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CANNES 2020 Marché du Film

French sales agents shine at Cannes Online

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- CANNES 2020: Totem Films with Gagarin, Charades with Le Discours, Playtime, Wild Bunch, mk2 Films, Pathé, Luxbox and Les Films du Losange, stole particular focus at the virtual market

French sales agents shine at Cannes Online
Gagarin by Fanny Liatard and Jérémy Trouilh

French international sales agents whipped out a number of announcements at the Cannes Film Festival’s Online Marché du Film (running 22 - 26 June). The main deals struck and new films now gracing line-ups are as follows...

Among the very few films awarded the Cannes 73 Official Selection seal of approval and treated to a scheduled market screening (with other titles opting for a launch via a potential world premiere in Toronto or San Sebastian, or playing a similarly tactical marketing card), Fanny Liatard and Jérémy Trouilh’s Gagarin [+see also:
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interview: Fanny Liatard and Jérémy Tr…
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- which was notably acquired for the US by Cohen Media Group and for the UK by Curzon - helped Totem Films come out on top. The team composed of Agathe Valentin, Laure Parleani and Bérénice Vincent also launched the Totem Docs Label, which already includes the films in post-production Sheroes [+see also:
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 by French director Aude Pépin (focused on the militant Chantal Birman), We [+see also:
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interview: Alice Diop
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by her compatriot Alice Diop (a journey into the diversity of the Parisian suburbs, following in the tracks of the RER B train), the completed feature film The Most Fearless by US director Heather Kessinger (about a Bangladeshi surfer) and the project The Female Gaze by France’s Iris Brey (who will adapt her own text ‘Le regard féminin - Une révolution à l’écran’ for the big screen).

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Charades did well out of the market premiere of the Official Selection title The Speech [+see also:
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by Laurent Tirard, which racked up sales by way of acquisitions for Italy (I Wonder Pictures), Spain (A Contracorriente), Portugal (Lusomundo), Poland (Gutek), the Czech Republic and Slovakia (Aerofilms), Hungary (Mozinet), Romania (Voodoo), the territory of former Yugoslavia (Megacom), the Baltic countries (A One), Greece (Weird Wave), CIS, Israel, Taiwan, Australia and New Zealand. This whirlwind of deals rounds off the presales previously registered for Benelux (Cineart) and Switzerland (Filmcoopi), with Le Pacte having already scheduled the film’s French release for 23 December.

Another Cannes-labelled title already benefiting from abundant presales, this time courtesy of Playtime, is Summer of 85 [+see also:
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by François Ozon (set to be launched in French cinemas by Diaphana on 14 July), which was bought for Japan by flag Co., Ltd during the Online Marché du Film.

Wild Bunch, meanwhile, which namely sold the North American rights to Hatching [+see also:
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interview: Hanna Bergholm
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, by Finland’s Hanna Bergholm, to IFC Midnight, announced the arrival of Rebel by the Belgian duo Adil El Arbi and Billal Fallah in its line-up. This Caviar production revolves around a 13-year-old Moroccan boy hailing from Molenbeek who finds himself at a crossroads and in the throes of an identity crisis following his father’s death. His mother Leila tries to keep him away from his big brother who has “turned bad”.

For its part, mk2 Films launched presales on The Young Lovers [+see also:
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by Carine Tardieu, starring Melvil Poupaud, Fanny Ardant and Cécile de France in lead roles, and on the documentary Louis Armstrong: The Cause of Happiness by Thibaut de Longeville.

Pathé International kicked off presales on its production Notre Dame On Fire [+see also:
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by Jean-Jacques Annaud (who co-wrote the script alongside Thomas Bidegain), on which filming should commence at the end of the year.

Luxbox added Playback by Stéphane Berthomieux (who co-wrote the screenplay with Mathieu Demy) to its line-up, with Kad Merad, Déborah François and Geraldine Chaplin starring in the cast and portraying the misadventures of a French crooner and dedicated Dean Martin fan who, during a trip to the US, radically questions the reason for his existence… The film is set to be shot at the end of 2020.

Among other announcements of note is the news that Les Films du Losange got the ball rolling on presales of Nobody's Hero [+see also:
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interview: Alain Guiraudie
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by Alain Guiraudie, that TF1 Studio unveiled the first images from the film in post-production Erna at War [+see also:
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interview: Henrik Ruben Genz
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by Denmark’s Henrik Ruben Genz (starring Trine Dyrholm in the shoes of a mother whose mentally handicapped son is sent to the Front on the German border, and who disguises herself as a man, enlisting in a bid to protect him), that Best Friend Forever sold Los conductos [+see also:
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by Camille Restrepo (a French-Colombian-Brazilian co-production discovered in Berlin’s Encounters competition) to Grasshopper Film for the US and, last but not least, that Other Angle Pictures worked hard on behalf of Ruben Alves’s Miss [+see also:
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(released in France on 23 September via Warner, and bought for Germany, Benelux, Switzerland, Portugal, Japan, South Korea, Canada and Brazil).

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(Translated from French)

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