Julie Gayet and Nadia Turincev’s Paris-based production company is also set to unveil a rough-cut of A Spell To Ward off the Darkness in Les Arcs.

 
 
French production company Rouge International has boarded Czech Olmo Omerzu’s upcoming picture Family Film alongside Prague-based Endorfilms ahead of its presentation at the Les Arcs Co-Production market this weekend.  
 
Other minority co-producers on the film, about a brother and sister who are left to fend for themselves when their parents set off on a long journey, include Slovenia Arsmedia and Croatian Studio Dim.
 
It is Omerzu’s second picture after his critically acclaimed debut A Night Too Young, about two young boys who end up passing New Year’s Eve with a trio of hedonistic adults, which was presented at the Berlinale Forum in 2012.
 
“Our vision of filmmaking is very international, hence the international in our name… we don’t want to produce 100% Franco-French fare,” actress and producer Julie Gayet, co-chief of Paris-based Rouge International alongside Russian-born Nadia Turincev..
 
The company will also present a rough-cut of experimental filmmakers Ben Russell and Ben Rivers’ documentary A Spell to Ward off the Darkness – exploring spirituality in a secular age - in Les Arcs’ Work-in-Progress section.
 
The picture was recently acquired for Arte’s respected Monday night documentary slot La Lucarne.
 
Rouge is also developing Russell and River’s next picture Tuomo, a spin-off of A Spell about one of the characters, a Finnish man who sets off on a pilgrimage from Scandinavia to Santiago de Compostela in Spain.
 
They recently took that project and Oliver Laxe’s Morocco-set hybrid documentary Las Mimosas – exploring Sufism — to CPH:FORUM in Copenhagen.
 
Laxe’s hybrid documentary fiction You All Are Captains, set around a children’s film workshop in Tangiers, won the Fipresci prize in Directors’ Fornight in 2010.
 
Las Mimosas is in a similar vein, says Gayet, adding: “We love these hybrid documentary fiction works.”
 
Gayet and Turincev, a former Cannes Directors’ Fortnight selector and artistic director at Moscow International Film Festival, created Rouge in 2007.
 
Past production credits include Cristian Jimenez’ Bonsai, in which the company had a 50% stake, and Palestinian director Raed Andoni’s hydrid documentary FIX ME. 

Topics