04/11/2005

Today’s major European arthouse release on UK screens is Jacques Audiard’s The Beat My Heart Skipped [+see also:
trailer
film profile] released by Artificial Eye on 25 screens, a larger than normal print run for a foreign language film.
Robert Beeson, director of Artificial Eye told Cineuropa that because of the film’s strong genre element and good chance to expand its revenue stream on DVD, The Beat… benefited from a heavier than usual advertising spend in the press and on major poster sites such as on Piccadilly Circus to give it a bigger awareness, a strategy previously used for Denis Arcand’s Barbarian Invasions in 2004. The film’s first-class trailer also played in front of Jim Jarmusch’s Broken Flowers to reach the potential cross-over audience. And as with most foreign-language films, the film’s marketing campaign was also largely publicity-driven. The director attended the film’s UK premiere at the last Edinburgh Film Festival where he gave some interviews and Romain Duris came to London a few weeks ago to promote the film. The influential London weekly entertainment guide Time Out chose The Beat… as the film of the week and gave it a N°1 position on the Critics choice list.

While preparing today’s opening of The Beat My Heart Skipped, Artificial Eye was also very busy over the last two weeks with ten of its films screening as part of the London Film Festival which closed last night. Among the company’s future releases that had a platform screening at the LFF are Michael Haneke’s Hidden [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Margaret Menegoz
interview: Michael Haneke
film profile] to be released on 27.01.06, the brothers Quay’s Piano Tuner of Earthquakes (17.02.06 release) and Dominik Moll’s Lemming [+see also:
trailer
film profile] (10.03.06).