29/10/2009

Post the Silver Marc’Aurelio at the Rome International Film Festival’s Alice Nella Citta section, London-based sales company High Point has sold Martin Koolhoven’s Dutch Academy Award entry Winter in Wartime [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile] to Family Films for France and Atlas for Germany.

High Point had enjoyed some success in 2004 with another World War II set Dutch film, Ben Sombogaart’s Twin Sisters, which was nominated for Best Foreign Film at the Academy Awards.

High Point’s Carey Fitzgerald said, “We knew as soon as we took Winter in Wartime on that we had something really special on our hands. There is a sense of real momentum gathering around this film, as more and more people discover it, propelling it forward to a point which we hope will be even more of a triumph than before.”

Meanwhile, Revolver Entertainment has picked up Heitor Dhalia’s Adrift and Jim Jarmusch’s The Limits of Control for UK distribution. Both films played in the London Film Festival’s Film On The Square strand.

Adrift is a coming-of-age story set on the beaches of Brazil following a family on holiday where 14-year-old Filipa (Laura Neiva), who is dealing with her burgeoning sexuality, discovers her parents have ulterior motives in being away from home. Her father Matias (Vincent Cassel) is a writer struggling to finish his latest novel and is prone to lengthy, unexplained afternoon disappearances, while her mother Clarice (Débora Bloch) is hitting the bottle heavily, and begins to pick fights with Matias given the slightest opportunity.

Spain-set The Limits of Control is Jarmush’s quirky take on the hitman genre where Isaach de Bankolé encounters mysterious eccentrics (Tilda Swinton, John Hurt, Gael García Bernal, etc).