Screen International Cannes 2018 Day 2

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WEDNESDAY, MAY 9 2018

AT CANNES FILM FESTIVAL www.ScreenDaily.com

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SCREENINGS

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BIRDS OF PASSAGE DIRECTORS’ FORTNIGHT - OPENING FILM A Film by CRISTINA GALLEGO & CIRO GUERRA

2018 - Drama - Colombia/Mexico/Denmark/France - 35mm - 120 min

Wed Wed Thu Fri Sat Mon

May May May May May May

9th 8:45 THEATRE CROISETTE Official 9th 19:30 THEATRE CROISETTE Premiere 10th 9:30 OLYMPIA 2 Market 11th 22:30 ARCADES 1 Official (French ST only) 12th 18:00 ARCADES 2 Market 14th 9:45 OLYMPIA 2 Market

CÓMPRAME UN REVÓLVER DIRECTORS’ FORTNIGHT

(BUY ME A GUN)

A Film by JULIO HERNÁNDEZ CORDÓN 2018 - Drama - Mexico/Colombia - 2.35 - 84 min

Fri Sun Mon Mon Tue

May May May May May

11th 13th 14th 14th 15th

16:00 14:00 8:45 14:15 15:30

PALAIS K Private (buyers only) LERINS 3 Private (buyers only) THEATRE CROISETTE Official THEATRE CROISETTE Premiere OLYMPIA 3 Market

BORDER

UN CERTAIN REGARD A Film by ALI ABBASI

2018 - Nordic Noir - Sweden/Denmark - 2.39 - 108 min

Thu Thu Fri Fri Sat

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10th 10th 11th 11th 12th

11:15 16:30 9:30 16:30 14:00

THEATRE DEBUSSY Official THEATRE DEBUSSY Premiere OLYMPIA 1 Market SOIXANTIEME Official OLYMPIA 5 Market

SEXTAPE

UN CERTAIN REGARD

A Film by ANTOINE DESROSIÈRES 2018 - Comedy - France - 1.85 - 98 min

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10th 10th 11th 11th 14th

14:00 22:15 15:00 18:00 15:30

THEATRE DEBUSSY Official THEATRE DEBUSSY Premiere BAZIN Official OLYMPIA 8 Market OLYMPIA 7 Market

ONE DAY

CANNES CRITICS’ WEEK - COMPETITION A Film by ZSÓFIA SZILÁGYI

2018 - Drama - Hungary - 2.39 - 100 min

Wed Wed Wed Thu Thu Sat

May 9th 11:30 ESPACE MIRAMAR May 9th 16:30 ESPACE MIRAMAR May 9th 22:30 ESPACE MIRAMAR May 10th 8:30 ESPACE MIRAMAR May 10th 11:30 OLYMPIA 9 Market May 12th 12:00 PALAIS I Market

Premiere Official Official Official

SHEHERAZADE

CANNES CRITICS’ WEEK - SPECIAL SCREENING A Film by JEAN-BERNARD MARLIN 2018 - Drama - France - 106 min

Fri Fri Fri Sat Sun

May May May May May

11th 8:30 PALAIS DES FESTIVALS SALLE BUÑUEL Official 11th 14:15 ESPACE MIRAMAR Official 11th 20:00 ESPACE MIRAMAR Premiere 12th 9:30 PALAIS J Market 13th 11:30 ARCADES 3 Market

0 BOOTH RIVIERA #G3 - PH: +33 (0)4 92 99 32 20 SALES - Jean-Christophe Simon simon@filmsboutique.com SALES - Louis Balsan louis@filmsboutique.com SALES - Valeska Neu valeska@filmsboutique.com

SALES & MARKETING - Sophia Baumgärtner Perez sophia@filmsboutique.com FESTIVALS - Isabel Ivars isabel@filmsboutique.com ACQUISITIONS - Gabor Greiner gabor@filmsboutique.com

MARIO

CANNES ECRANS JUNIOR A Film by MARCEL GISLER

2018 - Drama - Switzerland - 1.85 - 118 min

Thu Sun

May 10th 15:45 LERINS 3 Market May 13th 9:45 GRAY 1 Market

PIG

CANNES MARKET

A Film by MANI HAGHIGHI 2018 - Comedy/Drama - Iran - 2.39 - 107 min

Wed May

9th 11:30 PALAIS D Market

ELDORADO

CANNES MARKET

A Film by MARKUS IMHOOF 2018 - Documentary - Switzerland/Germany - 1.85 - 92 min

Mon May 14th 12:00 LERINS 3 Market

L’ANIMALE CANNES MARKET

Panorama Special

A Film by KATHARINA MÜCKSTEIN 2018 - Drama - Austria - 2.39 - 96 min

Tue

May 15th 13:30 LERINS 2 Market

BUTTERFLIES

CANNES MARKET

A Film by TOLGA KARAÇELIK 2018 - Drama/Comedy – Turkey - 2.35 - 117 min

Wed May 9th 17:30 RIVIERA 2 Market Tue May 15th 9:45 LERINS 3 Market

CORNELIUS, THE HOWLING MILLER CANNES MARKET

A Film by YANN LE QUELLEC 2018 - Drama - France - 2.35 - 105 min

Mon May 14th 13:30 PALAIS J Market

RED COW CANNES MARKET A Film by TSIVIA BARKAI

2018 - Israel - Drama - 90 min

Thu

May 10th

9:30 RIVIERA 2 Market

A BLUEBIRD IN MY HEART

CANNES MARKET A Film by JEREMIE GUEZ

2018 - France - Drama - 85 min

Sun

May 13th 17:30 LERINS 4 Market

COLO

CANNES ACID

A Film by TERESA VILLAVERDE 2017 - Drama - Portugal/France - 1.78 - 136 min

Sat

May 12th 14:00 ALEXANDRE III Official

A Kingdom Of Opportunities

A Landscape Of New Stories

With a rich tradition of storytelling, a deep pool of talent and a wealth of pristine locations, Saudi Arabia opens its doors to the global film community. Come discover our world of possibilities.

Visit us at Village International Pantiero #207

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Donbass proves hot property

BY MELANIE GOODFELLOW

Sergei Loznitsa’s drama Donbass, about the conflict in Ukraine, has secured theatrical deals ahead of opening Un Certain Regard today.

Paris-based Pyramide International has sold the film to Greece (Ama Film), Turkey (Fabula Films), Germany (Salzgeber & Co), Ukraine (Arthouse Traffic), Poland (Against Gravity) and Benelux (Imagine Films). Pyramide Distribution will release it in France.

Donbass is produced by Leipzigbased MaJaDe Fiction, Ukraine’s Arthouse Traffic, Paris-based JBA Production, Graniet Film and Wild At Art in the Netherlands, and Romania’s Digital Cube.

Nikkatsu scales Dreadout: Tower Of Hell

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AGC Studios, Ingenious forge co-financing deal

BY JEREMY KAY

Stuart Ford’s AGC Studios, in Cannes selling Missing Link and Midway, has signed a $150m cofinancing pact with UK-based Ingenious Media as it ramps up its production ambitions. Film and TV financing division AGC Capital struck the deal, which will see Ingenious Media cover 50% of the equity investment required to fund each film produced and financed by AGC, and provide debt financing.

London-based private equity manager Ingenious Media collabo-

rated with Ford on several projects at his former venture IM Global, and is highly experienced in the industry, having co-financed Avatar and backed films from Fox and Fox Searchlight. Ford expects to announce his maiden slate in the coming months. In March he brought in ex-IM Global production chief Greg Shapiro as head of film.

At IM Global, they produced or set up Reed Morano’s international spy thriller The Rhythm Section starring Blake Lively and Jude Law; Steven Knight’s noir thriller Serenity

with Matthew McConaughey; Wayne Roberts’ dramatic comedy Richard Says Goodbye starring Johnny Depp; and Drake Doremus’s sci-fi romance Zoe with Ewan McGregor and Léa Seydoux.

Yesterday Ford hosted a buyers’ presentation with LAIKA chief Travis Knight on Missing Link, the animation company’s fifth film that will open in the US in spring 2019 via Annapurna. AGC Studios COO Miguel Palos brokered the cofinancing deal with Ingenious Media’s head of film Peter Touche.

Hubert Boesl

Directors’ Fortnight, page 38

REVIEWS Everybody Knows Farhadi’s Cannes opener is intricate, propulsive and a good yarn » Page 22

FEATURES Japan Buzz Hot projects from Japan in the festival and market » Page 30

The birth of Quinzaine Waintrop, Jacob and Tavernier reflect back on Cannes ’68 » Page 38

SCREENINGS All the films screening today in the festival and market » Page 70

Hamill, Schnapp voice Hallowaiian

BY TOM GRATER

Star Wars star Mark Hamill and Stranger Things breakout Noah Schnapp have boarded the voice cast of feature animation Hallowaiian: Adventure Hawaii. They join Teilor Grubbs and Mark Dacascos.

UK sales outfit SC Films is debuting a first teaser for the project in Cannes this week. Viva Pictures has US rights and is planning to release in time for Halloween.

The family adventure is being directed by Sean Patrick O’Reilly.

Producers are Fresh Baked Films’ Erick Dickens and Scoutabout Entertainment’s Page Feldman.

BY LIZ SHACKLETON

Japanese studio Nikkatsu Corp has reached a deal with Korea’s CJ E&M to handle worldwide sales on Indonesian filmmaker Kimo Stamboel’s sci-fi horror Dreadout: Tower Of Hell.

Scheduled to start shooting in July, the film is based on an Indonesian smash-hit video game about a group of students who head to the site of a mysterious murder.

CJ E&M, which is an active producer of Indonesian films, is coproducing with Stamboel’s production outfit goodhous.id.

“When I first experienced the game, I knew it had awesome potential to be made into a feature film,” commented Stamboel, who said he would add local cultural influences to make the film “creepier and more terrifying”.

As one half of hot Indonesian filmmaking duo the Mo Brothers, along with Timo Tjahjanto, Stamboel’s credits include Killers, co-produced by Nikkatsu, and Headshot, which premiered in Toronto 2016.

CJ E&M has aggressively expanded its local-language production activities in Southeast Asia, with projects across all genres in Indonesia, Thailand and Vietnam.

TODAY

Penelope Cruz walks the red carpet with Everybody Knows co-stars Ricardo Darin, Javier Bardem and director Asghar Farhadi for the opening night of the 71st Cannes Film Festival

LevelK takes The Exception

BY WENDY MITCHELL

Lady Bird star tools up for How To Build A Girl Coky Giedroyc, the director of BBC series The Hour, will direct How To Build A Girl, Caitlin Moran’s adaptation of her own bestselling novel. Lady Bird actress Beanie Feldstein has signed up to play the lead in the feature, which is being produced by Alison Owen and Debra Hayward for their banner Monumental Pictures. Protagonist

Pictures has boarded world sales on Girl, which will shoot this summer in the UK. Film4 developed the project with Monumental and will co-finance with US financier Tango Entertainment.

Moran’s semi-autobiographical story follows a smart, opinionated and overweight teenager who leaves her hometown to reinvent

herself as a bad-ass and adventurous music critic.

Owen said: “We searched high and low for a girl who could match the boundless wit, sparkle and big heart of Caitlin’s super-heroine and feel incredibly lucky to have found her in the effervescent Beanie Feldstein.”

Tom Grater

LevelK has taken on world sales for The Exception, a Danish thriller starring Borgen’s Sidse Babett Knudsen. Jesper W Nielsen directs from a script by Christian Torpe, an adaptation of the hit 2004 novel by Danish author Christian Jungersen.

The strong female cast also includes Danica Curcic, Amanda Collin and Lene Maria Christensen.

LevelK is now pre-selling the film, which will begin shooting in late August.

NEWS

WestEnd Films flexes Muscle at the market

BY TOM GRATER

Cavan Clerkin (The Last Kingdom) and Craig Fairbrass (Cliffhanger) will lead the cast of psychological thriller Muscle for director Gerard Johnson (Hyena). WestEnd Films is launching sales on the project at Cannes and has already secured a deal with French distribution outfit The Jokers.

The film sees Clerkin play Simon, an unhappy, unambitious office worker whose life is gradually taken over by Terry (Fairbrass), his new, very hands-on personal trainer who reveals himself to be more committed — and dangerous — than Simon could have imagined.

Matthew James Wilkinson (Double Date) is producing; Hook Pictures’ Ed Barratt (Wasteland) and Richard Wylie are co-producing; and Alan Martin is executive producing.

Logical Pictures is also producing and has fully financed the project. The same company backed the upcoming Farming starring Kate Beckinsale, Damson Idris and Gugu Mbatha-Raw. WestEnd’s Cannes line up also features Agnieszka Holland’s political thriller Gareth Jones and Borkur Sigthorsson’s Vultures, which is produced by Baltasar Kormakur.

Bac goes stellar with Terra Willy

BY MELANIE GOODFELLOW

Bac Films International is launching sales on family film Terra Willy, the latest animated feature from TAT Productions, the company behind the well-travelled The Jungle Bunch: The Movie.

Set in the future, the film revolves around a 10-year-old boy called Willy, who is separated from his parents following the destruction of their spaceship. His rescue capsule lands on a wild planet covered in exotic fauna and flora.

“After the international success of The Jungle Bunch, we’re glad

Terra Willy

to start working with talented French-based animation studio TAT Productions,” said Bac Films International sales chief Gilles Sousa.

Founded in 2000 by brothers Jean-Francois and Eric Tosti, and David Alaux, Toulouse-based TAT Productions broke out internationally in 2013 with its popular TV series and feature film in The Jungle Bunch franchise. While the series aired in 180 territories, The Jungle Bunch: The Movie drew around 700,000 admissions in France and is in the midst of an international rollout.

Other upcoming productions on the TAT slate include Young Thief Pil, Argonauts and The Jungle Bunch 2.

Euforia, Handyman grace True Colours’ palette

BY GABRIELE NIOLA

True Colours has grown into one of Italy’s key sales outfits a little over two years after its launch.

This year, the company headed by former Rai Com exec Catia Rossi brings a strong line-up to the Cannes market, headlined by Valeria Golino’s second directorial outing Euforia, which is playing in Un Certain Regard. The film stars Riccardo Scamarcio and Valerio Mastandrea as two brothers at odds who are forced to live together.

WTFilms finds passion for Schwartzman’s Unicorn

True Colours is also kickstarting sales on a pair of comedies.

The Handyman is the directing debut of screenwriter Valerio Attanasio and stars Sergio Castellitto as a powerful lawyer exploiting his intern.

Blessed Madness stars Carlo Verdone and Ilenia Pastorelli in a story of the depressed owner of a religious paraphernalia shop whose life is shaken up by the arrival of a brazen female employee. The film scored 1.3 million admissions at the Italian box office in January.

Also new to True Colours’ slate are I’m Back, the Italian remake of Look Who’s Back with Benito Mussolini in place of Adolf Hitler; Francesco Falaschi’s drama As Needed, about a chef assigned to community service as a cooking teacher for a group of people living with autism; and Costanza Quatriglio’s upcoming Just Like My Son, which tells the story of a son trying to reunite with his mother after the Taliban persecution of the early 2000s forced them to separate.

The House That Jack Built

Voltage scares up Haunting Voltage Pictures has commenced worldwide sales on psychological thriller The Haunting Of Nicole Brown Simpson starring Mena Suvari.

The feature is the second in an anthology of supernatural stories inspired by true events from Voltage and Skyline Entertainment after The Haunting Of Sharon Tate.

The Haunting Of Nicole Brown Simpson follows OJ Simpson’s ex-wife in the days leading up to her death, as seen from her point of view. Daniel Farrands directs and principal photography is set to begin this summer. The project explores Brown Simpson’s friendship with Glen Rogers, a serial killer who later allegedly confessed to a criminal profiler that he killed her.

Lucas Jarach, Farrands and Eric Brenner are producing, and Skyline Entertainment principal Jim Jacobsen serves as executive producer.

The Haunting Of Sharon Tate stars Hilary Duff and wrapped in Los Angeles earlier this year.

Voltage’s Cannes sales slate includes young-adult adaptation After to star Julia Goldani Telles and Hero Fiennes-Tiffin; and Little Italy with Emma Roberts and Hayden Christensen.

Jeremy Kay

Kino Lorber gets A Paris Education

BY MELANIE GOODFELLOW

BY JEREMY KAY

Paris-based WTFilms has acquired worldwide rights to Robert Schwartzman’s comedy The Unicorn, which premiered at SXSW in March. The deal excludes North American rights, which were previously acquired

by Screen Media in a deal negotiated by ICM Partners and Submarine.

Schwartzman’s second feature stars Lauren Lapkus and Nick Rutherford as a long-engaged couple who attend her parents’ wedding anniversary and discover the secret to the older couple’s enduring passion is threesomes.

The young couple set off in search

Kino Lorber closed a deal for North American rights yesterday to Jean-Paul Civeyrac’s A Paris Education following its world premiere in Berlin’s Panorama.

The black-and-white film will open theatrically in late summer, followed by VoD and home entertainment in the autumn.

A Paris Education centres on a student navigating love and friendship. Andranic Manet and Corentin Fila star in the Moby Dick Films production.

Kino Lorber senior vice president Wendy Lidell negotiated the deal with Laure Parleani of Les Films du Losange.

The Unicorn

of a third party, or ‘unicorn’, to pep up their own love life.

“We fell in love with this smart, fresh and sexy comedy,” said Gregory Chambet, co-chief of WTFilms. “It’s a perfect rom-com for the Instagram generation.”

WTFilms’ Cannes slate also features revenge thriller Heavy, co-starring Daniel Zovatto and Game Of Thrones’ Sophie Turner.

4 Screen International at Cannes May 9, 2018

Spain targets von Trier’s Jack Golem has acquired rights for Spain to Lars von Trier’s The House That Jack Built from TrustNordisk. The Spanish distributor has a long history with von Trier, releasing several of the Danish director’s films, including Melancholia and Antichrist. TrustNordisk has already sold The House That Jack Built, which has its world premiere here in an Out of Competition slot on May 14, to most other key territories, including the US (IFC), UK (Curzon Artificial Eye) and France (Les Films du Losange).

Wendy Mitchell

www.screendaily.com

MARKET PREMIERE MAY 11 th | 11:30 AM ArcAdes 3

SONY PICTURES ENTERTAINMENT PRÄSENTIERT „LILIANE SUSEWIND – EIN TIERISCHES ABENTEUER“ EINE PRODUKTION VON DREAMTOOL ENTERTAINMENT IN KOPRODUKTION MIT DEUTSCHE COLUMBIA PICTURES FILMPRODUKTION VELVET FILMS CINE PLUS AARON KISSIOV FELICE AHRENS PERI BAUMEISTER TOM BECK CHRISTOPH MARIA HERBST MERET BECKER AYLIN TEZEL KAMERA RICHARD VAN OOSTERHOUT SZENENBILD ALINA SANTOS KOSTÜMBILD GENOVEVA KYLBURG MASKENBILD FABIENNE ADAM MARKUS SCHARPING SCHNITT MARTIN RAHNER ORIGINALTON THOMAS GRIMM-LANDSBERG SOUNDDESIGN RAINER HEESCH MISCHUNG TOBI FLEIG FILMMUSIK RIAD ABDEL-NABI DYNAMEDION VFX SUPERVISOR URS FRANZEN PRODUKTIONSLEITUNG SEBASTIAN FRÖHLICH PRODUCERIN SIBYLLE ILLNER PRODUZENTEN MAIKE HAAS STEFAN RAISER FELIX ZACKOR KOPRODUZENTEN SEBASTIAN SCHELENZ ANDRÉ SOMMERLATTE FRANK EVERS HELGE NEUBRONNER DREHBUCH KATRIN MILHAN ANTONIA ROTHE-LIERMANN MATTHIAS DINTER BEATE FRAUNHOLZ BETTY PLATZ NACH DER KINDERBUCHSERIE VON TANYA STEWNER REGIE JOACHIM MASANNEK

MIT MALU LEICHER

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A SPY CAT AND HER GANG. A SECRET MISSION. A PAWSOME ADVENTURE!

A FILM BY ACADEMY AWARD ® WINNING

CHRISTOPH AND WOLFGANG LAUENSTEIN

MARKET PREMIERE 4 WED | MAY 09 | 15:30 LÉRINS MARKET PREMIERE 6 THU | MAY 10 | 15:30 OLYMPIA MARKET PREMIERE

CURRENT SLATE An extraordinary extraterrestrial animated feature film project from the producers of worldwide successes “Niko” and “Ooops! Noah is Gone …”, written and directed by Academy Award® winners Wolfgang and Christoph Lauenstein, “Luis” is a turbulent adventure for the whole family, full of hair-raising mix-ups and surprising twists.

COMING SOON A high-profile 3D animated feature film about a smart cat and her quirky friends who finds themselves in a biger-thanlife-adventure. Directed by Academy Award®-winning brothers Christoph and Wolfgang Lauenstein (“Balance”), MARNIE’S WORLD brims with verbal gags, action and adventure, and offers great entertainment for the whole family.

COMING SOON Set in a magical world of fantasy, populated by mythical creatures, BAYALA is based on the very popular BAYALA® brand, the high-end line of fantasy figurines by Schleich.

From the producers of worldwide successes “Niko & The Way To The Stars” and “Ooops! Noah is Gone ...”.

A moving and thrilling 3D animation adventure for the whole family. This story about the power of friendship and the victory of love over hate is fast-paced and entertaining, with lots of twists and turns, featuring top-notch animation and an unforgtettable soundtrack. After the world-famous hit TV series, the brave little dragon and the sparking ice princess finally conquer the silver screen!

COMING SOON In this second instalment of the internationally successful 3D animation “OOOPS! NOAH IS GONE …”, our courageous youngsters once again go through many thrilling adventures and eventually save all of the animals in the ark.

Contact at Cannes Palais des Festivals Riviera L7 Phone +33 (0) 4 92 99 33 35

GLOBAL SCREEN PRESENTS AT CANNES 2018

GLOBAL SCREEN PRESENTS A CONSTANTIN FILM PRODUCTION IN ASSOCIATION WITH OLGA FILM ELYAS M’BAREK IN “THIS CRAZY HEART” PHILIP NOAH SCHWARZ NADINE WRIETZ UWE PREUSS MUSIC JOHNNY KLIMEK EDITOR SIMON GSTÖTTMAYR PRODUCTION DESIGNER CHRISTIAN SCHÄFER DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY CHRISTOF WAHL LINE PRODUCER PATRICK ZORER EXECUTIVE PRODUCER VIOLA JÄGER HARALD KÜGLER SCREENPLAY MAGGIE PEREN ANDI ROGENHAGEN BASED ON THE BOOK BY DANIEL MEYER WITH LARS AMEND PRODUCED BY MARTIN MOSZKOWICZ OLIVER BERBEN DIRECTOR MARC ROTHEMUND © 2017 CONSTANTIN FILM PRODUKTION GMBH I ROLIZE GMBH & CO. KG

MARKET SCREENING C WED | MAY 09 | 10:00 PALAIS MARKET SCREENING 3 FRI | MAY 11 | 15:30 ARCADES MARKET SCREENING

MARKET SCREENING 4 SAT | MAY 12 | 17:30 LÉRINS MARKET SCREENING

Hans Weingartner (in competition in Cannes with “The Edukators”) sends his protagonists on an exciting road trip across Europe. Socio-political depth and a tender love story meld into a captivating, light-handed, profoundly moving boy-meets-girl story.

MARKET SCREENING THIS CRAZY HEART is a moving true story of joy and hope for the next day, of dreams and intense friendship. German superstar Elyas M‘Barek (“Suck Me Shakespeer”, “Who Am I”) plays the leading role, while Philip Noah Schwarz delivers a dramatic big-screen debut at his side. Marc Rothemund (“Sophie Scholl”, “My Blind Date with Life”) directed the story with ample feeling and quick pacing.

MARKET SCREENING 3 FRI | MAY 11 | 17:30 ARCADES MARKET SCREENING

A hard-hitting, nail-biting action film, in which German A-listers Moritz Bleibtreu (“Baader Meinhof Komplex”) and Birgit Minichmayr (“Downfall”, “Everyone Else”) play a nervewracking cat-and-mouse game.

E MARKET SCREENING WED | MAY 09 | 16:00 PALAIS

A gripping cross-cultural drama about a husband torn between his loyalty to his family and his wife, from the producers of “Vincent” and “Moscow, Belgium”. Selected at the Rotterdam Film Festival, Grand Prix-winner at the Film Fest Gent, Best Director at the Arras Filmfestival.

CURRENT SLATE Genre specialist Christian Alvart (“Nick: Off Duty”) stages this high-suspense thriller with an A-list cast: Wotan Wilke Möhring (“Who Am I”), international Emmy® award-winner Christiane Paul (“The Wave”, “In July”). A high-value, edge-of-the-seat action production from genre powerhouse Syrreal Entertainment.

NEWS

Highway, the thriller from Lotus Eaters director Alexandra McGuinness, has been picked up for international sales by Carnaby International. CAA and Verve Ventures are co-repping rights for North America.

Eiza Gonzalez and Lucy Fry star alongside Josh Hartnett, Christian Camargo and Antonia Campbell-Hughes. Written and directed by McGuinness and now in post-production, Highway follows two women who live in a small desert town that is bypassed by the wider world.

When one woman vanishes, the other is forced to take control.

Producers are Dominic Wright from Ripple World Pictures and Anna O’Malley and Eamonn Cleary from TW Films. Financing came from GCI Films and the Irish Film Board.

Tom Grater

Cinestaan, Newscope train Dog Sundance hit fires for New Europe

BY LIZ SHACKLETON

Cinestaan Film Company is teaming with UK-based Newscope Films to produce India’s first liveaction all-animal family feature, Aasha The Street Dog (working title). Set on the streets of Delhi, the cast comprises many animals and a child. The film is being scheduled for delivery in spring 2019.

F LO IRS OK T

Carnaby plots Highway route

truecolours-asneeded-halfpage-screen-daily-cannes-09-05-18.indd 1

8 Screen International at Cannes May 9, 2018

In addition, Cinestaan has appointed Paul Hudson as director of sales at its international sales arm, C International Sales. Based in Los Angeles, Hudson will broaden the company’s remit to represent films with no Indian connection and as such, it has boarded Pawel Pawlikowski’s Competition title Cold War as an investor.

BY GEOFFREY MACNAB

New Europe Film Sales has announced new deals on Gustavo Pizzi’s Loveling, which arrives in Cannes having screened as the opening film in Sundance’s World Cinema Dramatic Competition.

New sales include to China (Huashi), ex-Yugoslavia (DEMIURG), Australia and New Zealand

(Palace), Czech Republic (Aero Films), Portugal (Nitrato Filmes), Mexico (Piano), Poland (Best Film), Greece (Strada), Spain (B-Team Pictures) and Switzerland and Austria (Trigon). Sales were confirmed by company CEO Jan Naszewski. New Europe is also selling Ognjen Glavonic’s Directors’ Fortnight entry The Load.

Pharoah flies flag for War Screen International can unveil a first look at Jay Pharoah in How To Sell A War, the fiction feature debut of doc director Rudolph Herzog, which wrapped this week after shooting in Dublin and Georgia.

Deals include to China (Lemon Tree), the Middle East (Front Row) and Switzerland (Praesens).

The film stars Pharoah as vain and arrogant rock star Harry Hope, who is due to lead a global charity

concert in a warzone. When a ceasefire is called four days before the event, Hope’s PR sets off on a mission to create a fake news story telling the world that the war is back on. Katherine Parkinson (The IT Crowd) also stars.

Samantha Taylor and Mike Downey are producing under their Dublin-based banner Film & Music Entertainment (F&ME).

Tom Grater

04/05/18 11:34

www.screendaily.com

A FILM BY

ADILKHAN YERZHANOV

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MAY 9TH MAY 11TH MAY 17TH MAY 17TH MAY 18TH

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NEWS

FilmSharks has Some Time After Argentina’s FilmSharks has launched worldwide sales on the Croisette on Spanish multi-Goya filmmaker Jose Luis Cuerda’s $5m comedy Some Time After (Tiempo Despues) after closing sales before the market. eOne will launch the film theatrically in Spain in the third quarter of the year, while Antena3 has licensed Spanish free TV rights, and Movistar Plus acquired pay TV and SVoD rights.

Some Time After takes place far in the future when the entire universe has been consolidated into an administrative tower surrounded by communities of unemployed people.

Felix Tusell Sanchez of Estela Films is producing the comedy, which is in post.

Jeremy Kay

Picture Tree sales slate blooms with dark duo

BY GEOFFREY MACNAB

Berlin-based outfit Picture Tree International has added several projects to its Cannes slate. New titles are Outmastered, a dark comedy from Oskar Roehler (Atomised), and Timon Modersohn’s thriller Playmaker.

Outmastered follows affluent couple who take out an ad for a

new cleaner, with startling consequences. Playmaker is about a former professional footballer who has been drawn into the sport’s corrupt underbelly. Both are market premieres here.

