Paris-based Memento International has snapped up international rights for Sudabeh Mortezai’s third fiction feature Europa that is set to world premiere in competition at the Sarajevo Film Festival in August.
The film, shot mostly in English, follows an ambitious executive working at the titular Europa, a mysterious corporation looking to expand into the Balkan region, ostensibly with philanthropic development ambitions. Things don’t go as planned when the executive is challenged by a stubborn and spiritual farmer who refuses to budge from his ancestors’ land.
Europa is Mortezai’s third fiction feature following two award-winning documentaries. Macondo , the Austrian-Iranian filmmaker’s first foray into fiction premiered in competition in Berlin in 2014 and also screened in Sarajevo in competition where it won the CICAE prize among several other festival awards and sold to more than 20 territories across the globe. Her follow-up Joy, an intimate portrayal of sex trafficking, premiered at Venice’s Giornate Degli Autori in 2018 where it won the Europa Cinemas Label before going on to win best film at the London Film Festival, the Etoile d’Or at Marrakech Film Festival and a dozen other awards before being sold to Netflix worldwide.
Europa is produced by Mehrdad Mortezai of Austria’s Fratella Filmproduktion and was co-financed by Film4, alongside the Austrian Film Institute, Vienna Film Fund, and ORF. The executive producers are David Kimbangi for Film4, and Mike Goodridge for Good Chaos. The film will be distributed in Austria by Filmladen.
Memento called the film “a very compelling insight on the excesses of modern capitalism and neoliberalism.” Mortezai explained her motivation for making the film: “Exploitation is at the core of our way of life in the privileged societies of the West. Nowadays it masquerades behind progressive ideals and promises of human rights and equality, all while crushing anything and anyone standing in the way of profits and corporate expansion. Someone has to pay the price for progress. And someone has to get the job done. This is what Europa is about.”.
Memento International has had a strong festival run this year coming off Cannes wins for Bajoli’s Omen and Vladimir Perisic’s Lost Country and Martin Provost’s French painter drama Bonnard, Pierre & Marthe that premiered to strong reviews and a slew of sales worldwide. Memento’s eclectic 2023 slate also includes Liu Jian’s Berlin and Annecy animated title Art College 1994, English-language Sundance titles Anthony Chen’s Drift and Babak Jalali’s Fremont, winner of the best director prize at Karlovy Vary this July.
The Sarajevo Film Festival runs August 11-18.
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