Paris-based company Indie Sales has acquired “Happy Holidays,” the sophomore feature of Oscar-nominated Palestinian filmmaker Scandar Copti.
Copti’s feature debut, “Ajami,” co-directed by Yaron Shani, won the Camera d’Or Special Mention at the Cannes Film Festival in 2009 and was nominated for an Oscar in the international feature category.
“Happy Holidays” takes place in contemporary Israel, where a minor accident in Jerusalem triggers a chain of events. “Lies and unspoken truths will sow division among a multi-faceted patriarchal society,” reads the synopsis.
Nicolas Eschbach, Indie Sales’ CEO and co-founder, described “Happy Holidays” as a “highly-expected second feature from Palestinian director Scandar Copti after his Cannes-selected critically-acclaimed debut.”
Currently in post-production, the film is expected to be delivered in the spring. “Happy Holidays” is produced by Red Balloon Film in Germany, together with Tessalit Productions in France, Intramovies in Italy and Fresco Films in Palestine.
Indie Sales will introduce the...
Copti’s feature debut, “Ajami,” co-directed by Yaron Shani, won the Camera d’Or Special Mention at the Cannes Film Festival in 2009 and was nominated for an Oscar in the international feature category.
“Happy Holidays” takes place in contemporary Israel, where a minor accident in Jerusalem triggers a chain of events. “Lies and unspoken truths will sow division among a multi-faceted patriarchal society,” reads the synopsis.
Nicolas Eschbach, Indie Sales’ CEO and co-founder, described “Happy Holidays” as a “highly-expected second feature from Palestinian director Scandar Copti after his Cannes-selected critically-acclaimed debut.”
Currently in post-production, the film is expected to be delivered in the spring. “Happy Holidays” is produced by Red Balloon Film in Germany, together with Tessalit Productions in France, Intramovies in Italy and Fresco Films in Palestine.
Indie Sales will introduce the...
- 2/2/2024
- by Elsa Keslassy
- Variety Film + TV
Indie Sales has boarded Nathalie Najem’s “No Way Back,” a timely feature debut tackling domestic violence with a cast led by Bastien Bouillon (“The Night of the 12th”) and Zita Hanrot (“Angry Annie”).
Now in post, “No Way Back” will be introduced to buyers by the banner Indie Sales at the Unifrance Rendez-Vous showcase next week.
“No Way Back” tells the story of Laura, who is rebuilding her life after years under the toxic influence of Joachim and is raising their daughter on her own. When Joachim’s new girlfriend, Shirine, shows up at her door in dire straits, Laura realizes that they must help each other to get rid of Joachim’s harmful influence. The film appears to be in a similar vein as Xavier Legrand’s Venice prizewinner “Custody,” with an emphasis on sisterhood.
Bouillon won last year’s Cesar Award for best male newcomer for his...
Now in post, “No Way Back” will be introduced to buyers by the banner Indie Sales at the Unifrance Rendez-Vous showcase next week.
“No Way Back” tells the story of Laura, who is rebuilding her life after years under the toxic influence of Joachim and is raising their daughter on her own. When Joachim’s new girlfriend, Shirine, shows up at her door in dire straits, Laura realizes that they must help each other to get rid of Joachim’s harmful influence. The film appears to be in a similar vein as Xavier Legrand’s Venice prizewinner “Custody,” with an emphasis on sisterhood.
Bouillon won last year’s Cesar Award for best male newcomer for his...
- 1/8/2024
- by Elsa Keslassy
- Variety Film + TV
Graphic novel adaptation stars stars Cesar-winning actress Izia Higelin
Indie Sales has boarded Blandine Lenoir’s fourth feature Juliette In Spring and will launch sales at Unifrance’s Rendez-Vous in Paris which takes place from January 16-23.
The film, based on Camille Jourdy’s graphic novel, follows a thirty-something woman who returns to her hometown to spend time with her family as buried memories, unspoken truths and long-buried secrets bubble up to the surface in what Indie Sales calls “a sweet, tender and sometimes extravagant family portrait.”
The film stars Cesar-winning actress Izia Higelin in the titular role alongside a...
Indie Sales has boarded Blandine Lenoir’s fourth feature Juliette In Spring and will launch sales at Unifrance’s Rendez-Vous in Paris which takes place from January 16-23.
