email print share on Facebook share on Twitter share on LinkedIn share on reddit pin on Pinterest

CANNES 2022 Marché du Film

Totem Films to brandish three aces selected for Cannes

by 

- The French sales agent will be wagering on Jasmine Trinca’s Marcel!, Mikko Myllylahti’s The Woodcutter Story and Annie Ernaux and David Ernaux-Briot’s The Super 8 Years

Totem Films to brandish three aces selected for Cannes
Marcel! by Jasmine Trinca

The 75th Cannes Film Festival’s Marché du Film (running 17 – 25 May) looks set to be a busy one for the French international sales agent Totem Films, who will be negotiating on behalf of three titles respectively showcasing in the Official Selection, Critics’ Week and the Directors’ Fortnight.

(The article continues below - Commercial information)

Headed up by Bérénice Vincent and Laure Parleani, the Totem team will notably be pinning its hopes on Marcel! [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Jasmine Trinca
film profile
]
, the first feature film directed by Italian actress Jasmine Trinca which is set to be unveiled in an Official Selection Special Screening. The cast stars Alba Rohrwacher, Maayane Conti and Giovanna Ralli, while the story - written by the director together with Francesca Manieri - revolves around three characters: a little girl who’s an insomniac, a mother who’s an artist and a dog called Marcel. The little girl loves her mother with all her heart, but the latter loves Marcel more than anything. Will an unexpected event help these circles of love to intersect? Production comes courtesy of Cinemaundici in league with Totem Atelier (heralding the firm’s first co-production) and RAI Cinema.

Critics’ Week, meanwhile, will see Totem wagering on The Woodcutter Story [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Mykko Myllylahti
film profile
]
, which is the first feature film to be directed by Finnish screenwriter Mikko Myllylahti (a project which won Critics’ Week’s Next Step Award in 2019 and was selected for the Cannes Film Festival’s Cinéfondation Workshop that same year – read our news), an Aamu Film Company production made in league with Dutch firm Keplerfilm, Denmark’s Beofilm and Germany’s Achtung Panda!.

Another attraction in the Totem line-up is Annie Ernaux and David Ernaux-Briot’s documentary The Super 8 Years [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Annie Ernaux and David Erna…
film profile
]
, set to be unveiled in the Directors’ Fortnight, for which the famous French novelist (whose works Happening [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Anamaria Vartolomei
film profile
]
, Simple Passion [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Danielle Arbid
film profile
]
and J’ai aimé vivre là [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile
]
have recently been adapted for the big screen) delved back into her past: "As I watched the super 8 films we’d shot between 1972 and 1981, I realised that they weren’t only part of our family archive, they were also a testimonial to the pastimes, lifestyles and aspirations of a particular social class in the decade following 1968. I wanted to incorporate these silent images into a story where private lives, social issues and history intersect, in order to convey the taste and colour of those years." Production was entrusted to Les Films Pelléas alongside Arte France (La Lucarne).

As for the Marché du Film, this event will see Totem pressing on with pre-sales on five feature films currently in post-production: the French-Moroccan work Animalia [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Sofia Alaoui
film profile
]
by Sofia Alaoui, Dead Girls Dancing [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Katarina Stark
film profile
]
by Germany’s Anna Roller (a Kalekone Film production whereby a road trip through Italy involving three high school girls takes an unexpected turn), Bowling Saturne [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Patricia Mazuy
film profile
]
by French director Patricia Mazuy, Explosions In The Heart by Norway’s Yenni Lee (see our video interview) and A Letter from Helga [+see also:
trailer
interview: Thorvaldur Kristjánsson
film profile
]
by Iceland’s Ása Helga Hjörleifsdóttir (acclaimed in Toronto 2017 for her first feature The Swan [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Ása Helga Hjörleifsdóttir
interview: Thorvaldur Kristjánsson
film profile
]
), who has adapted Bergsveinn Birgisson’s novel of the same name (set in a remote fjord in 1940s Iceland, where young farmer Bjarni and budding poetess Helga embark upon a passionate, forbidden affair, their emotions as wild as the waves of the ocean around them) into a film produced by Vintage Pictures (Iceland) and Zik Zak Filmworks (Iceland), in co-production with Allfilm (Estonia) and Rotterdam Films (the Netherlands).

(The article continues below - Commercial information)

(Translated from French)

Did you enjoy reading this article? Please subscribe to our newsletter to receive more stories like this directly in your inbox.

Privacy Policy