Cannes Competition Title ‘Close’ Sells To Italy & Spain On Eve Of Festival

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.

Manori Ravindran International EditorCannes competition title “Pacifiction,” from “Liberté” director Albert Serra, has been acquired for the U.S. by specialty distributors Grasshopper Film and Gratitude Films.Serra won the Un Certain Regard section’s Special Jury Prize in 2019 for “Liberté” and cracked the festival’s official selection this year with “Pacifiction.”The film is set on the French Polynesian island of Tahiti, and centers on the High Commissioner of the Republic and French government official, whose role brings him to navigate both the high-end “establishment” and shady venues where he mingles with the locals.

Refresh for latest…: The 75th Cannes Film Festival draws to a close tonight as the main awards, including the Palme d’Or, are soon to be handed out in the Palais. Scroll down for the list of winners which is being updated as prizes are announced.

Elsa Keslassy International Correspondent“Plan 75,” Hayakawa Chie’s Japanese dystopian drama which world premiered at Cannes’ Un Certain Regard, has been sold in a raft of territories by Urban Sales. The movie is set in Japan, in a near future where a government program called Plan 75 encourages senior citizens to be voluntarily euthanized in order to remedy the aging society. The film weaves the stories of an elderly woman who isn’t able to live independently, a pragmatic Plan 75 salesman and a young Filipino caregiver.

Marta Balaga Italy’s Valerio Ferrara was named the winner of the 25th edition La Cinef for his warm take on a hapless barber who believes in conspiracy theories in “A Conspiracy Man” (“Il Barbiere Complottista”). Laughing stock of his family, nobody takes him seriously. Until he is arrested by the police.“Personally, I have a special affection for the cinema of this country,” said Canadian actor Monia Chokri, praising the director’s sense of humor.

“The Stars at Noon” finds the French filmmaker Claire Denis shooting in Panama doubling for Nicaragua; directing a cast of Yanks, Brits, and assorted Central Americans; and working from a script switching between Spanish and English. Internationally coproduced Towers of Babel such as this aren’t at all uncommon at the Cannes Film Festival, but the errors in translation all over this disappointing foreign-relations drama run deeper than simple differences of ethnicity or language.

EXCLUSIVE: Mubi has acquired Lukas Dhont’s Cannes Competion entry Close for the UK, Ireland, Latin America, Turkey and India.

EXCLUSIVE: Utopia has finalized its North American deal for Cannes Competition pic Holy Spider, the noir thriller from Danish-Iranian filmmaker Ali Abbasi. We told you the deal was all but there a couple of days ago.

Pablo Sandoval World premiering at the Cannes ACID showcase, “Polaris” explores the intimate relationship between two sisters, Hayat and Leila. The film, set between the isolated Northern Sea and warm, well-connected France, aims to bring a human perspective to this tale of sisterhood set against dramatic land- and seascapes.“Polaris” marks the doc feature debut of Spain’s director Ainara Vera whose experience includes workings a first AD and co-editor on several of Victor Kossakovsky’s productions, including the Berlinale 2020-selected  “Gunda.”Vera and Hayat met on the shoot of another Kossakovsky movie, “Aquarela,” during which the two fostered a bond, with Hayat serving on Kossakovsky and Vera’s sailors crew.

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.

Gregg Goldstein Belgian director Lukas Dhont is in rare company. His 2018 Un Certain Regard debut, “Girl,” won the Caméra d’Or and three more Cannes prizes, besting the number of first-time feature wins from the likes of Steven Soderbergh and Steve McQueen. And while his rise has come with some controversy, he earned a place in competition with the May 26 Lumière gala premiere of his sophomore effort, “Close.” The story of two 13-year-old boys whose powerful friendship ends when their relationship comes under scrutiny “started from a very personal place,” says the out director, who penned the script with “Girl” co-writer Angelo Tijssens.

Deadline’s studio at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival kicked off at the American Pavilion by hosting fest-goers such as Joel Edgerton of The Stranger, Jesse Eisenberg and Julianne Moore of When You Finish Saving The World, and many more. Click on the photo above to launch the gallery.

A24 has won North American rights to Charlotte Wells’ Cannes buzz title Aftersun.

The 1969 Competition Lake Placid Blue Mustang that Kurt Cobain used in Nirvana's iconic Smells Like Teen Spirit video has sold for $4. 5 million at auction. Making it the most valuable electric guitar, and second most valuable guitar overall, ever sold at auction after Cobain's 1959 Martin D-18E used during Nirvana's MTV Unplugged performance reached $6 million in 2020.  The Julien's Auctions Music Icons sale at the Hard Rock Cafe in New York had started with a bid of $150,000 and six bids later had hit the $2 million mark.

EXCLUSIVE: Holy Spider, the Ali Abbasi-directed Iranian serial killer thriller, is nearing a deal for U.S. rights with Utopia, the U.S. sales and distribution firm owned by Robert Schwartzman and Cole Harper. The provocative Cannes Competition film premiered today on the Croisette to strong applause.

For his most subdued film yet, Belgian director Felix van Groeningen, along with co-directing partner Charlotte Vandermeersch take to the Italian Alps for a decades-spanning story of friendship. Following Groeningen’s solo effort, 2018’s “Beautiful Boy,” “The Eight Mountains” is a quiet return to form with its stunning mountain scenery and strong performances from Luca Marinelli and Alessandro Borghi, but this elegiac personal epic is far too languid for its length.

Two years in France inspired Italian director Pietro Marcello to create “Scarlet,” his French-language feature debut and the opening film of this year’s Directors’ Fortnight at the Cannes Film Festival. Freely inspired by Aleksandr Grin’s tale “The Scarlet Sails,” the film examines the quiet tenderness that permeates the relationship between a father comfortable in skepticism and a daughter driven by unshakeable belief.

Elsa Keslassy International CorrespondentFive years after winning Cannes’ Camera d’Or prize with her debut feature, “Jeune Femme,” French writer-filmmaker Leonor Serraille graduated to a competition slot with “Mother and Son,” a timely family drama spanning three decades. Serraille is one of the five female directors competing for this year’s Palme d’Or.“Mother and Son” charts the lives of a young African woman, Rose, and two of her four children, Jean and Ernest, who come to France from the Ivory Coast in the 1980s with high ideals.

Z began to be used as a symbol of support for the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The film is now called “Coupez!” in France.A remake of the 2017 Japanese horror-comedy “One Cut of the Dead,” “Final Cut” is silly and excessive and completely over-the-top, but it also brings out the lightness and deftness of Hazanavicus’ touch with comedy; the director somehow manages to fling body parts and bodily excretions at the audience for almost two hours, and yet you leave feeling as if you’ve seen a feel-good movie.Like the original Japanese film, “Final Cut” takes place in three parts.