Goodfellas, the Paris-based sales company formerly known as Wild Bunch International, has unveiled a lively slate of titles ahead of Cannes, including starry period drama The Flood, Dea Kulumbegashvili’s Those Who Find Me, French social drama Like A Son, prison drama Inside, football documentary Napoli 1990, Napoli 2023 and Spanish thriller The Party’s Over, along with several titles in Cannes’ Official Selection.
The Flood is the second feature from Italian director Gianluca Jodice following The Bad Poet and stars Mélanie Laurent and Guillaume Canet as King Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette in a twist on the well-known story that follows the couple and their children after they are arrested and imprisoned in the Tour de Temple. Paolo Sorrentino is on board as associate producer for the film produced by France’s Ascent Film (The First King, The Bad Poet) and Quad Productions (The Intouchables and The Death of Stalin). Memento will release the film in France.
Kulumbegashvili’s Those Who Find Me is the Georgian director’s follow-up to her debut feature Beginning, winner of the Golden Shell at San Sebastian. Producers include Luca Guadagnino for Frenesy Film and First Picture. The film stars Beginning actors Ia Sukhitashvili and Kakha Kintsurashvili in a story about, an obstetrician-gynaecologist working in the only hospital of a provincial town in Georgia who is accused of negligence when a baby dies under her supervision.
Goodfellas will also kick off sales on Australian director Charles Williams’ Inside starring Guy Pearce in a tense and poetic, prison-set story about a soon-to-be-paroled prisoner forced to murder Australia’s most despised criminal to pay his debts that sparks a transformative paternal love triangle with a just-transferred from juvenile prison inmate that will be their undoing. Williams won the short-film Palme d’Or for All These Creatures in 2018. Bonsai is on board as Australian distributor.
Nicolas Boukhrief’s Like A Son stars Vincent Lindon as a history teacher who forms a bond with a boy from the Roma community. The film is produced by France’s Eskwad (The New Toy, Les Tuche, Irreversible) and Le Pacte has French distribution rights.
Elena Manrique’s The Party’s Over is a behind-closed-doors saga set in Spain that follows an illegal Senegalese immigrant hiding out in an Andalusian manor house. The film is produced by La Claqueta (The Endless Trench) and Perdicion Films (A Monster Calls) with costumes by Goya award-winning Fernando Garcia.
Goodfellas is also bringing Nico Marzano’s documentary Napoli 1990, Napoli 2023 to Cannes. The documentary follows generations of supporters from the Diego Maradona-led 1990 national championship win that unleashed days of celebration in the city to 33 years later when a new era of fans prepare for new triumph against the complex content and fervor of contemporary life in Naples. Produced by Frames of Representation and Inland Films, Napoli 1990, Napoli 2023 is edited by All The Beauty And The Bloodshed’s Joe Bini with Honeyland’s Samir Ljuma on as DP.
Rounding out the company’s Cannes slate is Caligula - The Ultimate Cut, Penthouse Films International’s new cut of the shocking cult classic 40 year after its original release. The updated version includes an unprecedented amount of never-before-seen footage. Bac Films will release the film in France.
Festival titles
As usual, Goodfellas will market premiere a slew of titles in the festival’s official selection and sidebars, including Maiwenn’s opening night historical drama Jeanne Du Barry, plus Competition films Ken Loach’s The Old Oak and Kore-Eda Hirokazu’s Monster, Jean-Bernard Marlin’s Salem in Un Certain Regard, Valerie Donzelli’s Just the Two of Us in Cannes Premiere, and Stephan Castang’s Vincent Must Die in Critics’ Week.
French horror Vincent Must Die is the first title from Wild West, the genre- focused production company that is a joint venture between Goodfellas and Capricci. It stars Karim Leklou and Vimala Pons in a story about a man whose unremarkable life is overturned when random strangers begin violently attacking him.
Goodfellas will also market premiere Bruno Polyades’ comedy Wow! and continue sales on its full slate including Kim Chapiron’s The Young Imam, just released in France on April 26 via Le Pacte with more than 80,000 admissions after its first week.
The sales company unveiled its new moniker in March following a teaser bash in January during Unifrance’s Rendez-Vous in Paris, after splitting from pan-European Wild Bunch AG to go independent in 2019. Wild Bunch’s original co-founders Vincent Maraval and Brahim Chioua went solo under WBI that year, but maintained the link to the former company for a three-year term.
“It’s just our name that changed,” says Eva Diederix, head of sales at Goodfellas. “We have the same team and the same strength as before. It’s a new chapter, with the independence we already launched in 2019.”
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