Sola Media popular with family films

by Annika Pham

23/05/2006 - German sales company Sola Media, headed by Solveig Langeland, has closed a series of deals on the much promoted Cannes title Lotte From Gadgetville [trailer], directed by Janno Põldma and Heiki Ernits. The Estonian/Latvian animated film featuring Lotte the dog, Bruno the cat, Albert the rabbit and Susumu the Japanese bee in a town where inventing new things is a hobby, will be released theatrically first in Estonia this September, then in Latvia and in Benelux.

Other territories sold include Norway (Coriander Films), Sweden (Folkets Bio ) and Germany (MFA Film Distribution). Sola Media is considering making an English language version of the film.

Silentium [trailer] by Wolfgang Mumberger, which just won the top award in Cognac in April, was picked up by French distributor Les films sans frontières, adding to a previous list of buyers that includes Spain (Civita), Greece (Ama Film), and the Czech Republic and Slovakia (AQS).

Added to Sola Media's line-up just before Cannes, Belgium’s highly successful Gilles, by Jan Verheyen, was just sold to Turkey and is in negotiations for several other territories. The family football film has passed the 230,000 admissions mark in Flanders alone and received the Audience Award at this year’s Plateau Awards (local Oscars). “Gilles is the typical type of film that we love, a very moving quality family film,” stressed the company’s head of sales to Cineuropa.

Another big title being handled by Sola Media is Juraj Jakubisko’s period film Bathory, currently in production with delivery date set for AFM or Berlin 2007. Based on the legends surrounding the life and death of Countess Elizabeth Bathory of Transylvania, the film stars Anna Friel, Karel Roden (Blade II), and Hans Matheson (Deathwatch). The project is being produced by Jakubisko Film Slovakia and Jakubisko Film (Czech Republic), in co-production with Film & Music Entertainment (UK), Lunar Films Ltd , and Eurofilm Studio (Hungary).