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CANNES 2020 Marché du Film

SND sets its sights on Cannes with 11 titles in the Market showcase

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- Standing particularly tall in the French sales agent’s Marché du Film line-up are two premières in the form of Daniel Cohen’s A Friendly Tale and Nicolas Vanier’s Poly

SND sets its sights on Cannes with 11 titles in the Market showcase
Actors Bérénice Béjo, Vincent Cassel, François Damiens and Florence Foresti, who will star in Daniel Cohen’s A Friendly Tale

While Thierry Frémaux is scheduled to unveil, on 3 June, the list of films selected for the Cannes 2020 Label and the event’s Official Selection, with Critics’ Week and the ACID programme following suit the next day, preparations for the online Marché du Film, organised by Jérôme Paillard and running 22 – 26 June, are in full swing and the line-ups of French international sales agents are beginning to emerge.

The international sales division of the SND group, for example, will be wagering on 11 titles, two of which will enjoy online market premieres. Standing out in the category of large-cast comedies is A Friendly Tale [+see also:
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by Daniel Cohen (The Chef [+see also:
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, Les deux mondes [+see also:
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) which features the likes of Bérénice Béjo, Vincent Cassel, Belgium’s François Damiens and Florence Foresti. Written by the director alongside Olivier Dazat, the story centres around the character of Léa. When she announces to her nearest and dearest that she’s in the middle of writing a book, the reactions come thick and fast. How is it that someone so indecisive and unambitious has managed to write a novel? But once the book is published, it turns out to be a huge success and Léa’s triumph will cause shockwaves amongst her entourage… Production is entrusted to Parisian firm Cinéfrance, while the film’s release in French cinemas is scheduled for 9 September.

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A market premiere is also on the cards for Poly [+see also:
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by Nicolas Vanier, who directed the first instalment of Belle et Sébastien [+see also:
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(2013) and who is once again diving into the world of Cécile Aubry, a children’s author and the director of certain TV soap operas hugely popular in the 1960s. Starring, among others, François Cluzet, Julie Gayet and Patrick Timsit (and adapted by the filmmaker in league with Maxime Giffard and Jérôme Tonnerre), Poly recounts the misadventures of Pascale, a little girl who wants to save mistreated pony Poly from a monstrous circus owner. She is helped by a young teen known as Pablo, the circus’s odd-job boy, who’s been left with a limp after falling from a trapeze… Production is steered by Bonne Pioche, with the film scheduled for release in France on 7 October.

The SND sales team, led by Charlotte Boucon, will also be pursuing sales for a handful of finished titles (whose release dates are yet to be finalised), such as the psychological thriller Appearances [+see also:
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by Marc Fitoussi, not to mention the comedy All Aboard! [+see also:
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by Benjamin Euvrard, which stars André Dussollier and Jérôme Commandeur as an unpredictable grandfather and an out-of-depth father, respectively, caught up in a madcap chase to catch a train which has carried off the children placed in their care.

Presales on the basis of a promo reel, meanwhile, will continue for chilling film Kandisha [+see also:
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by the duo Alexandre Bustillo and Julien Maury, and Éric Besnard’s Délicieux [+see also:
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(a Nord-Ouest Films production featuring a top-drawer cast composed of Grégory Gadebois, Isabelle Carré, Benjamin Lavernhe, Patrick Chesnais and Guillaume de Tonquedec), which delves into the 18th century (based upon a script penned by the director alongside Nicolas Boukhrief) just ahead of the French Revolution, in the wake of a chef dismissed by his master who, upon meeting a surprising young woman, finds the courage to free himself from his condition as a servant and to offer his services directly to the public, creating the very first restaurant.

Also worth a mention in the SND line-up is a teaser for Émilie Therond’s documentary Good Morning Professor (produced by Winds) and, once again, Gabriel Le Bomin’s De Gaulle [+see also:
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, which notched up 595,000 admissions in 11 days during its release in France, before the health crisis and the forced closure of cinemas brutally interrupted its big screen career, which its distributor SND should be relaunching once movie theatres re-open.

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(Translated from French)

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