In advance of Cannes, Picture Tree had closed some key sales on Swedish family comedy Monky from director Maria Blom, which

was introduced to buyers last year. The film, about a boy who finds a monkey in his backyard, has been picked up for China by Hengye Pictures, India (Star India), Taiwan (AV-JET International Media), Spain (Flins & Piniculas), Italy (Notorious Pictures) and the Middle East (Empire Networks).

Autlook curates Art Of Museums

BY GEOFFREY MACNAB

Autlook Filmsales will show the first two episodes of its big-budget series The Art Of Museums from Beetz Brothers Production in the market.

The eight-part documentary series presents world-famous

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10 Screen International at Cannes May 9, 2018

museums through their iconic artworks. Each museum will be presented by a celebrity artist.

Names involved include Vivienne Westwood, Karl Ove Knausgard, Erwin Olaf, Marina Abramovic, Norman Foster and Sasha Waltz.

The series is made in co-pro-

duction with Navigator Film, ZDF and ORF in collaboration with Arte. Autlook Filmsales is representing global rights excluding Austria, France, Germany and the Netherlands.

Delivery of the full series is expected in September.

M-Line shifts Little Forest

BY JEAN NOH

South Korean sales company M-Line Distribution has sold Yim Soon-rye’s foodie drama Little Forest to Japan (Klockworx), China (Shangzhou Media), Taiwan (Movie Cloud), North America (The Korea Daily), Hong Kong (Edko Films), Singapore and Malaysia (Clover Films) and worldwide in-flight excluding Korea and Taiwan (Kairos).

Based on the Japanese manga of the same title, Little Forest stars Kim Tae-ri, Ryu Jun-yeol, Moon So-ri and Jin Ki-joo. It is about a young woman who learns how to cook.

M-Line has also picked up zombie comedy The Odd Family: Zombie On Sale and period drama Feng Shui, and is launching sales on both titles at Cannes. The former is set for local release in the winter, and the latter in September.

04/05/18 11:36

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12 Screen International at Cannes May 9, 2018

Dogwoof inks deals on Studio 54, Wealth

BY TOM GRATER

UK documentary specialist Dogwoof has locked a series of deals across two titles on its Cannes sales slate.

Matt Tyrnauer’s Studio 54, about how two young men, Ian Schrager and Steve Rubell, conquered New York City’s club scene with their hedonistic venue, has sold to Scandinavia (Edge Entertainment), Australia and New Zealand (Madman), Germany and Austria (Weltkino) and Italy (BIM).

An Altimeter Films and Passion Pictures production, Studio 54 was produced by John Battsek and

Dolphin swims for Epic Patrick Ewald and Shaked Berenson’s Epic Pictures has closed a slew of deals on Cannes sales title Dolphin Kick. The company has closed deals on the Aristar Entertainment family film in German-speaking Europe (KSM), Frenchspeaking Europe (Daro), the Middle East (Eagle Films), China (Blue Media Times) and Australia and New Zealand (Eagle Entertainment). Fox Asia has acquired pay-TV rights. Negotiations are ongoing for the UK, Spain and Italy.

Dolphin Kick tells of a talented swimmer who loses his passion for the sport after his mother dies. On a family trip he encounters a dolphin that has lost his pod, and so the boy and dolphin help each other home. Axle McCoy and Tyler Jade Nixon star.

Jeremy Kay

Generation Wealth

Corey Reeser, and executive produced by Robert Sharenow, Elaine Frontain Bryant and Molly Thompson for A&E Indie Films.

Separately, Dogwoof has also scored deals on Amazon Studios production Generation Wealth, which premiered at this year’s

Sundance and has now sold to Australia and New Zealand (Madman) and Scandinavia, Baltics and Iceland (Non Stop).

Directed by Lauren Greenfield (The Queen Of Versailles), the film is an exposé journey into the global boom-and-bust economy, the corrupted American Dream and the human costs of capitalism.

It will be released in July by Amazon Studios in the US and by Dogwoof in the UK. Dogwoof ’s sales slate also includes 2018 Cannes Classics selection The Eyes Of Orson Welles from director Mark Cousins.

Arclight takes Replicate, Furie

BY LIZ SHACKLETON

Arclight Films has picked up worldwide rights to John Murlowski’s sci-fi thriller Replicate and Vietnamese action thriller Furie, starring the fast-rising actress Veronica Ngo. Produced by Murlowski and William Fay, Replicate follows three friends who discover their neighbours

are being killed and replaced by creatures that are perfect copies.

Directed by Le Van Kiet, Furie stars Ngo as a gangster who is lying low after becoming a mother, but cannot escape her violent past. Ngo, who recently starred in Star Wars: The Last Jedi, is also producing with Bey Logan.

Bravos Pictures picks up Reborn

BY LIZ SHACKLETON

Hong Kong-based Bravos Pictures has taken worldwide rights excluding China to Chinese cyberhacker thriller Reborn, produced by Andre Morgan.

Currently in post, the $12m film is directed by Li Hai Long and stars Han Geng, Rhydian Vaughan, Li Yuan and Japanese pop and

TV star Tomohisa Yamashita in his acting debut. Beijingbased Perfect Village Entertainment is co-investing.

Produced by Sirens Films and Morgan & Chan Films, Reborn follows a programmer who encounters a woman and her criminal partner in a video game. It is scheduled for delivery in the third quarter of 2018.

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NEWS

Netherlands hails incentives impact

Masaaki Yuasa’s Lu Over the Wall

BY GEOFFREY MACNAB

This year’s Tokyo International Film Festival (TIFF, October 25November 3) will host retrospectives of the work of Japanese actor Koji Yakusho and animation director Masaaki Yuasa. TIFF’s Japan Now section will screen a selection of Yakusho’s work, while Yuasa is the subject of TIFF’s Animation Focus.

Liz Shackleton

M-Appeal falls for love story

BY GEOFFREY MACNAB

Berlin-based M-Appeal has boarded international sales for Argentinian filmmaker Albertina Carri’s The Daughters Of Fire.

The film revolves around three women who meet by chance and start a lifechanging polyamorous jour-

ney. It premiered in Buenos Aires International Festival of Independent Cinema, winning best film in the Argentinian competition.

“There are few films that show female sexuality in such a poetic and sensual way,” said M-Appeal MD Maren Kroymann.

14 Screen International at Cannes May 9, 2018

Research published in the Netherlands has revealed the transformative effect the government’s Film Production Incentive has had on the local industry.

The research covers the period from July 2014, when the incentive was introduced, to December 2017. In the period, financial contributions worth $55m were made to 256 produc-

tions, resulting in a Dutch film industry spend in excess of $253.3m. For every euro granted, an average of $5.45 (¤4.60) was spent on production in the Netherlands.

Netherlands Film Fund CEO Doreen Boonekamp says the scheme has had a galvanising effect on both co-production in the Netherlands and on the post-production sector. “It is really a

Wizart shifts Snow Queen

BY GEOFFREY MACNAB

Russian animation outfit Wizart has confirmed new deals on animated features The Snow Queen: Mirror-

lands and Sheep And Wolves: Pig Deal. Wizart is screening first footage of both films, which are currently in production, in the market.

boost to the international collaboration of the Netherlands with many countries,” she said. “Before the scheme, a lot of production was going abroad rather than staying in the Netherlands.”

The Netherlands Film Production Incentive is a cash rebate scheme towards qualifying production costs.

It has been extended since October 1, 2017 to include high-end TV drama.

Mirrorlands has pre-sold to Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia (Acme Film), Poland (Kinoswiat) and exYugoslavia (Blitz), while Pig Deal has gone to Norway (Storytelling Media).

Vision has hopes for Healer Vision Films is in Cannes with sales title The Healer, a former number-one release in Colombia that has raised more than $3m for children with cancer.

Oliver Jackson-Cohen, Camilla Luddington, Jonathan Pryce, Jorge Garcia and Kaitlyn Bernard star in the story of a young man with healing powers who is enticed to live in Canada, where his gift reveals itself.

Director/producer Paco Arango has donated his share of earnings to charities that support children with cancer across the world. Vision will distribute in the US on September 14.

Jeremy Kay

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A love that dares to speak its name Kenyan director Wanuri Kahiu talks to Mark Salisbury about shooting her Un Certain Regard title, LGBT love story Rafiki, on the streets of Nairobi — the capital of a country in which same-sex relationships are illegal “I was looking for modern African literature to adapt, and I really wanted to tell a love story,” explains Kenyan filmmaker Wanuri Kahiu of the inspiration behind her second feature, Rafiki, which premieres in Un Certain Regard.

“There are very few love stories that come out of Africa,” notes Kahiu. “Love from here is always depicted as hard and combative and full of conflict, and this wasn’t.

This was a sweet, innocent love story about two girls.”

Based on short story Jambula Tree by Ugandan writer Monica Arac de Nyeko, Rafiki is the Nairobi-set coming-of-age tale of two young women, played by Samantha Mugatsia and Sheila Munyiva.

While Rafiki features familiar Kenyan actors in supporting roles, the two leads are unknown.

Munyiva came from an open audition, while Mugatsia, who had never acted before, was spotted at a party. “She looked exactly like the

‘Love from here is always depicted as hard and combative and full of conflict, and this wasn’t’ Wanuri Kahiu, director

(From left) Sheila Munyiva on set with director Wanuri Kahiu

character and I just hoped she could act,” recalls Kahiu. “I didn’t even have the courage to ask her number. I got a friend to get it so I could call her for an audition.”

Shooting a film with LGBT subject matter in Kenya, where samesex relationships are punishable by up to 14 years in prison, was a risk.

Before filming began, Kahiu sat

down with her cast and crew to discuss all the potential implications.

“People are quite sensitive to this subject matter, so we asked them if they wanted to be part of the film knowing what it was about,” Kahiu explains. “We then asked them to speak to their families and make sure they were on board. Once the cast confirmed

they were fine, we continued.

Luckily nobody walked out. We also had people on the crew who were out, which helped.”

But making the film was one thing. Getting it shown in Kenyan cinemas is a different matter entirely. Rafiki has been banned by the Kenyan government’s Film Classification Board, meaning the

film is “restricted for exhibition, broadcast, distribution or possession within the Republic of Kenya”.

“We were very disappointed,” says Kahiu, who had been hoping for an 18 rating. “It’s a violation of freedom of expression, and it sets a very hard tone about what creatives are and are not allowed to say.

And that creatives are not allowed to present different views of people and our society.”

The director is debating whether to appeal the decision.

“We are looking into the possibility. At the moment, our intention is to celebrate the film at Cannes.”

In conversation with...

Bafta-nominated actor Paul Dano (There Will Be Blood ) will open Critics’ Week today with his directing debut Wildlife, which premiered at Sundance. Based on a novel

by Richard Ford, it stars Jake Gyllenhaal and Carey Mulligan as an unhappy couple whose relationship unravels in 1960s Montana. IFC has US rights.

You wrote the film with your girlfriend Zoe Kazan.

How was that?

We worked in a way that was really healthy for us. We would sit down, talk about it, maybe daydream together, then one of us would go off and write. If we sat in a room together and wrote, I think that would be hard.

How was it when she criticised your work?

The first time I was pretty vulnerable. It was my first time trying to write. Criticism doesn’t feel good but you know the intent is good.

That’s one of the nice things about working with someone you trust. I could take it and give it. We had our moments, but we could handle it.

What does getting your first film into Cannes mean to you?

As a super film dork, you want to take your film Wildlife there. Also, frankly, I was just too nervous to enjoy Sundance so I’m really excited for Cannes.

18 Screen International at Cannes May 9, 2018

Why adapt Wildlife as your first film?

I read the book several times and was really haunted by it. Once I thought of the ending,

Taylor Jewell/Invision/AP/REX/Shutterstock

PAUL DANO, WILDLIFE (Critics’ Week) the last shot, I thought, “This could be a film.

I think I can write this”.

Will you direct again?

I have thoughts about directing again but nothing concrete. It is without question something I’m working towards. Hopefully it won’t take long.

What do you think of the Cannes/Netflix row, which you experienced with Okja last year?

I’d rather people talk about the films. That was something I felt last year with Okja. I was like, OK, it’s a moment, but we spent years making this beautiful fairytale, can we talk about this too? I understand why people feel personal about it. It sounds like in France they need to address their theatrical windows law. I’m sure that will change at some point.

Orlando Parfitt » See review, page 24

Paul Dano

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REVIEWS

» Everybody Knows p22 » Wildlife p24 » Mandy p24 » Leave No Trace p26

Reviews edited by Fionnuala Halligan finn.halligan@screendaily.com

Everybody Knows Reviewed by Lisa Nesselson The joy of a wedding in the Spanish countryside morphs into the anguish of a kidnapping, against an ever-shifting backdrop of family secrets in the ironically titled Everybody Knows (Todos Lo Saben). Making fine use of a top-flight Spanish-speaking cast, Asghar Farhadi deftly inserts love, resentment, class, money and family ties into a propulsive narrative replete with doubts, accusations, intimations, red herrings and other welcome ingredients from the suspenseful-drama arsenal. Solidly entertaining, Farhadi’s second film outside Iran (after Franceset The Past) should see encouraging returns worldwide following its world premiere in Competition as Cannes’ opening film.

After a pleasingly artful look at the intricate gears that run the clock and chimes in the church bell tower, we are introduced to a great many characters in short order as Laura (Penelope Cruz) arrives with her two children, frisky 16-year-old beauty Irene (Carla Campra) and young Diego, to attend the marriage of her sister Ana (Inma Cuesta) to Joan (Roger Casamajor) in the village where they grew up. Laura, who lives in Argentina, does not get back to Spain all that often since she married Alejandro

22 Screen International at Cannes May 9, 2018

COMPETITION Sp-Fr-It. 2018. 132mins Director/screenplay Asghar Farhadi Production companies Memento Films Production, Morena Films, Lucky Red International sales Memento Films International, sales@ memento-films.com Producers Alexandre Mallet-Guy,Alvaro Longoria Production design Clara Notari Editing Hayedeh Safiyari Cinematography Jose Luis Alcaine Music Javier Limon Main cast Penelope Cruz, Javier Bardem, Ricardo Darin, Eduard Fernandez, Barbara Lennie, Inma Cuesta, Elvira Minguez, Carla Campra, Sara Salamo, Roger Casamajor

(Ricardo Darin) 20 years ago. He, alas, could not make the trip due to work obligations.

Third and eldest sister, Mariana (Elvira Minguez) runs a small hotel with her husband Fernando (Eduard Fernandez). Their daughter Rocio (Sara Salamo) and her young daughter live with them. She and her husband are separated.

Happy reunions as everyone converges for the celebration include Laura and her childhood friend Paco (Javier Bardem) who runs a local vineyard. He and his attractive wife Bea (Barbara Lennie), who teaches at a school for young delinquents, are clearly crazy about each other.

Irene takes an immediate liking to Paco’s nephew Felipe, who lets her pilot his motorbike at speed down country roads. The only glitch in what appears to be a charmed life is that Irene has asthma for which she requires medication.

The post-ceremony party is in full swing when the electricity goes out. Not feeling well on the dance floor — probably due to jet lag — Irene goes upstairs to bed. That same night, the ordeal, which takes up the rest of the film, begins when Laura receives a text message saying kidnappers have her daughter. Sure enough, Irene is gone. There is a precedent of a similar situation that ended badly, which gives extra weight to the warning not to inform police.

A nicely sustained tone of unease takes over.

How will Laura break the news to Alejandro?

And how can they cope with the ransom demand that nobody could possibly assemble before Irene’s health problems turn deadly?

We live in a time of purloined meta-data but all the problematic revelations and interpersonal ammunition that surface here stem from people just plain saying things to each other, with or without discretion. The entire cast acquits itself well, with special praise for the dynamic between Bardem and Lennie and for Darin, whose Alejandro has an uncommon belief in the power of adversity and subscribes to the notion that everything happens for a reason. Veteran DoP Jose Luis Alcaine’s lighting contributes to a burnished sense of place as long-buried bits of explosive information ignite.

Plunging headfirst into a tense European tale without a residual trace of Iran or Farsi, Farhadi pulls off a setting rife with plausible motivations and complex — although never hard to follow — intrigue. Is human nature the same all over? Probably. But a good yarn well told is almost certainly a universal pleasure.

SCREEN SCORE

★★★ www.screendaily.com

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04/05/18 11:32

REVIEWS

Wildlife Reviewed by Tim Grierson

Mandy Reviewed by Tim Grierson A sensuous swath of striking imagery and otherworldly atmosphere, Mandy is a hypnotic, bloody pleasure. Director Panos Cosmatos’s revenge tale flows from one moody set piece to the next, plunging deep into midnight-movie nirvana to craft the sort of big-screen experience that’s utterly arresting in its scope and ambition. Nicolas Cage delivers a predictably frenzied performance as a grieving man on the trail of those who killed his beloved, but the film’s real star is the spell Cosmatos weaves effortlessly.

Picked up for distribution in the US by RLJE Films, this Directors' Fortnight offering will court lovers of extreme cinema, with mainstream audiences probably being turned-off either by the deliberate pace or graphic violence. Cage’s commercial cachet may have evaporated in recent years, but fans of Cosmatos’s Beyond The Black Rainbow will be first in line.

Set in the California wilderness in 1983, Cage stars as Red, a lumberjack besotted with the enchanting Mandy (Andrea Riseborough). But their domestic bliss is shattered when a dangerous religious cult led by a would-be prophet named Jeremiah (Linus Roache) kidnaps Mandy, torturing and killing her. Full of sorrow and fury, Red vows to avenge her death.

Cosmatos’s dreamlike thriller with a loose plot is a period piece, but the power of Benjamin Loeb’s smoky cinematography and the late Johann Johannsson’s epicsounding, metal-tinged score make Mandy feel as if it is taking place outside of time, dwelling in its own nightmarish realm in which frightening supernatural creatures coexist with their human counterparts.

The director expertly establishes his eerie vibe from the outset, and Mandy’s first half is given over to constructing the surreal, almost alien landscape, slowly introducing the encroaching horror of Jeremiah’s fanatic followers into the mix. The visuals are so sumptuous — deep, rich colours amid this mythic forest environment — that it scarcely matters the storytelling is pedestrian by comparison.

Once the revenge plot takes over, Cosmatos and cowriter Aaron Stewart-Ahn turn Mandy into a gory affair.

Riseborough has a bewitching presence, while Roache overdoes the psycho-shaman routine, perhaps to keep pace with Cage’s equally gonzo lumberjack. Over-the-top, the Oscar winner’s bug-eyed anguish does somewhat complement Mandy’s tenuous grasp on the real world.

24 Screen International at Cannes May 9, 2018

DIRECTORS' FORTNIGHT Bel-US. 2017. 121mins Director Panos Cosmatos Production companies Piccadilly Pictures, Sun Capital, SpectreVision, Umedia, XYZ Films, Wallimage International sales XYZ Films, info@xyzfilms. com Producers Adrian Politowski, Martin Metz, Nate Bolotin, Daniel Noah, Josh C Waller, Elijah Wood Screenplay Panos Cosmatos and Aaron Stewart-Ahn from a story

by Panos Cosmatos Production design Hubert Pouille Editing Brett W Bachman Cinematography Benjamin Loeb Music Johann Johannsson Main cast Nicolas Cage, Andrea Riseborough, Linus Roache, Ned Dennehy, Olwen Fouéré, Richard Brake, Bill Duke

In Wildlife, a sensitive teen tries to maintain his equilibrium within a dysfunctional family. That setup could not be more familiar, but Paul Dano’s confident directorial debut sports the same qualities that he always brings to his own performances: it is intelligent, understated and guardedly emotional. Based on Richard Ford’s novel, the film is a wonderful showcase for Carey Mulligan as a fedup mother, but it also provides rising star Ed Oxenbould with a chance to play a young man who says little but observes intensely.

Having premiered at Sundance, Dano’s film moves to Cannes with good notices for Mulligan’s star turn, alongside Jake Gyllenhaal in a supporting role. The source material and genre trappings should continue to attract audiences on this side of the world. Set in 1960s Montana, Wildlife concerns Joe (Oxenbould), who has come to town with his long-suffering mother Jeanette (Mulligan) and restless father Jerry (Gyllenhaal), who keeps moving the family in search of new job opportunities. But after he is fired from his gig at a golf course, he reluctantly accepts risky work as part of a fire-fighting crew battling a blaze in nearby forests, keeping him away from home for weeks.

Dano, who co-wrote the adaptation, quickly focuses his attention on the relationship Joe has with his mother, who treats him more like a co-conspirator than a son. With Jerry gone, she starts talking to Joe candidly about her worries concerning her husband’s infidelity and the infrequency of their sexual intimacy. Suddenly, Jeanette reveals a more assertive, liberated personality which is a by-product of both her anger at Jerry for abandoning the family and her rising suspicion that she is trapped in a bad marriage.

As the passive Joe, Oxenbould displays an impressive ability to seem tranquil while hinting at the underlying anxiety of having to grow up fast to serve as an unofficial referee between his parents. While Oxenbould is muted, Mulligan is electric. As a 34-year-old feeling regret about a thankless life of domesticity, the Oscar-nominated actress captures desperation and pent-up sexual desire.

Aided by Diego Garcia’s crisp, clean cinematography, Dano grounds this emotionally tricky story in measured tones. As a director, Dano prefers static camera setups and uncluttered frames, emphasising the mundane nature of the drama, which only allows the increasing darkness of this tale to become more upsetting.

CRITICS' WEEK US. 2018. 104mins Director Paul Dano Production companies Magic Child, Sight Unseen Pictures, Nine Stories Productions International sales Endeavor Content, dmcintosh@ endeavorcontent.com Producers Alex Saks, Paul Dano, Oren Moverman, Ann Ruark, Jake Gyllenhaal, Riva Marker Screenplay Paul Dano and Zoe Kazan, based on the book by Richard Ford Production design Akin McKenzie Editing Matthew Hannam, Louise Ford Cinematography Diego Garcia Music David Lang Main cast Carey Mulligan, Ed Oxenbould, Jake Gyllenhaal, Bill Camp

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23/04/18 14:36

REVIEWS

Leave No Trace Reviewed by Tim Grierson A father and daughter live off the grid, but how much longer can they live together? That question drives the exceedingly moving Leave No Trace, a character drama told with remarkable understatement and specificity by director Debra Granik and actors Ben Foster and Thomasin McKenzie. In films such as Winter’s Bone (2010), Granik has been adept at chronicling marginalised individuals, but her new effort reveals a sustained tenderness she has never before achieved.

With Bleecker Street Media having picked up domestic rights after its Sundance premiere, Leave No Trace should spark further interest bolstered by good reviews and Granik’s track record. Admittedly, this is an intimate, somewhat familiar tale, which may create an inevitable commercial ceiling, but arthouse crowds will take notice.

As the film begins, Will (Foster) and his teen daughter Tom (McKenzie) reside in the deep forests of Portland, Oregon, happy to live off the land and sleep in a tent far from civilisation. But their rugged idyll is upset by the arrival of local authorities who force them to meet with social services and integrate into society. At first, the restless Will tries to make the best of this imposed domesticity, but soon he and the adoring Tom head back into nature.

In adapting Peter Rock’s novel My Abandonment, Granik has been provided with the same kind of wandering, eternally searching protagonist that populated her debut drama Down To The Bone and her underrated, little-seen 2014 documentary Stray Dog. Her partner in this endeavour is Foster, who gives Will a silent volatility that always hints at a secret pain running so deep within this gentle, melancholy character that we fear what would happen if he ever erupted.

Instead, Will is nothing but loving to Tom, who seems to gravitate to the peculiar circumstance in which she has been raised. Unfortunately for Will, his insistence that she be an independent free-thinker may have consequences: over the course of Leave No Trace, McKenzie charts Tom’s slow realisation that the life Will has chosen for them might not be the one she wants for herself anymore.

Neither a glib celebration of marching to the beat of one’s own drum nor a cautionary tale about the dangers of being seduced by eccentrics, the film would rather spend its time sympathising with its leads.

26 Screen International at Cannes May 9, 2018

DIRECTORS' FORTNIGHT US. 2018. 108mins Director Debra Granik Production companies Bron Creative, Topic Studios, Harrison Productions, Reisman Productions, Still Rolling Productions International sales Endeavor Content, dmcintosh@ endeavorcontent.com Producers Anne Harrison, Linda Reisman, Anne Rosellini Screenplay Debra Granik and Anne Rosellini, based on the novel by Peter Rock Production design Chad Keith Editing Jane Rizzo Cinematography Michael McDonough Music Dickon Hinchliffe Main cast Ben Foster, Thomasin McKenzie, Jeff Kober, Dale Dickey

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truecolours-double-screen-cannes-daily-09-05-18.indd 1

my big gay italian wedding

[ puoi baciare lo sposo ] directed by alessandro genovesi

market screening Monday May 14th at 11:30 - Riviera 2

04/05/18 09:11

HOT PROJECTS JAPAN

Follow the leader Buyers looking for Japanese films will find plenty of tantalising projects this year in both the festival and the market. Liz Shackleton reports COMPETITION

MARKET TITLES

Asako I & II

Ao-Natsu

Dir Ryusuke Hamaguchi

Dir Takeshi Furusawa

Hamaguchi is making his Cannes debut with his eighth feature, about a young woman who falls in love with a freespirited man who disappears suddenly.

Two years later, she meets a salaryman who looks exactly like him, but has a different personality. Starring Masahiro Higashide and Erika Karata, the film is co-produced by Japan’s Bitters End and Nagoya Broadcasting Network with France’s Comme des Cinéma. Hamaguchi’s five-hour drama Happy Hour won the best actress prize for its ensemble cast and a special mention for its screenplay at Locarno in 2015.

Wakana Aoi (Midnight Bus) and Hayato Sano (Real Girl) star in this live-action adaptation of Atsuko Nanba’s popular manga of the same name. The story revolves around a city girl who spends a summer in the countryside and finds herself having to choose between a male friend who comes to visit her from Tokyo and a boy from the local school.

Director Furusawa’s credits include other adaptations of teen romance mangas including Clover (2014) and Relife (2017). Ao-Natsu is scheduled for Japanese release on August 1.

Contact mk2 Films

Contact Masashi Yamamoto, Tokyo Broadcasting System (TBS) y-masa@green.tbs.co.jp

intlsales@mk2.com

Shoplifters Dir Hirokazu Kore-eda Kore-eda returns to Competition for the fifth time with a story about a father and son from a poor family who take in a girl they find shivering on the streets after one of their shoplifting sessions.

Although the family appears to be living happily together, an unforeseen incident reveals hidden secrets, testing the bonds that unite them. Ando Sakura (100 Yen Love), Lily Franky and Kirin Kiki head the cast, which is produced by Gaga Corp, Fuji TV and AOI Promotion.

Gaga will release the film in Japan in June this year.

International contact Fanny Beauville, Wild Bunch fbeauville@wildbunch.eu Asia contact Haruko Watanabe, Gaga watanabh@gaga.co.jp

CANNES CLASSICS

Dir Mamoru Hosoda

Tokyo Story

Tokyo Story Dir Yasujiro Ozu

Contact Shion Komatsu, Shochiku shion_komatsu@shochiku.co.jp

30 Screen International at Cannes May 9, 2018

DIRECTORS’ FORTNIGHT

Mirai

Ozu’s 1953 classic has been digitally restored by Shochiku in co-operation with the Japan Foundation.

Widely regarded as his masterpiece, and a recurring entry in all-time best film lists, Tokyo Story follows an elderly couple (Chishu Ryu and Chieko Higashiyama) who travel to Tokyo to visit their children but find they are too busy to spend time with them. Carlotta Films will release the film theatrically in France.

Shoplifters

Asian Three-Fold Mirror 2018

Asako I & II

The latest film from animation master Hosoda (The Boy And The Beast) tells the story of a small boy who is disappointed when his baby sister replaces him as the centre of his family’s attention. However, he learns how to become a big brother after discovering a fantasy world where he encounters family members at different stages of their lives, including his sister as a teenager.

Produced by Hosoda’s Studio Chizu, the film has already sold to multiple territories, including to Anime and Wild Bunch for France.

The Japanese release is scheduled for July 20.

International contact Jean-Félix Dealberto, Charades jeanfelix@ charades.eu Asia contact Naoko Satoh, Nippon TV satohn.stf@ ntv.co.jp

Dirs Daishi Matsunaga (Japan), Edwin (Indonesia), Degena Yun (China) Produced by Tokyo International Film Festival and the Japan Foundation, the second instalment of co-production initiative Asian Three-Fold Mirror brings together three directors from Japan and other Asian countries to co-create a series of films with a common theme.

Indonesian actor Nicholas Saputra stars in all three episodes of the omnibus, which will receive its world premiere at Tokyo International Film Festival (October 25-November 3).

