Ibrahim El Batout's The Cat finished thanks to the Venice Final Cut fund
- CANNES 2014: The film is produced by Amr Waked, Egypt's biggest international star, and French co-producer KnightWorks
The Franco-Egyptian co-production The Cat by prominent Egyptian director Ibrahim El Batout (Winter of Discontent [+see also:
trailer
film profile]), produced by Amr Waked’s ZAD production company and co-produced by French firm KnightWorks, has been finished thanks to the “Final Cut” fund of the Venice Film Market, Waked's Europe representative, Daniel Ziskind, announced at Cannes yesterday.
Last September, the film was included in the Venice Market’s Final Cut Workshop, which supports the post-production of promising films, and is being run for the first time this year.
The Cat revolves around an Egyptian who divorces his wife after their daughter is mysteriously kidnapped in Cairo. The man soon discovers that traffickers are kidnapping street children in his neighbourhood.
Daniel Ziskind told Cineuropa that Final Cut had been essential in order to finish the film and allowed producer Cyril le Pesant from KnightWorks to enter as co-producer. In total, the Final Cut fund provided €50,000 for the post-production of the film, in different forms. KnightWorks contributed to the post-production, the CNC contributed with another €10,000, whereas AOC, Creative Sound and Les Machineurs contributed to the finalising of the sound, mix, and copies respectively. Finally, Amiens Film Festival contributed for the fabrication of the DCP.
“The Final Cut fund is a very powerful instrument to favour co-productions between European and African production companies. We were able to make a promo that has been shown at Cannes. The promo attracted a lot of interest from distributors, and we are expecting to close several deals.” Ziskind now has Venice or Toronto 2014 in his sights. A private screening will be organised in Paris in June for distributors and sales agents.
Waked will soon be seen by international audiences in Luc Besson’s sci-fi actioner Lucy, alongside Scarlett Johansson, Morgan Freeman and South Korea’s Choi Min-sik (Old Boy). In Lucy, which Universal will release on 5 August in France and the US, Waked plays a French policeman.
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