German sales agents pick up Sundance, Rotterdam, Berlinale films

Jean-Christophe Simon’s Berlin-based outfit Films Boutique has four world premieres at next week’s Berlin Film Festival:

• Sudabeh Mortezai’s first feature Macondo after his acclaimed documentaries The Bazaar of Sexes and Children of the Prophet, in the Official Competition.
  
  
• Brazilian Daniel Ribeiro’s coming of age comedy-drama The Way He Looks, in the Panorama.
  
  
• Umut Dag’s stark drama Cracks In Concrete, in Panorama Special.
  
  
• Canadian film-maker Denis Coté’s documentary Joy Of Man’s Desiring about the energies and rituals of the workplace, in the Berlinale’s Forum.

In addition, Films Boutique will have the market premiere of Michael Tully’s comedy Ping Pong Summer, starring Susan Sarandon, Amy Sedaris, Judah Friedlander and Lea Thompson, which premiered in Sundance and is screening at Rotterdam this week.

The other market premiere is Swedish filmmaker Göran Hugo Olsson’s documentary Concerning Violence, on the struggle for freedom in the African colonies.

The film is based on recently discovered archive footage and accompanied by extracts from Frantz Fanon’s book The Wretched of the Earth. It premiered in Sundance and is now screening in the Panorama where Olsson’s previous film Black Power Mixtape was shown in 2011.

A market screening has also been booked for Georgian Levan Koguashvili’s comedy Blind Dates, which has its European premiere in the Forum section.

Media Luna’s world premieres

Cologne-based sales company Media Luna New Films has picked up Dutch filmmaker Dick Tuinder’s Farewell To The Moon, which had its world premiere in Rotterdam’s Tiger Awards Competition this week.

The tragi-comedy about a boy’s first love affair as the last man lands on the moon in 1972 was produced by Column Film.

World premieres of two debut features will be represented by Media Luna’s Ida Martins in Berlin.

The first is Maximilian Leo’s My Brother’s Keeper, a drama about identity and the yearning for another life, which is the opening film of the Perspektive Deutsches Kino sidebar and was produced by Cologne-based production house  augenschein Filmproduktion, which Leo co-founded with Jonas Katzenstein in 2008.

The second is Argentinian-born Inés María Barrionuevo’s coming of age story Atlantida, to be shown in the Generation 14plus competition.

Media Luna has also booked market screenings for the three films as well as for back titles such as Jan Verheyen’s The Verdict, Miguel Ferrari’s Goya-nominated Blue And Not So Pink, and Bettina Blümner’s Broken Glass Park.

Another feature, Julia von Heinz’s Hanna’s Journey, has made it onto the LOLA longlist and will be shown in the EFM’s LOLA@Berlinale programme in the revamped ZOO-Palast cinema.

Cinema release for Lamento

Berlin-based missingFILMs has picked up Jöns Jönsson’s Lamento for theatrical distribution in Germany in 2014.

The Swedish-born director’s feature debut about a mother adopting unconventional ways to grieve after her daughter’s suicide will have its world premiere in the Berlinale’s Perspektive Deutsches Kino sidebar next week.

Lamento is Jönsson’s graduation film from the Konrad Wolf“University of Film & Television in Potsdam-Babelsberg and received the First Steps Award for best feature film last September.

The line-up at Christos Acrivulis and Andreas Severin’s distribution outfit includes Marco Wilms’ Art War, Tim Lienhard’s documentary One Zero One, and Aron Lehmann’s LOLA longlist title Kohlhaas oder die Verhältnismäßigkeit der Mittel.