French flag flies high at Business Street

by Fabien Lemercier

29/10/2010 - Forming by far the largest national contingent, 21 French international sales companies have been hard at work since yesterday at the Rome Film Festival’s Business Street and will be until November 1.

Standing out among them are MK2 International (see news); Gaumont; Pathé Distribution; Celluloid Dreams (which is presenting German director Denis Gansel’s We Are the Night and Jean-Christophe Roger’s animated film Allez Raconte! [trailer]); and Le Pacte, which has planned market screenings for Olia Barco’s Kill Me Please [trailer], Christophe Honoré’s Man at Bath [trailer], Mathieu Amalric’s On Tour [trailer, film focus] and directorial duo Pierre Barougier and Jean-Pierre Pozzi’s documentary Just A Beginning.

However, the line-up of Rome screenings is dominated by Wild Bunch, which is presenting 14 titles. These include San Sebastian victor Neds [trailer] by Peter Mullan; Venice titles Happy Few [trailer] by Antony Cordier, The Clink of Ice [trailer] by Bertrand Blier, Lope [trailer] by Andrucha Waddington and The Ditch by Wang Bing; features unveiled at Cannes, such as Swedish film Sound of Noise [trailer], Kaboom by Atom Egoyan and Draquila – Italy Trembles [trailer] by Sabina Guzzanti; as well as Kim Chapiron’s Dog Pound [trailer].

The Business Street is also hosting EuropaCorp (which is pinning particular hopes on Eric Lartigau’s The Big Picture [trailer]); Pyramide International (whose line-up includes, among others, Alix Delaporte’s Angèle et Tony [trailer], Eran Riklis’s The Human Resources Manager and forthcoming films L’Empire by Bruno Dumont, Free Men by Ismaël Ferroukhi and Elena by Andrey Zvyagintsev); Les Films du Losange (which will screen Romanian director Marian Crisan’s Tomorrow [trailer], Jean-Paul Civeyrac’s Young Girls In Black [trailer] and Romain Goupil’s Hands Up); Films Distribution (which will show, among others, Mikhaël Hers’s Memory Lane [trailer]); and Rezo with German director Philip Koch’s Picco.

Also in action on the Via Veneto are Memento Films International (which will continue to negotiate sales for its strong titles in post-production: The Monk by Dominik Moll and The Woman in the Fifth by Pawel Pawlikowski), SND, Coproduction Office, Funny Balloons, Umedia, Colifilms Diffusion, Bac Films, Doc & Film International, Roissy Films and Other Angle Pictures. This massive presence of French sellers shows their appetite for the Italian territory.

(Translated from French)