France-based animation sales company Gebeka International, which was launched as a joint venture between Wild Bunch International (WBI) and Gebeka Films last June, has hired Jason Bressand to pilot sales.
He reports to WBI head of sales Eva Diederix and joins WBI and Gebeka Films staffers Livia Van der Staay and Marion Delord who oversee acquisitions.
Bressand arrives from Paulo Branco’s Paris-based company Alfama Films, where he was head of international sales and festivals from 2018.
During his time there, he handled titles including German director Robert Schwentke’s World War Two drama The Captain and Portuguese filmmaker Tiago Guedes’s Venice 2019 Golden Lion contender The Domain.
Prior to Alfama, Bressand gained experience in the film industry working for French production companies Moonshaker Films and 2.4.7 Films as well as FilmNation Entertainment in New York while completing a Master’s degree at the EDHEC Business School in Lille.
“Two things attracted me to this position: the opportunity to work at a new company and help build it up, with the backing of two companies of the calibre of Gebeka and WBI, and the rise of animation as a genre,” said Bressand.
“There are so many ambitious animation projects coming together right now. I’m looking forward to the opportunity to bring the best of these to the international market.”
Upcoming feature animations on the growing Gebeka International slate include The Character Of Rain by Liane-Cho Han, who was director of animation on Remi Chayé’s Long Way North and Calamity. It is adapted from the eponymous novel by Belgian writer Amélie Northomb, inspired by her early years growing up in Japan.
It also continues sales on Gebeka International’s debut sales acquisition Sheba, a 3D coming-of-age family adventure following in the footsteps of legendary African figure the Queen Of Sheba.
Other works on the slate include Luxembourgish animator Carlo Vogele’s Greek mythology-inspired drama Icarus & The Minotaur, whose animator credits include Pixar’s Monsters University and the recent series Fox And Hare.
A joint production between Iris Productions and Rezo Productions, Bac Films have launched the film theatrically in France on March 30, to coincide with the Easter school holidays.
Gebeka International combines the strengths of two companies with a long track-record handling high-end feature-length animation. Gebeka Films is a major force in the theatrical distribution of animation in France, with past releases including Chayé’s Calamity and Claude Barras’s Oscar-nominated My Life As A Courgette. WBI has a long history of selling feature-length animation, with recent titles including Patrick Imbert’s mountain adventure The Summit Of The Gods and Ari Folman’s Where Is Anne Frank.
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