01/03/2007

Celebrating its 20th anniversary this year, French world sales outfit The Coproduction Office, headed by Philippe Bober, is ready for business at this year’s Cannes and Venice film festivals, with its line-up featuring two serious contenders: You, the Living [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Pernilla Sandström
interview: Roy Andersson
film profile] (Du levande) by Swedish director Roy Andersson and Import/Export [+see also:
trailer
film profile] by Austria’s Ulrich Seidl.

In competition at the 1970 Berlin Film Festival with his debut feature (A Swedish Love Story), selected at the 1975 Cannes Directors’ Fortnight with his second (Giliap) and winner of the Jury Prize at the 2000 Cannes Film Festival for his third (Songs from the Second Floor), Andersson’s You, the Living is rumoured to be among the hotly-tipped Cannes’ favourites.

Backed by Eurimages (€500,000), Arte France Cinéma (€300,000) and SFI, the film is a 22% co-production by Philippe Bober via his French (Société Parisienne de Production) and German branches ( Thermidor Filmproduktion). Bober initiated the €4.8m project with Roy Andersson Filmproduktion, which also includes a 10% Danish co-production.

You, the Living has been picked up by Germany (Neue Visionen Filmverleih), Greece, Scandinavia and Japan.

The second jewel in The Coproduction Office’s 2007 line-up is Seidl’s Import/Export (see news), also backed by Arte France Cinéma (€200,000 in co-production and pre-sales) and which could also be destined for Cannes and Venice, where the Austrian director took the Jury Special Prize in 2001 for Dog Days.

Bober – co-producer on three films by Lars von Trier (including Breaking the Waves), two by Carlos Reygadas (Battle in Heaven [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Carlos Reygadas
interview: Jean Labadie
film profile], see Focus), Austrian helmer Jessica Hausner’s Lovely Rita [+see also:
trailer
film profile] and Hungarian director Kornel Mundruczó’s Johanna [+see also:
trailer
film profile] – is working with Seidl for the fourth time and the second time with Andersson.

The Coproduction Office, who last year sold Romanian helmer Corneliu Porumboiu’s 12:08 East of Bucharest [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Corneliu Porumboiu
interview: Daniel Burlac
film profile] (see Focus) to over 20 territories, is now gearing up for the re-release of Mundruczo’s Delta [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Kornél Mundruczó
interview: Orsi Tóth
film profile] (see news and article).

(Translated from French)