As AFM enjoys its first face-to-face edition since 2019, Screen profiles a selection of key titles, at various stages of production, available across the market.
France
Elle Driver relaunches Arnaud Des Pallières’ Party Of Fools from CODA producer Philippe Rousselet and Jonathan Blumental — a female-driven drama set in Paris in 1893 — this time with an all-new French cast including Mélanie Thierry, Marina Fois, Carole Bouquet and Yolande Moreau. Elle Driver also unveils first-look images from Yann Samuell’s The Lulus, a family drama about young children in wartime France in 1914, and France-Spain animated co-production Robot Dreams about a dog and a robot who become friends.
Kinology kicks off sales for Luc Besson’s Dogman starring Cannes best actor winner Caleb Landry Jones as a survivor of childhood trauma who develops a strong bond with dogs. It also has Dali, Quentin Dupieux’s take on the legendary surrealist starring several of France’s most famous actors: Jean Dujardin, Pierre Niney, Alain Chabat, Louis Garrel, Edouard Baer, Pio Marmai, Gilles Lellouche and Anais Demoustier. The company is also debuting sales on Bambi, A Tale Of Life In The Woods, a live-action adaptation of Felix Salten’s legendary children’s classic from MC4 and Gebeka Films, directed by Laurent Charbonnier and Michel Fessler, and French-language horror title The Deep Dark from Mathieu Turi, set in the historical mines of northern France complete with a ghost-mummy-vampire creature.
Wild Bunch International (WBI) launches several new titles for AFM including Olivier Masset-Depasse’s The Price Of Money: A Largo Winch Adventure with Tomer Sisley back as the titular character, whose next adventures take him from Canada to Burma to Burbank. It also unveils Valérie Donzelli’s domestic abuse drama Just The Two Of Us (L’Amour Et Les Forets) from Rectangle Productions, co-written with Happeningdirector Audrey Diwan and starring Virginie Efira and Melvil Poupaud. Other hot titles on WBI’s line-up include Mexican war drama Heroic by David Zonana and James Huth’s French family comedy The New Toy starring Jamel Debbouze and Daniel Auteuil. Animation arm Gebeka International screens a mood reel of The Legendaries (Les Legendaires) based on the bestselling comic book.
Newen Connect (formerly TF1 Studio) kicks off sales for French comedy The Madness Express from Vendome Pictures (CODA, The Lost Prince) directed by Olivier Van Hoofstadt and starring Elsa Zylberstein, Artus and Philippe Duquesne. It also launches Denis Imbert’s On The Wandering Paths starring Jean Dujardin and produced by Radar Films, about a man hiking alone across France after waking from a coma. Newen also premieres first-look images from Funny Birds, an English-language drama about three generations of women that stars Catherine Deneuve and is executive produced by Martin Scorsese, plus first-look images from Alibi.com 2, the sequel to the hit 2017 comedy.
Charades debuts Magnus Martens’ Norwegian genre film There’s Something In The Barn. It describes the horror-comedy, based on a creature from Nordic folklore, as “Gremlins meets Home Alone meets National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation”. Norway’s 74 Entertainment produces alongside US executive producer and financier XYZ Films. Charades also kicks off sales on How To Blow Up A Pipeline, a Toronto 2022 Platform title about environmental activists, described by the company as a “part high-stakes heist, part radical exploration of the climate crisis”; Usman Riaz’s debut hand-drawn Pakistani animated feature The Glassworker; Baya Kasmi’s French comedy The (In)famous Youssef Salem; and George Kane’s Irish ensemble comedy Apocalypse Clown. The latter is about a troupe of failed clowns and an intrepid reporter who embark on a chaotic road trip amid a mysterious solar event that throws the world into anarchy.
SND (Group M6) launches three new promo reels for Eric Barbier’s Princes Of The Desert (formerly titled Tehu) about the adventures of a Berber boy and a camel, now starring French actress Alexandra Lamy and with a soundtrack by Mika; Laetitia Colombani’s The Braid, based on her bestselling book about the intertwining stories of three women across different continents; and Julien Hervé’s French comedy Ooh La La!about surprise DNA tests that throw off a couple’s wedding plans. SND (Group M6) also delivers The Babyfrom prolific French director Guillaume Nicloux (Valley Of Love, Lockdown Tower) starring Fabrice Luchini in a story about family, grief and resilience, and unveils its first teaser for Frédéric Tellier’s biopic Abbé Pierre — A Century Of Devotion.