Contact Masaki Koga, UniJapan masaki.koga@tiff-jp.net

A Banana? At This Time Of Night?

Dir Tetsu Maeda Currently in pre-production, this drama revolves around a young man with muscular dystrophy who insists on living independently, but becomes entangled in a love triangle with two of the carers who have volunteered to look after him. Yo Oizumi (FullMirai metal Alchemist), Mitsuki »

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J OYC E D I D O NATO M USEO D EL PRAD O, MAD RI D V IV IENNE WESTWOOD KU NSTHISTOR IS CHES MUSEUM, VI ENNA JULIE MEHRETU SOLOMON R. GUGGENHEIM MUSEUM, NEW YORK SASHA WALTZ MUSÉE D‘ORSAY, PARIS WOLFGANG JOOP UFFIZI GALLERY, FLORENCE ERWIN OLAF RIJKSMUSEUM, A M STE R DAM KATHARINA GROSSE ALT E NAT I ONALGALERIE, BERLIN KAR L OVE KNAUSG ÅRD MUNCH MUSEUM, OSLO

T IN 4K O H S , S E I ER 8 PART S :00 09/18 18 / 5 0 18:00 PALAIS K 8 1 / 2 1 / 5 5 0 OLYMPIA

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@@ AUSTRIAN FILMS, AUSTRIAN FILMS, RIVIERA J5 J5 RIVIERA

HOT PROJECTS JAPAN

the cast of the film, which is scheduled for Japanese release in November.

MARKET TITLES CONTINUED

Contact Shion Komatsu, Shochiku shion_komatsu@shochiku.co.jp

Takahata (Destiny: The Tale Of Kamakura) and Haruma Miura (The Eternal Zero) head the cast of the film, directed

by Maeda, whose credits include awardwinning comedy drama School Days With A Pig.

Love At Least Dir Kosai Sekine

Contact Naoko Satoh, Nippon TV satohn.stf@ntv.co.jp

Born Bone Born Dir Toshiyuki Teruya Born Bone Born © �2018 Love At Least Film Partners

Contact Miyuki Takamatsu, Free Stone Productions miyuki.takamatsu@ freestone.jp

Dir Ayuko Tsukahara

Contact Masashi Yamamoto, Tokyo Broadcasting System (TBS) y-masa@green.tbs.co.jp

Day And Night Dir Michihito Fujii Shinnosuke Abe (13 Assassins) stars in this drama about a man forced to return to his hometown following the suicide of his father, a whistleblower who revealed malpractice at a major car company. He starts to think about revenge after meeting a worker in a children’s nursing home who commits crimes based on a conviction that he is helping the children. Produced by Japanese actor Takayuki Yamada, Day And Night is in post-production for release in winter next year.

Contact Emico Kawai, Nikkatsu kawai@nikkatsu.co.jp

32 Screen International at Cannes May 9, 2018

Louder! Can’t Hear What You’re Singin’, Wimp!

Dir Satoshi Miki

Café Funiculi Funicula Based on Toshikazu Kawaguchi’s bestselling novel, this ensemble drama revolves around a coffee shop that enables its customers to travel back in time and revisit their past. Kasumi Arimura (Flying Colors), Kentaro (Let’s Go, Jets!) and Haru (Grasshopper) head the cast of the film, which is scheduled for Japanese release through Toho on September 21.

The film marks Tsukahara’s feature debut after directing several popular TV dramas, including Unnatural.

Contact Emico Kawai, Nikkatsu kawai@nikkatsu.co.jp

Love At Least

Everyday Is A Good Day Dir Tatsushi Ohmori Two award-winning Japanese actresses — Haru Kuroki (The Little House) and Kirin Kiki (Rage) — star in this drama based on Noriko Morishita’s essay, Life Bible, about her 25 years as a student of Japan’s famous tea ceremony. Mikako Tabe also stars as the cousin who convinces the young protagonist to give the ancient ceremony a chance. Currently in post-production for release in the autumn, the film is written and directed

by Ohmori, whose The Ravine Of Goodbye won the jury prize at the 2013 Moscow International Film Festival.

Contact Yasushi Miyamae, Colorbird ymiyamae@colorbird.co.jp

Hard-Core Dir Nobuhiro Yamashita The latest comedy drama from Yamashita (La La La At Rock Bottom) follows two friends who stumble across a rusty old robot while digging for Shogun gold.

The brother of one of the friends convinces them that the robot is made with advanced technology, despite its oldfashioned appearance, and can help them find the gold. Starring Takayuki

Yamada, Takeru Satoh and Yoshiyoshi Arakawa, the film is scheduled for release in November.

Contact Etsuko Furutsuki, Kadokawa furutsuki-e@kadokawa.jp

The House Where The Mermaid Sleeps Dir Yukihiko Tsutsumi Based on a novel by Keigo Higashino, this mystery drama revolves around a soon-to-be-divorced couple whose daughter falls into a coma after nearly drowning in a pool. When the doctors declare her brain- dead, with no hope of recovery, her anxious parents refuse to accept the reality of her death. Ryoko Shinohara (Unfair series) and Hidetoshi Nishijima (Creepy) head (Right) Louder! Can’t Hear What You’re Singin’, Wimp!

Sadawo Abe, formerly lead singer of the Japanese comedy rock band Group Tamashii, stars in this comedy as a rock star who takes illegal performanceenhancing drugs to improve his singing voice. He’s worried about the long-term effects of doping, but doesn’t know what to do until he meets a female street musician (Riho Yoshioka) with an exceptionally quiet singing voice.

Directed by Miki (Adrift In Tokyo), the film is scheduled for release in October.

Contact Mai Kato, Asmik Ace katomai@asmik-ace.co.jp

Until I Meet September’s Love Dir Toru Yamamoto Haruna Kawaguchi (Creepy) and Issei Takahashi (Shin Godzilla) star in this adaptation of Yumi Matsuo’s novel about a woman who starts hearing a voice in her apartment that claims to be from the future and teams up with a neighbour to solve the mystery. Currently in postproduction, the film will be distributed theatrically by Warner Bros Japan in 2019.

Director Yamamoto has also directed upcoming romantic comedy Missions Of Love.

Contact Naoko Satoh, Nippon TV, s satohn.stf@ntv.co.jp ■

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© 2018 LOUDER! Can’t Hear What You’re Singin’, Wimp! Film Partners

The feature-length version of an awardwinning short film, this family drama explores the Okinawan custom of washing the bones of deceased relatives four years after their death. Produced by Yoshimoto Kogyo, the film stars Eiji Okuda as the family patriarch coming to terms with his wife’s death, Michitaka Tsutsui and Ayame Misaki. It recently premiered at Okinawa International Movie Festival.

Up-and-coming actress Shuri, Masaki Suda (Wilderness) and Riisa Naka (Time Traveller) star in this adaptation of a novel written by popular author, playwright and stage director Yukiko Motoya. The story revolves around a woman who is confined indoors as she suffers from narcolepsy, her apparently indifferent boyfriend and his exgirlfriend who tries to break them up.

The feature debut of award-winning short film director Sekine, the film is in post-production for Japanese release in the autumn.

k r Ma

r a d n le

o y k o T

a c r u yo

Oct.23［TUE］-25［THU］, 2018 2017

ss e n i s Bu ults Res

13%up!

Total Market Value

$60,050,000

15%up!

Total Business Meetings

(*1 )

7,798

10%up! (*2)

Registered Buyers

1,549

*1 including prospective deals *2 overseas buyers

Booth at MARCHÉ DU FILM : JAPAN BOOTH PALAIS 01-23.01 TIFFCOM Organizer's Office (UNIJAPAN) email : inquiry@tiffcom.jp

Details :

http://www.tiffcom.jp/en/

PROMOTIONAL FEATURE

Tokyo reaches out Under the auspices of festival director Takeo Hisamatsu, Tokyo International Film Festival is seeking to increase regional collaborations while expanding its own programming initiatives

A

s Tokyo International Film Festival (TIFF, October 25-November 3) heads into its 31st edition, it will be continuing with its three keyword mission to be “expansive, empowering and enlightening.” This vision and a series of new initiatives, introduced by festival director Takeo Hisamatsu during TIFF’s 30th anniversary edition last year, are designed to celebrate diverse aspects of cinema — both arthouse and commercial — as well as to cultivate a new generations of filmmakers and film fans.

Koji Yakusho is TIFF’s ‘Actor in Focus’

‘We need to create opportunities for Japanese filmmakers to work with their Asian neighbours’ Takeo Hisamatsu, festival director

Under the remit of ‘expansive’, through which TIFF aims to connect audiences to a wide range of countries, themes and genres, the festival has already confirmed two of its key retrospectives: veteran Japanese actor Koji Yakusho as the ‘Actor in Focus’ in the Japan Now Section and ‘The World of Masaaki Yuasa’ as the Animation Focus.

Yakusho has an impressive body of work that includes Cannes Palme d’Or winner The Eel (1997) and international productions such as Memoirs Of A Geisha (2005) and Babel (2007). He also

recently starred as a murder suspect who keeps changing his story in Hirokazu Kore-eda’s The Third Murder (2017). “He’s different to other Japanese actors such as Ken Takakura or Toshiro Mifune, who had a strong persona or established image, as he completely disappears into every character that he’s playing,” says Hisamatsu. “It’s amazing

ASIAN THREE-FOLD MIRROR 2018 DIRECTORS

Daishi Matsunaga (Japan)

Edwin (Indonesia)

34 Screen International at Cannes May 9, 2018

Degena Yun (China)

to see the variety of characters that he’s successfully played.”

Yuasa’s work includes Lu Over the Wall (2017), which won a Cristal award for best feature at Annecy International Animated Film Festival, award-winning film Night is Short, Walk On Girl and a large body of TV work including the Doraemon, Chibi Maruko-chan and Crayon Shinchan series. Most recently he directed the Devilman Crybaby series, which was streamed worldwide by Netflix in January 2018. “In Japan, he’s best known for his TV work, but internationally he’s gaining recognition for his features,” Hisamatsu explains.

“Introducing creators like Yuasa to the world is one of our most important missions.”

Other major highlights at TIFF will include regular sections such as the International Competition, Asian Future, Japanese Cinema Splash and

Crosscut Asia, a programme held in collaboration with the Japan Foundation, which introduces Japanese audiences to the cinema of Southeast Asia. Hisamatsu also plans to continue with the Midnight Film Festival, a tribute to an as-yetunspecified cinematic genre (last year the focus was musicals) and outdoor screenings, which all proved popular with audiences when introduced last year.

Collaborative hub TIFF also aims to ‘empower’ by acting as a hub for content creators and industry professionals from Asia and beyond, providing them with a platform to meet and collaborate. Key to this strategy is TIFF and the Japan Foundation’s Asian Three-Fold Mirror initiative, which brings together directors from Japan and other Asian countries to jointly create a series of short films with a common theme. The first omnibus, Asian Three-Fold Mirror: Reflections (2016), included segments from Japan’s Isao Yukisada, the Philippines’ Brillante Mendoza and Cambodia’s Sotho Kulikar. “We need to create opportunities for Japanese filmmakers to work with their Asian neighbours and communicate with them,” Hisamatsu explains, adding that the Japanese government is in talks for a co-production treaty with China that it hopes to sign this year.

Currently in post-production, the second round of the initiative, Asian ThreeFold Mirror 2018,, comprises short films from Japan’s Daishi Matsunaga, Indonesia’s Edwin and China’s Degena Yun. While Yun filmed in China last year, Edwin shot his segment in Tokyo in January and Matsunaga filmed in Myanmar in March. Indonesian actor Nicholas Saputra stars in Edwin’s segment and will also appear in the other two short films. The omnibus will receive its world premiere at this year’s edition of TIFF. Also on the collaboration front, TIFF is increasingly working with other film festivals and film-related organisations in the region. It is co-operating with

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Lu Over the Wall © 2017 Lu Film partners

MARKET FORCES TIFFCOM

Following a move into central Tokyo last year, content market TIFFCOM is responding to the growing international demand for Japanese content and IP aking place just before TIFF, film and TV market TIFFCOM (October 23-25) is one of the region’s biggest trading platforms, offering access to a wide range of Japanese and international content. Last year, the event moved from Odaiba, a man-made island in Tokyo Bay, to a more central location, Sunshine City, in the district of Ikebukuro.

TIFFCOM CEO Yasushi Shiina says the growth is due partly to the more convenient location, as well as to increasing international interest in Japanese content, in particular animation and intellectual property (IP). “The buyers, especially from Asian countries, are very interested in acquiring not only completed content, but also Japanese IP for remakes,” says Shiina, adding that TIFFCOM has added more meeting opportunities and seminars around this business area. “They appreciate that TIFFCOM is not only a film market, but covers TV, animation, music, book publishing and merchandising. We are covering many fields.”

One of the most enthusiastic buyers of

T

Masaaki Yuasa’s Lu Over the Wall

Shanghai International Film Festival and is also a founding member of the Asian Film Awards Academy (AFAA), along with Hong Kong International Film Festival and Busan International Film Festival. This year, TIFF is expanding its association with AFAA by hosting a group of film students from Hong Kong. During their visit, the students will be participating in the festival’s screenings, seminars, masterclasses and networking events.

“We hope to expose the students to different horizons of film programmes, and to give them the opportunity to meet both their peers and filmmakers from around the world,” says AFAA executive director Roger Garcia. “TIFF always has a great range of visitors and films, from mainstream Hollywood to independent art films from Asia. The exposure to this spectrum of works and professionals would certainly help the students in their understanding of the industry.”

The student visit falls under the festival’s ‘enlightening’ remit, which also involves strengthening programmes for young

creators, such as the Teens Meet Cinema initiative, a production workshop for junior high-school students.

The short films made through the first edition of the programme, along with a making-of documentary, were screened at last year’s TIFF. Expanding Master Classes TIFF also hopes to expand its series of Master Classes, which last year included Brillante Mendoza, Naomi Kawase, Fumihiko Sori and Ryuichi Sakamoto. “It’s very important for the festival to have this kind of talk session so young creators will be encouraged and motivated,” Hisamatsu says. “We have to be a conduit for them to be inspired by great filmmakers — not just directors but also editors, cinematographers and composers.”

Hisamatsu adds that TIFF is also exploring collaboration with other organisations of cultural events to attract a wider audience, with details to be announced shortly. While other elements such as the theme of Crosscut Asia will also be unveiled over the summer, the 2018 edition of TIFF is already shaping up to be a cinematic feast.

Masaaki Yuasa is the subject of the Animation Focus

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For further information 8 www.tiff-jp.net 8 www.tiffcom.jp

‘Buyers are interested not only in completed content, but also Japanese IP for remakes’ Yasushi Shiina, TIFFCOM CEO

Japanese IP has been mainland China’s booming film and TV industry, which over the past few years has been hoovering up Japanese films, TV formats and novels for remakes. “While we haven’t done a complete breakdown, we believe Chinese companies contributed to the increase in the total value of contracts,” Shiina says. “They’ve also been acquiring more completed Japanese films and animation.

More than 10 Japanese films were released theatrically in China both in 2017 and 2016, and so far this year, already four films have been released.”

China’s growing interest in Japanese content coincides with warmer relations between the Chinese and Japanese governments, which is also expected to result in an official Sino-Japanese co-production treaty to be signed this year. Last year, UNIJAPAN, the non-profit organisation that oversees both TIFF and

BY THE NUMBERS TIFFCOM 2017 Participants

19,549 (up 7%)

Exhibitors

37 1 (up 4%)

Total value of contracts

$60.05m (up 13%)

TIFFCOM, launched an initiative with the Japan Foundation and Shanghai International Film Festival to screen Chinese films in Japan, and vice versa, in the run-up to negotiations for the treaty.

The Japanese government is also in talks with France to update and potentially expand on an existing co-operation treaty, that involves an exchange of information between the two countries. “Recently Japanese films have been well received at Cannes Film Festival and we’ve had many requests from directors and producers on both sides to have a treaty between Japan and France,” Shiina says.

Among its many other functions, TIFFCOM aims to provide a platform where the local industry can explore co-productions with the rest of Asia and further afield. Last year, the event hosted a co-production forum and business matching opportunities. It is also considering the introduction of a projects market, not for this edition, but in the years to come. “Hong Kong and Busan already have successful projects markets, so we need to come up with a different angle, but we believe gap financing is very necessary for Japanese and Asian films,” Shiina says.

In an effort to increase the overall number of buyers, Shiina says he is now planning to increase co-operation with other organisers of creative events — including cosplay, manga and anime — that are scheduled to take place in Ikebukuro around the same time.

“Ikebukuro is developing its cultural and creative infrastructure as it gears up for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics,” Shiina explains.

“Over the next few years, we’ll see many new buildings and more than 30 new cinema screens in the Ikebukuro district.

There’s plenty of room to expand.”

TIFFCOM welcomed 371 exhibitors in 2017

May 9, 2018 Screen International at Cannes 35

IN FOCUS DIRECTORS’ FORTNIGHT AT 50

Independent

M

spirit

artin Scorsese But the reach of Directors’ Conceived amid the French social arrives at Fortnight goes far beyond the unrest of 1968, and born in 1969, Directors’ Fortdirectors who have shown their Directors’ Fortnight celebrates night today to films there over the years. receive the honorary Carrosse Its zeitgeisty, international its 50th edition this year. d’Or and participate in the selections, curated in the early Melanie Goodfellow reports opening of its 50th edition in a years against the backdrop of the programme of events billed as “an immense cinematic and social upheaval exceptional day with Mr Scorsese”. taking place across the globe in the The Palme d’Or and Oscar-winning 1970s, have shaped and informed the director will also assist in a screening of tastes of generations of cinephiles. his breakthrough picture Mean Streets, legendary film archivist and cinephile “I’m a son of the early years of Direcwhich premiered internationally in the Henri Langlois from his post as head of tors’ Fortnight,” says its outgoing artistic then renegade section in 1974, and take the Cinématheque Francaise by culture director Edouard Waintrop. “It shaped part in an on-stage conversation with a minister André Malraux. my cinematic taste. I was already a fan of group of French cineastes including The new section differentiated itself by John Ford and Alfred Hitchcock but Jacques Audiard, Bertrand Bonello, being non-competitive as well as more through Directors’ Fortnight, I also Cédric Klapisch and Rebecca Zlotowski. international and open to new cinematic became a fan of Werner Herzog and CarDirectors’ Fortnight was launched in visions and non-established filmmakers. melo Bene — who was popular back then 1969, under the directorship of PierreScorsese is among a long list of even if we talk about him less now — Henri Deleau, as an anti-establishment A-list directors and international Nagisa Oshima or Alain Tanner.” antidote to the official selection. It has its auteurs to have had their first Waintrop, who first attended roots in the period of social unrest in taste of Cannes at the sidebar, the sidebar in 1976, recalls that France in 1968 and was spearheaded by referred to simply as La QuinDirectors’ Fortnight titles were the then fledgling Société des Réalisazaine by French cinephiles, quickly released on the teurs de Films. The body had been offialongside the likes of screens of Paris’s thrivcially launched in June 1968 by a dozen Ken Loach, George ing independent cindirectors including Louis Malle, JeanLucas, Chantal Akerema scene of the Paul Rappeneau, Claude Lelouche, man, Jim Jarmusch, early 1970s.

Costa-Gavras, Jacques Rivette, Robert Nagisa Oshima, Bruno “There was a buzz Bresson and Claude Berri, to protect “the Dumont, Jean-Pierre around the selection in artistic, moral, professional and ecoand Luc Dardenne, and the early days. It was a nomic freedoms of cinema”. more recently Deniz different time. We Aside from the prevailing mood of the Gamze Erguven. couldn’t wait to see the time, their militancy had been sparked films. People would (Right) Martin Scorsese partly in response to an attempt to fire flock to the cinemas

38 Screen International at Cannes May 9, 2018

French directors protest an attempt to oust Henri Langlois from his post as head of the Cinématheque Francaise in 1968

‘I don’t think cinema is as rebellious as it was in the 1960s and ’70s’ Edouard Waintrop, artistic director

in the Latin Quarter. I remember going to see a rerun screening of Lucas’s THX 1138 in 1971 at the Palais Chaillot and being blown away.”

Radical origins Scorsese’s presence at Directors’ Fortnight also coincides with the 50th anniversary of the wave of wildcat anti-establishment strikes and protests — out of which Directors’ Fortnight was born — which brought France to a halt in May 1968, as students barricaded the streets of Paris and other major cities, 11 million people went on strike and workers seized factories.

The popular uprising also famously hit Cannes as a group of filmmakers led by Jean-Luc Godard, Francois Truffaut and Berri shut down the festival just as the curtain was about to rise on the premiere of Spanish director Carlos Saura’s political thriller Peppermint Frappé.

Former longtime Cannes delegate general Gilles Jacob, at the festival that year »

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IN FOCUS DIRECTORS’ FORTNIGHT AT 50

‘Carlos Saura and Geraldine Chaplin held on to the curtain to stop the screening of their own film’ Gilles Jacob, former Cannes delegate general

as a journalist for a weekly magazine, was at the Peppermint Frappé screening.

“Out of solidarity, Carlos Saura and Geraldine Chaplin [the actress who was Saura’s wife at the time] held on to the curtain to stop the screening of their own film,” says Jacob. “It was a unique act in the history of cinema, a magnificent example of suicidal generosity that won them the respect and affection of all the ‘revolutionaries’.”

After the festival closed down, attendees scrabbled to get home, he recalls.

“I piled into a tiny car but the gas stations were almost all empty and we nearly didn’t get home. The international guests all headed for the nearby Italian border. Fritz Lang returned to Rome with [Robert] Favre Le Bret, my predecessor [as delegate general].”

French director Bertrand Tavernier — who has gone on to become a four-time Palme d’Or contender — was also at Cannes, working as a press attaché alongside the late publicist Pierre Rissient. “We were handling Milos Forman’s magnificent The Firemen’s Ball, Peppermint Frappé and, if my memory doesn’t fail me, Karel Reisz’s Morgan — A Suitable Case For Treatment,” says Tavernier.

He recalls Saura had mixed feelings about the cancellation of Peppermint Frappé. “I can picture him saying, ‘I’ve been fighting for years against censorship of Franco, and Cannes protected me, gave me strength. It’s strange and paradoxical to stop, in the name of the Revolution, the screening of a film, denouncing the hypocrisy and machismo which reigns in Spain under Franco’s dictatorship.’ I think Forman felt a bit the same,” recounts Tavernier.

Directors’ Fortnight artistic director Waintrop was a 16-year-old high school student in Paris occupying his school.

“To be honest, nobody really cared or noticed what was going on in Cannes.

The situation was so intense in Paris,” he says. “Later, of course, we learned about it and thought it was a good thing but at the time we were more interested in what was happening at the Renault factory in Boulogne-Billancourt.

40 Screen International at Cannes May 9, 2018

Mai 68, La Belle Ouvrage

“I do remember we created our own cinema club in 1968 at which, sort of bizarrely, or interestingly, we showed films from the new generation of Eastern European cineastes emerging at the time, titles like Black Peter and A Blonde In Love,” Waintrop adds, naming two early films by Forman.

Socialist realism A number of filmmakers also remained in Paris during the peak of the protests, including notably producer and exhibitor Marin Karmitz, who was focused on directing at the time.

The events of 1968 had a profound impact on his filmmaking and indeed the whole ethos around the creation of his game-changing production and exhibition company mk2. He directed a series of features — Sept Jours Ailleurs, Camarades and Blow For Blow (Coup Pour Coup) — inspired by the socialist movements of the late 1960s.

A restored copy of Blow For Blow, about a group of female textile workers who ignore union advice and take their factory boss hostage in a protest over sweatshop conditions, screens in Cannes Classics on May 11 ahead of its re-release in France on May 16.

Further 1968-inspired films screening in Cannes this year include late filmmaker JeanLuc Magneron’s Mai 68, La Belle Ouvrage,, which mixes footage of street protests and chaotic hospital scenes with eye-witness accounts of the (Right) Geraldine Chaplin in Peppermint Frappé

events on the streets and police brutality.

“He was one of the early members of the SRF,” says the filmmaker’s son Loic Magneron, who is handling sales of the relaunched title under the banner of his Paris-based company Wide Management. “He was already established as a well-known documentary filmmaker for his reportage. When the protests broke out, he stayed in Paris and shot what was going on, fully immersed in the events, focusing on the Latin Quarter, the youthful nature of the movement and the way in which communication about the events had been manipulated by the state-run media.”

The film, which premiered in the inaugural Directors’ Fortnight in 1969, has just been re-released in France, kicking off with a screening at the Cinématheque Francaise. It screens here in the market today and will screen in the US and Spain as part of the 1968 retrospectives.

Looking back at the legacy of 1968 on contemporary cinema, Waintrop says little of that militant, socialist spirit remains.

“I don’t think cinema is as rebellious as it was in the 1960s and ’70s. At that time, a whole section of society was in step with cinema, and cinema was in step with a whole section of society,” he suggests.

“Today, filmmakers are more focused on themselves and their careers… times have changed. You have a few socially minded filmmakers, like Ken Loach, but they’re rare.”

‘The arrogance of power had provoked events’ Bertrand Tavernier, filmmaker

That said, Waintrop notes this year’s Directors’ Fortnight selection does contain a handful of titles capturing difficult social conditions, notably Argentinian director Agustin Toscano’s The Snatch Thief, about a handbag snatcher seeking redemption, and Julio Hernandez Cordon’s Buy Me A Gun, a dystopian vision of cartel-controlled Mexico.

“These films show a profound crisis in their countries of origin… but whereas there was a lot of hope in the cinema of the 1970s, there is a lot less today,” says Waintrop.

As Cannes Film Festival unfolds once again amid widespread strikes and street protests across France, attendees this year might be asking if a new revolution is around the corner as discontent rises over the erosion of the hard-won worker rights gained in 1968 due to the ‘gig economy’ of the digital era.

Although those who lived through 1968 think a repeat of the strife of that period is unlikely, there is a sense of ‘never say never’. “I don’t have a crystal ball,” says Tavernier. “The arrogance of power, the ignorance of reality had provoked events. Today, is history repeating s itself or is it stuttering?” ■

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NI Screen Screen Cannes Daily Wed9May.indd 1

04/05/2018 12:44

SPOTLIGHT THE HOUSE THAT JACK BUILT

Killer instinct Lars von Trier’s long-time producer Louise Vesth talks about the Danish director’s return to Cannes after the festival overturned his ‘persona non grata’ status. Wendy Mitchell reports

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ill anybody in Cannes be able to watch Lars von Trier’s The House That Jack Built with an open mind?

“No,” is the quick answer, followed by a big laugh, from von Trier’s longtime producer, Louise Vesth from Zentropa.

The team had hoped for a Competition berth, but decided to accept the Out of Competition slot, in part because it shows the willingness of Cannes to let the Danish filmmaker back into the festival’s fold, seven years after it declared him ‘persona non grata’ following controversial remarks he made during the 2011 press conference for Melancholia.

“Thierry [Frémaux] has done a great job in the past few weeks to try to make it official from Cannes that Lars is no longer persona non grata,” Vesth says.

“He’s been persona non grata for those seven years for something he never meant, and he said then he didn’t mean it.”

Selection speculation Frémaux did not tell the filmmakers why the film was not selected for Competition. Speculation has ranged from the improbable idea that jury president Cate Blanchett told the Cannes festival director she would not consider the film, to press reports that it is so violent that it would not fit into Competition.

According to Vesth, the latter idea is off-base. “I don’t find it particularly violent in terms of how much violence we see, it’s more about the psychology of Jack,” she says. “It’s about a serial killer so there are killings in it, but the graphic parts are few and short. Maybe there is violence in 5% of the film. Compared with what we see in TV series and some films, it’s not filled with violence.”

The House That Jack Built is told through the perspective of Jack, a serial killer played by Matt Dillon, who tries for years to commit the perfect murder. The story is set during a 12-year period in 1970s and 1980s Washington State, but was shot in Sweden and Denmark.

The tortured soul of the serial killer

42 Screen International at Cannes May 9, 2018

Matt Dillon in The House That Jack Built

Louise Vesth

had resonance for von Trier. “I think he’s exploring what it feels to be an artist,” Vesth suggests. “This has to do with art, it’s about him and how painful it is to be an artist and do his films. Jack is not making films, he’s making murders, but there are still some parallels.”

The finished film has a confirmed running time of 155 minutes, and will have its world premiere on May 14 at 10:30pm.

While von Trier is “excited” to unveil the film, says Vesth, he is also naturally a bit nervous to come back to Cannes (where he has shown his films since 1984). “People always have expectations or pre-imagine what it is or what it should be. I’m prepared whatever happens,” Vesth adds of (Right) Lars von Trier

her pre-Cannes mindset. TrustNordisk handles sales and has already pre-sold the film widely.

Von Trier may be under extra scrutiny in Cannes because in late 2017 Bjork accused “a Danish director” of harassing her on the set of Dancer In The Dark (he has publicly denied the claims).