The film, based on Camille Jourdy’s graphic novel, follows a thirty-something woman who returns to her hometown to spend time with her family as buried memories, unspoken truths and long-buried secrets bubble up to the surface in what Indie Sales calls “a sweet, tender and sometimes extravagant family portrait.”
The film stars Cesar-winning actress Izia Higelin in the titular role alongside a...
- 1/5/2024
- by Rebecca Leffler
- ScreenDaily
Nobel Prize-winning writer Annie Ernaux has signed an open letter in support of Amber Heard, decrying “the vilification” and “ongoing online harassment” of the actress.
Ernaux won the Nobel Prize in Literature in October 2022 for her work charting the lives of women in France from the 1960s onwards, including abortion drama Happening, which formed the basis for Audrey Diwan’s 2021 Venice Golden Lion winner of the same name.
She is among a group of 68 French feminists and cultural figures to have signed the online letter in an initiative coinciding with the first anniversary of the actress’s defeat last June in a highly-mediatized defamation trial brought by ex-husband Johnny Depp.
Further signatories included actresses Ariane Labed and Zita Hanrot as well as actress-director Aïssa Maïga, screenwriter Caroline Deruas Peano (The...
Ernaux won the Nobel Prize in Literature in October 2022 for her work charting the lives of women in France from the 1960s onwards, including abortion drama Happening, which formed the basis for Audrey Diwan’s 2021 Venice Golden Lion winner of the same name.
She is among a group of 68 French feminists and cultural figures to have signed the online letter in an initiative coinciding with the first anniversary of the actress’s defeat last June in a highly-mediatized defamation trial brought by ex-husband Johnny Depp.
Further signatories included actresses Ariane Labed and Zita Hanrot as well as actress-director Aïssa Maïga, screenwriter Caroline Deruas Peano (The...
- 6/5/2023
- by Melanie Goodfellow
- Deadline Film + TV
Brussels-based company Best Friend Forever has acquired the international rights of Lkhagvadulam Purev-Ochir’s debut feature “City of Wind.” The film is in post-production and will be ready for a world premiere in fall 2023.
Purev-Ochir is known for several high-profile short films, including “Mountain Cat,” which was in Cannes Competition in 2020, and won best short in Busan in 2020, and “Snow in September,” which was awarded the Golden Lion for best short in Venice, and best short in Toronto last year.
Ze is a timid 17-year-old shaman. He studies hard at school to succeed in the cold, callous society of modern Mongolia, while communing with his ancestral spirit to help those in his community. But when Ze encounters Maralaa, his senses are awakened and another reality seems possible.
The film stars young Mongolian actors such as Tergel Bold-Erdene and Nomin-Erdene Ariunbyamba together with veterans Bulgan Chuluunbat, Ganzorig Tsetsgee and Tsend-Ayush Nyamsuren.
Purev-Ochir is known for several high-profile short films, including “Mountain Cat,” which was in Cannes Competition in 2020, and won best short in Busan in 2020, and “Snow in September,” which was awarded the Golden Lion for best short in Venice, and best short in Toronto last year.
Ze is a timid 17-year-old shaman. He studies hard at school to succeed in the cold, callous society of modern Mongolia, while communing with his ancestral spirit to help those in his community. But when Ze encounters Maralaa, his senses are awakened and another reality seems possible.
The film stars young Mongolian actors such as Tergel Bold-Erdene and Nomin-Erdene Ariunbyamba together with veterans Bulgan Chuluunbat, Ganzorig Tsetsgee and Tsend-Ayush Nyamsuren.
- 5/21/2023
- by Leo Barraclough
- Variety Film + TV
Leading French producer Michael Gentile’s Paris-based outfit The Film is about to start shooting Julie Delpy’s next directorial outing, “The Barbarians,” and Laurence Arné’s “Les Hennedricks” starring Dany Boon.
Delpy’s comeback to French filmmaking since “Lolo,” “The Barbarians” is a satirical comedy unfolding in a small town in Brittany which is preparing to welcome Ukrainian refugees after voting unanimously to greet them in exchange for subsidies from the government. But instead of seeing Ukrainians come into town, they see Syrian refugees, causing some tensions among locals and testing their liberal beliefs. Delpy will star in the film opposite Sandrine Kiberlain (“Mademoiselle Chambon”), Laurent Lafitte (“Elle”) and Ziad Bakri (“The Weekend Away”), India Hair (“Angry Annie”), Mathieu Demy (“The Bureau”) and Delpy’s father Albert Delpy.
