KWAÏ
france
©Canal+
©Ronan Lechat/Kwaï/FTV
©visuel Fremantle
©photo :
Christophe Brachet/Kwaï/FTV
Company Profile
After working for the French television broadcaster M6 as a commissioning editor for three years, Thomas Bourguignon became a producer for Alizés Films in 1997 and created the successful show Femmes de loi for TF1 (44 episodes).
He is also a screenwriter and a director. In 2009, he wrote and directed Words of Love, a TV movie which was selected for the Montreal Film Festival, FIPA, the Banff Film Festival, and TIFF (Toronto International Film Festival). He also wrote with Olivier Gorce the TV movie Natural Selection (2010).
In 2007, he founded his own production company, Kwaï, which became part of the Fremantle family in 2015. Kwaï produces high-end drama (TV movies and series) and was elected best TV producer in 2017 in France.
It works with the main French channels and has currently produced for Canal+, TF1, France 2, France 3 and Arte.
In addition to the French TV market, Kwaï is developing internationally-oriented series for broadcasters and plateforms:
- OUIJA, a 6 x 52’ series coproduced with Joërg Winger’s UFA in Germany.
- WINTER’S MIND, a 3 x 52’ coproduction for Arte.
Why «Kwaï»? Why that name? Because producing a series is like building a bridge over a river in the jungle, with people speaking different languages, and still believing in it! Building bridges between people, cutlures, countries, that’s our motto.
Company Highlights
BARON NOIR (BLACK BARON) - SEASON 3 2020
Genre: TV Series / 8 x 52' / Canal+
Genre: Political Thriller
Director: Antoine Chevrollier & Thomas Bourguignon
Screenplay: Eric Benzekri, Raphaël Chevènement, Thomas Finkielkraut & Olivier Demangel
Cast: Kad Merad, Anna Mouglalis, Hugo Becker, Astrid Whettnall, François Morel, Rachida Brakni,
Alex Lutz, Patrick Mille
After having worked so long in the shadows and “made” the last two Presidents of the Republic, the Baron noir decides to work on his own presidential candidacy. This is the whole point of this season 3.
Because in France, this king-poll is the “mother of all battles”, the election around which everything is organized and redisposed. Everything depends on it: the other elections, the fate of the parties and their leaders. However, in the international context of the rise of populism, this very particular election, which some profess to be “driving people crazy”, is becoming as open as it is uncertain.
If our hero combines handicaps – too “old world” to make new, he also drags his criminal record like a ball and chain – he nevertheless has a rare strength that seemed to be asleep forever in the age of fake news and social networks: political sense, precisely at the moment when tragedy signs his return to history.
REUNIONS 2020
Format: TV Series / 6 x 52’ / France 2 / Tabo Tabo / Tangor
Genre: Comedy
Director: Laurent Dussaux
Screenplay: Isabelle Dubernet, Eric Fuhrer, Nicolas Douay, Thomas Bourguignon, Jérôme Le Mest, Hélène
Le Gal, Vladimir Haulet, Yannick Hervieu & Laurent Mondy
Cast: Laëtitia Milot, Loup-Denis Elion, Sara Martins, Nicolas Bridet, Pascal Légitimus, Nicolas
Chupin, Eva Darlan
When their father dies, two half-brothers, one white, the other of mixed race, meet for the first time and learn they’ve inherited a lodge they must run together in the Réunion. The island may be a piece of paradise, but the task won’t be simple for these two very different families. Will they manage to form a close-knit tribe ?
THE LAST WAVE 2019
Format: TV Series / 6 x 52’ / France 2 / TV Presse Productions
Genre: Drama Supernatural
Director: Rodolphe Tissot
Screenplay: Raphaëlle Roudaut, Alexis Le Sec, Sophie Hiet
Cast: David Kammenos, Marie Dompnier, Lola Dewaere, Arnaud Binard, Guillaume Cramoisan, Odile
Vuillemin, Isabel Otero, Olivier Barthélémy, Alexia Earlier, Roberto Calvet, Capucine Valmary,
Gaël Raes, Théo Christine
That day in Brizan, a peaceful seaside resort in the Landes, everything changes with the arrival of the first Wave coming from a stagnant arcus over the ocean: a wave of clouds that, like a tsunami, will provoke the disappearance of surfers. The first of a series of phenomena that will be faced by the inhabitants of this small community, disrupting their intimate lives and the surrounding landscape.
Once the surfers come back, they discover themselves endowed with strange powers like the gift of apnea, the gift of healing, an accelerated pregnancy, etc. While most residents of Brizan are frightened by all these changes, other residents think that these surfers have been changed by the cloud, that Nature has made its missionaries … If so, why? Is it a simple climate change or, as some say, the beginning of the revolt of Nature? How will the inhabitants react to this phenomenon?
Séries Mania 2019
THE MIRACLE 2018
Format: TVSeries / 8 x 52’ / Arte / Sky / Wildside
Genre: Thriller
Director: Niccolò Ammaniti, Francesco Munzi, Lucio Pellegrini
Screenplay: Niccolò Ammaniti, Francesca Manieri, Francesca Marciano, Stefano Bises
Cast: Guido Caprino, Alba Rohrwacher, Lorenza Indovina, Elena Lietti, Tommaso Ragno, Monica Bellucci
During a raid into the hiding place of a head of the mafia, the police discovers a little statue of the Madone crying blood tears. This phenomenon seems to be unexplicable as the enigmatic object brings everybody who approaches it into a mystical ecstasy and overwhelms them.
Séries Mania (Special Jury Prize & Best actor award for Tommaso Ragno)
