Orange Studio will kick off sales at AFM for Like A Prince, the debut feature from actor Ali Marhyar about a star boxer attempting a career comeback in a French chateau after a bar fight gone wrong.
Like A Prince stars Ahmed Sylla as the titular athlete who is sentenced to community service at the prestigious Château de Chambord following a bar fight that injures him and threatens his career. There, amidst horses, strange bosses and knight-inspired stunts, he meets a foster child with a knack for boxing who inspires him to fight for her and attempt a comeback of his own.
Orange Studio’s head of world sales Charlotte Boucon called the film “a comedy, but with a lot of depth.”
The film is produced by Paris-based Issa!Films (Netflix series Off The Hook) and Yann Zenou, the French producer behind The Intouchables, Samba, A Bag Of Marbles and The Pod Generation. Sylla is a rising French talent known for his breakout role in 2017 French adventure comedy The Climb and recent popular local comedies Our Tiny Little Wedding and Leonor Seraille’s 2022 Cannes official selection Mother And Son. The film features Jonathan Cohen, Marhyar’s on-screen co-star in Netflix series Family Business, alongside Julia Piaton and Mallory Wanecque.
The film is currently in post-production and set for a January 17, 2024 release in France via Apollo Films.
AFM slate
Orange Studio’s talent-heavy slate also includes a blend of local drama, comedy and thriller titles including Florent-Emilio Siri’s action thriller Elyas, Frederic and Valentin Potier’s Prodigies (Prodigieuses), Simon Buisson’s Drone and The Chorus director Christophe Barratier’s Like a Family.
Elyas, formerly titled Fatum, stars Roschdy Zem and Laetitia Eido in an adrenaline-fueled story about a special forces veteran recruited as a bodyguard for a young girl. Now in post-production, Elyas is produced by Récifilms (November, Mobius) and scored by Oscar winner Alexandre Desplat.
Prodigies features Emily In Paris star Camille Razat, Franck Dubosc and Isabelle Carré in a drama about a prodigious pair of piano-playing twin sisters diagnosed with an illness that causes them to slowly lose the use of their hands. It is produced by Jerico Films, whose La Famille Bélier was remade into Oscar-winning film Coda, alongside One World Films. Now in post-production, Orange Studio and Apollo Films will release the film in France.
Marion Barbeau, breakout star of Cedric Klapisch’s Rise, stars in Drone from Night Of The 12th producers Haut et Court as an architecture student moonlighting as a cam-girl to make ends meet who finds herself in the grips of a drone following her every move.
Instant Family stars French comic Kev Adams alongside veteran actor Gerard Jugnot in a comedy-drama about a young magician struggling as a newly single dad to a baby who calls in his own father for support. M.E.S. Productions produces and Apollo and Orange Studio will release the film on November 15 in France.
The company also brings a first promoreel for Aude Léa Rapin’s female-driven dystopian thriller Planet B (Planète B) starring Adèle Exarchopoulos and Dune: Part 2 star Souheila Yacoub produced by rising French producers Les Films du Bal, known for Mati Diop’s Cannes prize-winning Atlantics and recent Venice vampire horror drama The Vourdalak. Le Pacte will distribute the film in France.
Also adding colour to Orange’s AFM line-up are current box office hit Lea Domenach’s Bernadette about France’s famed foremer first lady Bernadette Chirac starring Catherine Deneuve; Isabelle Brocard’s period drama Madame de Sévigné starring Karin Viard, Ana Girardot and Cedric Kahn; Tamer Ruggli’s Egypt-set road movie Back To Alexandria with Nadine Labaki and Fanny Ardant; and Eric Besnard’s 19th-century set inspirational drama Miss Violet starring Alexandra Lamy.
It also brings first market screeners for David Oelhoffen’s The Last Men (Les Derniers Hommes) produced by the late Jacques Perrin’s Galatée Films about legionnaires in Indochina in 1945 fighting to survive in the jungle and set for a 2024 release via Tandem.
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