Just like the pouring rain on the Croisette, the stream of announcements of new projects in production and in vendors' line-ups didn't let up for French companies on the fourth day of the Film Market at the 66th Cannes Film Festival.

At the end of the year, Laurent Cantet (Palme d’Or 2008 with The Class [trailer, film focus]) will film Retour à Itaca (Vuelta a Itaca) in Cuba, with a screenplay co-written with Leonardo Padura. Its production will be handled by Full House.

The 50-minute "Madagascar" has the resonance and eloquence of the best poetry, as it deftly turns an adolescent's search for identity into a metaphor for socialist Cuba. Laura is a professor at a shabby, stultifying college. Her daughter, Laurita, stops going to school, wishes to move to Madagascar and quickly races through several phases. One day, she looks like a heavy-metal fan, another like a bohemian who weeps at poetry and art. Slowly, she crosses the line from ordinary adolescent confusion to intense neurosis and beyond, finally becoming so obsessed with religion and good works that she brings 10 homeless children into the cramped house she shares with her mother and grandmother.