08/02/2024 - The sales agent will sell Competition titles Dahomey and Sons, Berlinale Special title Averroès & Rosa Parks and upcoming movies by Leos Carax, Arnaud Desplechin, Patricia Mazuy and Grassadonia–Piazza

The European Film Market, unspooling within the 74th Berlinale (running 15 – 25 February), looks set to be an incredibly busy one for the international sales department (steered by Alice Lesort) of French firm Les Films du Losange, who will be arriving in Germany armed with a highly attractive line-up, including two films nominated for the Golden Bear: Dahomey [+see also:
film review
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film profile] by French-Senegalese director Mati Diop and Sons [+see also:
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film profile] by Denmark’s Gustav Möller.

After her sensational feature film debut Atlantics [+see also:
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interview: Mati Diop
film profile] (awarded Cannes’ Grand Prize in 2019), Mati Diop has decided to venture into the documentary world by way of Dahomey. The film unfolds in November 2021, when twenty-six royal treasures belonging to the Kingdom of Dahomey are about to leave Paris to return to their country of origin: the present-day Republic of Benin. These artifacts and thousands of others were plundered by French colonial troops in 1892. But how should the country react to this return of ancestral riches when it has had to rebuild itself and make peace with their absence? As the souls of these works are finally freed, debate rages on among the students of Abomey Calavi University… Produced by Parisian firm Les Films du Bal (Judith Lou Lévy) and Senegal’s Fanta Sy, Dahomey will be distributed in French cinemas on 25 September 2024, courtesy of Les Films du Losange.

Les Films du Losange will also be pinning their hopes on another second feature film by a filmmaker on the rise: Denmark’s Gustav Möller, who was very well-received with The Guilty [+see also:
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interview: Gustav Möller
film profile] (scooping the Audience Award at the 2018 Sundance Festival, nominated as his country’s contender for the Oscar, and already the focus of an American remake on Netflix) and who’ll be unveiling Sons in Berlin. Starring Sidse Babett Knudsen, Sebastian Bull and Dar Salim, the film has already been pre-purchased by more than 30 regions.

Following the awarding of last year’s Golden Bear to On The Adamant [+see also:
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interview: Nicolas Philibert
film profile] - the first instalment of Nicolas Philibert’s documentary trilogy on mental illness - the director is set to unveil the second chapter of his work - Averroès & Rosa Parks [+see also:
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interview: Nicolas Philibert
film profile] – in the festival’s Berlinale Special section. These two units of Esquirol Hospital fall under du the Paris-Centre Psychiatric Group (much like the Adamant). Between individual interviews and patient-doctor meetings, the filmmaker focuses on showing a form of psychiatry which continually strives to make room for and rehabilitate patients’ voices. Little by little, each of them opens a door onto their own private world. But what place remains for the forsaken within an increasingly worn-out healthcare system? The film is produced by TS Productions and is due for release in France on 20 March.

The EFM will also see the Films du Losange team drawing copious attention from buyers thanks to four titles in post-production which include two produced by CG Cinéma: It’s Not Me by Leos Carax (presented as a "free-form film taking the form of a self-portrait which revisits more than 40 years of the author’s filmography and examines important moments in his life, all the while capturing the political quakes of the time") and Filmlovers! by Arnaud Desplechin (read our news). Notably starring Mathieu Amalric, Françoise Lebrun and Milo Machado Graner, the movie is described by the director as follows: "What does it mean, to go to the movies?
 Why have people been going for over one hundred years? I set out to celebrate movie theatres and their manifold magic. So I walked in the footsteps of young Paul Dédalus, as if in a filmgoer’s coming-of-age story. Memories, fiction and discoveries come together in an irrepressible torrent of pictures…”

Les Films du Losange will also be pressing on with presales on Lettere a Catello by Italian directors Fabio Grassadonia and Antonio Piazza (the winner of Cannes’ Critics’ Week Grand Prize in 2013 thanks to Salvo [+see also:
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interview: Fabio Grassadonia and Anton…
interview: Sara Serraiocco
film profile] and back in the showcase of Cannes’ parallel section in 2017 with Sicilian Ghost Story [+see also:
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making of
film profile]), a film loosely based on a period in the life of Matteo Messina Denaro (a mafia boss and the last Cosa Nostra fugitive) and toplined by transalpine stars Toni Servillo and Elio Germano. Production is steered by Indigo Film alongside RAI Cinema and Les Films du Losange.

The sales agent’s post-production line-up likewise includes La prisonnière de Bordeaux by Patricia Mazuy (starring Isabelle Huppert and Hafsia Herzi).

Last but not least, amongst other market screenings at the EFM coming courtesy of the sales agent, there’s also the Israeli-French co-production No Shade In The Desert by Yossi Aviram.

(Translated from French)