14/04/2006

Two European films awarded at the 2006 Berlin Film Festival are finally being released today on UK screens: the Dutch/ German/French/Israeli co-production Paradise Now [+see also:
trailer
film profile] by Hany Abu-Assad, released on eight screens by Warner Bros, and French comedy Crustacés et coquillages by Olivier Ducastel and Jacques Martineau, launched under the English title Cockles and Mussels by Peccadillo Pictures on eight screens.

Kah Loon, co-owner of gay specialized distribution company Peccadillo is confident about Cockles and Mussels’s potential to cross over from the core 30-40 gay and liberal Time Out and Guardian reading audiences to a much broader crowd. The film was launched early March at the Renault French Film Festival and the advertising campaign was supported in the national and regional press, and through postcards and posters.

Peccadillo has already released the directing duo’s previous films Drôle de Félix and Ma vie de chien and its next French release in September will be Mon ange with Vanessa Paradis.

The other 10 new Easter releases include UK music documentary Glastonbury by Julian Temple, which screened at Berlin 2005’s Panorama Special. According to Alisdair Nicholson from Pathe Distribution, the film was promoted mostly to the fans of the famous 36 year-old UK music festival and the music press, and an important tie-in was put together with Sony Ericsson. “We’ve had fantastic coverage so far, and although it is a documentary we hope the good buzz will work in the long run”, said Nicholson.

Also of note is today’s re-release by the BFI of Jacques Rivette’s classic 1961 film Paris Is Ours. The film is part of a major retrospective on the visionary French filmmaker at London’s National Film Theatre, which includes some 20 films that will be screened from April 13 to May 31.