The Band’s Visit (2007) by Eran Kolirin.

“It’s a wonderful film. Wonderful because of its sensitivity, it’s very subtle. The actors are also excellent. It’s a great tale about fraternity and humanity, I strongly recommend it to everyone.” It’s in the madness of the premiere of Lorna’s Silence by the Dardenne Brothers at Cannes Film Festival this year that we managed to get these few words by actor Fabrizio Rongione (Rosetta, The Child, Lorna’s Silence) about one of his favourite films of that period of time. The Band’s Visit has just been released in France both on DVD and Blu-Ray Disc.

Synopsis: Once, not long ago, a small Egyptian Police band arrived in Israel. They came to play at an initiation ceremony but, due to bureaucracy, bad luck, or for whatever reason, they were left stranded at the airport. They tried to manage on their own, only to find themselves in a desolate, almost forgotten, small Israeli town, somewhere in the heart of the desert. A lost band in a lost town…

More information about The Band’s Visit.

Read Arta Dobroshi’s Pick of the Week too about The Band’s Visit.

Fabrizio Rongione is a Belgian actor born in 1973. He directed theatre plays and a documentary called T’es le fils de qui toi ? (Who are you the son of?) and played in movies such as Masked Mobsters. But it’s the Dardenne Brothers who marked his career the most. They gave him his first appearance on screen in Rosetta in 1999, then in The Child in 2004 before giving him one the main parts in Lorna’s Silence in 2008.