As Production Booms, Top Hungarian Projects Head to Cannes

Elsa Keslassy International CorrespondentParis-based sales company Charades has closed a raft of deals on “Forever Young,” Valeria Bruni Tedeschi’s film which competed at Cannes and earned a warm critical welcome. “Forever Young” opens at the end of the 1980s in Paris and follows a young troupe of comedians who have just have been admitted to Les Amandiers, the prestigious theater school headed by Patrice Chéreau. Bruni Tedeschi wrote the script alongside Agnès De Sacy and regular collaborator Noémie Lvovsky.

EXCLUSIVE: Coda producer Pathé has concluded a raft of sales on its Cannes slate including for starry French drama Masquerade, Directors’ Fortnight entry Paris Memories and Penelope Cruz title L’Immensita.

Erik ten Hag has been told what his top priority is at Manchester United ahead of a busy summer.

Leo Barraclough International Features EditorWhen filmmaker Marie Kreutzer was writing “Corsage,” which chronicles a critical period in the life of Empress Elisabeth of Austria, also known as “Sissi,” she had in mind the experience of other women in the public eye, in particular Princess Diana and Meghan Markle. In recent weeks, she has been mulling the treatment of Amber Heard as well.

L’innocent. For the occasion, she chose a black strapless column gown with a sash around the hips, matching black heels, and diamond jewelry. Her hair was slicked back and her eyeliner dramatic, somewhere between a wing tip and .The dress was designed by Gianni Versace himself, per , for Austrian opera singer Helga Dernesch for a performance of Salomé at the famous Teatro alla Scala in Milan, in 1987.

Elsa Keslassy International CorrespondentPulsar Content has closed a raft of major deals on “La Maison,” Anissa Bonnefont’s erotic drama based on Emma Becker’s controversial bestselling novel chronicling the young author’s two-year undercover experience working as a sex worker at a Berlin brothel. The Paris-based company introduced the title to buyers at Cannes and sold it to Wild Bunch for Germany, Austria, Italy and Spain, among other deals. Wild Bunch will team with Capelight for the German release.

Elsa Keslassy International CorrespondentREinvent International Sales has closed major territory sales on “UFO Sweden,” a science fiction movie adventure from Crazy Pictures, a Swedish film collective whose past credits includes the 2018 hit movie “The Unthinkable.”Described as a mix between “X-Files” and “Stranger Things,” “UFO Sweden” is set in a small town and follows a teenage rebel placed in foster care, who suspects that her father is not dead, but has been kidnapped by UFOs. With the help from a UFO association, she is determined to find out the truth.

Naman Ramachandran Top Bangladeshi actor Nusrat Imrose Tisha is in Cannes to promote her new film “Mujib: The Making of a Nation.” A trailer for the film, a biopic of the late Bangladeshi leader Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, was unveiled at the Cannes Film Market.Popularly known as Bangabandhu (friend of Bengal), Rahman was one of the founders of the Awami League party and led the movement for political autonomy for East Pakistan and the subsequent formation of independent Bangladesh in 1971. He served as the first president and then the first prime minister of Bangladesh until he, his wife and sons were assassinated in an army coup in 1975.

Cannes Film Festival on Sunday.  The French actress, 36, looked stunning in a black, blue and white striped short sleeved T-shirt which she paired with the black trousers.  The star added some height to her frame in a pair of towering black pointed toe heels as she attended the event in the Campari Lounge at the Palais des Festivals.

#Cannes pic.twitter.com/VCEz0aI3BW“Holy Spider,” which screened on Sunday, was particularly overt in its discussion of violence against women, based on the true story of a serial killer who was supported by much of the public because he murdered prostitutes in the name of religion. It was not even made by a female filmmaker, but by the Iranian-born, Denmark-based Abbasi, whose last trip to Cannes was with the startling “Border,” which became known for its scene of troll sex.

