (the twenty fourth descendant of the first Daniel, created through means of artificial insemination) lives with his dog Fox in an underground cell protected from all forms of contamination; the satellite images which he receives on his computer screens transmit visions of a deserted earth. He dedicates himself, as his predecessors did, to documenting the events which drive Daniel1 to become the head of a sect which will in turn found a new cult, and a new species which will outlive the human race.

Going to meet his estranged father, who is the leader of a sect somewhat like the Raëliens, Daniel1 realizes that the sect which he thought was based on a simple hoax has changed direction with the recruitment of an expert scientist and the construction of a laboratory. He realizes that the promise made to the members (that of technical immortality made possible through modern biology) has become a reality. After the death of his father, he decides to carry on his father’s work.

Twenty-five generations later, Daniel25 has survived the cataclysms that have devastated the human race. One day his life completely changes when, alerted by mysterious messages on his computer screens, he will discover the existence of another survivor on the surface of the earth.

Michel Houellebecq