Fremantle’s The Apartment boarded Karim Aïnouz’s next feature Rosebushpruning, as co-producer, with The Match Factory, Mubi, Kavac Film and Rai Cinema.
The cast for the film, first announced last year, includes Kristen Stewart, Josh O’Connor and Elle Fanning.
Brazilian director Aïnouz is in Cometition at Cannes with Motel Destino, having last year premiered Firebrand in Compeition. Aïnouz is directing from a script by Kinds Of Kindness and Dogtooth writer Efthimis Filippou who has adapted Marco Bellocchio’s debut feature Fists In The Pocket.
Viola Fügen and Michael Weber are producing Rosebushpruning for The Match Factory, who are also handling worldwide sales for the film.
The film will begin production later this year.
The film is an adapation of Marco Bellocchio’s debut film, Fist In The Pocket, considered an Italian classic and the winner of prizes when it screened at Locarno and Venice film festivals in 1964. The story centres on a young man suffering from epilepsy who plots the murders of his dysfunctional family.
The adaptation rights have been acquired from Kavac Film which is also attached to the production through Simone Gattoni, with The Apartment’s Annamaria Morelli executive producing.
Rachel Dargavel for Crybaby Films is co-producing in the UK. Mubi is financing production alongside Catherine Boily and Mitch Oliver’s Metafilms and Anna Films in association with Fremantle.
Film und Medienstiftung NRW, Medienboard and the German Federal Film Board are also supporting the film.
Aïnouz said: “Marco Bellocchio’s astonishing debut, Fists In The Pocket, was released over 50 years ago and had a huge impact on Italian cinema and storytelling at the time. I’m excited to be collaborating with Efthimis Filippou to revisit this iconic work to create a contemporary parable about the explosion of the traditional patriarchal family — which I hope will be touching and provocative in equal measure.”
Annamaria Morelli, CEO of The Apartment, said: “We deeply appreciate Karim Aïnouz’s films and are enthusiastic of the way he and Efthymis Filippou adapted Bellocchio’s masterpiece, revisited with a strikingly bold and original vision.”
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