Cannes competition
Lobster rocks! Yorgos Lanthimos
Producer Leontine Petit talks to Melanie Goodfellow about the role of the Netherlands in Palme d’Or contender The Lobster. Greek filmmaker Yorgos Lanthimos’ The Lobster is one of the most eagerly awaited Palme d’Or contenders at the Cannes Film Festival this year. Not only is Oscar-nominated Lanthimos regarded as Greece’s finest contemporary director, the international cast he has assembled for his English-language debut is also prompting buzz and promises one of the most glamorous red carpets of the festival. Stars include John C. Reilly, Colin Farrell, Rachel Weisz, Ben Whishaw and French actress Léa Seydoux. Festival chief Thierry Fremaux said of the film: “It’s one of those films which you don’t really understand fully but which is fascinating nonetheless for the way in which the filmmaker, screenwriter and cast have come together to create an extravagant narrative… it’s the sort of film we love to have at Cannes.” Behind the scenes lies an elaborate, and equally cosmopolitan,
co-production in which the Netherlands played its part through the involvement of Leontine Petit, Derk-Jan Warrink and Joost de Vries of Lemming Film. The Amsterdambased company is no stranger to Official Selection, having coproduced previous Palme d’Or contenders Sergei Loznitsa’s My Joy (2010) and (2012), and Amat Escalante’s Heli in 2013. Lemming discovered The Lobster at the 2013 CineMart co-production market, where it was presented by Lanthimos and lead producer Ed Guiney of Dublin-based Element Pictures. “I’d known Ed through ACE for nearly ten years,” explains Petit. “We immediately expressed our interest and said we would be over the moon to get involved. Derk-Jan kept emailing, reiterating we were big fans of Yorgos.” “I think initially, they hadn’t thought of Holland as an obvious partner for the film… but they were looking for a missing 10% of the budget. I think the CineMart meeting and the fact Ed and I already knew one another convinced them to give it a shot.” Lemming pulled together some €400,000 for the film, securing Netherlands Film Fund support, Eurimages production funding and a pre-sale to Dutch distributor De Filmfreak and competitive deals with a number of Dutch postproduction houses. Amsterdam-
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based Storm Post Production worked on the colour grading, some of the visual effects and the DCP mastering while Johnny Burn of WAVE Studios and re-recording mixer Danny Van Spreuwel of Warnier Posta worked on the sound. “Not only were we involved in a beautiful project but we also made some great contacts through it, such as Carole Scotta at Haut et Court (France), and got to know Ed much better. These new connections were great and we feel we might be able move on with that in the future,” says Petit. She describes the whole operation as a textbook European co-pro. “Of course there were endless Skypes but all the partners were so experienced at co-productions it ran very smoothly. People understood when to give and take,” she says. In Cannes, the Lemming team will also be working on financing new minority co-productions; Argentine Lucretia Martel’s Zama, based on Antonio di Benedetto’s 1950s existentialist classic, Alireza Khatami’s HBF-supported debut feature Oblivion Verses, and Monos by Alejandro Landes and Alexis Dos Santos. Interestingly Zama was also presented at CineMart 2013, winning The WorldView New Genres Fund Development Award for the Best CineMart 2013 Project. It appears to have been a vintage year.