In addition, Zentropa — in particular cofounder Peter Aalbaek Jensen — has been accused by nine women of “sexual harassment, degradation and bullying”.

“This script was written before #MeToo,” Vesth explains of Jack. “It’s interesting that Lars has been doing so many female characters and now he’s doing a male psychopath character killing mostly women, just as the rest of the world is going into the

‘He’s exploring what it feels to be an artist. This has to do with art, it’s about him and how painful it is to be an artist’ Louise Vesth, Zentropa

female direction. I’m sure that will be up for discussion.” (Jack’s victims are both female and male.)

Vesth has worked at the Copenhagenbased company since 2001 but did not think this article was the correct forum to discuss the allegations against Aalbaek Jensen and Zentropa. Yet she does welcome the discussion: “It’s important for everybody to be allowed to say what they think about it. People can come forward with all their feelings and experiences and let’s discuss it and find a good way to work in the future. Zentropa management and all employees have looked into every corner of our organisation to see where we can improve our working environment. This has been a great process and I wouldn’t like to s have been without it.” ■

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SPOTLIGHT BIRDS OF PASSAGE

Power of the paranormal Cristina Gallego and Ciro Guerra talk to Jeremy Kay about shooting their Directors’ Fortnight entry Birds Of Passage amid electrical storms and suspected supernatural happenings

Rob Latour/REX/Shutterstock

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lectrical storms and possibly even more potent forces beset Colombia’s Ciro Guerra and codirector Cristina Gallego as they toiled in the country’s Guajira desert and the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta to shoot their Directors’ Fortnight entry Birds Of Passage, which screens here today.

“It was the most demanding shoot we’ve ever had,” says Guerra, whose Embrace Of The Serpent stunned Cannes three years ago and established him as an urgent new voice in world cinema.

“Physically and emotionally, it was very intense. We were pretty close to a Lost In La Mancha situation, where we almost lost our sets to severe weather in the desert. We had to fight for nine weeks with many natural challenges and [we believe] supernatural elements.”

When pressed on this last point, Gallego adds: “We were shooting in indigenous territory, and we had to battle with the weather and sandstorms over the set.

We had dreams and premonitions of our families, fear from the community about their ancestors… and finally a terrible electric storm. Everything was incredibly hard, but it made the film stronger.”

The $2.5m (¤2.2m) drama about the nascent drug trade in 1970s Colombia, as seen through the eyes of an indigenous Wayuu family in a matriarchal society, shot from February to April 2017.

“It was a fascinating piece of Colombian history that had never been seen in cinema before,” Gallego says. “It had all

44 Screen International at Cannes May 9, 2018

‘It is a story of women, of tradition, of honour, love and greed, of capitalism in its most pure, savage form’

Birds Of Passage: “The most demanding shoot we’ve ever had”

Cristina Gallego, Ciudad Lunar

the elements of great film noir, but also Greek tragedy, western and was reminiscent of the universe of Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

“An epic family story, set in a very strict, traditional society with its own systems of behaviour and commerce,” she continues. “[It is] a story of women, of tradition, of honour, love and greed, of capitalism in its most pure, savage form.”

Directing together

This was the first instance longtime collaborators — and former husband and wife — Guerra and Gallego had directed together. (Gallego produced Embrace Of The Serpent.)

(Right) Cristina Gallego and Ciro Guerra

Gallego says she initially planned to produce Birds Of Passage through her Ciudad Lunar production company, although her hands-on, physical approach to producing made her well prepared to step up and co-direct. “It was a story that had a very strong feminine component,” Guerra says, “so it needed a female eye that would balance and enrich all the genre elements and also remain true to its soul.”

Emboldened by the success of Embrace Of The Serpent and dedicated to telling the stories they want to tell, Colombia’s powerhouse creative duo have already set their sights on future projects.

Guerra is about to start pre-production on JM Coetzee adaptation Waiting For The

Barbarians, as well as Colombia’s first Netflix series and development on a new film. For Gallego, there is Ciudad Lunar’s commitment to producing Birds Of Passage, as well as imminent releases of Wajib, Sister Of Mine and Ruben Blades Is Not My Name.

Would they co-direct together again?

“Sure,” Guerra says. “We need to find the right project that interests us both. We are developing some ideas.”

Films Boutique is handling international sales for Birds Of Passage, which Ciudad Lunar produced with Blond Indian Films in co-production with Mexico’s Pimienta Films, Films Boutique and Denmark’s Snowglobe. The associate producers are Caracol Television, Dago Garcia Producciones, Cinecolombia, Bord Cadre, Efd and Labodigital. Further financing came from Proimagenes, Ibermedia, Eficine, OIM, USAID, the Danish Film Institute, Gobernacion de la Guajira, L’aide Aux Cinemas du Monde, Institut Francais, Centre National du Cinéma et de L’image Animée, TorinoFilmLab s and Creative Europe. ■

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IN FOCUS CANNES BUYERS

Beyond the bubble Some of the best fun of Cannes is speculating which films will win the festival’s big prizes.

But for international sales companies, it’s a more serious business. Charles Gant explores the significance of a Croisette launch when films are finally released around the world

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very year at Cannes Film Festival, assembled sales agents, buyers, exhibitors, programmers and especially — it must be admitted — members of the press enjoy being distracted from their daily cares by speculating which titles will win the key prizes. And for the broader constituency of arthouse film lovers not present at the festival, the awarding of the Palme d’Or provides a vital access point.

The question remains: how valuable is selection, and ideally a win, in Cannes?

And for which kinds of films does it matter most? It is hard to argue, for example, that Todd Haynes’ Wonderstruck (global box office so far: $2.5m) really saw its commercial fortunes lifted by its participation in Cannes’ Competition last year.

On the other hand, Sean Baker’s The Florida Project, the buzz title in the 2017 Directors’ Fortnight, had the kind of liftoff that might have been harder to achieve in the packed line-up of Toronto, catapulting it to an Oscar nomination for Willem Dafoe and $12.8m worldwide box office.

Cannes launchpad “A Cannes launch is almost necessary for certain types of films,” is the opinion of Vanessa Saal, managing director, sales and distribution at Protagonist Pictures, which presents Pawel Pawlikowski’s Cold War in Competition this year. “For certain titles to become event arthouse films, Cannes is a very important stamp of the beginning of commercialisation, especially with anything that’s foreign language.”

The pitfall is that if the Cannes critics take against you, as famously happened with Sean Penn’s The Last Face and Gus Van Sant’s The Sea Of Trees, it can be hard to recover. “Cannes puts an amount of importance to the press that’s even higher than usual,” says Saal.

“If you have something (Right) Willem Dafoe in The Florida Project

46 Screen International at Cannes May 9, 2018

120 BPM (Beats Per Minute)

KEY CANNES 2017 TITLES AT THE WORLDWIDE BOX OFFICE Figures to April 19, 2018 Film

France

UK & Ireland

US

Russia

Germany

Spain

Worldwide

Wind River (US)

$2.29m

$1.97m

$33.8m

$684,000

$971,000

-

$46.4m

The Beguiled (US)

$2.75m

$1.56m

$10.7m

$781,000

$949,000

$2.26m

$28.2m

The Square (Swe-Ger-Fr-Den)

$2.65m

$959,000

$1.5m

$94,000

$2.2m

$325,000

$16.9m

The Florida Project (US)

$1.28m

$1.24m

$5.9m

$76,000

$490,000

$383,000

$12.8m

In The Fade (Ger-Fr)

$1.87m

-

$321,000

-

$5.64m

$147,000

$9.92m

120 BPM (Beats Per Minute) (Fr)

$6.49m

$228,000

$125,000

-

$91,000

$100,000

$7.95m

The Killing Of A Sacred Deer (UK-Ire-US)

$401,000

$1.12m

$2.29m

$248,000

$763,000

$248,000

$7.55m

Loveless (Fr-Rus)

$1.77m

$441,000

$549,000

$1.8m

$56,000

$170,000

$5.91m

You Were Never Really Here (US-Fr)

$1.23m

$1.37m

$513,000

$563,000

-

$449,000

$5.11m

Happy End (Fr-Ger-Aust)

$645,000

$519,000

$302,000

$83,000

$855,000

-

$4.25m Source comScore

that’s panned at Cannes versus somewhere else, you’d rather be panned somewhere else.”

Charlotte Mickie, vice president of Paris-based sales outfit Celluloid Dreams, says: “Generally the Cannes selectors are very astute about their choices, so we go with their judgment if they want something and it’s such an honour, but of course things can and have gone sideways from time to time.”

Mickie notes that Cannes audiences can be “terribly wrong” with their initial reception of certain titles, citing the examples of Jane Campion’s Sweetie in 1989 and the Coen brothers’ Barton Fink

in 1991 — although any hostility to the latter was quickly corrected by the Cannes jury that awarded it three prizes including the Palme d’Or. Celluloid Dreams founder and president Hengameh Panahi adds that the company’s only bad experience was with Takashi Miike’s Shield Of Straw in 2013: “The Japanese producers were surprised that such a commercial movie could be selected in Cannes’ Competition. Well, the French critics massacred the film and by the time the reviews were out we saw all our deals being cancelled. We never sold the film in France. We tend to say that bad reviews can kill a film, but good reviews don’t sell the film.”

For Louisa Dent, managing director at Curzon Artificial Eye — one of the key distributors of foreign-language and art-

house titles in the UK — the great advantage of a Cannes premiere is that afterwards you know where you stand: “You’ve got all the press, exhibitors, partners, funding bodies, UK film festivals — there is a level of attendance at Cannes that is not there for Venice or Berlin, not in the same way. You get a very clear idea.

If the press is not on board, you can reconfigure the way you plan to release.”

Bump tactics For buyers and sellers alike, a big topic of negotiation for titles competing for the Palme d’Or is likely to be the tricky subject of bumps in the minimum guarantee (MG). If a deal is being hammered out ahead of the prize-giving, sales agents are likely to propose clauses in the deal memo that call for price hikes relating »

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CANNES 2018 N E W DEERSKIN by Quentin DUPIEUX In production - French Language - Comedy

STARRING Jean DUJARDIN, Adele HAENEL

HEAVY by Jouri SMIT

In post-production - English Language - Thriller

STARRING Daniel Zovatto, Sophie TURNER (GoT )

PLAY OR DIE by Jacques KLUGER

In post-production - English Language - Thriller/Horror

Based on the best-seller «Puzzle» written by Frank THILLIEZ

THE UNICORN by Robert Schwartzman Completed - English Language - Romantic Comedy

STARRING Lauren Lapkus (Jurassic World), Nicholas Rutherford (Don’t Worry He won’t get far on foot), Lucy Hale (Truth or Dare, Pretty Little Liars)

S C R E E N I N G S

EXCLUSIVE NEW PROMO SCREENINGS > TUESDAY MAY 8th I 17:30 I ARCADES 3

KEEP AN EYE OUT by Quentin DUPIEUX PRIVATE SCREENING

> WEDNESDAY MAY 9th I 17:30 I ARCADES 3 Comedy - 73 min

ALWAYS AT THE CARLYLE by Matthew MIELE MARKET SCREENING PREMIERE

> FRIDAY MAY 11th I 12:00 I GRAY 1 Documentary - 91 min

WINE CALLING by Bruno SAUVARD

> SUNDAY MAY 13th I 12:00 I GRAY 3 > WEDNESDAY MAY 16th I 17:30 I RIVIERA 1 Documentary - 90 min

A L S O

A V A I L A B L E

THROUGH THE FIRE by Frederic TELLIER

French Language - In post production - French Distributor: Mars Films - Drama

STARRING Pierre Niney, Anaïs Demoustier

LITTLE CARIBOU by Barry O’DONOGHUE English - In production - Animation

THE NIGHT EATS THE WORLD by Dominique ROCHER English - Just completed - Survival - 94 min

KEEP AN EYE OUT (AU POSTE)

PLAY OR DIE

Written & Directed by Quentin Dupieux

Directed by Jacques Kluger

THE NIGHT EATS THE WORLD

ALWAYS AT THE CARLYLE

Directed by Dominique Rocher

Written & Directed by Matthew Miele

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Dimitri Stephanides Partner dimitri@wtfilms.fr office : +33 1 42 61 09 83 cell : +33 6 43 37 96 98

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IN FOCUS CANNES BUYERS

to category wins. “Distributors will be willing to put a bump in for the Palme d’Or but not that many of the other prizes,” says Saal, who adds that European and Japanese distributors are more open than the US to this suggestion.

Mickie agrees: “Bump clauses can sometimes work for awards other than the Palme d’Or, but it’s becoming rarer, and the bumps are more lucrative and easier to secure in continental Europe.”

From the buyer’s perspective, according to Dent: “It’s asked for, and we often say it is a bit meaningless, which I think it is. Everyone asks for everything. They’re always going to ask. It really so much depends on the film.”

Dent adds that for titles from hitherto little-known directors such as Laszlo Nemes’ Son Of Saul (grand jury prize, 2015) or Cristian Mungiu’s 4 Months, 3 Weeks & 2 Days (Palme d’Or, 2007),

CANNES BUYERS 2018 International buyers of buzzy arthouse films reveal what they are looking for at this year’s festival, how those films are working in their territory right now and the best strategy for a good Cannes meeting Michael Barker

US

Co-president, Sony Pictures Classics What is the US market like for arthouse films? The foreign-language films are harder than ever before. If it’s one of those two or three that crosses over, you’re then in great shape.

Are you paying more or less than you were five years ago? We’re paying about the same… Now if you go back another 10 years you probably paid more.

What’s working in the market? It’s those films where we come up with marketing ideas that help make that film distinctive in the marketplace.

‘For certain titles, to become event arthouse films, Cannes is a very important stamp’

Chris Yu

SOUTH KOREA

President and chief executive, Green Narae Media

Vanessa Saal, Protagonist Pictures

Danielle DiGiacomo

US

Vice president of acquisitions, The Orchard

Michael Barker photo by Michael Buckner/Deadline/REX/Shutterstock

a big prize is a handy help, while the Palme d’Or in 2010 for Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s woozy, audience-challenging Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives made the difference between a film that “would have struggled to have done anything in the UK” and the modest achieved outcome ($147,000 at UK cinemas).

A Palme d’Or win last year for Ruben Ostlund’s The Square for Curzon was a nice-to-have, but much more valuable in engaging UK audiences were the film’s talking-point scenes, as was the case with Ostlund’s Force Majeure (aka “the avalanche movie”), which did not even play in Competition — it screened in Un Certain Regard. “Much more important than being in Cannes or winning a prize at Cannes is the film itself and whether you’ve got a hook that you can market it on,” says Dent.

Over the next three pages, Screen International correspondents talk to the key global buyers of Cannes films about the market for those films in their territories.

We ask distributors to tell us how their buying habits have changed in the past few years, how many films they plan to acquire this year, and the inside track on what constitutes a good Cannes meeting.

Answer: it’s not (just) a glass of rosé.

How many do you hope to buy? The worst thing you can do is say you have to buy a movie in Cannes… That’s when you make mistakes.

What makes a good meeting at Cannes?

When you meet the filmmaker [and] you feel the pulse of what’s on their mind, the ideas…

How can sales agents help to ensure a meeting goes well? My favourite sales agents are the ones that are fair, because some of them are not. I remember in the 1990s being sold a film, going off to lunch to celebrate, and at the end of the lunch having a press person call me to say it had just been sold to someone else. It never happened to me again.

50 Screen International at Cannes May 9, 2018

Are you paying more or less for films than five years ago? Now that we’ve had success in that arena, both box office-wise and awards-wise [recent buys include 120 BPM (Beats Per Minute) and Neruda], we find it’s less about outbidding someone on the minimum guarantees [MGs] and more about being a trustworthy, transparent and collaborative partner with a well-thought-out release strategy.

What is working? I’m still a believer that fresh visions and stories we haven’t seen before, as well as underrepresented people and narratives, are working.

How many do you hope to buy? One or two finished films. If a pre-buy with potential pops up that we really love, then that’s a possibility.

What is the South Korean market like for arthouse films? Since 2017 we’re seeing an unexpected slump in the arthouse market. Films that were buzzy at Cannes haven’t been greatly successful at the local box office.

What kinds of films are you looking for? We have a lot of titles in Cannes that we have pre-bought, so I’ll just be looking for one or two very good films. Very slow-paced arthouse films are less marketable these days. I’m looking for films with a definite concept. You have to stand out.

What makes a good meeting at Cannes? The sellers I like all have one thing in common — they accurately grasp a buyer’s needs by territory. Rather than pitching every title they have at length, they figure out what a particular buyer will want. It saves us all time and effort.

Paul Park

SOUTH KOREA

Content business part director, The Coup Corporation Are you paying more or less for a buzzy Cannes festival film than you were five years ago? Competition films tend to have deals ahead of time these days. We already bought Girls Of The Sun in Berlin. In the past five years, a market for arthouse films has formed and so naturally, it’s gotten more competitive, which has driven up prices to beyond the scope of what is reasonable — even though the Korean market has slowed a bit.

What kinds of films are you looking for? We’re looking for films that have a hook, an interesting concept. We usually buy five or six films.

What makes a good meeting at Cannes? The biggest thing is honesty. Bluffing to get higher prices, you get found out in the end and then we might end up distancing ourselves from that seller and their company. Some sellers give you an honest opinion about prices and how well a film might do in Korea. This results in better relationships and deals. »

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PERSPECTIVE CANADA

MAKE ROOM IN YOUR AGENDA. A curated program of Canadian features screening at the Marché du film, financed by Telefilm Canada.

Market Premiere

April in Autumn Warren Sulatycky DRAMA

Production and Sales Raging River Productions Warren Sulatycky warrensulatycky@gmail.com Palais B

13/05 11:30

Market Premiere

The Fall of Sparta La chute de Sparte

I’m Not a Bad Person

COMEDY

Production Amazing Factory Productions Sales Goodbye Productions Amber Ripley ripley@goodbyeproductions.com

Tristan Dubois

Production Parallaxes Sales Filmoption International Andrew Noble anoble@filmoption.com Palais J

Market Premiere

Andrew Huculiak DRAMA

Gray 3

10/05 18:00

11/05 11:30

Market Premiere

Incredible Violence

Kayak to Klemtu

HORROR

ACTION-ADVENTURE

G. Patrick Condon

Market Premiere

Zoe Hopkins

Knuckleball

Michael Peterson THRILLER

Production and Sales The Hunting Party G. Patrick Condon gpcondon@gmail.com

Production and Sales Scythia Films Daniel Bekerman danielb@scythiafilms.com

Production 775 Media Corp.

Sales Alliance Media Partners Timo Suomi timo@amp-film.com

Lerins 3

Gray 2

Gray 2

14/05 16:00

Market Premiere

Louise Lecavalier – In Motion Louise Lecavalier : sur son cheval de feu Raymond St-Jean DOCUMENTARY

Production Cine Qua Non Sales Filmoption International Andrew Noble anoble@filmoption.com Gray 3

12/05 17:30

Market Premiere

SuperGrid

Lowell Dean

ACTION-ADVENTURE

Production Echolands Creative Group Sales Raven Banner Michaelangelo Masangkay michaelangelo@ravenbanner.ca Palais J

11/05 9:30

Market Premiere

A Touch of Spring Un printemps d’ailleurs Xiaodan He DRAMA

Production GreenGround Productions Sales Filmoption International Andrew Noble anoble@filmoption.com Palais B

10/05 16:00

RDVCANADA.CA

12/05 15:30

13/05 9:30

IN FOCUS CANNES BUYERS

Torsten Frehse

GERMANY

Chief executive, Neue Visionen Filmverleih What is the German market like for arthouse films?

It’s becoming more and more difficult to reach 100,000 admissions.

Competition is tougher among distributors to acquire that particular film which will work, which is often accompanied by bidding wars and too-high minimum guarantees.

What kinds of films are you looking for? We already have some films for 2018-19 that we bought based on the strength of the screenplay such as Naomi Kawase’s Vision, Julie Bertuccelli’s Le Dernier VideGrenier De Claire Darling and Ludovic Bernard’s In Your Hands. So we aren’t under any real pressure to find a certain number of films. French comedies continue to be extremely popular in Germany and the same goes for arthouse films by renowned directors who have had a good run on the ‘A’ festivals.

Bianca Obermaier

Margherita Chiti

ITALY

Head of acquisitions and sales, Teodora What is the Italian market like for Cannes films? Cannes is the only film festival that can make a real difference at the box office.

You need a movie that has won a prize. The Square for sure wouldn’t have scored the box office it did if it wasn’t for the Palme d’Or win. But it does depend on the film. 120 BPM (Beats Per Minute) didn’t perform as well as another grand jury prize winner, such as Son Of Saul.

Stefano Massenzi

ITALY

Head of acquisitions and business affairs, Lucky Red What is the Italian market like for arthouse films?

It depends. The Square grossed ¤1m [$1.2m] while the average Cannes title has a more difficult life. The audience is mature, which is good for traditional movies but not for arthouse ones. Also, dubbing is a problem, particularly for non-Western languages. Asghar Farhadi’s A Separation only grossed ¤100,000 [$121,000] because of the dubbing.

How many films do you hope to buy? One or two.

Or maybe just one. But a very good one.

Are you paying more or less for films than five years ago? Less. A more fragmented market, the explosion of TV channels, the drop in home -video revenue and the lack of a real on-demand offer have all contributed.

How can sales agents help ensure a meeting goes well? By demonstrating they know you, even if it’s the first time you’ve met.

What kinds of films are you looking for at Cannes? Surprising ones and popular ones. We are looking for the broadest possible audience.

Clare Binns

Cate Kane

GERMANY

Acquisitions, Weltkino What kinds of films are you looking for at Cannes? We had a very successful Berlin and therefore Cannes is more relaxed. We will focus on films for a 2019 release.

How can sales agents ensure a meeting goes well in Cannes? Some snacks and a glass of rosé never hurt.

On a serious note, just like I aim to be prepared by knowing the line-ups and having covered scripts, I expect a sales agent to have done his or her part and be familiar with our slate and the German market.

Jakub Duszynski

UK

Joint MD, Picturehouse Cinemas What are you looking for this year? I was hoping to pick up films in Berlin but that was a disappointing market for us. The year before we picked up Sally Potter’s The Party but there wasn’t anything like that this year. There was one film we would have picked up in a shot, Sunday’s Illness, but Netflix had it. If something is great and we think it’s going to work, we’re going to buy it. The amount we buy is not prescriptive.

POLAND

Head of acquisitions, Gutek Film What is the Polish market like for arthouse films?

Cannes is as strong and as important as ever. This is the event we are all waiting for.

But I am paying more than five years ago. I face bigger competition every year for those few top films everyone wants to handle locally.

Which films are working in Poland right now? Bold, edgy, significant, uplifting films. I am looking for films that will turn me on. I would love to come back with three films for 2019.

How can sales agents ensure a meeting goes well?

Know the profile of the company you deal with, do not pitch all your films, push one film that you feel fits the profile of the company.

52 Screen International at Cannes May 9, 2018

Are you paying more or less for buzzy Cannes films than five years ago? You have to be very careful at Cannes that you don’t get carried away, people do sometimes end up overpaying for films.

What is the biggest challenge you face going into Cannes? The fact other markets have been not as good as they could have been. There will be a lot of people out there looking for some big titles.

What makes a good meeting in Cannes? When everybody wants to do a deal. We’ve all been around the block an awful long time, you want to deal with people that are going to work well with you. For example, I’ve always found Charlotte Mickie, who is now back at [French sales agent] Celluloid Dreams, a great person to work with.

She has immaculate taste and she wants to get films over the line. There are lots of good people out there who want to do business with you.

UK

Head of acquisitions, Curzon Artificial Eye What is the market for Cannes titles in the UK? We’ve been lucky to have the Palme d’Or for the past three years. It’s something you can usually sell to a cinephile audience.

What kinds of films are you looking for? We’re director-led, so we’re always hoping Cannes selects the best directors. Haneke, von Trier — those names are symbols of quality to audiences. We’ve been tracking Ruben Ostlund since Involuntary.

How many are you looking to buy this year?

We take the stuff we love.

Are you paying more or less for buzzy Cannes films than five years ago? It depends if we prebuy or not. Sometimes we’ve pre-bought and we’ve probably paid more than we would do once we’d seen the film, you take that risk. Sometimes it works the other way — we pre-bought The Square and paid a good minimum guarantee for it but probably would have had to pay more money if we’d have waited until Cannes.

What makes a good meeting in Cannes? Having an honest sales agent who knows what you want is really important. I hate it when people pitch films that I’m clearly never going to go for. »

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IN FOCUS CANNES BUYERS

The Photo Access / Alamy

Alexandre Mallet-Guy

Denis Ivanov FRANCE

UKRAINE

Chief executive, Arthouse Traffic

Chief executive, Memento Films Distribution What is the French market for Cannes films? Films that made 100,000 admissions five years ago don’t necessarily perform so well now. That said, Cannes can really help a title. For example, 120 BPM (Beats Per Minute) would never have performed so well without Cannes. The festival gave the film greater resonance in the media that helped it connect with a wider audience. Without Cannes, the film would have achieved 400,000 admissions instead of the 850,000 admissions that it did.

What is the Ukrainian market like for Cannes films?

Five years ago it was extremely complicated to deal with the rights for Ukraine only, as all rights were sold to the former USSR as a package. Now many big sales companies are ready to have direct deals with Ukraine.

What kinds of films are working right now? We’re working more and more with films early on in their development. France remains a competitive arthouse acquisition market. The Competition titles are rarely available for France by the time the festival rolls around, or even before. For Cannes this year, we won’t have much time for acquisitions and when it comes to international films we generally work with directors we already know, and for French films, we buy off the script and rarely at Cannes.

How many films are you looking for? We are hoping to buy up to 10 titles. We are mostly focused on arthouse films by well-known directors or with the participation of actors considered to be big stars by Ukrainian audiences.

What is the biggest challenge you face going into Cannes? For us, it’s not really on the acquisitions front, but rather looking after the titles we already have and making sure that the logistics are in place at the festival so that they are shown under the best possible conditions, and connect with media at the festival.

Jakob Abrahamsson

Otilio Garcia Gobeo

SPAIN

Chief executive, Golem Distribution What is the Spanish market like for Cannes films? The market is getting tougher and tougher due to [Spain’s ongoing financial] crisis, Europe’s highest VAT rates, piracy, and so on. Even the Palme d’Or doesn’t guarantee box-office success. The risk is higher and MGs cannot simply be as high as they used to be — we cannot afford it.

What kinds of films are you looking for? We already have Shoplifters by Hirokazu Kore-eda and Ash Is Purest White by Jia Zhangke. We are in talks for two others. We really hope they are well received as awards always help a little. We will also be looking for some more films for 2019. Women are Golem’s target audience. Spanish filmgoers are more and more drawn to comedy, to audience-friendly films. Robert Guédiguian’s The House By The Sea, [and then] The Death Of Stalin and The Party have all done well so we’ll do our best to avoid very ‘hard’ stories. That said, we never forget to look for emerging talents. We picked up Xavier Legrand’s Custody at Cannes last year.

NORDIC REGION

Chief executive, NonStop Entertainment What is the Nordic market like for Cannes films? Last year had some really quite good films, even though a fair number of them were pre-sold for Scandinavia and in the end several of them underperformed at the local box office. My hunch is we pay about the same or slightly less for Cannes titles than previously.

The biggest challenge would be to find titles that translate and work in the local market, and lately there has been a trend for us that Toronto and Sundance are becoming more important. But hey, Cannes is still Cannes and there is nothing like it.

What kinds of films are you looking for?

We’re looking for strong crossover titles, arthouse or ones that are more audience-friendly, but naturally grabbing a Palme d’Or winner always means something. We also acquire some classics, some docs and do some pre-buys. All in, we should s bring about four to six titles. ■

How can sales agents ensure a meeting goes well? It is so easy to spot a good seller: they know your company profile and line-up and do not try to sell anything and everything to you.

Enrique Gonzalez Kühn

SPAIN

Managing director, Caramel Films What is the Spanish market like for Cannes films? The Spanish audience has become bourgeois and middle-aged. Filmgoers don’t take chances so we have to be careful about the chances we take as distributors.

What kinds of films are you looking for?

An interesting auteur film with commercial appeal. That’s what we are all after. This year I have already got Pawel Pawlikowski’s Cold War. It’s difficult to predict the number of films I will buy. I was going to get one in Berlin and ended up with five.

54 Screen International at Cannes May 9, 2018

INTERVIEWS BY Martin Blaney, Elisabet Cabeza, Melanie Goodfellow, Tom Grater, Jeremy Kay, Wendy Mitchell and Gabriele Niola

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IN FOCUS UK PRIVATE FINANCING

The funding

dilemma Some of the UK’s leading private financiers tell Geoffrey Macnab why they are investing more in high-end TV drama than mid-range UK feature films right now

Hampstead by Ecosse Films was backed by Motion Picture Capital

O

n the eve of Cannes, the UK’s film financing sector is buzzing with activity. Both established and newer players are vying for new business, particularly from the high-end TV sector and big international films. The paradox is independent UK feature films are becoming harder to finance and the private financiers point out that this part of the market is confronted with severe structural problems.

