New films by Ari Folman, Hany Abu-Assad and Sam Garbarski are among six market premieres being presented at The Match Factory at Cannes’ Marché du Film.

Four of the titles will be screened in various sections of the Cannes Film Festival:

  • Folman’s The Congress, adapted from Stanislaw Lem’s cult classic The Futurological Congress, will open the Directors’ Fortnight sidebar on May 16, and have its first market screening the day after;

  • Hany Abu-Assad’s tragic love story Omar will screen in Un Certain Regard on May 20 and have its first public market screening on May 22;

  • Ritesh Batra’s The Lunchbox, co-produced by the Bronze Lola-winning German producer Rohfilm (Lore), will have its premiere in Critics’ Week on May 19;

  • feature debutants Agustín Toscano and Ezequiel Radusky’s quirky satire on modern class struggle, The Owners, is also screening in the Critics’ Week with its premiere on May 20.

In addition, the company has booked private, invitation-only screenings of Garbarski’s fourth feature Vijay And I, starring Moritz Bleibtreu and Patricia Arquette, and Soren Kragh-Jacobsen’s The Hour Of The Lynx.

Screening slots have also been booked at the Marché for titles which premiered during this year’s Berlinale - from the Competition films Pia Marais’ Layla Fourie and Danis Tanovic’s An Episode In The Life Of An Iron Picker through Felix van Groeningen’s acclaimed The Broken Circle Breakdown to Tom Shoval’s Youth.

New partners join Distribution 2.0

The Match Factory has announced that three distributors – Portugal’s Alambique, Russia’s Carmen Film and The Netherlands’ Contact Film – have joined the MEDIA Mundus-backed Distribution 2.0 project for its second session this year.

The partners from the first session during the past 15 months – Europa International, Mexico’s Canana Presenta, Hungary’s Cinefil, Taiwan’s Joint Entertainment, Germany’s Reelport and the US’ Strand Releasing – will also be continuing the collaboration which seeks to develop new structures and strategies for releases and marketing mechanisms.

Among other initiatives over the past year, The Match Factory has developed an exchange platform for promotional materials between distributors and sales agents together with the German service provider Reelport.

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