Gaumont has added French-language action feature The Orphans starring Dali Benssalah, Alban Lenoir, Anouk Grinberg and Sonia Faidi, to its Cannes slate.
The film is the first feature from Olivier Schneider who has worked as stunt coordinator on films including No Time To Die, Spectre, Taken and Fast and Furious X. It is about a cop and a mob fixer who team up to search for the killer of a former friend from their orphanage. Producers are Inoxy Films and Gaumont.
“Our ambition is to rehabilitate the French action movie and bring it back to cinemas,” said Alexis Cassanet, Gaumont’s head of international sales.
Gaumont is also kicking off sales on Franck Dubosc’s dark comedy How To Make A Killing, in which Dubosc also stars with Laure Calamy and Benoit Poelvoorde. It is the story of a couple living a quiet life in the mountains until they become accidental criminals following an incident with a bear, two dead drug dealers and millions of Euros in loot. Gaumont produces with Pour Toi Public Productions.
The company is also bringing Nicolas Vanier’s feelgood film The World Upside Down, about a wealthy Parisian trader who loses everything and is forced to take refuge on a country farm with his wife and son. The starry local cast includes Michael Youn, Barbara Schulz, Eric Elmosnino, Valerie Bonneton, Francois Berleand and Yannick Noah. Producers are Bonne Pioche and Gaumont.
Gaumont will release all three new titles in France.
Market premieres
Gaumont also heads to Cannes with a promo reel for Ken Scott’s Once Upon My Mother, an emotionally-charged family comedy starring Leila Bekhti as a mother of six defying insurmountable odds when she refuses to accept her son’s medical diagnosis. Jonathan Cohen, Jeanne Balibar and Josephine Japy co-star in the film set in 1960s Paris that is based on a true story.
Cassanet calls the film “an emotional rollercoaster ride spanning 40 years that speaks to different generations.”
Gaumont produces with Egerie Productions and Christal Films and will release the film in France in early 2025.
The French studio also has market premieres of high-concept romantic comedy In The Sub For Love about a flight attendant and a submarine officer who head off on a globe-trotting adventure, and Michiel Blanchart’s action-packed survival thriller Night Call starring Jonathan Feltre, Romain Duris and Jonas Bloquet. The latter is described as a genre-hopping race against time about a night shift that turns into a brutal descent into violence. It is Blanchart’s follow-up to Oscar-nominated short You’re Dead Helene.
The slate is rounded out with High In The Clouds, Gilles de Maistre’s animal adventure story Moon The Panda, and Laurence Arné’s family comedy Give A Little Beat starring Dany Boon.
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