Paris-based The Party Film Sales has boarded sales on French-Algerian director Damien Ounouri’s The Last Queen ahead of this week’s European Film Market (EFM, February 10-17).
Ambitious in scope, The Last Queen is inspired by the legendary 16th Century figure of Princess Zephira, the wife of the last King of Algiers Salim Toumi, and her struggle to defend her people from the infamous pirate Barbarossa.
Adila Bendimerad stars as Zephira with Dali Benssalah, seen recently in No Time To Die, playing Barbarossa. Other cast members include Imane Noel, Nabil Asli, Nadia Tereszkiewicz.
It is Ounouri’s long-gestated first fiction feature after documentaries Xiao Jia Going Home and Fidaï as well as the short mermaid-inspired contemporary drama Kindil El Bahr which played in Cannes Directors’ Fortnight.
“It’s a bold and impressive author-driven Algerian period drama that we’re sure will convince both a traditional arthouse audience and a larger one,” commented The Party Film Sales co-heads Clémence Lavigne and Samuel Blanc.
The Algerian-French is produced by Tal Intaj and Agat Films. Orange Studio, the cinema arm of French telecom giant Orange, is also on board the project as co-producer with Agat Films. It also holds the mandate for the international sales, which have been entrusted to The Party Film Sales, as well as the mandate for TV and streaming rights.
The Last Queen is among a trio of upcoming new features being launched by The Party Film Films during the EFM. The company also kicks off sales on Thai filmmaker Phuttiphong Aroonpheng’s new drama Morrison, his second film after directorial debut Manta Ray which won multiple festival prizes including the Venice Horizons award in 2018
Singer-song writer and musician Hugo Chakrabongse stars as a Thai-American ex-pop star who returns to his hometown in north-eastern Thailand to supervise the renovation of an old hotel. He discovers a delipidated relic of a bygone era that still bears the scars of the American GIs who passed through during the Vietnam War. He wanders its maze of corridors, between dream and fantasy, retracing his family’s history.
“By inventing his own cinematic language, Phuttiphong developed a very fascinating and singular vision as a filmmaker. With Morrison, he delivers an ambitious film combining a strong visual experience and a deep political reflection,” said Lavigne and Blanc.
Bangkok-based production company Diversion, the recent credits of which include Venice 2021 Horizons selection Anatomy Of Time, produces with Charles Gillibert’s Paris-based CG Cinéma.
The film will feature a soundtrack by Snowdrops, the French keyboard duo made up of Mathieu Gabry and Christine Ott, which previously worked on Manta Ray.
The company is also handling Stéphane Malterre’s haunting documentary The Lost Souls Of Syria. It follows the investigations that were sparked after an archive of 29,000 photos of anonymous corpses from the Syrian’s government’s secret archives, which were made public in 2014 by a mysterious whistleblower called Caesar.
The French-German production is produced by Paris-based Les films d’Ici and the Berlin-based collective Katuh Studio.
The company also handles international sales on Panorama title We, Students by Rafiki Fariala, which gives a rare portrait of youngsters in the Central African Republic through four students studying at its University of Bangui.
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