New York, 1974. Fifty year-old Chris (Clive Owen) has just been released on good behavior after several years in prison following a gangland murder. Waiting for him reluctantly outside the prison gates is his younger brother, Frank (Billy Crudup), a cop with a bright future. Chris and Frank have always been different, and their father, Leon, who’d raised them alone, seems strangely to prefer Chris – this, despite all his troubles.

Yet blood ties are the ones that bind. Frank, hoping that his brother has changed, is willing to give him a chance; he shares his home, finds him a job, and helps him reconnect with his children and his ex-wife, Monica (Marion Cotillard). But Chris’ past quickly catches up to him, and his descent back into a life of crime becomes inevitable. For Frank, this descent proves to be the last in a long line of betrayals, and after his brother’s latest transgressions, he banishes him from his life. But it’s already too late; the brothers’ destiny will keep bounded, forever. Set for release later this year, the stellar cast for ‘Blood Ties’ includes Clive Owen, Zoe Saldana, Marion Cotillard, Mila Kunis, James Caan, Matthias Schoenaerts and Billy Crudup. Guillaume Canet directed the film and co-wrote the script James Gray.  The film is remake of the 2008 French thriller ‘Les liens du sang’ by Jacques Maillot, an adaptation of the French novel of the same name by Bruno and Michel Papet. ‘Blood Ties’ premiered at the Cannes Film Festival earlier this week.

Can you tell us how the adventure of your first American film started?

Guillaume Canet: It all started just after ‘Tell No One’ was released in the United States. Because the movie was quite a hit there, I received a lot of proposals from studios asking me to direct movies in America. Mainly big money-making machines. I didn’t feel ready to take this path even though I felt quite excited about making a movie in the US, and in English. It wasn’t that I was obsessed with achieving the American Dream as a filmmaker or as an actor, but that I felt like working in a different way, and in English, and that I was keen to tap into the extraordinary pool of American actors. So I had this idea in the back of my mind but I was well aware that – control freak that I am (laughs) – I’d never be able to make a film for a studio with a producer breathing down my neck and telling me what to do for each and every shot and throughout the whole editing process. That was why I had turned down every offer I received at the time. It didn’t stop my agent from insisting and trying again and again. So naturally I thought it over, and finally I came to the conclusion that the only way for me to make a movie in the US was to go there with a personal project. But there was another problem: I felt totally unable to write a script in English on my own.

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