FUTURE LEADERS AGENTS
Roxana Adle
UK
Independent Talent Group roxanaadle@independenttalent.com Clients include Mike Newell, Jonathan Teplitzky, Per Fly, Wayne Blair, Anurag Kashyap, Eva Husson, Orlando von Einsiedel
Roxana Adle can thank her dentist for her start in the film business. “I had just graduated and was desperate to find a job in film when my dentist told me he had a client [Duncan Heath] who was a big-deal agent. When Duncan had his next appointment I accosted him in the waiting room and basically stalked him until he gave me a job. Let’s just say the first week was interesting, but I’m still here,” she laughs. French and Farsi-speaking Adle was Heath’s assistant before establishing herself as one of the UK’s most impressive young agents in her own right. “Generally, if their name is difficult to pronounce, that’s my type,” says Adle of her impressive client list. It includes Gangs Of Wasseypur writer-director-producer Anurag Kashyap, and established Danish writer-director Per Fly, as well as emerging voices such as Bang Gang (A Modern Love Story) writer-director Eva Husson, Borkur Sigthorsson, who is due to direct Icelandic crime thriller Mules, Virunga director Orlando von Einsiedel and Neither Heaven Nor Earth writer-director Clément Cogitore.
Matilda Boström
SWEDEN
Agentfirman matilda@agentfirman.com
Clients include Ronnie Sandahl, Michael Nyqvist, Matias Varela, Josephine Bornebusch, Mans Marlind, Bjorn Stein
Matilda Boström studied law at Uppsala University and worked at the Writers Guild of Sweden for four years before starting at Sweden’s Agentfirman in May 2013. She is the legal adviser for the agency as well as an agent/manager. She says becoming an agent was “a stroke of luck… I landed an internship at the Writers Guild by winning a game of ‘paper, rock, scissors’ over a classmate, which led to a job as a legal adviser at the Writers Guild, which in turn led me to meet the wonderful ladies who run Agentfirman.” Those colleagues — Annika Kilden, Jenny Planthaber and Aleksandra Mandic — make a big difference to her work, as all four are based in the same room in their Stockholm office, “combining skill and sharing all clients. They get the best from each of us.” Boström says it is interesting to see the international attention now paid to Scandinavian talents — her client Michael Nyqvist has appeared in high-profile action films including Mission: Impos-
sible — Ghost Protocol and John Wick for instance. She finds Swedish actors, writers and directors “talented, hard working, well prepared, curious and open”. Boström is keen to work with all kinds of creative clients. “That’s a thing I really like about my job. Working with people of all ages as well as combining scriptwriters, directors and actors.” It is that variation of the talents and the work that she loves the most. “It’s never dull.”
Andrea Brabin
ICELAND
Eskimo/Brabin Management andrea@eskimo.is
Clients To be announced — Brabin Management launches this month
Andrea Brabin was a model for more than 11 years before starting a successful casting agency in 1998. That company bought model agency Eskimo in 2000 and operates under that banner today. Now Brabin is taking the next step with the launch of Brabin Management this month. It will be Iceland’s first agency/talent management company. Brabin has worked on the Icelandic casting for many large international features that have come to the country, including Thor: The Dark World, Noah and Oblivion. She has also collaborated with local features all the way back to 2000’s seminal 101 Reykjavik.
44 Screen International at Cannes May 12, 2016
Silke Bacher
GERMANY
Homebase info@agenturhomebase.de
Clients include Burhan Qurbani, Lennart Ruff, Marco Kreuzpaintner, Anna Brüggemann, Richard Kropf
“It was a conscious decision not to represent actors,” says Silke Bacher of Berlin-based Homebase, the agency that handles 17 writers, 15 directors and, most recently, two editors. “For us, the people behind the camera are the stars.” Bacher points to her experience as a film and TV producer as crucial preparation for her work as an agent. “I got a real insight into what’s important in development and how essential it is for both sides — producers and talent — to have a strong agency partner,” she explains. “In the beginning, we were known as the agency for up-and-coming German independent talent but we’ve become broader and more commercial. For example, we succeeded in placing three of our writers in the first TV series by international VoD platforms developed out of Germany.” In addition, Bacher reps the Student Oscar winner Lennart Ruff, who started work on his feature debut, The Titan, in the US this year. “It is important for me that, as a boutique agency, our focus is not on growing too much, but more about keeping close contact to each single artist,” she says. Bacher notes that one of her daily challenges is to motivate the artists during the long development process. “We all know how tough the film industry is but we mustn’t forget sensitive artists make up its backbone,” Bacher says. “They constantly need to reveal their inner souls in order to deliver their best work and my job as an agent is to provide a safe place for them to do that.”
“Casting directors that I worked with on various projects around the world started calling me to ask for Icelandic agents and I started helping them out and taking the jobs,” she says. “I’d known for a while that this service was needed in Iceland.” She plans to work mostly with young up-and-coming talents on the agency side, although as a casting expert she does of course “recommend local talent that fit each request to casting directors around the world”. Brabin says Iceland boasts “a high level of educated and experienced actors of all ages. Due to how small the country is, it’s easy to get to know people on all levels of the business, and therefore fairly easy to get experience in films. “The high level of acting education in Iceland is a great foundation and most actors have a lot of experience in the theatre as well.” »
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