In April 2010, Jean-Baptiste Thoret travelled with Michael Cimino in search of his West and his Monument Valley. Like John Ford before him, Cimino had recounted his myth of America and printed a legend that was equally emblematic, but probably more critical of US society and history. The conversations recorded during that journey gave rise to the 2013 book Michael Cimino, les voix perdues de l’Amérique (Flammarion). Filmed in January-February 2020, Michael Cimino un mirage américain crosses the American landscape and pauses in the legendary locations of Cimino’s films. To evoke their presence, Jean-Baptiste Thoret meets several film people, colleagues and colourful characters to tell their stories.

Gian Luca Farinelli

“Making cinema means inventing a nostalgia for a past that never existed,” Michael Cimino once wrote. The filmmaker died on 2 July 2016, at the age of 77, after spending 20 years dreaming about films that were never to be made. In Michael Cimino un mirage américain we see Jim, Kathy, Orin, Bobby, John Wayne and a certain Boom-Boom. Quentin pays a flying visit, as do Oliver, Stanley and John. There are also glimpses of Mingo Junction (Ohio), America, and thus of cinema, and a little bit of Michael Cimino. It is a real mirage.

Jean-Baptiste Thoret