Stuart Woodward, senior relationship manager in media finance at Bank Leumi, points to the ongoing weakness of the presales market.

“All this stems from the death of DVD and the home entertainment market and the rise of SVoD,” he says. “It means distributors no longer know what a film is worth to them. That means you have less presales that you are able to finance a film against.”

Bank Leumi, Coutts, Barclays, French outfits Cofiloisirs and Natixis Coficiné, and even some US banks (among them City National and Comerica) are all looking for projects in the UK marketplace. However, with the presales market contracting, these banks are wary about

56 Screen International at Cannes May 9, 2018

‘Distributors are going to the safe havens of action thrillers and horror’ Charles Auty, The Fyzz Facility

providing gap financing. They know the distribution market is “incredibly soft”, as Woodward puts it.

“Right now, distributors are going to the safe havens of action thrillers and horror, genre-type stuff where there are incredibly well-defined audiences,” suggests Charles Auty, managing director of The Fyzz Facility.

Phil Hunt of London-based financiers Head Gear notes that as digital giants Netflix and Amazon are not sharing knowledge about audience tastes or what films work on their platforms, “filmmakers are shooting in the dark. We don’t really actually know what anyone wants.”

A further source of disquiet is the dif-

ficulty now facing the Enterprise Investment Scheme (EIS) as a tool for film financing. Financiers who once looked to back UK movies are increasingly turning their attention toward the booming high-end TV drama sector.

“The media landscape has never, ever changed faster than it is now,” suggests Flying Tiger’s Paul Brett. In his Prescience days, Brett was one of the financiers of The King’s Speech. “It is comparable to the introduction of sound in movies. So many colleagues who I was with or have spoken to in Berlin said they didn’t have one meeting about film. Everything was about television.”

The attraction of TV is that TV projects tend to already have solid backing. “They often come fully financed,” says Woodward. “A typical project we will see at the moment will have the cornerstone broadcaster, a co-production partner, a tax credit and, if there is a gap at all, it is usually filled by a distributor advance whether that is [from] BBC Worldwide, Endemol, Shine International or one of these guys.

The names you’re working with are household names… you can get a lot of comfort round their credit worthiness.”

And as TV financing tends to only be available on delivery, producers turn to the financiers to cashflow the project or to secure bridging loans.

Films, as ever, tend to be riskier propositions. However, if UK independent projects have credible sales estimates from reputable sales agents, financiers will still get behind them. Bank Leumi, for example, has recently backed Oliver Parker’s Swimming With Men and Richard Eyre’s The Children’s Act. Difficult marketplace Brett, on the other hand, believes even a blue-chip project such as The King’s Speech would struggle in the current marketplace. “If The King’s Speech was happening today and that script landed on my desk,” he says, “I would turn to [producers] Iain [Canning], Emile [Sherman] and Gareth [Unwin] and say you need to do this with Fox Searchlight.”

His point is that there is simply not enough money in the UK independent sector to make $10m-$15m budgeted features, and producers need to look for US support instead.

Another frustration for the UK’s private »

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CARMEN &

LOLA A film by Arantxa Echevarría

Zaira Romero * Rosy Rodríguez * Moreno Borja * Rafaela León * Carolina Yuste TVTEC SERVICIOS AUDIOVISUALES WITH THE SUPPORT OF ORANGE ESPAÑA - COMUNIDAD DE MADRID – ICAA PRESENTS “CARMEN & LOLA” PRODUCTION DIRECTOR EDUARDO SANTANA · DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY PILAR SÁNCHEZ DÍAZ · COSTUME DESIGNER CUARTO ROPERO TERESA MORA · MAKE-UP AND HAIR GLORIA PINAR Y SOLEDAD PADILLA · PRODUCTION DESIGNER SOLEDAD SESEÑA ASSISTANT DIRECTOR JORGE CALATAYUD · DIRECT SOUND FABIO HUETE · SOUND EDITING DANI PEÑA · MUSIC NINA ARANDA · EDITOR RENATO SANJUÁN · EXECUTIVE PRODUCERS PILAR SÁNCHEZ DÍAZ Y ARANTXA ECHEVARRÍA WRITTEN AND DIRECTED BY ARANTXA ECHEVARRÍA

— MARKET SCREENINGS (BUYERS ONLY) — Thu. MAY 10 at 16:00 – LERINS 1 Sun. MAY 13 at 14:00 – LERINS 1 — FESTIVAL SCREENINGS — Tue. MAY 15 at 15:00 – Theatre Croisette Wed. MAY 16 at 14:00 – Cinema Le Raimu (French subtitles only) Wed. MAY 16 at 20:45 – Theatre Croisette Thu. MAY 17 at 16:30 – Studio 13 (French subtitles only) Fri. MAY 18 at 16:30 – Cinema Alexandre III (French subtitles only)

AF_CYL_ScreenInternational_335x245_07052018.indd 1

07/05/18 17:24

IN FOCUS UK PRIVATE FINANCING

Bank Leumi backed Richard Eyre’s The Children’s Act

financiers is the ongoing uncertainty around EIS relief. Last autumn, there was an outcry over the suggestion that film would no longer benefit from EIS relief following the HM Treasury ‘Patient Capital’ Review. However, after a prolonged consultation period, the Treasury made it clear that film and TV wouldn’t be excluded from EIS and SEIS as long as the investments were being made. Films including Carol, Mr. Turner and Selma have been made with EIS investment on long-term businesses.

But in reality, the EIS market is in decline. As HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) will not give advanced assurance about the relief, financiers are taking a leap in the dark when they use the scheme.

“My views are the market will shrink because the investors are not necessarily going to be as enthusiastic about this type of investment any more,” says Laure Vaysse, chief operating officer of Motion Picture Capital, which backed Ecosse Films’ Hampstead, among others.

“It’s now abundantly clear the EIS landscape has changed radically following the introduction of the risk-to-capital test taken together with the earlier introduction of the growth and development test,” agrees Martin Smith, special advisor at leading UK film financier Ingenious Media. “Henceforth singlepicture financing is definitively a no-no but we all more or less knew that some time ago. It’s a matter of emphatic confirmation. That era is well and truly over.”

Smith predicts “a good deal of uncertainty” as financiers try to digest the EIS guidance and come to terms with HMRC’s eligibility conditions, which some see as deliberately vague.

58 Screen International at Cannes May 9, 2018

‘EIS will become much akin to venture capital business. This will scare off some companies, which is what HMRC intends’ Martin Smith, Ingenious Media

What is clear is that to be eligible for EIS relief, investors will have to make long-term commitments and be prepared to lose their capital.

“EIS will therefore become much akin to venture capital business,” says Smith.

“This will scare off some companies, which is what HMRC intends, and there will be a flight to quality, which suits us fine.”

He adds that Ingenious Media will be introducing two or more new funds shortly that will have more equity risk than previous funds.

Building businesses One optimistic voice about EIS is Kirsty Bell at Goldfinch Studios. The financier has been involved in more than 170 projects in film, TV and games, among them The Ice King, Building Jerusalem, That Good Night and Triple Word Score. Goldfinch offers gap financing, loans against the tax credit and has its own studios in York in the north of England as well as a VFX offshoot.

Bell suggests EIS can still be an effective tool as long as it is used for building businesses rather than for financing oneoff movies: “Single-project businesses, unless you are a Marvel comic or a massive animation series for TV, will be very difficult to pass any kind of business investment test. We are always invested in a slate rather than just one project.”

Great Point Media, the financing company set up by Jim Reeve and Robert Halmi in 2012, also continues to use EIS. “That’s something we’ll continue to be very active in and works really well for slates,” Reeve says. He estimates Great Point has raised $345m (£250m) through EIS over the past five-and-a-half years.

Great Point also provides financing for iFeatures, the low-budget filmmaking initiative run by Creative England and through which it has supported such UK critical hits as Lady Macbeth and The Levelling. The attraction here, Reeve says, is that the scheme offers the financiers the chance to develop relationships with top new talents early in their careers.

Although private financiers are as wary of the UK independent production sector as ever, there are plenty working in this space. The Fyzz Facility, set up by Wayne Marc Godfrey and Robert Jones in 2010, is an asset-based lender rather than an equity investor. It has provided more than $250m for (Right) The Levelling

more than 200 films over the past five years, including shark thriller 47 Meters Down starring Mandy Moore, which grossed over $60m worldwide, The Strangers: Prey At Night and upcoming thriller Three Seconds starring Rosamund Pike and Joel Kinnaman.

“We are, as a business, slightly unusual in that we are producers as well,” says Fyzz’s Auty. “We expect to be producing four to five films this year. We produced four films last year.”

The Fyzz Facility works closely with a few key producers, including Cassian Elwes of Elevated TV, and sales agents including Bloom, Highland Film Group, Altitude, Independent, Embankment and Protagonist. Fyzz also has a strong relationship with Ingenious where Auty previously worked.

Head Gear also remains extraordinarily active with more than 20 features filming or in post-production. “I am the quickest lender in the business and I am the most flexible because I don’t have other investors to report to,” says founder Hunt. Speed, he points out, is essential for film financiers at a time of a sustained talent drain to high-end TV, when agents won’t commit their clients to a feature until the very last minute while they wait in case a more lucrative small-screen project comes along.

Motion Picture Capital, owned by the Reliance Group, recently closed on The Corrupted starring Sam Claflin and Hugh Bonneville. It will be sold by The Exchange in Cannes. It continues actively to apply funds. Hindsight Media is busy too and recently announced its acquisition of a sci-fi drama called Anima, written by Steve Isles.

Premiere Picture, whose long-established ‘trader’ fund offers a percentage of the value of the distribution rights in return for a recoupment corridor, is shortly to launch its new ‘Buffalo’ fund.

Silver Reel is another deep-pocketed player whose credits include multi-awardwinning animated feature Loving Vincent.

Silver Reel also backed recent romantic teen fantasy Every Day, produced by Paul Trijbits, Christian Grass, Anthony Bregman and Peter Cron.

“There are so many more UK financiers in the market than there were five years ago,” says Jason Garrett, who oversees legal and business affairs at Premiere Picture. “There are quite a few entities out there with money to spend on collateralised lends ing.” ■

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IN FOCUS BLOCKCHAIN

Chain reaction As technological advances chip away at the entertainment industry’s inherent inefficiencies, experts in the field have coalesced around one buzzy development they believe will become a game-changer: blockchain. Jeremy Kay reports

T

he blockchain, a decentralised digital ledger that offers a way to verify and record transactions over a secure, encrypted platform, will, say early adopters, deliver much-needed transparency to all types of businesses.

Now, a number of parties in the film industry, with its intricate deal structures and often-antiquated reporting systems, are exploring potential applications.

New York-based SingularDTV has been using decentralised apps to help filmmakers raise production money and then develop and distribute their content. The underlying blockchain mechanism lends itself to these tasks by tracking the various transactions involved and offering a transparent ledger to the involved parties.

London and New York-based Big Couch uses its proprietary FilmChain collection service, which is based on the blockchain and allows content creators to trace transactions, automatically split payments and analyse recoupment data. Meanwhile, Swedish start-up Cinezen Blockchained Entertainment and Slate Entertainment Group (SEG), a freshly minted company from the US, are lining up blockchain VoD or so-called BVoD platforms.

In each case, the parties see blockchain as a new paradigm for conducting business in the industry that will introduce greater transparency across a secure digital mechanism.

Screen International recently reported that several sales agents, including Celsius in the UK and Denmark’s LevelK, have signed on to Cinezen’s VoD service. Cinezen uses a blockchain protocol known as Ethereum that allows customers to carry out functions such as royalty reporting and invoicing in a safe and transparent manner. Revenue payments are executed in tradable cryptocurrency from the end user to the rights holder. Cinezen hopes to have thousands of titles on its service by Cannes with plans for a fourth-quarter launch.

SEG has developed a multi-layer ecosystem powered by blockchain technology and driven by a cryptocurrency designed for mainstream adoption. Its decentralised streaming platform Binge offers the same facility. Chief executive Michael Moyal says this will be one of several features that could give established platforms like Netflix, Amazon Prime Video and Hulu a run for their money.

Unlike those services, investors, financiers and producers of content that play on Binge will be able to access behavioural analytics in real-time to see who is watching their content and understand what works, when and where on a piece of content.

The company claims its Binge

60 Screen International at Cannes May 9, 2018

model of complete transparency will become an entertainment industry first, providing valuable data to help creators produce better content.

“We will be aggressively acquiring content over the next 12 months,” Moyal says, adding that Binge is at Cannes, liaising on acquisitions with strategic partner XYZ Films, whose co-founder Nate Bolotin sits on the SEG board. The goal will be to buy global rights and pay minimum guarantees up front and — in another differentiator from Netflix — offer back-end participation.

Further, the decentralised nature of the platform means there will be no geoblocking — so viewers can log in and finish a show wherever they are in the world. SEG plans to launch Binge within the next 12 months and will operate it on a transactional and subscription model. Customers will be encouraged to use a digital wallet with Slate cryptocurrency that reads the ledger tracking the use of the currency, although traditional credit cards will be accepted.

Speeding up industry evolution Binge will fall under the umbrella of SEG’s blockchain media storage and delivery protocol that operates alongside a ticketing application called Slatix, a feature-rich application offering unique rewards and incentives. SEG wants to facilitate a wide range of transactional services to disrupt the entertainment industry using a blend of technology and integrity.

“People who are looking for ways to find new solutions to financing and distribution see blockchain as the future,” says Bolotin. “It provides openness and transparency in terms of the consumer data and respective earnings to both the licensor and its investors.”

XYZ is producing Ruairi Robinson’s sci-fi anthology New Frontiers alongside Ground Control and the project is being financed by SingularDTV through a tokenised economy, which is to say the latter is approaching cryptocurrency investors to pre-buy tokens sold at a preset price that represent a share of the pot. As faith in the project grows, the value of the tokens goes up.

“You’re creating an investment vehicle and allowing consumers to be part-owners,” Bolotin says. “We went in that direction because we believe today it’s incredibly difficult to raise money for a movie like this without a big theatrical release commitment in the US. This becomes a new way you can circumvent distributors around the world by going directly to the consumer.”

“In the last four or five years, at most of the film markets, a conversation we’ve heard a lot has been with this changing landscape of VoD and the lack of resources that are starting to be apparent

»

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IN FOCUS BLOCKCHAIN

WHAT IS BLOCKCHAIN?

to distributors; the power lies in the ability to control and distribute your IP and this is what the blockchain provides at the very basic level,” says Kim Jackson, co-founder and president of entertainment of SingularDTV. About 18 months ago the company raised capital through a Token Generation Event (TGE), an Initial Coin Offering (ICO) to build a platform where content creators can use proprietary apps to develop, shoot and distribute their work, as well as track revenue and rights management — areas that often become convoluted.

The role of the middleman in Hollywood, in particular the sales agent, has come under scrutiny in recent years. The blockchain looks like it could be about to speed up the evolutionary process, yet SingularDTV vice president of entertainment finance and development Daniel Hyman — a former sales agent himself — says the goal is not to eliminate intermediaries.

“They all serve important roles,” Hyman says. “The distributor has an extremely important function, and the sales agents, the agents, the marketing teams, the PR… We’re not cutting them out: we’re sort of streamlining the process and by doing that it allows filmmakers and distributors and viewers and customers alike to share in that transparent, immediate knowledge of how goods and money are being exchanged.”

“The big challenge for us is adoption,” says Irina Albita, who cofounded Big Couch with Maria Tanjala in 2014. “The technology is there and sounds great for geeks like us, but maybe not to a 65-yearold producer. We don’t want to change behaviour too much…

As with any new technology, it can scare people off. But blockchain just automates and improves the inner workings of something that they have done all along and will continue to do.”

Like SingularDTV, Big Couch operates on the Ethereum blockchain. Among other services, Albita and Tanjala deploy FilmChain’s mechanism to ensure fair and timely compensation for all content creators. “There’s no other industry out there where reporting systems and visibility on how your investment is doing at any given time is only on an annual or semi-annual basis,” Albita says. “What will have a huge impact on the industry is to create a real-time experience to monitor where your investment or your project is at.”

The company also championed the ‘crewfunding’ model (which so far has nothing to do with blockchain), whereby a production’s crew defer a portion of their up-front rate and receive profit participation. Big Couch claims this enables it to save up to 20% on budgets. To date,

62 Screen International at Cannes May 9, 2018

A blockchain is a digital ledger or database of transactions that is duplicated across a peer-to-peer network of computers.

Because the ledger is distributed and therefore decentralised, no single entity can control it. As each transaction or update to the ledger takes place, evidence is copied across the network to each holder of the ledger, which makes the mechanism transparent.

Each transaction is validated by the network and creates a block. These blocks are connected by a chain. The blockchain is coded in such a way that it is irreversible, so a user cannot undo a transaction. It is also protected from outside interference by cryptography.

The blockchain can be programmed.

Smart contracts use the underlying technology to automate tasks on the fulfilment of certain conditions.

Cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, Ether and Litecoin use the blockchain protocol

to determine what amount of money is being transferred between parties and when. The value of the currency is determined by several technical factors as well as its scarcity, utility and value assigned by a number of exchanges.

Some say the blockchain was created nearly 20 years ago as a time-stamp for digital documents. In 2009, an unknown entity called Satoshi Nakamoto created Bitcoin using blockchain.

As a foundational technology, blockchain can be used to track business transactions or assets.

Adopters argue the technology could revolutionise the way we work, given that it can lend transparency to any industry or type of digital behaviour involving a database and transactions.

In the film industry, this could be applied to digital rights management, tracking royalties and bringing down production costs on visual effects by distributing across the blockchain network.

the company has backed seven films, including Tell It To The Bees starring Anna Paquin and Icelandic drama The Deposit.

SingularDTV also produces original content and has lined up Trust Machine by Alex Winter about cryptocurrency and blockchain that is in post-production now, and The Happy Worker by director Duwayne Dunham on which David Lynch serves as executive producer. SingularDTV and its film and music projects found their supporters by launching tokens.

New ambitions Blockchain is attracting plenty of curious minds with the financial wherewithal to mount ambitious plans. Former Worldview Entertainment founder Christopher Woodrow is launching blockchain-based token MovieCoin and wants to raise $100m through an ICO to fund a slate of features.

Hollywood’s early adopters counsel caution over the Bitcoin gold rush and the volatility that comes from the surrounding hype and lack of regulation. “Companies like ours that are building real applications under the utility of tokenomics are very different from the ICOs that are giving blockchain technology a bad name,” Jackson says. “The media seems to be focused on this and they’re missing a big story of the value of blockchain technology around the world. There are so many applications being built, not just in entertainment.”

As Hyman puts it: “We’re not hailing ourselves as a currency.

We’re an application. We don’t want to be the next dollar; we want to be the mechanics behind a more efficient digital distribution s of entertainment.” ■

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IN FOCUS BREXIT & CO-PRODUCTION

The Brexit

EFFECT

W

hen Munira Mirza, an advisor on arts and philanthropy to the UK government and the former deputy mayor for education and culture of London, was on a panel titled ‘The Creative Industries Beyond Brexit’ earlier this year, she turned the debate on its head. While other speakers had been lamenting the obstacles Brexit was likely to put in the way of artists, architects and filmmakers, she took an opposing position. “Brexit is about engaging with the rest of the world,” Mirza declared. “It’s about being outside the protectionist zone which is the European Union.”

In the brave new world she portrayed when the UK leaves the EU on March 29, 2019, its departure will open up new opportunities for trade and cultural collaboration with territories such as China, North America, Latin America and India.

David Puttnam, president of the UK’s Film Distributors’ Association (FDA), was also looking forward in a recent speech: “An increased investment in the production and distribution of creative content with a distinctive British voice could help to deliver a form of national rebranding, renew confidence, and play an important role as we seek to redefine our relationships with the rest of the world.” The veteran producer called for

64 Screen International at Cannes May 9, 2018

With the country’s exit from the European Union less than a year away, UK film industry executives consider the potential ramifications on Britain as a robust co-production partner for Europe. Geoffrey are trading arrangeMacnab reports ments post-Brexit that to be made “as frictionless as possible… with reciprocal market access for the distribution of UK and EU member states’ film and TV productions”.

But many UK producers, distributors and sales agents do not share either Mirza’s optimism about new opportunities or Puttnam’s confidence in ‘national rebranding’. Few believe new co-production opportunities are now going to emerge in India, China or anywhere else.

“That’s a long way off,” suggests Rebecca O’Brien of Sixteen Films. “The films we make are not the films those markets are looking for.”

Global ideals “This fantasy of opening up new markets is probably borrowed from other industries where it may work, but film has always been predicated on the idea that if it can be distributed all around the world, then somebody will be working to make sure that does happen,” notes Charlie Bloye, chief executive of Film Export UK, the trade association that represents the UK’s independent sales companies.

However, when it comes to European co-productions, the Brexit effect is likely to be negligible because so few UK films

made way now. In 2017, 211 films started principal photography in the UK. Of these, 68 were inward investment films, 130 were locally produced UK features but only 13 were international co-productions. They included the English-language High Life, a UK-France-Germany co-production directed by France’s Claire Denis, and Cannes Competition title Cold War, a Poland-France-UK co-production, directed by Poland’s Pawel Pawlikowski and shot in Polish and French.

The lack of co-production activity is not necessarily a problem. Inward investment continues to boom and US producers appear confident that neither shooting in the UK nor working in the EU will become any more difficult after Brexit. The US studios, and more recently the streaming giants and HBO, have long based productions in the UK and shot on location around Europe.

“Our speculation is that [Brexit] will not have a massive amount of impact on most of us,” says Paul Hanson, CEO of Los Angeles-based Covert Media. The company’s feature Ophelia, which premiered at Sundance Film Festival this year, shot in the Czech Republic and did

‘Most producers in our network don’t even think about Britain as a partner’ Simon Perry, ACE

part of its pre-production and all of its post-production work in the UK. The film’s producer, production designer and composer were all from the UK, as were many of its actors including Daisy Ridley, Clive Owen and George MacKay. “Talking to producers and other financiers as well as distributors, no-one seems to be panicking,” adds Hanson.

In addition to High Life and Cold War, the BFI has backed some prestigious European features, including Sacha Polak’s Dirty God and Victor Kossakovsky’s documentary Aquarela. However, the BFI’s minority co-production fund has only $1.4m (£1m) a year to invest. It tends to support work by well-known European directors who already have international reputations. It will very rarely, if ever, back non-UK first features. »

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KSM International MarchÊ du Film – Riviera K8

Sebastian Brummer (brummer@ksmfilm.de) Martin Brunnett (brunnett@ksmfilm.de)

IN FOCUS BREXIT & CO-PRODUCTION

THE VIEW FROM EUROPE

Few European producers view the UK as a major co-production player. But while there are stumbling blocks, all want to see that relationship grow. Melanie Goodfellow reports s the UK’s film and TV professionals ponder their future outside of the European Union post-Brexit, their absence from the Creative Europe Programme could go unnoticed by their counterparts in the rest of the region, especially in its vibrant co-production scene. Few European producers see the UK as a major player in co-production.

It is a view born from the UK’s 2017 tally of 13 coproductions, which pales in comparison to France’s 123 co-productions with partners from 48 countries last year, or Germany’s 44 co-productions in 2016. “The UK is not a key co-production territory,” says French producer Bertrand Faivre, who operates out of both Paris and London, under his The Bureau banner.

Netherlands producer Leontine Petit — a key player in the European co-production scene whose credits include The Lobster, Zama, Blind and In The Fog — agrees. “I don’t feel there is a strong co-production culture in the UK except for working with the US and Ireland,” she argues. “Many UK producers do not know what the possibilities are in the rest of Europe. They are not as used to co-producing as we are.”

The reasons cited for the UK’s low profile on the European co-production scene are numerous, including the dominance of the English language worldwide, which means it makes less sense for UK producers to get involved in foreign-language fare, and as a result, focus on the US and Hollywood. Other factors include the UK’s current absence from the Council of Europe’s Eurimages film fund, high administration and production costs, the relatively small pot of state cash for independent cinema and the way in which the country’s tax credits are structured.

“Firstly, you have to shoot in the UK to access the tax credits; then there’s the fact that the combined budgets for cinema of the BBC, Film4 and the BFI come to, what, £45m [$62m] or £50m [$69m]? It’s not a lot,” says Faivre. “The UK does not have a lot of money for independent cinema, and co-productions tend to take place in the independent cinema scene.”

Amsterdam-based Petit agrees: “There are not many possibilities to get soft money in the UK, the BFI supports very few co-productions and only from excellent A-list directors, and added to this, shooting in the UK is twice as expensive as in Holland, Belgium and many other countries in Europe.”

Faivre says only half of the dozen or so productions he has set up involving both UK and French elements, including Spy(ies), London River and Le Week-end, have been official co-productions. “There is no point trying to set up an official

A

co-production for films with budgets of less than €1.5m-€2m [$1.8m-$2.4m],” he says. “On London River, for example, the budget was too small to access the tax credits and the legal and auditing costs would also have been too high to justify a true co-production.”

Working together In spite of the UK’s shortcomings as a potential co-production partner, both Faivre and Petit remain keen to work with UK partners in the future. Faivre is involved in at least two highprofile productions involving UK and European partners. Petit will be holding talks in Cannes with potential UK and Irish co-producers for her UK-set feature project Taking Leave, which she is developing with the support of the London and Los Angeles-based Inside Pictures programme.

Faivre is also optimistic that existing relationships between UK producers and other non-UK European producers will survive post-Brexit. “You have people like Rebecca O’Brien who works closely with France’s Why Not Productions. I expect relationships like that will continue, people will readjust,” he says, referring to the long-time partners who collaborated on many of Ken Loach’s films as well as Lynne Ramsay’s You Were Never Really Here.

Paris-based sales agent and producer Vincent Maraval at Wild Bunch, who also worked closely with O’Brien and Why Not, concurs. “If the UK drops out of Creative Europe, it might result in some UK distributors no longer buying European films and it will mean a bit less money for production, but it doesn’t mean we’ll stop working with the UK,” he says.

Maraval notes, however, that the most important factor when setting up a co-production with France is that the partner country qualifies as European under the stipulations of France’s CSA audiovisual authority. This is essential for French coproducers to be able to access funding from local broadcasters, such as pay-TV giant Canal Plus and the state-backed channels of France Télévisions, which remain key players in the film finance sphere but have to ensure that 50% of the new films they broadcast are European. “Being a member of the EU doesn’t make a country European. The UK is part of Europe, whether it’s part of the EU or not,” he says.

As Brexit approaches, it seems the ball is very much in the court of the UK’s producers, and the bodies that support them, over whether they want to keep a seat in the European coproduction scene or not.

Lynne Ramsay’s You Were Never Really Here

66 Screen International at Cannes May 9, 2018

The days when the UK was highly desirable as a minority co-production partner because of the tax write-offs are long gone. It is no longer possible to do financial-only co-productions in which international partners could access UK tax relief with no creative UK element to the film. UK producers talk darkly of the difficulties they face when they attend co-production events such as Rotterdam’s CineMart or the Berlinale Co-Production Market.

“As a minority co-producer, it is a thankless task. It is financially unviable.

There is no real co-production money in the UK,” says Christine Alderson of Ipso Facto Films of attending co-production events knowing that, beyond the UK tax credit, there is very little UK producers can offer potential partners.

Her sentiments are echoed by veteran producer Simon Perry, president of Euro-

‘People have fallen out of the habit of coproduction.

What you don’t see, you don’t know’ Rebecca O’Brien, Sixteen Films

pean producers’ network ACE. “It’s a perception of Britain by Europe that is really being compounded by Brexit. [That perception] already was very, very negative,” Perry suggests. “Most of the producers in our network don’t even think about Britain as a possible partner. It is bottom of the list as a co-producer of choice.”

But that is not at all the perspective of Isabel Davis, head of international at the BFI. She points out the UK film financing system is different to that of its European partners. “We have less public money overall for co-production than our near neighbours in Europe,” she notes. “We tend to look at co-productions for their cultural and creative importance. In that regard, we should be seen as sincerely behind it.”

Davis argues UK film tax relief is attractive to international producers and films that would previously have qualified as co-productions are being made through the system. “Underneath that data, you have a much richer picture of international engagement where films will have qualified as British under the cultural test but will have brought on European or other partners,” she says.

The real impact of Brexit on the film industry may be felt by the sales and distribution sector. But if the UK leaves »

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IN FOCUS BREXIT & CO-PRODUCTION

Join us at Pavilion 117 The Happy Prince

the EU’s Creative Europe programme after 2020, UK producers are bound to feel the pain too. “There will be a drop in the acquisition price of British movies if they don’t qualify for any [marketing or distribution] support [from Creative Europe],” predicts Bertrand Faivre, founder of London and Parisbased production company The Bureau, whose recent credits include 45 Years and Lean On Pete.

