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DISTRIBUTION France

Attractive scoops for Diaphana

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French outfit Diaphana is in the spotlight today, with its release on 199 French screens of Marjane Satrapi and Vincent Paronnaud’s animated film Persepolis [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Marc-Antoine Robert
interview: Marjane Satrapi, Vincent Pa…
film profile
]
, winner of the Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival in May (see Focus).

Persepolis is the third animated title to be distributed by Michel Saint-Jean’s outfit after previous hits Sylvain Chomet’s The Triplets of Belleville [+see also:
trailer
film profile
]
(released in 2003 on 242 prints, 827,000 admissions) and Michel Ocelot’s Azur & Asmar [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile
]
(released October 2006 on 551 screens, 1.76m filmgoers).

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The 13th most important distributor in France in 2006 (3.8m admissions for 13 films), Diaphana is one of the main promoters of quality European films, with releases in recent years featuring the Dardenne brothers’ The Child [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Luc & Jean-Pierre Dardenne
film profile
]
, Lucas Belvaux’s The Right of the Weakest [+see also:
trailer
film profile
]
, Isabel Coixet’s The Secret Life of Words [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Isabel Coixet
film profile
]
, Michel Spinosa’s Anna M. [+see also:
trailer
film profile
]
, Cécile Telerman’s Tout pour plaire [+see also:
trailer
interview: Cécile Telerman
film profile
]
and Eric Caravaca’s The Passenger [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile
]
, and not forgetting more recent hits, such as Ken Loach’s The Wind That Shakes the Barley [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Ken Loach
interview: Rebecca O’Brien
film profile
]
(941,000 admissions) and Philip Gröning’s remarkable German documentary Into Great Silence [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Philip Groening
film profile
]
(248,000).

The strategy is proving a profitable one, with upcoming releases including Lady Jane [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile
]
(see news), the next film by Robert Guédiguian, Hiner Saleem’s Sous les toits de Paris and collective animated film Peur(s) du noir (“Afraid of the Dark”).

A regular co-producer of features it distributes, Diaphana sometimes handles executive production, an activity it first began with Dominique Moll’s With a Friend Like Harry and continued with Lemming [+see also:
trailer
film profile
]
by the same director; Denis Dercourt’s The Page Turner [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Denis Dercourt
interview: Michel Saint-Jean
film profile
]
; Manuel Poirier’s La maison (see article, out August 22, 2007); and Safy Nebbou’s L’empreinte de l’ange (“The Angel’s Footprint”), starring Sandrine Bonnaire and Catherine Frot, slated to begin lensing in August.

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(Translated from French)

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