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BERLINALE 2020 EFM

Totem Films to promote Kiss Me Before It Blows Up at Berlin

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- The French sales agent’s line-up encompasses 11 titles, with 3 market premieres, including the German production helmed by Israel’s Shirel Peleg, a rom-com about a culture clash

Totem Films to promote Kiss Me Before It Blows Up at Berlin
Kiss Me Before It Blows Up by Shirel Peleg

After a highly dynamic start to its business activities last year at Cannes with And Then We Danced [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Levan Akin
interview: Levan Gelbakhiani
film profile
]
 by Levan Akin (the sales of which absolutely skyrocketed) and Land of Ashes [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile
]
 by Sofia Quirós Ubeda, young French international sales agent Totem Films, headed up by Agathe Valentin, Laure Parleani and Bérénice Vincent (read the interview), is really hitting its stride and will be rocking up at the European Film Market at the 70th Berlinale (20 February-1 March 2020) with a jam-packed slate of 11 titles.

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Standing out particularly on the menu are three market premieres, with Luxor [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Zeina Durra
film profile
]
by Zeina Durra (a UK co-production that has just taken part in the World Cinema Dramatic Competition at Sundance, with British actress Andrea Riseborough in the lead role), the Finnish omnibus fiction Force of Habit (which has been made as both a film and a series, and which follows 11 women confronted with all possible facets of gender inequality) and Kiss Me Before It Blows Up, the feature debut by Shirel Peleg, a young Berlin-based Israeli director (see the news).

Produced by German outfit Fireglory Pictures, and starring Moran Rosenblatt, Luise Wolfram, Rivka Michaeli, Juliane Köhler, Bernhard Schütz, Irit Kaplan and John Carroll Lynch, Kiss Me Before It Blows Up is a subversive romantic comedy about a culture clash and a family conflict that arise when love crosses all boundaries. Chaos ensues when two generations of Israeli women fall for a German lady and a Palestinian man, respectively. The film will be distributed in Germany by X Verleih.

Also on Totem Films’ line-up are a clutch of titles in post-production: Gagarin [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Fanny Liatard and Jérémy Tr…
film profile
]
by French duo Fanny Liatard and Jérémy Trouilh (see the article), Softie [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Samuel Theis
film profile
]
by their fellow countryman Samuel Theis, the documentary We [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Alice Diop
film profile
]
by Alice Diop, and Moneyboys [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: CB Yi
film profile
]
by China’s C.B Yi (produced by Austria’s KPG and French firm Zorba).

At the EFM, the Totem Films team will also be pre-selling two films currently in production: Compartment No 6 [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Juho Kuosmanen
film profile
]
by Finland’s Juho Kuosmanen (whose feature debut, The Happiest Day in the Life of Olli Mäki [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Juho Kuosmanen
film profile
]
, scooped the Un Certain Regard Prize at Cannes in 2016), which is slated to be completed in spring 2021 and which whisks us away on a train travelling from Moscow to Murmansk with two characters who have absolutely nothing in common; and the animated flick My Sunny Maad [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Michaela Pavlátová
film profile
]
by Michaela Pavlatova, which revolves around a young Czech woman who follows an Afghani man to Kabul purely out of love.

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(Translated from French)

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