Indie Sales' Brussels-based subsidiary Best Friend Forever is taking on the Marché du Film, unfolding within the Cannes Film Festival (17-28 May), with two films set to showcase in the ACID selection.

The first, which will open the section, is a debut feature film by the promising Lucas Delangle, who’s a former student of La Femis and Claire Simon’s first assistant. The Strange Case of Jacky Caillou [+leggi anche:
recensione
trailer
scheda film] takes us to a village in the mountains, high up in Alps. It’s here that Jacky lives alone with his grandmother Gisèle, an acknowledged healer—magnetiser. As Gisèle begins to teach him her gift, a young woman arrives from town to consult with her. She has a strange mark on her skin which is spreading across her body. Convinced that he can heal her, Jacky chases a miracle. The young filmmaker adopts a naturalist approach, using an aesthetic bordering on documentarian and "like a genre film which isn’t a genre film", as Head of Best Friend Forever Martin Gondre explains. The movie is produced by Les Films du Clan in co-production with Micro Climat.

Likewise within the ACID selection, BFF will be presenting the latest film by Damien Manivel who is hereby continuing a demanding career which already got off to a good start (his previous feature Isadora’s Children [+leggi anche:
recensione
trailer
intervista: Damien Manivel
scheda film] scooped the Leopard for Best Director in Locarno). In Magdala [+leggi anche:
recensione
trailer
intervista: Damien Manivel
scheda film], he takes a passage from the Gospel, re-imagines the character of Mary-Magdalene and turns her into a complex and super-modern character, while preserving his usual brand of “audacious and sensorial” cinema, Gondre enthuses. Magdala is produced by MLD Films.

BFF will also be unveiling Alê Abreu’s animated Brazilian film Perlimps in a market premiere. The filmmaker was previously a contender for the Best Animated Film Oscar in 2016 via Boy and the World, and his latest work follows the adventures of Claé and Bruô, secret agents from enemy kingdoms. Lost in the Enchanted Forest, they realise that their respective missions are actually one and the same: to save the Perlimps people from the terrible giants surrounding the area. Perlimps is set to be screened in Annecy in June.

Another animation in BFF’s line-up - for adults this time round - is Anca Damian’s The Island [+leggi anche:
recensione
trailer
scheda film], which is a modern re-reading of the legend of Robinson Crusoe by the Romanian director who previously gave us Marona’s Fantastic Tale [+leggi anche:
recensione
trailer
scheda film].

Last but not least, BFF will be flying the flag for Nicolas Silhol’s new film, whose first feature Corporate [+leggi anche:
recensione
trailer
intervista: Nicolas Silhol
scheda film] - presented at Karlovy Vary - earned over 250,000 admissions in France. He’s continuing his exploration of the business world with Anti-Squat [+leggi anche:
recensione
trailer
scheda film], a merciless thriller about the excesses that characterise our ultra-liberal societies, carried by actress Louise Bourgoin and due for release in the autumn.