CANNES, France -- Cristian Mungiu's Cannes Film Festival entry “R.M.N.” is set in an unnamed mountainous Transylvanian village in Romania, but the conflicts of ethnocentricity, racism and nationalism that permeate the multi-ethnic town could take place almost anywhere.Of all the films competing for the top Palme d'Or prize at Cannes, none may be quite as of the moment as “R.M.N." The movie, using a Romanian microcosm, captures the us-vs-them battles that have played out across Europe and beyond, wherever immigration and national identities have collided.Mungiu, the celebrated Romanian filmmaker of the landmark 2007 abortion drama “4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days," has long been accustomed to his films being written off as grim portraits of a faraway Eastern Europe. It's a caricature he rejects, especially when it comes to “R.M.N.”“Whenever journalists interpret that it’s yet again another somber painting of this country, well, it’s not about that country — or not only about that country,” Mungiu told reporters Sunday.

IFC Films has nabbed North American rights to “Corsage,” Marie Kreutzer’s bold costume drama starring Vicky Krieps as the Empress Elisabeth of Austria known as Sissi. Represented in international markets by MK2 Films, the movie world premiered at Cannes’ Un Certain Regard and earned unanimous praises.

Here are some of the key talking points from the Cannes Film Festival and market at half-way.

Christopher Vourlias Riding the high of a production-servicing boom, Estonia’s domestic industry has likewise shown no signs of slowing down. Here’s a roundup of top local productions in the pipeline, from producers who are searching for international partners in Cannes:The Invisible Fight Director: Rainer Sarnet Producers: Katrin Kissa, Homeless Bob Production (Estonia), Alise Gelze, White Picture (Latvia), Amanda Livanou, Neda Film (Greece), Helen Vinogradov, Helsinki-filmi (Finland) Sarnet, whose fantasy-drama “November” played at Tribeca in 2017, returns with a ‘70s-set kung-fu comedy about a guard on the Soviet-Chinese border who, after surviving a deadly attack, decides to become a monk but must continually prove along the way that he’s capable of becoming the enlightened man he set out to be.

Christopher Vourlias On the outskirts of Budapest, a big-budget period drama is recreating the fateful day that sparked the Hungarian war of independence in 1848. Construction is underway at the state-owned Mafilm studio complex on a massive set that will stand in for the Hungarian capital in the 19th century.

A silver spoon clunks loudly inside a bowl of beef broth. The meal — well, barely a meal — is served to Empress Elisabeth of Austria (Vicky Krieps) twice a day, her diet a strict combination of insipid soup and wafer-thin slices of lemon.

Leo Barraclough International Features EditorErotic love story “99 Moons,” which has its world premiere in Cannes’ ACID sidebar today, has kicked off international sales. Berlin-based M-Appeal is handling the rights to the film, which is directed by Jan Gassmann.Arthouse VOD platform Filmin has taken the rights in Spain, and arthouse distributor StraDa Films has taken the films for Greece. France and Latin America are in negotiation.

It took the Empress Elisabeth’s strongest lady’s maid an hour every morning to lace her stays. The Emperor Franz-Joseph’s wife Sisi, as she was fondly known to the subjects of the Austro-Hungarian empire, was famous for the narrowness of her waist, which reputedly measured 19 and a half inches; the slightest weight gain was a matter of seething public interest. It looks very much as if Vicky Krieps, who brings great complexity to her portrait of the empress in Marie Kreutzer’s Un Certain Regard title Corsage, shares the imperial measurements. Let’s hope that is just a trick of the camera. So much corsetry — or corsage, the word we hear much used in the royal dressing-rooms of 19th-century Vienna — doesn’t leave much room for little things like ribs.

Marta Balaga Butterfly Vision (completed) Director: Maksym Nakonechnyi Producers: Darya Bassel, Yelizaveta Smith Production: Tabor Productions, 4 Film, Masterfilm, Sisyfos Sales: Wild Bunch Lilia, held as a prisoner of war for months, finally returns home. But she is struggling to resume her life as a soldier and wife, while discovering she is pregnant.Chrysanthemum Day Director: Simon Mozgovyi Producers: Alex Chepiga, Artem Koliubaiev Production: Mainstream Pictures Young doctor encounters an old woman, known as a healer, who mysteriously survives a nuclear explosion.