Paris-based sales company Luxbox has secured key sales for Tunisian Oscar submission Under The Fig Trees, with Modern Films acquiring UK-Ireland rights and Trent Film picking up the film for Italy.
Erige Sehiri’s coming-of-age story about a group of rural youths picking figs over a summer world premiered in Cannes Director’s Fortnight in May before a North American premiere in Toronto in the Contemporary World Cinema section and world tour at festivals including Karlovy Vary, Melbourne and Sarajevo.
Luxbox has previously sold the title to North America (Film Movement), Benelux (Liberation), France (Jour2fete), the Middle East (Mad Solutions), Portugal (Nitrato), Spain (Atalante), Turkey (Bir Film) and Eastern Europe (HBO).
Under the Fig Trees is Sehiri’s first fiction feature following her 2018 award-winning documentary Railway Men about the working lives of train drivers struggling to keep Tunisia’s run-down railway network running. Sehiri was only the second Tunisian woman to be selected for the Director’s Fortnight.
The film also won a top post-production prize at the 2021 Marrakech International Film Festival’s Atlas Workshops.
Under The Fig Trees is produced by Sehiri’s Tunis-based Henia Productions and Didar Domehri at Paris-based Maneki Films, a co-production with Palmyre Badinier, Nicolas Wadimoff, Coeytaux at Akka Films and Roshi Behesht Nedjad at Berlin-based In Good Company.
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