France’s Cité Films Backs New Films by Chile’s Niles Atallah, Turkey’s Yesim Ustaoglu (EXCLUSIVE)

Brent Lang Executive Editor RLJE Films is partnering with Shudder on “Kids vs. Aliens,” which it will fully finance and premiere at Fantastic Fest later this month. Both companies are business units of AMC Networks. Shudder is a streaming service that focuses on horror, thriller and supernatural films. RLJE Films will release the alien invasion film in theaters, on demand and across digital platforms in early 2023. A Shudder release will follow later in the year.  “Kids vs. Aliens” centers on Gary, who wants to make awesome home movies with his best buds. All his older sister Samantha wants is to hang with the cool kids. When their parents head out of town one Halloween weekend, a teen house party turns to terror when aliens attack, forcing the siblings to band together to survive the night. 

John Hopewell Chief International Correspondent Paris-based La Fabrica Nocturna Cinéma, producer of Chema García Ibarra’s 2021 Locarno winner “Sacred Spirit,” has boarded Gabriel Azorin’s “Last Night I Conquered the City of Thebes,” marking another financing milestone for his buzzy, poetic and time blending Spanish project.  A Locarno Match Me! hit. “Thebes” has been put through both San Sebastián’s Ikusmira Berriak and Madrid’s ECAM Incubator, rapidly consolidating as Spain’s foremost development labs which each attract about 270 applications a year.   La Fabrica Nocturna, whose credits also take in “The Heiresses,” joins Madrid’s Dvein Films, A Coruña’s Filmika Galaika (“They Carry Death”) and Lisbon’s Primeira Idade (“The Metamorphosis of Birds”) as a producer partner on “Thebes,” which won a RTP Award, consisting of the pre-buy of rights from the Portuguese public broadcaster, at late 2020’s Seville European Film Festival.  

John Hopewell Chief International Correspondent Atresplayer Premium, the burgeoning OTT service behind HBO Max hit “Veneno,” has renewed “The Gypsy Bride” (“La novia gitana”), whose Season 1, from “Penny Dreadful” director Paco Cabezas, world premieres at the San Sebastian Film Festival.  Atresmedia Television will produce with Banijay Iberia’s Diagonal TV, producer of Netflix hit “Heirs to the Land.”Produced by VIS with the participation of Atresmedia Television and the collaboration of the Diagonal TV, the first season of “The Gypsy Bride” will bow on Atresplayer Premium on Sept. 25.  Directed in its totality by Cabezas, whose credits also include “American Gods,” Season 1 is set in a gypsy community on Madrid’s humble outskirts as homicide inspector Elena Blanco, (Nerea Barros, “Marshland”) is called in to investigate the torture and assassination of a young woman just before her wedding.

Netflix is set to introduce a wide variety of films, documentaries and comedy specials to its offerings over the coming fortnight. A combination of new feature-length movies and old classics have already been added to the streaming platform this month.

Naman Ramachandran “Gangs of London” producer Pulse Films has unveiled the first clip from “Name Me Lawand,” which will have its world premiere at the BFI London Film Festival. Directed by Edward Lovelace (“The Possibilities Are Endless”), the film is in competition at the festival’s The Grierson Award for documentaries. The documentary, filmed over four years, follows Lawand Hamad Amin, who spent his early years in Iraq unable to hear or communicate. His profound deafness meant he could not learn language, and with no access to a deaf education, Lawand grew isolated and trapped inside himself.

John Hopewell Chief International Correspondent Alvaro Longoria, partner-producer at Morena Films, one of Spain’s top production shingles, is teaming with the Government of Cantabria to create El Bosque del Cine, a pioneering reforestation scheme offering producers a simple but inspiring way of cancelling productions’ carbon footprints.  The program is set to be unveiled on Sept. 13 at a round table at this week’s Santander Film Festival. El Bosque del Cine aims to plant 34,000 trees over 40 hectares, lent to the program by the Government of Cantabria. Creation will be divided into two phases of 20 hectares each, the first beginning this year. The forest will absorb 19,000 tons of carbon dioxide (CO 2) emissions, equivalent to the footprint of 320 movies. 

Marta Balaga Greece’s Homemade Films has boarded Mahdi Fleifel’s upcoming feature “Men in the Sun,” currently in the final stages of development. The story, set in Athens, will deal with masculinity, exile and loss, showing young refugees in their 20s hustling to survive in the urban pressure cooker. The company is also ready to start shooting Sofia Exarchou’s “Animal,” co-producing with Nabis Filmgroup, Ars Ltd., Digital Cube and Felony Productions. Furthermore, its founder Maria Drandaki recently presented new projects at Venice Gap-Financing Market. “Arcadia,” directed by Yorgos Zois, will see Homemade Films joining forces with Foss Production and Red Carpet. “Titanic Ocean” by Konstantina Kotzamani will be shot in Japan and Singapore in 2023.