Delpy penned the script with Matthieu Rumani (“Family Business”), in collaboration with Lea Domenech (“Bernadette”). “The Barbarians” will start filming on...
Delpy’s comeback to French filmmaking since “Lolo,” “The Barbarians” is a satirical comedy unfolding in a small town in Brittany which is preparing to welcome Ukrainian refugees after voting unanimously to greet them in exchange for subsidies from the government. But instead of seeing Ukrainians come into town, they see Syrian refugees, causing some tensions among locals and testing their liberal beliefs. Delpy will star in the film opposite Sandrine Kiberlain (“Mademoiselle Chambon”), Laurent Lafitte (“Elle”) and Ziad Bakri (“The Weekend Away”), India Hair (“Angry Annie”), Mathieu Demy (“The Bureau”) and Delpy’s father Albert Delpy.
Delpy penned the script with Matthieu Rumani (“Family Business”), in collaboration with Lea Domenech (“Bernadette”). “The Barbarians” will start filming on...
- 5/19/2023
- by Elsa Keslassy
- Variety Film + TV
Music Box Films has acquired U.S. rights to “Full Time,” Eric Gravel’s visceral social thriller which is one of the five finalists for France’s official submission to the 95th Academy Awards.
Represented in international markets by Be For Films, “Full Time” world premiered at last year’s Venice festival in the Horizons sections and won a pair of awards for Laure Calamy (“Call My Agent!”) and Gravel. The critically acclaimed film went on to made its U.S. debut at New Directors/New Films.
Music Box Films will release “Full Time” in cinemas and on home entertainment platforms in 2023.
Calamy, one of France’s top actors, stars as a single mother who goes to great lengths to raise her two children in the suburbs while holding down a demanding job as head chambermaid in a Parisian luxury hotel. When she finally gets a job interview for another...
Represented in international markets by Be For Films, “Full Time” world premiered at last year’s Venice festival in the Horizons sections and won a pair of awards for Laure Calamy (“Call My Agent!”) and Gravel. The critically acclaimed film went on to made its U.S. debut at New Directors/New Films.
Music Box Films will release “Full Time” in cinemas and on home entertainment platforms in 2023.
Calamy, one of France’s top actors, stars as a single mother who goes to great lengths to raise her two children in the suburbs while holding down a demanding job as head chambermaid in a Parisian luxury hotel. When she finally gets a job interview for another...
- 9/21/2022
- by Elsa Keslassy
- Variety Film + TV
Best-known for her role as Noemie in the hit French series “Call My Agent!,” Laure Calamy has emerged in recent years as one of France’s biggest stars and most versatile actors. After a busy career in theater and many notable supporting roles, she finally got a shot at leading roles, and kudos have followed, for Caroline Vignal’s romantic comedy “My Donkey, My Lover and I,” which was part of Cannes’ Official Selection and earned her a Cesar award, and Eric Gravel’s social drama “A Plein Temps,” for which she won best actress at Venice in the Horizons section.
Calamy is now on a roll and she’s shown that she can play anything. Case in point: Over this summer, she was at Locarno to present Blandine Lenoir’s period drama “Angry Annie,” in which she plays a working mother who joins the Movement for the Liberation of...
Calamy is now on a roll and she’s shown that she can play anything. Case in point: Over this summer, she was at Locarno to present Blandine Lenoir’s period drama “Angry Annie,” in which she plays a working mother who joins the Movement for the Liberation of...
- 9/4/2022
- by Elsa Keslassy
- Variety Film + TV
Paris-based company Indie Sales has boarded Emad Aleebrahim Dehkordi’s feature debut “A Tale of Shemroon” which is set to premiere in the New Directors competition at San Sebastian.
Set in the north of Tehran, “A Tale of Shemroon” follows Iman and his younger brother Payar who live with their father. After the death of their mother, Iman starts a business thanks to his connections with the city’s affluent youth, but these new opportunities bring him on a dangerous path affecting his family’s destiny.
“We are proud to be a part of San Sebastian’s New Directors competition with this new voice from Iranian cinema,” said Nicolas Eschbach at Indie Sales. “Emad (Aleebrahim Dehkordi) depicts the reality of the Iranian youth living in parts of Tehran that have seldom been seen before,” Eschbach continued.
“A Tale of Shemroon” was produced by Indie Sales’s sister company Indie Prod,...
