French director Julie Bertuccelli has started filming her second feature, The Tree, in Queensland in Australia, with Charlotte Gainsbourg heading the cast.

The $10 million English-language film will shoot for ten weeks in Australia.

Paris-based Memento will start sales in Toronto on the film which is scheduled for delivery in spring 2010. Kojo Pictures will release it in Australia, Le Pacte in France and Cineart in Belgium.

Australia’s Taylor Media is co-producing with France’s Les Films du Poisson. Investors also include Screen Australia, the Pacific Film and Television Commission, Canal Plus and Arte.

Based on the book Our Father Who Art In The Tree by UK-based Australian author Judy Pascoe, the storyline revolves around a tree which becomes a family’s centre after the sudden death of the father.

Marton Csokas, whose Hollywood credits include Kingdom Of Heaven and The Bourne Supremacy as well as Tim Burton’s upcoming Alice In Wonderland, and Aden Young (Black Robe) are also in the cast.

Bertuccelli trained as a documentary filmmaker and her first feature, Since Otar Left, won the Critics Week grand prize at Cannes in 2003 and a César for best first film. It sold in more than 30 international territories.

The Tree is the ninth feature to be made as a co-production between France and Australia since a memorandum of understanding was signed between the two countries in 1986.

Nancy Tartaglione in Paris contributed to this report