If UK films are no longer classified as European by Creative Europe, it will mean a reduction in demand from European distributors that also cofinance UK features by putting up minimum guarantees or co-produce UK projects such as The Death Of Stalin (Gaumont) and The Happy Prince (Beta Cinema). These distributors will

‘We feel confident the landscape for co-production after Brexit is very stable’ Isabel Davis, BFI

find it harder to sell the films on to their broadcasters, who have quotas for European films.

Opportunities for UK technicians to work on European co-productions may also decrease as producers looking to pass EU cultural tests will be wary about hiring them. Furthermore, VFX, post-production and animation houses express concern about their ability to continue hiring the best young talent from the EU. Some employers said they are already seeing Brexit clauses in contracts that required them to guarantee non-UK employees legal and financial protection in the case of a so-called ‘hard Brexit’.

Although the Creative Industries sector deal unveiled in March revealed the number of Tier 1 (exceptional talent) visas would be doubled, this has

only allayed employers’ concerns very slightly. The figures were small — visa numbers will go up from 1,000 to 2,000 — and the bar to secure one of these visas is very high. The measure does nothing to address concerns about employing freelancers who make up such an important part of the workforce. The creative industries federation is lobbying for a more flexible ‘creative freelance visa’ to sit alongside the exceptional talent visa, but the government is yet to respond.

One subject back on the agenda is whether or not the UK should rejoin Eurimages, the Council of Europe’s coproduction fund, having left in 1995.

After more than 20 years out of the organisation, UK producers have mixed feelings about returning. “People have fallen out of the habit of coproducing,” argues O’Brien. “What you don’t see, you don’t know. That’s the problem. People are blinkered as to what the options are. Once you’ve done one co-production, it’s easier to do lots.

I’ve continued to co-produce throughout my career. Eurimages would actually make a difference.”

Ireland is thriving as an Englishspeaking Eurimages member with a strong appetite for co-production. Canada is also set to join while the perception grows that the UK — as Perry puts it — is “even more distant, an offshore island drifting towards North America”.

Although Munira Mirza’s vision of the creative industries striking bold new partnerships beyond the EU postBrexit seems wildly far-fetched to many UK producers and executives, there is a growing feeling that the relationship between UK producers with their European partners will not be too adversely affected post-Brexit.

“We feel confident the landscape for co-production after Brexit is very stable,” says Davis. “We are staying, of course, within the EU Convention. Our bilateral treaties do not change, our tax credit will remain the same, the cultural test will remain the same. Our films will s remain cultural European works.” ■

68 Screen International at Cannes May 9, 2018

Friday 11 May 11.30-12.30

Forging Global Collaborations

Successful international collaboration starts with understanding local markets. Experienced producers in some of the world’s fastestgrowing markets discuss potential opportunities.

Speakers: Jeffrey Chan (China), Rodrigo S. González (Mexico)

15.30-17.00

Small Films, Big Impact:

How short filmmakers can make the most of the international festival circuit In association with the British Council Speakers: Kathleen McInnis (Festival Strategist, See-Through Films), filmmaker Jayisha Patel, producer Georgia Goggin (We Love Moses)

Saturday 12 May 12.00-13.00

Events at the UK Film Centre

Cold War (Zimna wojna) Dir. Pawel Pawlikowski In Competition Premiere tonight

Brexit Update

Leaving the EU but staying in Europe Speakers: Sunniva Hansson (Wiggin), Harriet Finney (BFI’s Director of External Affairs) Chair: Isabel Davis, BFI’s Head of International

14.30-15.30

The New Dealmakers

How international companies are successfully adapting to a changing marketplace Speakers: Tristen Tuckfield (EVP, 30West), Dana O’Keefe (Partner, Cinetic), Phil Hunt (Co-Managing Director, Head Gear Films), Samantha Racanelli (Agent, Endeavor Content), Claudia Bluemhuber (Managing Director, Silver Reel Partners)

For up-to-date listings and services visit weareukfilm.com

Also at the UK Film Centre: • Meet UK agencies & experts • Information point • Expert advice • Wifi and Café

2018_UKFC_SCREEN_HPV_107X304.indd 1

@weareukfilm

www.screendaily.com 04/05/2018

17:53

1985

Writer/Director: Yen Tan (Pit Stop) Cast: Cory Michael Smith (Gotham), Virginia Madsen (Academy Award Nominee, Sideways), Michael Chiklis (The Shield), Jamie Chung (The Hangover II & III)

A closeted young man returns home for Christmas during the first wave of the AIDS crisis and struggles to reveal his dire circumstances to his conservative family.

“Subtle and gripping (...) A fine piece of cinematic craftmanship.” – Indiewire “Richly hypnotic (...) A rare, miracle of a film.” – Film School Rejects

SCREENINGS: May 12 / 13:30 / Palais J May 14 / 12:00 / Lerins 1

MAINE

Writer/Director: Matthew Brown (In the Treetops) Cast: Laia Costa (Victoria, Newness), Thomas Mann (Kong: Skull Island, Me and Earl and the Dying Girl)

Backpacking alone on the Appalachian trail, a married woman meets a younger hiker and the two strangers become inexplicably drawn to one another.

“Quietly piercing (...) Costa is an arresting presence.” – The Hollywood Reporter “Brown has a keen understanding of exiles and runaways.” – Indiewire

SCREENING: May 13 / 12:00 / Palais I

BEHOLD MY HEART

Writer/Director: Joshua Leonard (Beautiful Losers, The Lie) Cast: Marisa Tomei (Academy Award Winner, My Cousin Vinny, Academy Award Nominee, The Wrestler), Charlie Plummer (All the Money in the World, Lean on Pete), Timothy Olyphant (Justified, Santa Clarita Diet), Mireille Enos (World War Z, The Killing), Emily Robinson (Transparent)

After the tragic death of his dad, 16-year-old Marcus must look after his self-destructive mother while navigating the difficulties of adolescence.

SCREENING: May 11 / 18:00 / Lerins 1

MADELINE’S MADELINE

Writer/Director: Josephine Decker (Thou Wast Mild And Lovely, Butter on the Latch) Cast: Molly Parker (House of Cards, Deadwood), Miranda July (The Future, Me and You and Everyone We Know), Helena Howard

Madeline got the lead role in the play! Strangely, the character looks just like Madeline. And has a cat just like Madeline’s. And is holding a steaming hot iron next to her mother’s face – like Madeline is.

“A mind-scrambling masterpiece (...) One of the boldest and most invigorating American films of the 21st century.” – Indiewire

SCREENING: May 10 / 18:00 / Riviera 1

SLUT IN A GOOD WAY

Director: Sophie Lorain (Heat Wave) Cast: Marguerite Bouchard, Romane Denis, Rose Adam, Alex Godbout

When 17-year-old Charlotte discovers that her newfound sexual empowerment has all been part of a game created by her male coworkers, she bands her female colleagues together to go on a sex strike.

“The Quebecois teenage answer to Frances Ha.” – The New York Times “Fierce energy (…) Gorgeously shot.” – Film Threat

SCREENING: May 13 / 9:30 / Lerins 2

CITY OF JOEL Director: Jesse Sweet Cast: Hasidic community of Kiryas Joel, Members of the town of Monroe, NY

50 miles north of New York City, a town called Monroe becomes a microcosm for a divided nation as a land dispute between an ultraorthodox Hasidic sect and their secular neighbors erupt into a turf war.

SCREENING: May 14 / 10:00 / Lerins 1 SALES: Ryan Kampe rk@visitfilms.com +1 646 548 4700

Lydia Rodman lsr@visitfilms.com +1 617 835 6307

FESTIVALS: Joe Yanick jy@visitfilms.com +1 440 479 9879

CANNES BOOTH: Lerins M4 www.visitfilms.com info@visitfilms.com

SCREENINGS Edited by Paul Lindsell

JURY GRID, PAGE 96

paullindsell@gmail.com » Screening times and venues are correct at the time of going to press but subject to alteration

15:00

FESTIVAL

ENAMORADA

AND PRESS

(Mexico) 96mins.

Dir: Emilio Fernandez.

Cast: Pedro Armendariz.

During the Mexican Revolution, a guerrilla general and his troops take the conservative town of Cholula. As the revolutionaries mistreat the town’s rich folk, general Reyes falls for the beautiful and wild Beatriz Penafiel, the daughter of one of the town’s richest men.

08:30 EVERYBODY KNOWS

(France) 132mins.

Dir: Asghar Farhadi.

Cast: Penélope Cruz, Javier Bardem, Ricardo Darin.

Laura, a Spanish woman living in Buenos Aires, returns to her hometown outside Madrid with her Argentinian husband and children. However, the trip is upset by unexpected events that bring secrets into the open.

Cannes Classics Bunuel

16:00 DONBASS

Competition Lumiere Ticket required, press

(Netherlands) 110mins.

Dir: Sergei Loznitsa.

Cast: Boris Kamorzin, Valeriu Andriuta.

WILDLIFE

(US) 104mins.

Dir: Paul Dano.

Cast: Jake Gyllenhaal, Carey Mulligan.

A boy witnesses his parents’ marriage falling apart after his mother finds another man.

Critics’ Week Miramar

08:45

Un Certain Regard Debussy Press

FESTIVAL & PRESS 18:30 YOMEDDINE

(Austria) 97mins.

Dir: AB Shawky.

Cast: Rady Gamal, Ahmed Abdelhafiz, Shahira Fahmy.

A Coptic leper and his orphaned

apprentice leave the confines of the leper colony for the first time and embark on a journey across Egypt to search for what is left of their families.

Competition Lumiere Ticket required

BIRDS OF PASSAGE

(Colombia) 120mins.

Dir: Cristina Gallego, Ciro Guerra.

Cast: Natalia Reyes.

In the 1970s, as the American youth embraces hippie culture, a marijuana bonanza hits Colombia, quickly turning farmers into seasoned businessmen. In the Guajira desert, a Wayuu indigenous family takes a leading role in this new venture and discovers the perks of wealth and power. But when greed, passion and honour blend together, a fratricidal war breaks out that will soon put their family, their lives and their ancestral traditions at stake.

Directors’ Fortnight Theatre Croisette

10:00 DEAD SOULS

(China) 495mins.

Dir: Wang Bing.

In Gansu Province in northwest China lies the remains of countless prisoners abandoned in the Gobi Desert 60 years ago. Designated as ‘ultra-rightists’ in the Communist Party’s Anti-Rightist campaign of 1957, they starved to death in the Jiabiangou and Mingshui re-education camps. The film invites us to meet the survivors of the camps to find out firsthand who these persons were, the hardships they were forced to endure and what became their destiny.

Special Screenings Salle Du 60eme Press

11:00 A ILHA DOS AMORES

(Portugal) 169mins.

Dir: Paulo Rocha.

Cast: Luís Miguel Cintra, Clara Joana,

70 Screen International at Cannes May 9, 2018

Zita Duarte.

Depicts the life of the 19th-century Portuguese writer Wenceslau De Moraes by means of nine ancient ballads from China. The writer married a Chinese woman after he left his wife and family to live in Macao. Later, he moved to Japan where he fell in love with a Japanese woman, staying in Japan for the rest of his life.

Mixed in with the career and loves of Moraes is the history of Portugal at home and in its colonies.

Cannes Classics Bunuel

11:15 DONBASS

(Netherlands) 110mins.

Dir: Sergei Loznitsa.

Cast: Boris Kamorzin, Valeriu Andriuta.

In the Donbass, a region in eastern Ukraine, a

hybrid war takes place, involving open armed conflict alongside robberies on a mass scale perpetrated by gangs.

In the Donbass, war is called love, propaganda is uttered as truth, hatred is declared to be love. It’s not about one region, one country or one political system, it’s about humanity and civilisation in general.

It’s about each and every one of us.

Un Certain Regard Debussy Press

11:30 ONE DAY

(Hungary) 99mins.

Dir: Zsofia Szilagyi.

Cast: Zsofia Szamosi, Leo Furedi, Ambrus Barcza.

Anna, 40, has an average life: three healthy children, her work as an Italian teacher, a flat she owns with her husband and a mortgage that is not too bad. Nevertheless, Anna sometimes has the impression of upholding a life with all her might, one that leaves no room for her. When she finds out her husband is cheating on her with her best friend, her life is put

on the line and she runs the risk of losing control.

Critics’ Week Miramar

13:00 EVERYBODY KNOWS

(France) 132mins.

Dir: Asghar Farhadi.

Cast: Penélope Cruz, Javier Bardem, Ricardo Darin.

Competition Lumiere Ticket required

13:45 RAFIKI

(Kenya) 82mins.

Dir: Wanuri Kahiu.

Cast: Patricia Amira, Muthoni Gathecha, Jimmy Gathu.

Kena and Ziki, two girls living in Nairobi, fall in love and must ultimately choose between love and safety.

Un Certain Regard Debussy Press

14:30 MEAN STREETS

(US) 112mins.

Dir: Martin Scorsese.

Cast: Harvey Keitel, Robert De Niro.

Classic crime drama charting the lives of two young hoodlums in New York’s underbelly.

Directors’ Fortnight Theatre Croisette

16:30 CONVERSATION WITH MARTIN SCORSESE

90mins.

Directors’ Fortnight Theatre Croisette

ONE DAY

(Hungary) 90mins.

Dir: Zsofia Szilagyi.

Cast: Zsofia Szamosi, Leo Furedi, Ambrus Barcza.

Critics’ Week Miramar

18:30 YOMEDDINE See box, above

18:45 THE EYES OF ORSON WELLES

(US) 115mins.

Dir: Mark Cousins.

Granted exclusive access to hundreds of private drawings and paintings

by Orson Welles, filmmaker Mark Cousins dives deep into the visual world of this legendary director and actor to reveal a portrait of the artist as he’s never been seen before — through his own eyes, sketched with his own hand and painted with his own brush. The film brings vividly to life the passions, politics and » www.screendaily.com

MEI AH ENTERTAINMENT RIVIERA H1

Director

Director

Philip Yung

Jingle Ma

Cast

Cast

Aaron Kwok, Tony Leung CW

INTERNATIONAL SALES

Tony Leung CW, Kris Wu

SCREENINGS

power of this 20th-century showman, and explores explores how the genius of Welles still resonates today.

Cannes Classics Bunuel

19:00 YOMEDDINE

(Austria) 97mins.

Dir: AB Shawky.

Competition Debussy Press

19:15 YOMEDDINE

(Austria) 97mins.

Dir: AB Shawky.

Competition Bazin Press

19:30 BIRDS OF PASSAGE See box, right

WILDLIFE

(US) 104mins.

Dir: Paul Dano.

Cast: Jake Gyllenhaal, Carey Mulligan.

Critics’ Week Miramar

20:00 EVERYBODY KNOWS

(France) 132mins.

Dir: Asghar Farhadi.

Cast: Penélope Cruz, Javier Bardem, Ricardo Darin.

Competition Salle Du 60eme & Olympia 1

21:15 WAR AND PEACE: PART I

(Russia) 147mins.

Dir: Sergei Bondarchuk.

Cast: Ludmila Savelyeva, Sergei Bondarchuk, Vyacheslav Tikhonov.

In 1805, disillusioned and tired of the futility of high society, Prince Andrei Bolkonsky leaves St Petersburg for the army in the hope of serving his country. His search for the meaning of life seems to be pointless when he is badly wounded in the battle of Austerlitz and his beautiful young wife dies in labour. One day he meets the young Natasha

FESTIVAL & PRESS 19:30

In the 1970s, as the American youth embraces hippie culture, a marijuana bonanza hits Colombia, quickly turning farmers into seasoned businessmen.

BIRDS OF PASSAGE

(Colombia) 120mins.

Dir: Cristina Gallego, Ciro Guerra. Cast: Natalia Reyes, Carmina Martinez.

In the Guajira desert, a Wayuu indigenous family takes a leading role in this new venture, and discovers the perks of wealth and power. But when greed, passion, and

honour blend together, a fratricidal war breaks out that soon puts their lives and ancestral traditions at risk.

Directors’ Fortnight Theatre Croisette

AU

DI EN CE

AW AR

D

WI NN

ER :

TH E

BR E

AD

WI NN

ER

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72 Screen International at Cannes May 9, 2018

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SCREENINGS

Rostova. Her naive and sincere admiration of the world brings him back to life.

Cannes Classics Bunuel

21:30 BLACK PANTHER

(US) 134mins. Dir: Ryan Coogler. Cast: Chadwick Boseman, Michael B Jordan, Lupita Nyong’o.

Marvel comic book action film.

Cinema On The Beach Plage Mace

22:00 SUMMER

FESTIVAL & PRESS 22:15 RAFIKI

Kena and Ziki, two girls living in Nairobi, fall in love and must ultimately choose between love and safety.

(Kenya) 82mins. Dir: Wanuri Kahiu. Cast: Patricia Amira, Muthoni Gathecha, Jimmy Gathu.

Un Certain Regard Debussy Press

(Russian) 126mins.

Dir: Kirill Serebrennikov.

Cast: Teo Yoo, Irina Starshenbaum, Filip Avdeev, Alexandr Gorchilin, Alexandr Kuznetsov.

Leningrad, summer 1981. The underground rock scene is booming.

Among the followers of Led Zeppelin and Bowie,

young Viktor Tsoi is eager to make a name for himself. An encounter with his idol, Mike, and his beautiful wife, Natasha, will change his life forever.

Competition Lumiere Ticket required

YOMEDDINE

(Austria) 97mins.

Dir: AB Shawky.

Cast: Rady Gamal, Ahmed Abdelhafiz, Shahira Fahmy.

Competition Bazin Press

22:15 RAFIKI See box, left

22:30 ONE DAY

(Hungary) 99mins.

Dir: Zsofia Szilagyi.

Cast: Zsofia Szamosi, Leo Furedi, Ambrus Barcza.

Critics’ Week Miramar

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74 Screen International at Cannes May 9, 2018

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SCREENINGS

Studio 54 was the epicentre of 1970s hedonism, a monumental magnet for beautiful stars, casual sex and mounds of cocaine — a den of excess that defined its own rules.

Now, 39 years after the velvet rope was first slung across the club’s hallowed threshold, a feature documentary tells the real story behind the greatest club of all time.

MARKET SCREENINGS

09:15 MAY 68 (MAI 68, LA BELLE OUVRAGE)

(France) 117mins.

Wide House. Dir: JeanLuc Magneron.

Interviews and footage shot during the tumultuous events of May 1968.

Palais F

TOYS & PETS ADVENTURES

Palais D

See box, left

09:30

TRUSTNORDISK PROMO REEL

A MAN IN A HURRY

(France) 107mins.

Gaumont. Dir: Hervé Mimran. Cast: Fabrice Luchini, Leila Bekhti.

Alain is a respected businessman at the height of his powers, with no room in his schedule for such trivial matters as family and fun. A massive stroke jumbles his speech, making everything he says difficult or impossible to understand and often hilarious. In order to save his career, he needs the help of a young speech therapist named Jeanne.

But the work requires learning patience, and Alain gradually comes to understand that a whole part of his life has so far passed him by.

Arcades 1

BAD SAMARITAN

(US) 107mins.

Electric Entertainment.

Dir: Dean Devlin.

Cast: David Tennant, Robert Sheehan.

Two young car valets use their business as a front to rob the houses of their unsuspecting patrons. Life is good for the petty thieves until they target the wrong house, changing their lives forever.

Olympia 3

THE FOOTBALLEST

(Spain) 96mins. Film Factory Entertainment.

Dir: Miguel Angel Lamata. Cast: Julio Bohigas, Milene Mayer, Marcos Milara.

Francisco and his friends play for a soccer team that has reached its lowest point. They have got to win one of the next three games to prevent

(Denmark) 20mins.

TrustNordisk.

Olympia 1

UNDERDOG

MARKET 09:30 TOYS & PETS ADVENTURES

(China) 98mins.

All Rights Entertainment.

Atang lives in a shop and is the only toy that the school from cutting their team altogether. A series of strange events take place in the first two games. Coincidence?

Conspiracy? Francisco and his friends decide to create The Footballest, an investigative team that will get them into all kinds of adventures.

Riviera 2

MAIL ORDER MONSTER

(US) 88mins. Film Mode Entertainment. Dir: Paulina Lagudi. Cast: Charisma Carpenter, Emma Rayne Lyle, Josh Hopkins, Madison Horcher.

A girl seeks the help and guidance from a robot monster to help cope with the bullies at school and her father’s new girlfriend.

shocked the world in 1987. cannot change colour.

One day, Atang meets a little robot and decides to join it on an adventure to find a way back to his creator — and to finally change his colour.

Arcades 3

PROSPECT

(US) 98mins.

Independent. Dir: Chris Caldwell, Zeek Earl.

Cast: Sophie Thatcher, Jay Duplass, Pedro Pascal.

A teenage girl and her father travel to a remote alien moon aiming to strike it rich. They have secured a contract to harvest a large deposit of the elusive gems hidden in the depths of the moon’s toxic forest. But there are others roving the wilderness and the job quickly devolves into a fight to survive.

(France) 110mins. Pathé International.

Olympia 9

PLAYTIME PROMO REEL

90mins. Playtime.

Gray 4 Priority badges only

76 Screen International at Cannes May 9, 2018

ST BERNARD SYNDICATE

(Denmark) 100mins.

LevelK. Dir: Mads Brügger. Cast: Frederik Cilius, Rasmus Bruun.

Two awkward European entrepreneurs set out on a business adventure to try and make their fortune in the lucrative Chinese pet industry. When their seemingly genius plan to create a breeding centre

Palais B

(South Korea) 100mins.

Contents Panda/Next Entertainment World.

Dir: Oh Sung-Yoon, Lee Choon-Baek.

Cast: Doh Kyung-Soo, Park So-Dam, Park ChulMin, Lee Joon-Hyuk.

A warm-hearted animation about the great journey of abandoned dogs.

Palais H By invitation only

STUDIO 54

(US) 98mins. Dogwoof.

Dir: Matt Tyrnauer.

Cast: Steve Rubell, Ian Schrager.

09:45 POSTCARDS FROM LONDON See box, below

Olympia 6

SC FILMS ANIMATION PROMO

15mins. SC Films International.

Gray 2

Lerins 4

PATHÉ INTERNATIONAL PROMO REEL

Olympia 7

for St Bernards (a symbol of wealth among the working-class) doesn’t develop as expected, their desperation drives them off course. A hilarious film about misguided ambition and an unlikely friendship forming in adversity.

MARKET 09:45

SPEED KILLS

POSTCARDS FROM LONDON

(US) 100mins. Hannibal Classics. Dir: Jodi Scurfield. Cast: John Travolta.

The true story of Don Aronow, the larger-thanlife speedboat champion and multimillionaire whose mysterious murder

(UK) 88mins. The Bureau Sales.

Dir: Steve McLean. Cast: Harris Dickinson, Raphael Desprez, Ben Cura.

Tells the story of beautiful teenager, Jim, who, having travelled from the suburbs, finds himself in Soho where he falls in with a gang of unusual

high-class male escorts — The Raconteurs — who specialise in postcoital conversation. From shy novice to sought-after escort, and eventually artist’s muse, Jim would be the toast of the town if it wasn’t for his annoying affliction — Stendhal Syndrome — which causes him to hallucinate and faint.

Lerins 3

»

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CANNES SCREENINGS SCREENING TODAY

SCREENING TOMORROW

Wednesday, May 9th | 11:30am Palais F

Thursday, May 10th | 9:30am Palais F

Wednesday, May 9th | 3:30pm Riviera 2

Thursday, May 10th | 1:30pm Palais D

Come visit us at Cannes - Lerins M6 For Sales Inquiries, contact: Jack Campbell, President Tamara Nagahiro, Vice President Jack@OctaneEnt.com Tamara@OctaneEnt.com

www.octaneent.com

+1-818-508-6601

SCREENINGS

PRINCESS EMMY — THE MOVIE

(Germany) 76mins.

Studio 100 Film.

Dir: Piet De Rycker.

Cast: Ruby Barnhill, John Hannah, Franka Potente.

A young princess risks everything in order to win the right to possess a truly remarkable gift.

Gray 1

SHEEP AND WOLVES: PIG DEAL

MARKET 10:00 OUTMASTERED

(Germany) 110mins.

Picture Tree International.

Dir: Oskar Roehler.

Cast: Katja Riemann, Oliver Masucci, Samuel Finzi, Lize Feryn.

The wealthy and rather bored landscape architect Evi Muller-Todt lives with her plastic-surgeon husband Claus in their comfortable villa.

One day, in a burst of red-wine-induced whimsy, Claus takes out an ad for a new 10:00 BIG BANG

(France) 95mins. SND — Groupe M6. Dir: Cecilia Rouaud. Cast: Vanessa Paradis, Camille Cottin, Pierre Deladonchamps, Chantal Lauby, Laurent Capelluto, Marc Ruchmann.

When their grandfather dies, Gabrielle, Elsa and Mao are reunited. They haven’t seen each other much for the past 20 years, following their parents’ divorce. The siblings can’t wait to leave but their grandmother has a last wish. She wants them to take her one last time to Saint Julien, in the countryside where they spent their summers as children. It’s only dealing

LIVING SPACE

cleaner: ‘Slave wanted (m/f)’. Astonished by the leather-clad figures that soon gather at his door, he realises his ad has been taken quite literally. At the behest of a shocked Evi, Claus sends the applicants away, only to receive an unexpected courtesy call from Bartos. Wellgroomed, educated and ready to serve, Bartos signals his willingness to enter into a more traditional masterservant relationship.

Palais I

(Australia) 80mins. Jinga Films. Dir: Steven Spiel.

Cast: Andy Mcphee, Georgia Chara, Leigh Scully, Jolene Anderson, Emma Leonard, Amelia Ayris, Charlotte McLeod, Erik Vent, Emma Burnside.

College sweethearts Brad and Ashley venture into the heartland of Germany for a romantic holiday.

Things take a sinister turn when they encounter a Nazi SS officer at an isolated farmhouse, thrusting them into a psychological vortex of horror.

Jean-Pierre Bacri.

Castro used to be a very famous TV host but now his popularity is in decline.

Today, he attends the housewarming party of his producer and longtime friend Nathalie. Everyone is there and, under the smooth surface of polite chatter, things are heating up.

Riviera 1 Press allowed

(Russia) 30mins. Wizart.

Dir: Vladimir Nikolaev.

The united town of sheep and wolves lives a peaceful and quiet life until two unexpected guests turn up — a polar fox and a tiny ewe. No one ever expected them to bring a deadly danger, which can be overcome only if they work together.

having many affairs with students, becomes the prime suspect when a young woman is found murdered.

Gray 5

T 34 — PROMO

(Russia) 30mins.

Mars Media Entertainment.

Dir: Alexey Sidorov.

Cast: Alexander Petrov.

In 1944, a courageous group of Russian soldiers manage to escape from German captivity in a half-destroyed legendary T-34 tank. The film recalls the times of unforgettable bravery, fierce fighting, unbreakable love and legendary miracles.

Palais G

THIS CRAZY HEART See box, below

Lerins 2

WILD BUNCH PROMO REELS

SPINNING MAN

(US) 97mins. Film Bridge International.

Dir: Simon Kaijser.

Cast: Pierce Brosnan, Guy Pearce, Minnie Driver.

A ‘happily married’ professor, known for

(France) 90mins.

Wild Bunch.

Arcades 2 Priority badges only

11:30 ANOTHER DAY OF LIFE

(Poland) 85mins.

Palais E

with their own past and trauma that Gabrielle, Elsa and Mao will be able to reinvent themselves.

Olympia 5

DECISION: LIQUIDATION

(Russia) 96mins.

Mosfilm Cinema Concern. Dir: Aleksandr Aravin. Cast: Igor Petrenko, Aleksey Vertkov, Dmitry Parastaev, Ayub Tsingiev.

The ruthless extremist Bazgaev, who was responsible for the terrorist attacks that led to deaths of hundreds of civilians, among them school children, is planning new attacks. A group of security officers attempt to track and destroy him.

Based on a true story.

Lerins 1

78 Screen International at Cannes May 9, 2018

OUTMASTERED See box, above

PARTY HARD, DIE YOUNG

(Austria) 92mins.

Arri Media International.

Dir: Dominik Hartl.

Cast: Elisabeth Wabitsch, Michael Glantschnig, Michael Ostrowski.

School’s over, let’s party!

Julia and her clique travel to an island resort with the purpose of celebrating the ‘party of their lives’, but soon it turns out that ‘party of their deaths’ would be a more fitting description.

Olympia 8

PLACE PUBLIQUE

(France) 98mins.

Le Pacte. Dir: Agnes Jaoui. Cast: Agnes Jaoui,

MARKET 10:00 THIS CRAZY HEART

(Germany) 106mins.