Set in the north of Tehran, “A Tale of Shemroon” follows Iman and his younger brother Payar who live with their father. After the death of their mother, Iman starts a business thanks to his connections with the city’s affluent youth, but these new opportunities bring him on a dangerous path affecting his family’s destiny.
“We are proud to be a part of San Sebastian’s New Directors competition with this new voice from Iranian cinema,” said Nicolas Eschbach at Indie Sales. “Emad (Aleebrahim Dehkordi) depicts the reality of the Iranian youth living in parts of Tehran that have seldom been seen before,” Eschbach continued.
“A Tale of Shemroon” was produced by Indie Sales’s sister company Indie Prod,...
- 8/29/2022
- by Elsa Keslassy
- Variety Film + TV
“Rule 34,” a challenging and sexually explicit film from Brazilian director Julia Murat, has emerged as the surprise winner of the Golden Leopard award at this year’s Locarno Film Festival — an edition where typically audacious and formally ambitious work dominated the program. Marking a strong ceremony for female filmmakers, the main competition jury at the Swiss festival also handed an impressive three awards — best director and a brace of acting prizes — to gritty coming-of-age drama “I Have Electric Dreams,” an auspicious debut feature from Costa Rican writer-director Valentina Maurel.
A character study of a young female law student pursuing a parallel calling in amateur online pornography — while defending female abuse victims in her day job — “Rule 34’s” title stems from the popular online meme that “if it exists, there’s a porn version of it.” Murat’s film wasn’t among the buzzier entries in this year’s competition,...
A character study of a young female law student pursuing a parallel calling in amateur online pornography — while defending female abuse victims in her day job — “Rule 34’s” title stems from the popular online meme that “if it exists, there’s a porn version of it.” Murat’s film wasn’t among the buzzier entries in this year’s competition,...
- 8/13/2022
- by Guy Lodge
- Variety Film + TV
The fashions, fabrics and eye-crossingly patterned wallpapers of the 1970s abound in “Angry Annie,” a French period piece practically painted in avocado green and Le Creuset orange, with hand-crocheted accessories for good measure. Would that the rest of Blandine Lenoir’s rousing abortion drama felt quite so dated. Instead, in a year where the overturning of Roe v. Wade signifies a major step back in the collective fight for women’s reproductive rights, this story of women banding together to assert their bodily autonomy in an age of sexual revolution feels all too timely: not merely a compelling reminder of how things were, but a warning of how they could yet be.
Bright and predominantly hopeful in tone, and powered by a typically lovable performance from recent César winner Laure Calamy (“Call My Agent”) as a meek wife and mother emboldened by an underground women’s movement, this is a less visceral,...
Bright and predominantly hopeful in tone, and powered by a typically lovable performance from recent César winner Laure Calamy (“Call My Agent”) as a meek wife and mother emboldened by an underground women’s movement, this is a less visceral,...
- 8/12/2022
- by Guy Lodge
- Variety Film + TV
There’s a new giant in town, or at least at Locarno’s Match Me!, one of the festival’s biggest industry initiatives.
For years, by a large head, France has had more titles at the Locarno Festival’s two biggest sections, the Piazza Grande showcase and main International Competition than any other country in the world. 2022 is no exception.
Unifrance also hosts the Festival’s biggest industry bash, a first Friday night sit-down dinner or party which used to take place at Locarno’s hillside Belvedere Hotel and has now moved to the near Maggiore Lake-side Blu Restaurant.
Now, however, Unifrance, Europe’s biggest national film-tv promotion board, has put its weight behind Match Me!, a networking initiative this year bringing together 32 emerging producers from over the world.
“It’s a perfect fit,” said Locarno Pro head Markus Duffner. Unifrance’s first-time presence at Match Me! also says much...
For years, by a large head, France has had more titles at the Locarno Festival’s two biggest sections, the Piazza Grande showcase and main International Competition than any other country in the world. 2022 is no exception.
Unifrance also hosts the Festival’s biggest industry bash, a first Friday night sit-down dinner or party which used to take place at Locarno’s hillside Belvedere Hotel and has now moved to the near Maggiore Lake-side Blu Restaurant.
Now, however, Unifrance, Europe’s biggest national film-tv promotion board, has put its weight behind Match Me!, a networking initiative this year bringing together 32 emerging producers from over the world.
“It’s a perfect fit,” said Locarno Pro head Markus Duffner. Unifrance’s first-time presence at Match Me! also says much...
- 8/5/2022
- by John Hopewell
- Variety Film + TV
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