Cannes 2008 - Coming Soon to a Theatre Near You
LiC will never be mistaken for a Hollywood business blog (thank the gods), but the real business of film festivals like Cannes is…well…business. If a film doesn’t get bought, it doesn’t get seen.
Though the market this year was repeatedly described as tepid, particularly for domestic US distributors, several potential gems were picked up during the course of the festival which means we, the unwashed masses, will get to see them.
This is only a partial list of some of the more interesting buys culled from IndieWIRE:
From Sony Pictures Classics:
- Waltz with Bashir. Ari Folman’s animated look at the massacre of Palestinian civilians during Israel’s 1982 invasion of Beirut. The film received high praise all around and some had it pegged as a candidate for the Palme d’Or.
- Le Silence de Lorna (Lorna’s Silence). Another film set among the lower classes from Belgium’s Dardenne brothers. This one, about an Albanian woman whose plot to marry a junky in order to procure citizenship and then a Russian mobster for money goes awry, got decent reviews and won the screenplay award.
- Tyson. James Toback’s documentary about the controversial boxer won the Un Certain Regard Knock Out Prize…whatever that is. This deal is supposedly still in the works.
- Before the festival began, Sony Pictures Classics also purchased Atom Egoyan’s Adoration and Wong Kar Wai’s Ashes of Time Redux.
The other busy buyer was IFC:
- Hunger. Steve McQueen’s debut feature, the true story of Bobby Sands who starved himself to death in prison in 1981 in an effort to get the British government to recognize members of the IRA as political prisoners.
- Un Conte de Noël (A Christmas Tale). Catherine Deneuve, Chiarra Mastroianni, Mathieu Amalric and Emmanuelle Devos star in Arnaud Desplechin’s dysfunctional-bourgeois-family-holiday story that got some good reviews.
- The Chaser. Na Hong-Jin’s South Korean genre entry about an ex-cop turned pimp tracking down a serial killer who is knocking off his prostitutes.
- Summer Hours. The latest from Olivier Assayas (Irma Vep, Demonlover, Clean, Boarding Gate) stars Juliette Binoche as one of three siblings dealing with the death of their mother and the disposition of her valuable estate.
Also of note, Liberation Entertainment picked up the omnibus ode to Japan’s capital Tokyo! from Michel Gondry, Bong Joon-ho and Leos Carax; and before the festival began, Magnolia Films’ genre arm Magnet Releasing picked up Jennifer Lynch’s Surveillance.
Finally a couple of significant films that have yet to pick up US distribution: Steven Soderbergh’s Che (The Argentine and Guerilla) and Charlie Kaufman’s Synecdoche, New York.
Filed under: Film Festivals
Related Posts: - IFC Grabs Sundance Winner ‘Ballast’
- ‘Synecdoche, New York’ Nears Distribution Deal
- Sony is Ducky with ‘Synecdoche’
- Sony Classics laps up Egoyan’s ‘Adoration’
- Lights Out at Warner Specialty Units
If someone does not pick up “Synecdoche” soon for a US release, that means that I will have to wait even longer to see it, and that is just plain cruel.
It might be true that if a US distributor doesn’t want it, international ones won’t either, but not necessarily. It might depend on how ‘American’ it is. Theoretically, an international distributor might think they could make money on it while US distributors chicken out.
Maybe.