Global Screen. Dir: Marc Rothemund. Cast: Elyas M’Barek, Philip Noah Schwarz, Nadine Wrietz, Uwe Preuss.

When thirtyish rebel Lenny has to take care of 15-year-old David, who’s suffering from heart disease, it is the beginning of a wild adventure.

Lenny fearlessly breaks all the rules to fulfil his young friend’s every wish.

Palais C

»

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CANNES LINEUP

Thursday, May 10 |Friday 9:30am 11/4 | Palais F Screening

Screening Thursday 11/3 Broadway Screen 4 9:30am

Broadway Screen 4 1:30pm

Thursday, May 10 | 1:30pm | Palais D Friday, May 11 | 4:00pm | Palais C

Wednesday, May 9 | 11:30am | Palais F Saturday, May 12 | 12:00pm | Lerins 1

Wednesday, May 9 | 3:30pm | Riviera 2 Friday, May 11 | 12:00pm | Palais E

Friday, May 11 | 2:00pm | Palais C

Tuesday, May 8 | 4:00pm | Palais E

Come visit us at Cannes - Lerins M6 For Sales Inquiries, contact: Jack Campbell, President Tamara Nagahiro, Vice President Jack@OctaneEnt.com Tamara@OctaneEnt.com

www.octaneent.com

+1-818-508-6601

SCREENINGS

any more: he continually switches from apathetic to horny with an unbridled sex-drive. For Marilyn, convinced that her love can save him, it is the beginning of a wild and unpredictable journey.

Olympia 3

PIG

(Iran) 107mins. Films Boutique. Dir: Mani Haghighi. Cast: Hasan Majuni, Leila Hatami, Leili Rashidi.

Iranian directors are getting slaughtered by an unknown serial killer and a blacklisted director, Hasan Kasmai, is curious about only one thing: why isn’t the killer after him?

Palais D

MARKET 11:30 HEAVY TRIP

(Finland) 90mins.

LevelK. Dir: Juuso Laatio, Jukka Vidgren.

Cast: Torstein Bjorklund, Minka Kuustonen, Ville Tiihonen.

Turo is trying to overcome his fears by leading the Indie Sales. Dir: Raul De La Fuente, Damian Nenow.

Warsaw, 1975: a brilliant and idealistic veteran journalist embarks on a dangerous road trip into the heart of the Angolan civil war.

Arcades 3 Priority badges only

AS NEEDED

(Italy) 92mins.

True Colours Glorious Films Srl. Dir: Francesco Falaschi. Cast: Vinicio Marchioni, Valeria Solarino, Luigi Fedele.

Arturo, a talented chef with a troubled past, is sentenced to community service at the San Donato Institute, teaching cookery to a group of guys with Asperger syndrome.

Guido, a 20 year old with Asperger’s and a great talent for cooking, is one of the pupils he teaches.

The unlikely friendship between the two will help Arturo to change his life.

Riviera 2

most unknown heavy metal band in Finland, Impaled Rektum, to the hottest metal festival in Norway. The journey includes heavy metal, grave robbing, Viking heaven and an armed conflict between Finland and Norway.

Palais B

DINO KING: JOURNEY TO FIRE MOUNTAIN

(Australia) 92mins.

Odin’s Eye Entertainment.

Dir: Ho Han Sang.

Cast: Park Hee Soon.

Speckles, a ferocious Tarbosaurus, and his young son, Junior, roam the lands in search of food, adventure and peace.

Under the watchful eye of his Dad, Junior is growing up healthy and strong but with an overconfidence that is due to his young age. After one such encounter results in Junior being kidnapped, Speckles embarks on an adventure to the ends of earth to find Junior. Speckles will stop at nothing to save his offspring.

Lerins 4

DISCARNATE

(US) 87mins.

Octane Entertainment.

Dir: Mario Sorrenti.

Cast: Thomas Kretschmann, Nadine Velazquez, Josh Stewart, Bex Taylor-Klaus.

A neuroscientist’s

80 Screen International at Cannes May 9, 2018

obsession with a drug that expands the human mind inadvertently unleashes a deadly supernatural force on his team.

Palais F

THE HEALER

(Canada) 108mins.

Vision Films.

Dir: Paco Arango.

Cast: Jonathan Pryce, Oliver Jackson-Cohen, Camilla Luddington, Jorge Garcia.

A young man suddenly discovers he has the gift of healing. In trying to understand it and the new reality that it offers, a teenage girl with terminal cancer will unexpectedly show him the way.

threatened by a human construction site.

Lerins 2 Press allowed

PLANETA INFORM PROMO REEL

100mins. Planeta Inform Film Distribution.

Olympia 6

MY GUY

(France) 100mins.

Orange Studio.

Dir: Marion Vernoux.

Cast: Nicolas Duvauchelle, Ana Girardot, Béatrice Dalle.

The life of Piotr and Marilyn, a young suburban couple, is suddenly shattered by a car accident. Suffering from a head trauma, Piotr is not in his right mind

RAI COM PRIVATE SCREENING

102mins. Rai Com. Olympia 9

RAISING COLORS

(France) 101mins.

Gaumont. Dir: Hélène Fillieres. Cast: Diane Rouxel, Lambert Wilson.

The story of the emancipation of a young woman in a very

masculine world.

Arcades 1

RISE OF THE LEGEND

(Malaysia) 110mins.

Ori Pictures/Ori Animation. Dir: Teng Bee. Cast: Lee Chongwei, Kok Huang, Mark Lee, Jake Eng, Tosh Chan.

Story of badminton player Lee Chong Wei. Palais H

SKATE KITCHEN

(US) 106mins. Charades.

Dir: Crystal Moselle.

Cast: Kabrina Adams, Tom Bruno, Thaddeus Daniels.

A teen girl gets the ride of her life when she joins allgirl New York skateboard collective Skate Kitchen and falls for a mysterious guy on the scene.

Palais J

STRIKE

(UK) 95mins. Hollywood Classics International/101 Films International. Dir: Trevor Hardy. Cast: Ken Stott, Lizzie WaterworthSanto, Naomi McDonald.

To save his family, a young miner mole needs to defeat a mobster cat and get selected to play in the Wild World Soccer Cup. Gray 4

SUPPORT THE GIRLS See box, below

Gray 2

HEAVY TRIP See box, above

MINUSCULE — THE MANDIBLES FROM FAR AWAY

(France) 90mins.

Futurikon. Dir: Thomas Szabo, Helene Giraud.

When a young ladybug gets trapped by accident in a cardboard box shipped to the Caribbean, his father sets off for the paradise archipelago to find his little kid and free him. Once he finally makes it there, our hero finds himself entrusted with a double mission: find his offspring and save his new Caribbean ladybug friends’ home,

MARKET 11:30 SUPPORT THE GIRLS

(US) 94mins. Myriad Pictures.

Dir: Andrew Bujalski. Cast: Regina Hall, Haley Lu Richardson, Dylan Gelula.

The general manager at a highwayside ‘sports bar with curves’ has her incurable optimism and faith in her girls, her customers and herself tested over the course of a long, strange day.

Olympia 7

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PROMO SCREENING IN BOOTH

SCREENING TOMORROW

THURSDAY, MAY 10 – 11:30AM – LERINS 4 sales@filmmodeentertainment.com • Booth #: RIVIERA L12 www.filmmodeentertainment.com

SCREENINGS

12:00 A ROUGH DRAFT

(Russia) 114mins. Reason8 Films. Dir: Sergey Mokritsky. Cast: Nikita Volkov, Yulia Peresild, Evgeny Tsiganov.

After a heartbroken man is erased from memory of everyone he knew, he discovers that his new mission is to serve as customs officer with the mysterious power to open portals between worlds.

Gray 3

DON’T GO

(Ireland) 95mins.

Radiant Films International. Dir: David Gleeson. Cast: Stephen Dorff, Melissa George.

Married couple Ben and Hazel recently lost their young daughter. After relocating to a small beachside town in Ireland, Ben begins to have vivid, mysterious dreams about his little girl, which he suspects may hold the key to bringing her back to life.

Gray 1

FULLEYE.NET CINEMATIC VR

25mins. Fulleye.

Next VR Cinema Ticket required

Cast: Rose Byrne, Ethan Hawke, Chris O’Dowd.

A heart-warming romantic comedy about love and life’s second chances, that follows the story of longsuffering Annie, her music obsessed boyfriend Duncan and music star Tucker Crowe, the object of Duncan’s obsession.

Olympia 8

MY NAME IS THOMAS

(Italy) 90mins. Acek.

Dir: Terence Hill.

Cast: Eva BasteiroBertoli, Francesca Beggio, Veronica Bitto.

An easy-rider sets off for the desert. Western atmospheres, dust and desert become the backdrop for a moving on-the-road journey that celebrates life and friendship.

MARKET

Olympia 4 NOSSA CHAPE

(Brazil) 101mins.

Wild Bunch.

Dir: Jeff Zimbalist.

Tracks the rebuilding of the Chapecoense football club in Brazil after a plane carrying the team crashed in November, 2016, killing all but three of the players.

Arcades 2 Priority badges only

JULIET, NAKED

THE PRIVATE LIFE OF A MODERN WOMAN

(US) 105mins.

Rocket Science.

Dir: Jesse Peretz.

(US) 71mins. Paul Thiltges Distributions Sarl. Dir: James Toback.

Successful actress Vera Lockman thrashes about during a nightmare in which she struggles with, shoots and kills her drugdealer ex-boyfriend. Jolted awake, she reveals in her journal that the killing actually occurred the day before and that Sal lies dead in a trunk in her living room.

Riviera 1

RIDE

(US) 90mins.

Blue Fox Entertainment.

Dir: Jeremy Ungar.

Cast: Bella Thorne,

Will Brill, Jessie T Usher.

When Uber driver James and his passenger, Jessica, pick up the charismatic Bruno, a normal night out in LA becomes a psychological battle for survival.

Palais E

12:00 THE TROUBLESHOOTER

(France) 84mins.

Le Pacte. Dir: Julien Guetta. Cast: Eric Judor, Laure Calamy.

Alex, 43, is a man of few responsibilities who works as a tow-

(Poland) 100mins.

Intramovies. Dir: Piotr Domalewski. Cast: Dawid Ogrodnik, Arkadiusz Jakubik, Tomasz Zietek.

When it comes to family, life sometimes works better in photos.

to fight back in life.

Palais C

13:30 BAC FILMS PROMO

Olympia 3

THE HARROWING

Palais B

THE SNATCH THIEF

BREAK

See box, left

(France) 100mins.

SND — Groupe M6.

Dir: Marc Fouchard.

Cast: Sabrina Ouazani, Kevin Mischel, Slimane Nebchi.

An entertaining urban street-dance movie.

Arcades 1

Lerins 3 Priority badges only

THE TROUBLESHOOTER See box, above

TO KILL A WATERMELON

THE SNATCH THIEF

(Argentina) 93mins. The Match Factory. Dir: Agustin Toscano.

Cast: Sergio Prina, Liliana Juarez, Leon Zelarayan.

A robber regrets having brutally hit an

82 Screen International at Cannes May 9, 2018

elderly woman in order to snatch her handbag, and attempts to make up for the damage he inflicted. But his past deeds as snatch thief hunt him, keeping him from restarting his life anew.

Olympia 5 Priority badges only

(China) 88mins. Asmik Ace. Dir: Gao Ze Hao. Cast: Yong Dong, Ming Hu, Liu Hua. One hot day, a quiet watermelon farmer meets an enchanting stranger.

This is the story of a man who is at the bottom of the society as he realises the awakening of his need

in Los Angeles who are brought together by their lovable canine counterparts.

(Italy) 60mins.

BAC Films.

Palais G

(UK) 80mins.

Cohen Media Group.

Dir: Laura Fairrie.

The story of how a cycle of fear, hatred and violence has taken hold.

12:00

Lerins 1 Press allowed

SILENT NIGHT

SPIRAL

MARKET

truck driver. One day, he assists a woman and ends up spending the night at her place.

The next morning, Alex discovers he is alone, with three children.

CELLULOID DREAMS PRIVATE SCREENING 1

(US) 110mins. Film Mode Entertainment.

Dir: Jon Keeyes.

Cast: Arnold Vosloo, Matthew Tompkins, Michael Ironside.

Wrongly accused of the ritualistic murder of his best friend, a vice detective bent on finding the truth is plunged into a living hell when he goes undercover and discovers the truth behind a demonic myth.

82mins. Celluloid Dreams/Celluloid Nightmares.

Lerins 2

Olympia 9

(France) 110mins.

Studiocanal.

Dir: Amanda Sthers.

Cast: Jonathan Rhys Meyers, James Caan, Rosanna Arquette.

Follows Harry Rosenmerck, a JewishAmerican cardiologist who left everything behind to become a pig »

DOG DAYS

(US) 111mins. Annapurna International (Panorama Media). Dir: Ken Marino.

Cast: Nina Dobrev, Lauren Lapkus, Vanessa Hudgens.

Follows a group of interconnected people

HOLY LANDS

www.screendaily.com

SCREENINGS

MARKET 13:30 TATTERDEMALION

(US) 105mins.

Breaking Glass Pictures. Dir: Ramaa Mosley. Cast: Leven Rambin, Jim Parrack, Taylor John Smith, Toni Chritton Johnson, Landon Edwards.

An army veteran

farmer in Israel, including his estranged son David, a successful gay playwright, his daughter Annabelle, who’s still studying at the age of 30, and their mother, his ex-wife who decides to revisit their love story after finding out she is terminally ill. Harry is faced to deal with life and face its outcome head-on.

Olympia 6

MAPPLETHORPE

(US) 95mins. The Exchange. Dir: Ondi Timoner. Cast: Marianne Rendon, Matt Smith, John Benjamin Hickey.

An intimate portrait of the life of Robert Mapplethorpe, one of the most controversial and influential photographers of the 20th century.

Maria Leon.

Who wouldn’t travel back in time to change those things they have always regretted?

Palais H

PUT GRANDMA IN THE FREEZER

(Italy) 100mins.

True Colours Glorious Films. Dirs: Giancarlo Fontana, Giuseppe G Stasi. Cast: Fabio De Luigi, Miriam Leone, Lucia Ocone, Marina Rocco.

Simone, a clumsy financier, falls in love with Claudia, who’s living on her grandma’s retirement checks. When the old lady dies, Claudia hides the body in a freezer and sets up a fraud with the help of some friends to avoid bankruptcy.

STARS BY THE POUND

(France) 88mins.

Be For Films. Dir: MarieSophie Chambon.

Cast: Laure Duchene, Angèle Metzger, Pauline Serieys, Zoé De Tarlé, Philippe Rebbot, Isabelle De Hertogh.

Lois, 16, has only one dream: becoming an astronaut. However, although she’s gifted in physics, she has a big problem: Lois weighs over 200 pounds — a family

trait she’s inescapably stuck with. Then, just when everything seems lost, Lois meets Amelie, Stannah and Justine: three teenagers shattered, like her, by life’s tough breaks; yet ready for anything in order to leave with her for outer space.

Lerins 4

TATTERDEMALION See box, above

TYREL

(US) 86mins. Magnolia

Pictures & Magnet Releasing. Dir: Sebastian Silva. Cast: Jason Mitchell, Christopher Abbott, Michael Cera, Caleb Landry Jones, Ann Dowd.

Tyler, a sole black man, attends an otherwise allwhite weekend of drunken bro debauchery on a birthday trip to a cabin in the Catskills.

Palais J

14:00 A DISCOVERY OF CHINA AND ITS PEOPLE (I) & (II)

44mins. Vrroom.

Next Vr Cinema Ticket required

BÉCASSINE!

(France) Wild Bunch.

Dir: Bruno Podalydes.

Cast: Karin Viard, Denis Podalydès, Emeline Bayart.

A family movie adapted

returns home to the Ozarks and finds an abandoned boy in the woods. As she searches for clues to the boy’s identity, the woman discovers the local folklore about a spirit, which comes in the form of a child.

Gray 4

from the beloved comic book ‘Bécassine’.

Arcades 2

DEADTECTIVES See box, below

THE ELEPHANT AND THE BUTTERFLY

(Belgium) 86mins.

Blue Fox Entertainment.

Dir: Amélie van Elmbt.

Cast: Isabelle Barth, Thomas Blanchard, Judith Chemla.

Antoine has just returned to his hometown, where he reunites with his former lover and the mother of their little girl, Elsa, whom he has never met before now. An unexpected turn of events means Antoine is suddenly left alone and he has to take care of Elsa.

Gray 3

Riviera 2

Gray 2

RAGE MISSING!

(Netherlands) 96mins.

Princ Films. Dir: Paul Ruven. Cast: Sanneke Bos, Mark van Eeuwen, Yes-R. A divorced lawyer whose teenage daughter has gone missing and may have become the victim of a sex trafficking ring will stop at nothing to save her.

Palais F

NOT THE END

(Spain) 90mins. Filmax International. Dirs: César and José Esteban Alenda.

Cast: Javier Rey,

(Portugal) 84mins.

Doc & Film International.

Dir: Sergio Trefaut.

Cast: Isabel Ruth, Leonor Silveira, Hugo Bentes, Kaio César, Rita Cabaco, Adriano Luz. Portugal, 1950: in the desolate landscape of the South, battered by the wind, misery and hunger, sudden violence erupts: a succession of cold-blooded murders occur over a single night. Why? What’s the origin of these crimes?

A dark tale about abuse and revolt.

MARKET 14:00 DEADTECTIVES

(US) 90mins. Odin’s Eye Entertainment. Dir: Tony West. Cast: Chris Geere, David Newman, Martha Higareda.

Deadtectives follows a team of hapless paranormal

investigators on a reality TV series who go on a quest to Mexico’s most haunted house in the pursuit of better ratings. However, when the true dark secrets of the mansion begin to reveal themselves, the hapless presenters quickly discover that this house is no hoax.

Palais C

»

Palais D

84 Screen International at Cannes May 9, 2018

www.screendaily.com

SCREENING TOMORROW THURSDAY, MAY 10 • PALAIS D • 11:30AM Her Fiancé’s Dark Side is Alive Xavier Samuel, Morgan Griffin

BAD BLOOD Directed by David Pulbrook

SCREENING TOMORROW THURSDAY, MAY 10 • PALAIS I • 4:00PM “I’m your boogie man, that’s what I am.

I’m here to do whatever I can.”

Kush Khanna, Amy Jackson, Aston Merrygold Jerry-Jane Pears, Roshan Seth, Nick Moran

BOOGIE MAN Directed by Andy Morahan

APARTMENT C42 RELAIS DE LA REINE 42/43 LA CROISETTE

ROY OR RIAYA +44 7710 305 326 ELLEN LITTLE ellen@thelittlefilmcompany.com

SCREENINGS

the faded musician must reluctantly join forces with a cast of unexpected characters to smuggle him back.

Gray 1

15:00 VR WITH A SOUL

26mins. Gengiskhan Production.

Facing an organ shortage crisis, the government offers sentence remission to long-term prisoners in exchange for a part of their body. Wearing a VR headset, the viewer is invited to share the life of a prisoner who is about to trade something for years of freedom.

Next Vr Cinema Ticket required

15:30

MARKET 14:00 KUNG FOOD

(China) Yi Animation, 60mins. Dir: Sun Haipeng.

In the world of food, mortal enemies Super

EMBANKMENT PRIVATE SCREENING

100mins. Embankment Films, Olympia 8 By invitation only

GENERATION WEALTH

(US) 108mins. Dogwoof.

Dir: Lauren Greenfield.

Cast: Florian Homm, Tiffany Masters, Jaqueline Siegel.

A documentary that investigates the pathologies that have created the richest society the world has ever seen.

Palais E

Bao and Salmon — a hot steaming bun and a cold sushi roll — are forced to unite to prevent the world’s flavours from getting out of control.

Lerins 1

GIFT

(US) 88mins. Dreams Factory. Dir: Sunny Zhao.

Cast: Emma Barnett, Elyse Dufour, Eric Brenner, Jeffery Klemmer, Sandra Simpson, Slash Coleman.

A mysterious piano connects two children from opposite sides of the world, leading to a journey of a lifetime in pursuit of truth and the love of music.

MR PRESIDENT’S VACATION

(Russia) 90mins.

Andrianova Kino.

Dir: Ilya Sherstobitov.

Cast: Dmitriy Grachev, Yuriy Kutsenko, Nastasya Samburskaya.

The Russian president decides to go on vacation.

To do this, he changes his appearance with the help of prosthetics and make-up but the hapless make-up artist takes the cover image of the first magazine he sees laying around, and now the president looks exactly like the narcissistic marginal Valera, who’s hiding from the collectors Palais G

OUIJA HOUSE See box, below

PATHÉ INTERNATIONAL PROMO REEL

(France) 110mins.

Pathé International.

Olympia 4

A close look at the life and work of Ingmar Bergman, exploring his film legacy with his closest collaborators, both in front of and behind the camera, as well as a new generation of filmmakers.

Lerins 3

SEARCHING FOR INGMAR BERGMAN

SMUGGLING HENDRIX

(Germany) 95mins.

CMG — Cinema Management Group.

Dirs: Margarethe von Trotta, Felix Moeller.

Cast: Liv Ullman, Daniel Bergman, Linn Ullman, Ruben Ostlund, Jean Claude Carriere, Stig Bjorkman, Olivier Assayas, Wim Wenders, Mia Hansen-Love.

(Cyprus) 93mins.

The Match Factory.

Dir: Mario Piperides.

Cast: Adam Bousdoukos, Vicky Papadopoulou, Ozgur Karadeniz.

When Yiannis’s dog Jimi accidentally crosses the UN buffer zone that divides Cyprus between the “Greek South” and the “Turkish North”,

BETWEEN WORLDS

(US) 89mins. Voltage Pictures. Dir: Maria Pulera. Cast: Nicolas Cage, Franka Potente, Penelope Mitchell.

A down-on-his-luck truck driver haunted by the memory of his deceased wife and child meets a spiritually-gifted woman who enlists him in a desperate effort to find the lost soul of her comatose daughter.

But the spirit of the man’s dead wife proves stronger, possessing the young woman’s body and determined to settle her unfinished business with the living.

Lerins 2 By invitation only

Palais K

KUNG FOOD See box, above

THE GENTLE INDIFFERENCE OF THE WORLD

THE LAST PRINCE OF ATLANTIS

(Kazakhstan) 100mins.

Beta Cinema.

Dir: Adilkhan Yerzhanov. Cast: Dinara Baktybayeva, Kuandyk Dussenbaev.

After her father’s untimely death, Saltanat is forced to trade her idyllic countryside life for the cruel city. She has to find money to pay off the large family debt that her father left behind, in order to save her mother from jail.

(US) 84mins.

Cinema Libre International. Dir: Vladlen Barbe. Cast: Nikolay Drozdov, Stanislav Duzhnikov, Armen Dzhigarkhanyan.

A beautiful fairy tale about love: old pearl-fisher Bltazar is forced to sell his boat to the wealthy Don Vincenzo. But this is not the worst part. Now Vincenzo wants to take his beautiful daughter, Adrianna.

Palais I Priority badges only

Riviera 1 Press allowed

86 Screen International at Cannes May 9, 2018

MARKET 14:00 OUIJA HOUSE

(US) 96mins. ITN Distribution. Dir: Ben Demaree.

Cast: Mischa Barton, Tara Reid, Dee Wallace, Chris Mulkey, Tiffany Shepis, Carly Schroeder,

Mark Grossman, Derrick A King, Grace Demarco.

A student brings her friends to a mysterious house where they plan to do research for a book project.

But they inadvertently summon an evil entity.

Gray 5

»

www.screendaily.com

SCREENINGS

FISHBOWL CALIFORNIA

on, she plans to abandon her crusade, only to be dragged in even deeper after a desperate plea for help from her sister.

(US) 83mins. California Pictures. Dir: Michael A Macrae. Cast: Katrina Bowden, Quinton Aaron, Kate Flannery.

A man struggling to find purpose in life is enlightened by a drunk, ailing widow.

Olympia 7

Palais H

MARFA GIRL 2

HOLY TOUR

(Belgium) 70mins. Be For Films. Dir: Valéry Rosier, Méryl FortunatRossi.

A film about the fans who come to cheer the Tour de France race.

Olympia 6

THE KINDERGARTEN TEACHER See box, right

LITTLE WOODS

(US) 105mins.

Independent. Dir: Nia Dacosta. Cast: Tessa Thompson, Lily James, Lance Reddick.

A modern Western that tells the story of two sisters, Ollie and Deb, who are driven to work outside the law to better their lives. For years, Ollie has illicitly helped the struggling residents of her North Dakota oil boomtown access Canadian healthcare and medication.

When the authorities catch

LOVERS See box, below

(US) 77mins. Breaking Glass Pictures. Dir: Larry Clark. Cast: Adam Mediano, Drake Burnette, Mercedes Maxwell, Jonathan Velasquez.

Gray 4

MARNIE’S WORLD

(Germany) 85mins.

Global Screen.

Dirs: Christoph Lauenstein, Wolfgang Lauenstein.

Four crazy antiheroes on the run. Their leader is the unworldly innocent, naive Marnie, a house cat who is not allowed to leave the house and only knows about real life from television.

Lerins 4

PLAYMAKER

(Germany) 95mins.

Picture Tree International.

Dir: Timon Modersohn.

Cast: Frederick Lau, Antje Traue, Karl Markovics, Oliver Masucci.

Ivo, a former professional

MARKET footballer and jailbird with nothing to lose, is a betting natural. His feel for the sport and background draw the interest of Dejan, who takes him into his family, sucking him quickly into football’s underbelly.

Yusuf can only find peace on the roof of his parents’ house above the alleys of a slum in Adana with his beloved pigeons.

Finding a foothold in the world outside is more difficult.

Palais D

15:30 THE KINDERGARTEN TEACHER

(US) 96mins.

Protagonist Pictures.

Dir: Sara Colangelo.

Cast: Maggie Gyllenhaal, Rosa

ST AGATHA THE PIGEON

(Turkey) 76mins.

Wide. Dir: Banu Sivaci.

Cast: Kemal Burak Burak Alper, Ruhi Sari, Michal Elia Kamal.

(US) 98mins. Octane Entertainment. Dir: Darren Lynn Bousman.

Cast: Sabrina Kern, Carolyn Hennesy, Courtney Halverson.

A pregnant con woman on the run seeks refuge in a convent hidden in deafening isolation.

Riviera 2 Priority badges only

(US) 98mins.

Ambassador Film Group.

Dir: Emma Forrest.

Cast: Amie Dornan, Billy Crystal, Ben Mendelsohn, Jemima Kirke, Lola Kirke, Alice Eve, Scott Caan, Jennifer Grey.

Follows a doctor, Rabbi, former rock star and two conflicted British sisters as they navigate their wild desires and troubled relationships against the backdrop of the infamous Hollywood Hills.

(Italy) 102mins. Intramovies. Dir: Matteo Vicino.

Cast: Primo Reggiani, Margherita Mannino, Ivano Marescotti, Antonietta Bello, Luca Nucera.

88 Screen International at Cannes May 9, 2018

Four stories where the main characters, playing different roles, are all connected in a spiral driven by love. Doubt, suspicion and murder are constantly represented throughout the story.

Palais B

(New Zealand) 95mins.

The Film Sales Company.

Dir: Pietra Brettkelly.

Cast: Guo Pei, Wendi Murdoch, Philip Treacy.

A brave designer chases the dream — to be crowned haute couture.

But she comes from China, the land of knockoffs and production lines.

Will her Cinderella story end at the Met Gala?

Palais J

16:00 BLACK 47

(US) 100mins. Princ Films. Dir: Michael Sajbel. Cast: Lance Henriksen, Jackson Hurst, Ali Hillis.

After living in an old mansion for almost 10 years, a family suddenly discovers a ghost-like presence trying to communicate with them.

Palais F

Olympia 2

WRAITH

MARKET

YELLOW IS FORBIDDEN

(Ireland) 100mins.

Altitude Film Sales.

Dir: Lance Daly.

Cast: Hugo Weaving, Jim Broadbent, James Frecheville, Freddie Fox, Stephen Rea, Barry Keoghan, Moe Dunford.

Ireland — 1847, during the Great Famine: Feeney, a hardened ranger, deserts his post with the British Army and returns home to find his family slain by the brutal hands of the English.

He sets out to avenge their deaths, working his way up the political and social hierarchy.

Olympia 9

LOVERS

Olympia 3

Gray 2

UNTOGETHER

15:30

Salazar, Gael Garcia Bernal.

A kindergarten teacher in New York becomes obsessed with a student, who she believes is a child prodigy.

www.screendaily.com

»

26 JUL - 05 AUG - 2018

THE JERUSALEM DEVELOPMENT AUTHORITY

SCREENINGS

Charades. Dir: Philipp Jedicke. Cast: Gonzales, Peaches, Leslie Feist.

