US actor Michael Shannon was at the American Film Festival in Deauville for the launch of ’99 Homes’ by American director Ramin Bahrani.<br /><br /> Set in Florida during the 2000 subprime crisis, the film stars Andrew Garfield as Dennis Nash, a desperate construction worker evicted from his home by a ruthless real-estate broker, played by Shannon. <br /><br /> Director Ramin Bahrani says what was initially meant to be a social drama turned out as a thriller.<br /><br /> “When I first set out to make the film, I thought it was just going to be a social drama. When you hear the word “foreclusure”, you think ‘Oh it’s going to be a sad and depressing film.’ But as soon as I got to Florida, I realised everyone had a gun and there were endless corruption and scams. And it turned into a thriller, a kind of a classical gangster story, a Faustian tale, a deal with the devil theme, where Michael’s character is kind of a mentor and Andrew Garfield the apprentice.”<br /><br /> In order to get his house back, Nash reluctantly takes on a