Memento International launches sales on Martin Provost’s Bonnard, Pierre & Marthe, produced by Les Films du Kiosque, about renowned French painters Pierre and Marthe Bonnard and starring Vincent Macaigne (Irma Vep) and Cécile de France (Lost Illusions, The French Dispatch) as the eponymous couple. It also continues sales on Bruno Dumont’s highly anticipated The Empire, this time with French actress Lyna Khoudri replacing Lily-Rose Depp and starring alongside Happening breakout star Anamaria Vartolomei and Camille Cottin (Stillwater, House Of Gucci), who replace the previously announced Virginie Efira and Adèle Haenel.
Film Seekers kicks off sales on Pandemonium, a French horror film from artist and director Quarxx about a man who dies at the scene of a car crash and descends into the depths of hell, where he is doomed to experience the pain of tortured souls along the way. It also launches sales on Dutch-language romantic comedy If Only She Knew, based on the bestseller by Chantal van Gastel.
Indie Sales delivers Richard The Stork 2 with its first promo reel for the anticipated animated sequel from directors Mette Rank Tange and Benjamin Quabeck following the original title that sold to more than 155 countries. It also screens Robin Pront’s Zillion, about a legendary 1990s nightclub, which was just released in Belgium to strong reviews.
Pulsar Content launches Pablo Absento’s screenlife genre film Bloat produced by Timur Bekmambetov’s Bazelevs Production (Searching, Unfriended) and co-produced by Logical Pictures, currently in post. The company also unveils its first screenlife — a format that depicts its story on computer, tablet or smartphone screens — with a market screening of Egor Baranov’s Resurrected.
Wide launches sales on BFI London Film Festival acquisition Inland, directed by Fridtjof Ryder and starring Mark Rylance, a thriller about a troubled young man who returns to his hometown when his mother disappears; CAA Media Finance is representing North American rights. It also kicks off sales for Ash Patino’s Boy Scout’s Honor outside of North America for the documentary about sexual abuse within the Boy Scouts of America, and subsequent cover-up.
Rebecca Leffler
Italy
Fandango is launching sales on Emanuele Scaringi’s Pantafa, a sophisticated horror based on a legend of Italian folk tradition starring Kasia Smutniak. The Italian outfit is also presenting Valerio Nicolosi’s Ants(Formiche), a documentary on the tragedy of migrants in the Mediterranean sea, which features Bruce Springsteen reading excerpts from John Steinbeck’s novel The Grapes Of Wrath, and is continuing sales on Francesca Archibugi’s The Hummingbird (Il Colibri) starring Pierfrancesco Favino, Nanni Moretti and Kasia Smutniak, which has already sold to more than 25 territories.
Rai Com will launch sales on Luca Lucini’s teen movie Paper Dolls (Le Mie Ragazze Di Carta), which traces the lives of three adolescents amid first loves, rugby practice and rural and urban existences, as well as Umberto Carteni’s Almost Orphan (Quasi Orfano) about the complex interactions between southern and northern Italians in the business capital of Milan, starring Riccardo Scamarcio and Vittoria Puccini.
Vision Distribution’s line-up is headed by Gianni Zanasi’s The Desired War, which stars Edoardo Leo and Miriam Leone and premiered at Rome Film Festival. Vision is also presenting Donato Carrisi’s thriller I Am The Abyss, based on the director’s own novel, which will be a market premiere in Santa Monica. Other Vision titles include Kim Rossi Stuart’s horse-racing drama Brado and Andrzej Saramonowicz’s Bejbis, a Polish comedy released at home by Monolith Films.
True Colours will focus on four titles at AFM. Roberto Ando’s Strangeness (La Stranezza) premiered at Rome Film Festival and stars Toni Servillo as Italian Nobel Prize-winning writer Luigi Pirandello. Paolo Genovese’s The First Day Of My Life has had strong European pre-sales and also features Servillo alongside Valerio Mastandrea and Margherita Buy. Both films will be distributed by Medusa in Italy. The sales outfit is also showing Italy-Lithuania co-production Sisters, the debut film of Latvian director Linda Olte, a social drama centring on orphanages and international adoption, and Edoardo Falcone’s The Prince Of Rome, inspired by Charles Dickens’ tale A Christmas Carol.
Summerside International is launching tense family drama The Judgement directed by Gianluca Mattei and Mario Sanzullo, and is also showing Lithuanian fantasy Lobis by Agne Marcinkeviciute, which tells the story of a group of people who discover a treasure map in their local village.
Intramovies’ AFM line-up is headlined by Tereza Nvotova’s folk horror The Nightsiren, which played at Sitges Film Festival, and Sébastien Betbeder’s French comedy Thick And Thin starring Thomas Scimeca and Nicolas Belvalette.