The journey full of megalomania and piano music of Chilly Gonzale: from the Berlin punk scene to the philharmonic orchestras, it is a story of eccentricity that also stars Daft Punk, Drake, Feist and Jarvis Cocker.

Gray 1

THE TOWER

MARKET 16:00 DIVINE JUSTICE

(Japan) 105mins.

Open Sesame Co. Dir: Takayuki Takuma. Cast: Hiroshi Mikami, Kazuki Namioka, Moe Miura.

In a motel room where a fatal accident has

DISTANCES

(Spain) 99mins.

True Colours Glorious Films. Dir: Elena Trape.

Cast: Alexandra Jimenez, Bruno Sevilla.

Olivia, Eloy, Guille and Anna travel to Berlin to surprise their friend Comas. He doesn’t receive them as they expected, and during the weekend their friendship will be put to the test. Together they will discover that time and distance can change everything.

occurred in the midst of a love affair: a detective, his fellow female officer and a “cleaner” try to cover up the accident and the body. However, things are not what they seem.

Gray 5

the largest breaks in the world.

Gray 3 By invitation only

MAD MOM

(France) 82mins.

Gaumont. Dir: Frédéric Quiring. Cast: Audrey Lamy, Florent Peyre, Max Boublil.

Everything is for the best in Fanny’s perfect housewife life — until one day she discovers that her darling nine-year-old son is being bullied by three boys at school.

Olympia 8

Riviera 1

NUMBER 37 DIVINE JUSTICE

See box, right

See box, above

THE PRAYER HEAVY WATER

(US) 90mins.

Red Bull Media House.

Dir: Michael Oblowitz.

Cast: Nathan Fletcher, Makua Rothman, Danny Fuller, Herbie Fletcher.

Big wave surfer Nathan Fletcher and filmmaker Michael Oblowitz team up to capture the essence of what it means to surf

(France) 107mins.

Le Pacte. Dir: Cedric Kahn. Cast: Anthony Bajon, Damien Chapelle, Hanna Schygulla, Alex Brendemühl.

Thomas, 22, is a drug addict. To recover, he decides to join a community of former addicts who use prayers as a way to cure themselves.

Gradually, Thomas

90 Screen International at Cannes May 9, 2018

discovers faith and love.

But he also realises a new kind of torment.

Lerins 3 Press allowed

RAFIKI

(Kenya) 82mins.

MPM Premium. Dir: Wanuri Kahiu. Cast: Patricia Amira, Muthoni Gathecha, Jimmy Gathu.

Kena and Ziki, two girls living in Nairobi, fall in love and must ultimately choose between love and safety.

Nicholas Hope.

An attractive surgeon finds herself trapped in a world where children from her past emerge to taunt and test her. Will she learn to play by the rules of ‘The School’ and save herself and her missing son?

Lerins 1

SHUT UP AND PLAY THE PIANO

(Germany) 82mins.

(Norway) 80mins.

Jour2Fete Sales.

Dir: Mats Grorud.

Beirut, present-day Lebanon: Wardi, an 11-year-old Palestinian girl, lives with her whole family in the refugee camp where she was born. Her beloved great-grandfather Sidi was one of the first people to settle in the camp after being chased from his home back in 1948. The day Sidi gives her the key to his old house back in Galilee, she fears he may have lost hope of someday going home. As she searches for Sidi’s lost hope around the camp, she will collect her family’s testimonies, from one generation to the next.

Arcades 2 Priority badges only

TRENDS PRESENTS

45mins. Ventana Sur. Next Vr Cinema Ticket required

ZAGROS

(Belgium) 103mins.

Global Screen.

Dir: Sahim Omar Kalifa.

Cast: Feyyaz Duman, Suat Usta, Maaike Neuville.

While Zagros, a young Kurd, is herding his sheep in the mountains, his wife is accused of infidelity by her in-laws. In a culture where that is as good as a death sentence, she flees to Belgium together with her nineyear-old daughter. The poisonous seeds of doubt keep however growing in Zagros’s mind. A gripping cross-culture drama about a husband torn between his loyalty to his family and his wife.

Palais E

17:30 ÁGA

(Bulgaria) 96mins.

Beta Cinema.

Dir: Milko Lazarov.

Cast: Mikhail Aprosimov, Feodosia Ivanova, Galina Tikhonova.

In the snowy Northern wilderness, Nanook and

Palais G

ROSE

(US) 91mins. Moviehouse Entertainment. Dir: Rod McCall. Cast: Cybill Shepherd, James Brolin, Pam Grier.

A widowed ex-cop discovers she may have a life-threatening illness and decides to go on a solo road trip to explore the beauty of the southwestern US. While on her journey, Rose discovers more than just the simple beauty of New Mexico when she meets — and falls in love with — Max, an old cowboy who has come to a crossroads of his own as well.

Olympia 4

THE SCHOOL

(Australia) 87mins.

CMG — Cinema Management Group.

Dir: Storm Ashwood.

Cast: Megan Drury, William McDonald,

MARKET 16:00 NUMBER 37

(South Africa) 110mins. Reel Suspects.

Dir: Nosipho Dumisa. Cast: Irshaad Ally, Monique Rockman, Ephraim Gordon, Sandi Schultz, David Manuel.

Trapped in his apartment, Randal Hendricks, a recent paraplegic, is given a gift of binoculars by his devoted

girlfriend, Pam. But he is in financial debt to Emmie, a sadistic loan shark, and when he witnesses a powerful gangster, named Lawyer, commit murder while observing his neighbours through his binoculars, he initiates a dangerous blackmail scheme in an attempt to settle his debt.

Palais C

»

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8 - 1 6 M AY 2 0 1 8

A U F E S T I VA L D E C A N N E S 2 0 1 8

NEED A LAST MINUTE VENUE, WANT TO HOST A VIP LUNCH, OR NEED A BASE TO DO BUSINESS AT THE HEART OF CANNES?

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T H E M E M B E R S C L U B @ P L A G E 4 5 is equipped with comprehensive light and sound and a professional and experienced team on site to fully cater to your events individual needs.

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SCREENINGS

THE TRAVELLING CAT CHRONICLES

(Japan) 119mins.

Shochiku Co. Dir: Miki Koichiro.

Cast: Sota Fukushi, Mitsuki Takahata.

Nana is smart and aware of her talents.

She has paws and purrs.

Her father, Satoru, cannot take care of her any more and must give her up. He searches for someone to look after Nana and begins visiting people who may be good candidates.

Palais F

18:00

MARKET 17:30 DOVLATOV

(Russia) 126mins.

Alpha Violet.

Dir: Alexey German Jr. Cast: Milan Maric, Helena Sujecka, Danila Kozlovsky, Artur Beschastny, Anton Shagin.

Six days in the life of the brilliant, ironic

writer who saw far beyond the rigid limits of 1970s Soviet Russia.

Sergei Dovlatov fought to preserve his own talent and decency with poet and writer Joseph Brodsky, while watching his artist friends getting crushed by the ironwilled state machinery.

Vittorio Matteucci, Veronica De Laurentiis, Adrian Paul.

This is the story of a man, Dante himself, who went on a journey through the worst of the afterlife, Inferno, to finally consummate his love relationship at the gate of Paradise.

Gaumont. Dirs: Stephan Archinard, Francois Prévot-Leygonie. Cast: Arnaud Ducret, Max Baissette de Malglaive.

A football coach afraid of commitment has to take care of his nephew with Asperger’s syndrome.

of puberty, philosophy and sexuality.

Olympia 9

SHOTGUN

Gray 4 Press allowed

MY BROTHER’S NAME IS ROBERT AND HE IS AN IDIOT

Lerins 2

JIM BUTTON AND LUKE THE ENGINE DRIVER

Sedna dreams to reunite with their daughter Ága, who has left the slowly eroding traditional way of life a long time ago.

Palais J

the big city and starting a music career. But everything changes when 16-year-old Josephine turns up claiming to be pregnant with his child.

Palais D

BUTTERFLIES

(Turkey) 117mins. Films Boutique. Dir: Karacelik Tolga. Cast: Tolga Tekin, Bartu Kucukcaglayan, Tugce Altug.

In a Turkish village, three siblings who neither know each other nor anything about their late father, wait to bury his body.

As they start to find out more about their father and each other, they also start to learn more about themselves.

Riviera 2

DENMARK

(Denmark) 90mins.

Wide. Dir: Kasper Rune Larsen. Cast: Frederikke Dahl Hansen, Jonas Lindegaard Jacobsen, Jacob Skyggebjerg.

Norge, 22, is your typical slacker young adult.

He aimlessly wanders suburban blocks with a beer, a joint and his only friend, Myre. The two kids dream of moving to

DOVLATOV See box, above

FRAMED

(Spain) 80mins.

Jinga Films. Dir: Marc Martinez Jordan. Cast: Alex Maruny, Joe Manjon, Claudia Pons, Julia Molins, Daniel Horvath, Biel Montoro.

A group of friends at a farewell party are attacked by home invaders and subjected to a twisted game of life and death.

Their terrifying ordeal is streamed live on the internet where the perpetrators achieve celebrity status.

Palais H

INFERNO BY DANTE

(US) 108mins. Global Film Sales. Dir: Boris Acosta. Cast: Eric Roberts, Franco Nero, Nia Peeples, Al Sapienza, Jeff Conaway, Vittorio Gassman, Silvia Colloca,

92 Screen International at Cannes May 9, 2018

(Germany) 105mins.

Timeless Films.

Dir: Dennis Gansel.

Cast: Henning Baum, Solomon Gordon, Annette Frier, Christoph Maria Herbst, Uwe Ochsenknecht, Michael Bully Herbig.

The story follows Jim, a young orphan boy, his best friend and a magical steam engine as they travel across the world in search of the truth about where Jim came from.

(Germany) 172mins.

The Match Factory. Dir: Philip Groning. Cast: Josef Mattes, Julia Zange, Urs Jucker, Stefan Konarske, Zita Aretz.

Robert and Elena are twins entangled in a tale

Lerins 4

RUNNING FOR GRACE

(US) 115mins. Blue Fox Entertainment.

Palais B

(US) 95mins. The Exchange. Dir: Marks Hannah. Cast: Jeremy Allen White, Maika Monroe, Gina Gershon, Sasha Lane, Dean Winters, Joe Keery.

Elliot and Mia’s relationship develops quickly after one of them is diagnosed with a lifechanging illness.

Gray 2

AN INTERVIEW WITH GOD

(US) 96mins. Film Bridge International.

Dir: Perry Lang.

Cast: David Strathairn, Brenton Thwaites.

An up-and-coming journalist finds his world and faith increasingly challenged when he’s granted the interview of a lifetime — with someone who claims to be God. Gray 5

ANGEL FACE See box, below

BEST OF MUSEUMS — 2 PILOTS

104mins. Autlook Filmsales.

Palais K

Olympia 7

KEEP AN EYE OUT

(France) WTFilms.

Dir: Quentin Dupieux.

Cast: Benoit Poelvoorde, Grégoire Ludig, Anais Demoustier.

Louis just found the corpse of a man in front of his apartment building.

Taken in for custody by Captain Buron, he finds himself on the wrong end of a surreal interrogation.

But how can you prove you are innocent when the police are crazy?

Arcades 3 Priority badges only

MR KNOW-IT-ALL

MARKET 18:00 ANGEL FACE

(France) 108mins. Playtime.

Dir: Vanessa Filho. Cast: Marion Cotillard, Ayline Etaix, Alban Lenoir, Amélie Daure.

One day, Marlene suddenly chooses to abandon her daughter for a man she has just met after yet another night of excess. Elli must confront her mother’s demons to get her back.

Arcades 2 Priority badges only

(France) 100mins.

»

www.screendaily.com

No Mounties.

Some maple syrup.

Loads of great films, business connections and insights.

Industry registration opens May 4 Toronto International Film Festival September 6 – 16, 2018

tiff.net/industry

SCREENINGS

Dir: Fruit Chan. Cast: Jin Zhang, Anderson Silva, Stephy Tang, Kevin Cheng, Annie Liu. A detective goes on the trail of a serial killer who he believes has abducted the detective’s niece.

Olympia 3 By invitation only

and charming serial killer loose in the suburbs of New York.

Palais D

THERE IS SOMETHING HAPPENING

101mins. Shellac.

Dir: Alix Anne.

Arcades 1

NINE TO NIRVANA

(China) 90mins. Beijing International Film Festival. Dir: Lu Chunwei

WHAT A WONDERFUL FAMILY! 3: MY WIFE, MY LIFE

Palais J

See box, below

THE RUSSIAN BRIDE

MARKET 18:00 EDHEL

(Italy) 84mins. Tvco.

Dir: Marco Renda.

Cast: Gaia Forte, Roberta Mattei, Mariano Rigillo, Nicolo Ernesto Alaimo, Fioretta Mari.

Edhel is a young girl born with a malformation that makes her ears look

pointy, like those of an elf, setting her apart from her peers. Edhel’s encounter with Silvano, the bizarre school janitor who introduces her to the world of fantasy, convinces the girl of the possibility that those ears are the clear sign of belonging to the noble line of the elves.

HERSTORY

(US) 120mins. Archstone Distribution. Dir: Martin Scott. Cast: Jason Patric, Lou Dimond Phillips, Christoph Sanders.

A tenderfoot from Philadelphia, two misfit gamblers and a deadly preacher have a date with destiny in a boom town gone bust.

(South Korea) 120mins.

Contents Panda/Next Entertainment World.

Dir: Min Kyu-Dong. Cast: Kim Hee-Ae, Kim HaeSook.

Not ‘his’tory, but ‘her’story that must not be forgotten.

EDHEL See box, above

GORDON & PADDY

(Sweden) 65mins.

New Europe Film Sales.

Dir: Linda Hamback.

Cast: Stellan Skarsgard, Melinda Kinnaman, Felix Herngren.

The forest’s police chief Gordon is about to retire and he needs a new assistant. Paddy, a clever mouse, seems the right candidate. Together they have to solve Gordon’s last case — the mystery of squirrel’s missing nuts.

Olympia 4

Palais G By invitation only

INVISIBLE ESSENCE: THE LITTLE PRINCE

(Canada) 90mins. The Orchard. Dir: Officer Charles.

Explores the global legacy of ‘The Little Prince’ 75 years after its publication.

avenge his love, his people, and his God. Palais C

SECRET SCREENING DOC & FILM INTERNATIONAL — ON RSVP ONLY

100mins. Doc & Film International.

Riviera 1

Gray 5

LETO

(Turkey) 70mins.

Peace Motion Pictures.

Dir: Omer Sarikaya.

(France, Russia) 105mins. Charades Sales.

Dir: Kirill Serebrennikov.

Leningrad, summer 1981: the underground rock scene is booming. Among the followers of Led Zeppelin and Bowie, young Viktor Tsoi is eager to make a name for himself. The encounter with his idol, Mike, and Mike’s beautiful wife, will change his life forever.

Palais F

ON HAPPINESS ROAD

(France) 90mins. Wild Bunch.

STRAWBERRY FLAVORED PLASTIC

Olympia 2 Priority badges only

(US) 107mins.

Mirovision. Dir: Colin Bemis.

A sensational, sentimental, and philosophical horror neo-noir that follows the still-at-large crimes of Noel, a repentant, classy

20:00 INVINCIBLE DRAGON

(Hong Kong) 105mins.

Mandarin Motion Pictures Distribution.

Olympia 5

SILENT ANGEL

WILD BUNCH PROMO REELS

(Taiwan) 111mins. Ablaze Image. Dir: Sung HsinYin. Cast: Kwei Lun-Mei, Wei Te-Sheng, Chen Bor Jeng.

Chi earned her American dream after persevering with her studies in Taiwan. Following her grandmothers’ death, Chi returns to her family on Happiness Road, where she begins to feel nostalgic about her childhood and starts to contemplate the meaning of life and home. What is happiness and will Chi find her own?

THE WAR WITH GRANDPA

(US) 92mins. The Solution Entertainment Group. Dir: Tim Hill. Cast: Robert De Niro, Uma Thurman, Christopher Walken.

Upset that he has to share the room he loves with his grandfather, Peter decides to declare war in an attempt to get it back.

22:00

Gray 1

Gray 3

BIG KILL

Lerins 3

Films. Dir: Marcus Green Reinaldo.

Manny Ortega witnesses a police officer wrongfully gun down a neighborhood hustler. Manny films the incident on his phone.

Should he release the video and bring exposure or keep the video private and be complicit in the injustice?

(US) 100mins. VMI Worldwide. Dir: Michael Ojeda. Cast: Corbin Bernsen, Kristina Pimenova, Gregory O’Gallagher.

A Russian woman travels to America with her daughter to marry a reclusive billionaire, who turns out to be a psycho who sends their lives spiraling into a living hell.

20:30

Lumiere Ticket required

Palais E

Lerins 1

SAMSON JELLYFISH

(UK) 101mins. Bankside Films. Dir: James Gardner. Cast: Liv Hill, Victoria Alcock, Angus Barnett.

A young carer discovers an unlikely talent for standup comedy.

Palais I

MONSTERS AND MEN

(US) 95mins. Hanway

94 Screen International at Cannes May 9, 2018

(South Africa) 110mins.

Pure Flix/Quality Fix. Dir: Bruce MacDonald.

Cast: Taylor James, Billy Zane, Jackson Rathbone, Rutger Hauer, Lindsay Wagner.

After losing the love of his life to a cruel Philistine prince, a young Hebrew with supernatural strength defends his people, sacrificing everything to

MARKET 20:00 WHAT A WONDERFUL FAMILY! 3: MY WIFE, MY LIFE

(Japan) 120mins. Shochiku Co. Dir: Yoji Yamada. Cast: Satoshi Tsumabuki, Yu Aoi, Ko Hashizume,

Kazuko Yoshiyuki, Masahiko Nishimura, Yui Natsukawa.

A housewife’s rebellion results in the biggest crisis yet for the uproarious Hirata family.

Palais H

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C ome an d dis cove r the n ew s pirit o f the Fe s tival de Can n e s 2018

A . D .R i s p ro u d to we lcome the or iginal Bei j i ng c onc ept Ci nker wi thi n L e S t u di o d u ring le Fe s tiv al de Can nes 2018 , from May 8 th to May 19 th.

Cin ker w i l l p rov ide e xquis ite mov ie -goi ng ex peri enc e through fl ex i bl e and div ers i f i ed h i g h -qualit y s e r v ice of f e ri ngs : A private screening room powered

by EclairColor (capacity 15 people)

Two stages of 600sqm set us as conference and meeting rooms

A dedicated area to the Tea Ceremony

By welcoming Cinker, Le Studio is becoming the new HQ of the cinema industr y few steps away from Le Palais des Festivals.

★★★

Good

AVERAGE

SCREEN INTERNATIONAL

Excellent

ANTON DOLIN Meduza, Russia

MICHEL CIMENT Positif, France Culture, France

JUSTIN CHANG Los Angeles Times, US

TIM ROBEY, ROBBIE COLLIN The Daily Telegraph, UK

KONG RITHDEE Bangkok Post, Thailand

NICK JAMES Sight & Sound, UK

WANG MUYAN Ellemen, China

★★★★

KATJA NICODEMUS Die Zeit, Germany

THE SCREEN JURY AT CANNES

JULIEN GESTER, DIDIER PERON Libération, France

JURY GRID

★★ Average ★ Poor

✖ Bad

Screen International office Majestic Barriere, 1st floor, Suites Joy and Alexandre, 10 Boulevard De La Croisette, 06400 Cannes E-mail: firstname.lastname@ screendaily.com (unless stated)

EVERYBODY KNOWS (Iran) Asghar Farhadi

Farhadi’s and Javier Bardem★★ in the story of a woman ★★ thriller ★★stars Penelope ★★ Cruz ★★ ★★ ★★ ★★journeying ★★from Buenos ★★ Aires to her native village for a family that is soon disrupted. ★★ ★★in Spain ★★ ★★wedding★★ ★★ ★★ ★★ ★★ ★★

YOMEDDINE (Egy-Aust) AB Shawky

A Coptic and his orphaned embark journey across to search★★ for their families. ★★ leper★★ ★★ apprentice ★★ ★★ on a★★ ★★ Egypt★★ ★★ Shawky is the only feature-debut filmmaker selected Competition ★★ ★★ ★★ ★★ for★★ ★★this year. ★★ ★★ ★★ ★★

SUMMER (Rus-Fr) Kirill Serebrennikov

Russian set in the★★ 1981 Leningrad ★★ director ★★Serebrennikov ★★ presents ★★ his love ★★triangle★★ ★★ rock-and-roll ★★ scene, ★★as a group of★★ young musicians of age. Teo Yoo, Irina★★ Starshenbaum Filipp Avdeev star. ★★ ★★ come ★★ ★★ ★★ and ★★ ★★ ★★

SORRY ANGEL (Fr) Christophe Honoré

Honoré’s story between writer young literature ★★ bittersweet ★★ love ★★ ★★ a 40-year-old ★★ ★★ and a★★ ★★ student ★★stars Pierre ★★ Deladonchamps ★★ ★★and Vincent ★★ Lacoste. ★★ ★★ ★★ ★★ ★★ ★★ ★★

COLD WAR (Pol-Fr-UK) Pawel Pawlikowski

Pawlikowski’s Cold War-era the passionate a mismatched ★★ ★★ ★★love story ★★follows★★ ★★ love affair ★★between ★★ ★★ couple. ★★The cast includes and Agata★★ Kulesza. ★★ ★★ Tomasz ★★Kot, Joanna ★★ Kulig★★ ★★ ★★ ★★ ★★

THE IMAGE BOOK (Fr) Jean-Luc Godard

The latest project fact and fiction Arab world, ★★ ★★ from New ★★Wave legend ★★ Godard ★★mixes ★★ ★★ to explore ★★the contemporary ★★ ★★ having nearly two years in★★ various countries ★★ shot for ★★ ★★ ★★ across ★★the region. ★★ ★★ ★★ ★★

Online/editorial assistant Ben Dalton

ASH IS PUREST WHITE (China-Fr-Jap) Jia Zhangke

Set in China’s★★ underworld, this tale★★ of love and★★ betrayal follows protect her ★★ ★★ ★★ a dancer ★★ who fires ★★a gun to ★★ ★★mobster boyfriend On release★★ from prison five years later, she★★ sets out to★★ find him. ★★ Zhao Tao and Liao Fan star. ★★ during ★★a fight.★★ ★★ ★★ ★★

Group art editor Peter Gingell

GIRLS OF THE SUN (Fr) Eva Husson

Golshifteh as the leader battalion that to liberate★★ their town, ★★ Farahani ★★ stars ★★ ★★of a real-life ★★ Kurdish ★★female★★ ★★sets out★★ which

by Isis extremists.

Bercot co-stars with ★★has been ★★overrun★★ ★★ Emmanuelle ★★ ★★ ★★ as a journalist ★★ embedded ★★ ★★the fighters.

Reporters Melanie Goodfellow (melanie. goodfellow@btinternet.com), Geoffrey Macnab (geoffrey@macnab. demon.co.uk)

THREE FACES (Iran) Jafar Panahi

Panahi story of★★ three Iranian actresses: one from the pre-revolution days to stop acting, ★★ tells the ★★ ★★ ★★ ★★ ★★ ★★who had ★★ ★★ one popular of today and one girl longing ★★ star ★★ ★★ ★★ to attend ★★ a drama ★★conservatory. ★★ ★★ ★★ ★★

Sub-editors Willemijn Barker-Benfield, Paul Lindsell, Jon Lysons, Richard Young

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Italy’s of her homeland man, living on the margins ★★Rohrwacher ★★ returns ★★to the countryside ★★ ★★ ★★ for the ★★tale of a★★ ★★ ★★ of society, HAPPY AS LAZZARO (It-Ger-Fr-Swi) Alice Rohrwacher who can travel through ★★ time. The cast Sergi Lopez ★★ ★★ ★★includes ★★ ★★and Nicoletta ★★ Braschi. ★★ ★★ ★★

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SHOPLIFTERS (Jap) Hirokazu Kore-eda

Lily Franky, Sakura Ando and Mayu★★ Matsuoka★★ star in the★★ story of a shoplifting father-and-son the little girl ★★ ★★ ★★ ★★ ★★ ★★ duo and ★★ they take in from time in Competition. ★★ ★★the street. ★★It is Kore-eda’s ★★ fifth ★★ ★★ ★★ ★★ ★★ ★★

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ASAKO I & II (Jap) Ryusuke Hamaguchi

Asako her boyfriend’s double two ★★meets★★ ★★ perfect ★★ ★★years after ★★his abrupt ★★disappearance. ★★ Masahiro ★★ Higashide ★★ and Erika Karata star for Hamaguchi, who his Cannes★★ debut in Competition. ★★ ★★ ★★ ★★makes ★★ ★★ ★★ ★★ ★★

BLACKKKLANSMAN (US) Spike Lee

Lee’s inspired by the true story Stallworth, an undercover police officer ★★latest is★★ ★★ ★★ of Ron★★ ★★ ★★ African-American ★★ ★★ ★★ who infiltrated Ku Klux Klan.

Adam Driver star. ★★ ★★ the★★ ★★John David ★★ Washington ★★ and★★ ★★ ★★ ★★

AT WAR (Fr) Stéphane Brizé

Brizé Vincent★★ Lindon reunite prize winner Man for another ★★and actor ★★ ★★after Cannes ★★ 2015 ★★ ★★The Measure ★★ Of A★★ ★★ socially engaged this time about leader fighting ★★ tale,★★ ★★ a union ★★ ★★ a factory ★★ closure. ★★ ★★ ★★ ★★

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a curious★★ mind who★★ investigates missing★★ persons from ★★ Garfield ★★heads this ★★trippy crime ★★ tale as ★★ ★★ ★★his UNDER THE SILVER LAKE (US) Andrew David Robert Mitchell neighbourhood.

Topher Grace ★★ ★★Riley Keough ★★ and ★★ ★★also star. ★★ ★★ ★★ ★★ ★★

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BURNING (S Kor) Lee Chang-dong

Lee’s Steven Yeun play a well-to-do with a secret Yoo Ah-in★★ as a part-time ★★love triangle ★★ sees ★★ ★★ ★★ man ★★ ★★ hobby,★★ ★★deliveryman hoping a novelist and the woman★★ who comes between★★ them. ★★ ★★ to be ★★ ★★newcomer ★★Jeon Jong-seo ★★ as★★ ★★

DOGMAN (It-Fr-UK) Matteo Garrone

Billed is based★★ on a 30-year-old story and★★ centres on★★ a man (Marcello ★★as an ‘urban ★★ western’ ★★, Dogman ★★ ★★ news ★★ ★★ Fonte) seeking friend who him in jail. ★★ ★★ revenge ★★on an old ★★ ★★landed ★★ ★★ ★★ ★★ ★★

CAPERNAUM (Leb-Fr) Nadine Labaki

Lebanese film focuses on a rebellious who wishes parents★★ for having him. ★★ filmmaker ★★ Labaki’s ★★ third★★ ★★ ★★ youth ★★ ★★to sue his ★★ Set in the titular village, the★★ film has a★★ cast of mainly actors. ★★ ★★ ★★Palestinian ★★fishing★★ ★★non-professional ★★ ★★

KNIFE + HEART (Fr) Yann Gonzalez

Vanessa a late-1970s-set about a Parisian executive seeking credibility with ★★ Paradis ★★stars in★★ ★★ story★★ ★★ TV★★ ★★ to restore ★★ her★★ a more is disrupted cast is targeted a serial killer. ★★ creatively ★★ ambitious ★★production, ★★ which★★ ★★when the ★★ ★★ by ★★ ★★

AYKA (Rus-Ger-Pol) Sergei Dvortsevoy

A young immigrant worker in★★ Moscow tries down her★★ baby, who★★ she abandoned hospital. ★★ Asian★★ ★★ ★★to track★★ ★★ at the★★ Samal Yeslyamova, and David★★ Alaverdyan star. ★★ ★★ Andrey ★★Pashnin★★ ★★ ★★ ★★ ★★ ★★

THE WILD PEAR TREE (Tur-Fr) Nuri Bilge Ceylan

An★★ aspiring writer to his native in rural Turkey, he becomes overwhelmed father’s debts. ★★ returns ★★ ★★village★★ ★★ where★★ ★★ ★★ by his★★ Dogu T Hazar★★ Erguclu and Ahmet Rifat star. ★★Demirkol, ★★ ★★ ★★Sungar★★ ★★ ★★ ★★ ★★

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96 Screen International at Cannes May 9, 2018

Editorial +33 4 9706 8495 Editor Matt Mueller US editor Jeremy Kay (jeremykay67@gmail.com) Reviews editor and chief film critic Fionnuala Halligan (finn.halligan@ screendaily.com) Asia editor Liz Shackleton (lizshackleton@gmail. com) Senior editor, online Orlando Parfitt Senior reporter Tom Grater

Group head of production and art Mark Mowbray

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