Paris-based sales company The Party has acquired Happy! (working title), Pascal Plisson’s upcoming documentary about children with disabilities who chase their dreams despite the obstacles they face.
Writer and filmmaker Plisson’s doc On The Way To School was a box office success in France with 1.4 million admissions and sold to 18 countries worldwide in addition to winning the best documentary award at the Cesars in 2014. He is also behind recent docs Grand Jour, released in 2015, and Gogo in 2019 about a 94 year-old woman attending school in Kenya.
With Happy!, Plisson focuses his camera in on children with disabilities living in France, Kenya, Nepal, Rwanda and Brazil. Described as “extraordinary children who prove that love, inclusive education, humour and courage can move mountains, and that fate is sometimes full of surprises,” the film is produced by Eddy Vingataramin for Eady East Prod and will be released in France via Jour2Fête. The film is currently in the editing stages with expected delivery later in 2023.
The Party is hosting a slew of market premieres for buyers at this week’s Rendez-Vous in Paris including Julien Guetta’s Top Dogs from Nolita Cinema and Princesse Beli Productions. The film stars popular French comedian Jean-Paul Rouve opposite veteran actor Michel Blanc in a story about very different brothers who reconnect later in life and bond unexpectedly. Guetta is behind critically-acclaimed The Troubleshooter starring Eric Judor and Laure Calamy and Top Dogs is his second feature. Top Dogs is being released on 250 screens in France via Jour2Fête on Wednesday (January 11).
Gilles Perret’s The Takeover from Elzévir Films (Bigger Than Us, Douce France) follows a factory worker in the French Alps who joins forces with two of his childhood friends to pull off an epic heist and try to put the company back into its employees’ hands. Known for his politically-charged filmmaking, Perret has directed 13 documentaries including A Place in the Sun and Those Who Care. The Takeover is Perret’s first fiction feature and stars Pierre Deladonchamps, Laetitia Dosch, Grégory Montel, Vincent Deniard and Finnegan Oldfield.
Also on The Party’s Rendez-Vous screenings slate is Béatrice Pollet’s And Yet We Were All Blind features a starry local cast including Maud Wyler, Geraldine Nakache and Grégoire Colin. Pollet’s second feature after 2012’s Le Jour de la Grenouille follows a happily married couple with two kids whose lives are thrown into turmoil when the police discover a newborn near their house believed to belong to the mother.
The Party was founded in 2020 when Doc & Film International merged with Jour2Fête’s sales department under a joint banner. The company continues to expand its global reach as it bolsters its catalogue and will rep Veerle Baetens’ When it Melts at the upcoming 2023 Sundance Film Festival.
In 2022 The Party repped Frederick Wiseman’s A Couple and Damien Ounouri and Adila Bendimerad’s The Last Queen in Venice and Youssef Chebb’s Askhal at TIFF among others. The Party will also host screenings for The Last Queen at the Rendez-Vous.
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