EXCLUSIVE: Film is second work from director of critically acclaimed Buffalo Boy.

Paris-based Premium Films has acquired futuristic Vietnamese, murder mystery 2030 (Nuoc) which is set to open the Panorama section of the Berlinale.

2030 is the second feature from Vietnamese director Nghiem-Minh Nguyen-Vo after his critically acclaimed Buffalo Boy, which was Vietnam’s Oscar submission in 2006 and screened at several festivals including Toronto, Rotterdam Locarno and Busan.

The film is set against the backdrop of a futuristic Vietnam, where global warming and rising sea levels have forced cultivation to be done on floating farms.

The storyline revolves around a woman investigating the death of her husband. In the process, she discovers that a floating farm, close to where her husband’s body was found floating, is a secret genetic engineering research laboratory run by a former lover.

Premium Films, which has expanded its activities to features sales over the last two years having originally focused on shorts, heads to Berlin with an expanded sales team this year, following the arrival of former Wide Management staffer Michelle Palant on the sales team. She joins Kasia Karwan and Jean Charles Mille.

“We fell in love with the film,” said Palant. “It’s a love story set in a poetic and futuristic universe. The director masters several genres at once, romance, suspense and science fiction.”

Other films on Premium Films’ EFM line-up include Norwegian Iram Haq’s I Am Yours, about a single mother of Pakistani origin coping with a disapproving mother and dysfunctional relationship.

Norway’s Foreign Language Academy Award submission this year, the picture won best film at the Lubeck Nordic Film Days. It screens in Goteborg International Film Festival this week. Director and actress Haq signed with ICM partners last December. 

Premium will also continue sales on Noaz Deshe’s White Shadow, which screened in Sundance’s World Cinema Dramatic Competition last week, having premiered at Venice where it won the Lion of the Future prize.

The picture, executive produced by Ryan Gosling, tackles the issue of the persecution of albinos in Tanzania and revolves around an albino boy forced to go on the run after this father is murdered. 

The company will also begin pre-sales on Fanny Jean-Noel’s upcoming hybrid fiction/documentary Move! exploring dance around the world. The company has a promo-reel available.

Other titles on its EFM slate include Daniel Hoesl’s Soldate Jeannette and Alex Pitstra’s Die Welt.  

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