Alina Trabattoni
Spain
Filmax is offering a market premiere for Paul Urkijo Alijo’s second feature Irati, a graphic-novel adaptation set in eighth-century Spain that took the audience award at the recent Sitges Film Festival. Other titles on the Filmax slate include Four’s A Crowd, a black comedy from Spanish genre master Alex de la Iglesia, Alex Lora’s contemporary drama Unicorns, produced by Valérie Delpierre (Summer 1993), and horror thriller The Open Body. The latter is the feature debut of Angeles Huerta and follows a young teacher sent to work in a bleak village on the border between Spain and Portugal.
Film Factory Entertainment’s slate is full of Spanish genre muscle. Titles include The Communion Girl (La Nina De La Comunion), directed by Victor Garcia (The Damned) and produced by Atresmedia Cine, Ikiru Films and Warner Bros Entertainment Espana. Scripted by Jaume Balaguero’s writer Alberto Marini, the film revolves around a creepy urban legend about the ghost of a girl dressed for her first communion. Also on the slate is The Cuckoo’s Curse, a home-invasion thriller by director/producer Mar Targarona, whose company Rodar y Rodar was behind The Orphanage. From Agusti Villaronga (Black Bread), Film Factory will bring promo material of the Spanish filmmaker’s first foray into comedy drama with Stormy Lola, in which a high-spirited grandmother drifting into dementia is helped by her teenage grandsons. It is produced by Irusoin (Loreak) and Vilaüt Films (Alcarras).
Emilio Mayorga
Nordics
TrustNordisk will attend AFM to drum up business on its big-budget historical drama The Bastard starring Mads Mikkelsen and Amanda Collin. The film, now shooting for director Nikolaj Arcel (A Royal Affair), is about a 17th-century Danish soldier who tries to tame a wild land. A teaser is available.
TrustNordisk also has two other hot titles in production: Ole Bornedal’s psychological thriller sequel Nightwatch — Demons Are Forever starring Nikolaj Coster-Waldau; and Thea Hvistendahl’s horror drama Handling The Undead, which reunites The Worst Person In The World’s Renate Reinsve and Anders Danielsen Lie.
REinvent has just added The Angel Maker, which is shooting now and will have a teaser to show buyers. The Danish psychological thriller, directed by Esben Tonnesen and Julie R Olgaard, is about an expert in cybercrime who investigates a beastly serial killer. REinvent will also have market screenings for the sci-fi adventure UFO Sweden, about a teenager who thinks her father has been kidnapped by aliens, and Alex Herron’s horror-thriller Leave, about a woman investigating her own past while confronting a malevolent spirit.
As AFM kicks off, LevelK is announcing a brand-new title, Paprika Steen’s Fathers And Mothers, (Faedre Og Modre), which will be released in Denmark this week. The comedy is about hierarchy, rivalry and hidden agendas among parents. The ensemble cast includes Jacob Hauberg Lohmann (Shorta), Nikolaj Lie Kaas (Riders Of Justice), Amanda Collin (Raised By Wolves) and Martin Greis-Rosenthal (Another Round).
Also on the LevelK slate are Icelandic genre film Cold (now shooting), Sitges horror The Knocking from Finland; and Swedish director Axel Petersen’s forthcoming conman thriller Shame On Dry Land, which has a new promo.
Wendy Mitchell
Rest of the world
Germany’s The Playmaker brings market premiere The Black Spider to AFM, a mystery horror based on the 19th-century novella by Swiss writer Jeremias Gotthelf and directed by Markus Fischer; Lilith Stangenberg, Ronald Zehrfeld and Anatole Taubman star. On the family entertainment side, The Playmaker has Till Endemann’s Lucy Wanted, a comedy about a well-mannered 10-year-old girl who goes off the rails.
Munich-based Atlas International has Eva Hassmann’s romantic comedy Willie And Me, a road movie that stars country legend Willie Nelson and features his music on the soundtrack. Atlas also brings Dito Tsintsadze’s dark comedy thriller Roxy and comedy No Name Restaurant (Nicht Ganz Koscher) by Stefan Sarazin and Peter Keller.
Global Screen is presenting Klaus Härö’s English-language debut My Sailor, My Love, which opened at number one in Finland following a Toronto world premiere. Deals already closed on the film include to Signature for the UK, but the aim in Santa Monica is to secure a US distributor. Among other new titles is 3D animated feature My Fairy Troublemaker, directed by Caroline Origer.
Films Boutique has its latest Iranian drama, Mani Haghighi’s Hitchcock-style thriller Subtraction, which screened at Toronto and the BFI London Film Festival. The France-Iran co-production is supported by the CNC. Films Boutique is both the co-producer and sales agent.
