29/04/2016 - The international sales agent is heading to Cannes with Kirill Serebrennikov’s film in Un Certain Regard and the doc The Last Resort as a special screening

In preparation for the Film Market of the 69^th Cannes Film Festival (11-22 May 2016), French international sales agent Wide Management and its division dedicated to documentaries, Wide House, have a line-up that is truly bursting at the seams. The Paris-based company managed by Loïc Magneron is selling, among others, a feature being showcased in Un Certain Regard: namely, The Student by Russian director Kirill Serebrennikov.

A renowned stage director (he presented Idiots at the Avignon Festival in 2015, for example), Kirill Serebrennikov is a filmmaker whose reputation is constantly on the up: he won at Rome in 2006 with Playing the Victim, was in competition at Locarno in 2008 with Yuri's Day, and was in competition at Venice in 2012 with Betrayal. In Un Certain Regard at Cannes, he will unveil an adaptation of the play Martyr by Germany’s Marius Von Mayenburg. The Student revolves around a teenage boy in the midst of a mystical crisis, whose questions turn the lives of his mother and schoolmates, and his entire high school, upside down. Can girls go to their swimming classes in bikinis? Does sex education have a place in school? Should the theory of evolution be taught as part of the Natural Sciences? The adults are soon overwhelmed by the certitudes of the youngster, who swears only by Scripture. No one but his biology teacher will challenge him on his own ground... The film will be distributed in French theatres on 2 November by ARP Sélection.

As for Wide House’s documentary line-up, we should highlight The Last Resort [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Thanos Anastopoulos
film profile] by Thanos Anastopoulos and Davide Del Degan, which will have its world premiere as an Official Selection special screening. Co-produced by Italy, Greece and France (by Arizona, which will also handle its French distribution, and with backing from the CNC via the development support programme for Franco-Greek co-productions), the film is set on a popular beach in Trieste, where men and women are separated by a concrete wall. It is a reflection on boundaries, identity and different generations in the guise of a tragi-comedy about human nature.

At the Film Market, Wide Management will organise a “secret” screening of Glory [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Petar Valchanov
interview: Petar Valchanov, Kristina G…
film profile] by Bulgarian duo Kristina Grozeva and Petar Valchanov (news - who turned a lot of heads with their feature debut, The Lesson [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Kristina Grozeva, Petar Val…
interview: Margita Gosheva
film profile]), reserved solely for buyers, and will be pre-selling two titles in post-production, Dark Fortune [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile] by Swiss director Stefan Haupt (The Circle [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Stefan Haupt
film profile]) and the Georgian movie Dede by Mariam Khatchvani, among others.

Also of note among the myriad market premieres on the programme are the stunning Goran by Croatian filmmaker Nevio Mrasovic, the Spanish production The Shepherd [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Jonathan Cenzual
film profile] by Jonathan Cenzual Burley and Tamara by Elia K Schneider (billed as a Venezuelan Laurence Anyways [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile]).

(Translated from French)