19/05/2012 - One of Germany’s leading sales outfit Beta Cinema has inked deals on a handful of Cannes titles and is expanding on the English-language acquisition market.

“Cannes has kicked off really well for us,” says Dirch Schürhoff, managing director of Beta Cinema, who can already cite several deals closed on Lost in Siberia (photo), one of the company’s market premieres in Cannes. The ‘culture clash comedy’ that just opened at number one in the arthouse charts in Germany was picked up by Israel (Lev Cinemas) and Bulgaria (Bulgaria Film Vision). >BR>
Other fresh deals closed in Cannes include Rudolf van den Berg’s Dutch WW2 drama Süskind [+see also:
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film profile] from the producer of Black Book [+see also:
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film profile] Fu Works and Cadenza Films, picked up by Italy (Madeleine), Japan (Only Hearts), China (Champ Lis) and Venezuela (Cines Unidos), and the Berlinale Special entry Bliss by Doris Dörrie, sold to Norway (Fidalgo), South Korea (Peterpan Pictures) and Taiwan (Swallow Wings).

The pre-school animated film Come On, Let’s Find a Treasure, based on Janosh’s best-selling book, has attracted attention from France and Spain after its market premiere on Thursday. MFA will release it in a few weeks in Germany.

In the pre-sales market, the Hungarian film The Notebook by János Szász (Woyzeck) is creating a buzz with Spanish/French distributors who are anxious to see the first footage from the film, delivered early 2013. The €5m film photographed by Christian Berger (The White Ribbon [+see also:
film review
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interview: Michael Haneke
film profile]) has Ulrich Thomsen and Ulrich Matthes in the cast. Another established European director –Spain’s Imanol Uribe, has trusted Beta to handle his Orange Girl [+see also:
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film profile], winner of Best Director and Best Script in Málaga. The political thriller set under Franco’s regime in the 1950s will be released domestically in June by Alta Classics.

Other pre-sale offerings in Cannes such as the German/Norwegian Two Lives starring Juliane Köhler (Nowhere in Africa [+see also:
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film profile]) are typical of the kind of high quality German films with which Beta has built its trademark. “We’ve had many cross over German films in the past like The Lives of Others [+see also:
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interview: Florian Henckel von Donners…
interview: Ulrich Muehe
film profile], The Counterfeiters [+see also:
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film profile], and Downfall [+see also:
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interview: Bernd Eichinger
interview: Joachim Fest
interview: Oliver Hirschbiegel
film profile],” stresses Schürhoff. “In the future, we will balance those titles with new English-language films that will be acquired by Thorsten Ritter [recruited recently from Bavaria Film International]. We will announce two new English language films before the end of Cannes,” confirms the managing director.