German sales powerhouse Beta Cinema has several market premieres including Michael Herbig’s A Thousand Lines, a satirical drama based on one of Europe’s biggest media scandals involving a disgraced journalist at Der Spiegel. The film, starring Elyas M’Barek and Jonas Nay, premiered at Rome Film Festival. Beta’s other AFM titles include two films that will have their festival premieres at this month’s Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival. Austrian director Adrian Goiginger’s The Fox is the true story of a man who befriends a fox cub while serving as a motorcycle courier during the Second World War. Piece Of My Heart, produced by Dutch outfit Topkapi Films, is the dark story of a ballerina caught up in drug and alcohol abuse in 1970s Amsterdam.
Picture Tree International is introducing A Whole Life, based on the bestseller by Robert Seethaler. There will be a script and some early footage to show buyers. Directed by Hans Steinbichler, the film tells the story of a man over eight decades of the 20th century, as he endures poverty, war and violence as well as moments of great happiness. It will be released next year in Germany by Tobis Film. Other Picture Tree market premieres include The Chambermaid, which will premiere in competition at Tallinn Black Nights. Directed by Mariana Cengel Solcanska, it is about two women from different backgrounds who become friends and lovers after meeting just before the First World War. The company will also screen Achmed Abdel-Salam’s horror film Smother and Dieter Berner’s Alma & Oskar, about the turbulent romance between Alma Mahler — the widow of composer Gustav Mahler — and artist Oskar Kokoschka.
Sola Media has a promo of family film Teddy’s Christmas, directed by Andrea Eckerbom and produced by Fantefilm Fiksjon, the Norwegian outfit behind disaster movies The Wave and The Quake. It is a live-action feature with a CGI-animated teddy, and the cast is led by Marte Klerck-Nilssen, Jan Gunnar Roise, Mariann Hole, Nader Khademi and Marianne Krogness.
Ida Martins’ Media Luna is giving a market premiere to Irish drama Ann, directed by Ciaran Creagh. Based on a true story, it stars Zara Devlin as a pregnant teenager in a desperate plight. Also on the company’s AFM slate is Ivan Löwenberg’s I Don’t Want To Be Dust, about a housewife in a midlife crisis who enters a cult. The company also brings a pandemic-influenced drama: Lars Knorrn’s Distanz is about a man who avoids all human contact, including with his own family, to steer clear of infection before a chance meeting with a neighbour changes his life.
Berlin-based m-appeal has Gentian Koci’s Albanian international Oscar entry A Cup Of Coffee And New Shoes On, about deaf-mute twin brothers who learn they have a disease that may make them go blind. It will be a world premiere in competition at Tallinn Black Nights. Another new m-appeal title, Nitzan Gilady’s In Bed, about a night of excess and recrimination following a gay pride parade, is also heading to Tallinn.
Meanwhile The Match Factory is pushing its international Oscar contenders: Belgian title Close from Lukas Dhont and Venezuelan hopeful The Box by Lorenzo Vigas. The company also has Murina by Antoneta Alamat Kusijanovic, which was recently nominated for two Gotham Awards.
Dutch outfit DFW International is screening family adventure Hotel Sinestra. Produced by Keplerfilm and directed by Michiel ten Horn, it is set during a winter holiday in a Swiss hotel from which all the adults have suddenly vanished. The company is also screening romantic drama A French Summer.
Pim van Collem’s rebranded Skoop Media (formerly Dutch Features) is selling films through its labels Skoop Prime and Skoop Family. Latest titles include kids’ comedy Mini-Zlatan And Uncle Darling and Emil Krizka’s Czech thriller Repulse. Also on the slate is Sia Hermanides’ coming-of-age drama White Berry and Joost Reijmers’ thriller Herman Kills!.
Fortissimo Films is selling Israeli comedy Ducks — An Urban Legend from director Shahar Rozen, which will be in competition at Tallinn Black Nights.
Belgian outfit Best Friend Forever continues its push on Annecy award-winning animated feature Perlimps by Brazi’s Ale Abreu. The company also brings Andrea Bagney’s romantic comedy Ramona, a prize-winner at Rome.
Australian outfit Odin’s Eye has its chilly documentary Ice Maiden, which follows solo sailor Lisa Blair in her attempt to voyage round Antarctica in record time. The company is also pre-selling Jonathan auf der Heide’s thriller Devil Inside, about a virologist who discovers the threat that a contagious cancer afflicting Tasmanian devils could present to humankind.
Geoffrey Macnab
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