John Hopewell Chief International Correspondent One of the film industry’s biggest growth sectors, the international location shoot scene, looks set to impact Toronto on Saturday at a Spain Film Commission breakfast. Among attractions tabled at the meet with Canadian producers will be Spain’s extraordinary landscapes and heritage sites and a new shoot incentive which ranks among the highest in the world.  From Jan. 1, 2023 Spain’s Bizkaia looks set to offer an up-to-70% tax credit for foreign and national shoots lensing in the Basque province. Notably, the incentive has no cap at all.  The tax break forms part of a ramp up of Spain’s big international shoot scene. “House of the Dragon” has returned to islet San Juan de Gaztelugatxe, “Game of Thrones’” Dragonstone. In general, foreign shoots are flocking to Spain, spending €263 million ($263 million) there in 2021, double the 2016-19 average, according to a study by the country’s ProFilm line producers assn. 

EJ Panaligan editor Lifetime has announced two new TV movies, “A Rose For Her Grave” and “Desperate Hours,” both inspired by novels from author Ann Rule. “A Rose For Her Grave” stars Chrishell Stause of “Selling Sunset” fame, Colin Egglesfield and Laura Ramsey, and follows serial wife-killer Randy Roth opposite the woman who finally brings him to justice. Gina Gershon will serve as a first-time director for “Desperate Hours.” Samantha Mathis, Harrison Thomas and David Conrad star in the film. The screenplay is an adaptation of Rule’s novel “Last Chance.” The film follows a mother who finds herself and her young children held hostage by a man who forces his way into their home after committing a murder earlier in the day.

comes to digital, 4K, Blu-Ray, and DVD on Sept. 27, and with it a reel of never-before-seen bloopers from the film's set.

John Hopewell Chief International Correspondent Munich-based Beta Film, one of Europe’s biggest truly independent TV-film groups, has licensed to PPCW Media for Hong Kong and Macau International Emmy winner “Atlantic Crossing,” starring Kyle MacLachan and Sofia Helin. PPC Media has also acquired Alejandro Amenábar’s Movistar Plus+ original “La Fortuna,” with Stanley Tucci and Clarke Peters, a tale of piracy, court room battles and historical justice set between the U.S. and Spain. Reaching more remote places, Beta has also closed Mongolia with Hulegu Media, on “Sisi” a mix of sex, politics and period glam from RTL, Beta and Story House, a modern mindset take on a film icon.  

John Hopewell Chief International Correspondent Germany’s KiKA, France’s TF1 and Denmark’s DR Sales figure among the best-known of contenders for the 2022 Cartoon Tributes, awarded for outstanding achievement in Europe’s TV animation industry. France, followed by Spain, dominates Cartoon’s three categories of broadcaster, investor/distributor and producer of the year, which will be voted on by the about 1,000 delegates at this year’s Cartoon Forum, which takes place in Toulouse, Southern France, over Sept. 19-22. Award winners will be announced on Sept. 22.  Backed by German public broadcast giants ARD and ZDF, KiKa figures as Germany’s biggest kids connect provider. But it will face tough competition from TF1 Unité Jeunesse, the children’s  arm of giant French broadcast network TF1 whose kids slot TFOU broadcasts 70 hours of programming a year. 

Emmerdale fans think they have figured out a new twist coming up on the ITV soap after Mackenzie Boyd cheated on Charity Dingle with somebody local on Thursday night. During Thursday's episode, Mackenzie, who recently lost his baby with Charity in heartbreaking scenes, told Charity that he wanted to try for another baby.

John Hopewell Chief International Correspondent “Walls Can Talk,” the latest film by Spain Carlos Saura, director of “Raise Ravens,” “Deprisa, Deprisa” and “Carmen,” has been acquired for intentional sales by Madrid-based Latido.   Produced by María del Puy Alvarado at Malvalanda (“Madre,” “The Mole Agent”) and distributed in Spain by José Maria nd Miguel Morales’ Wanda Vision, “Walls Can Talk” will world premiere at the San Sebastian Film Festival as an RTVE Gala.  The doc feature sees Saura conduct his own inquest into the origins of art, directing and for once starring in a film. In it, he visits masterpieces of paleolithic art– in Spain’s Altamira and El Castillo caves, for instance – and asks modern (Miquel Barceló) and graffiti artists and urban creators (Suso 33, Zeta, Musa71) about what drives them to paint. 

After an uneven summer of new releases, we’re back in the fall season with two festivals either happening currently or right around the corner, with the Venice Film Festival and Toronto International Film Festival debuting some of the buzziest upcoming releases. Along with some of the festival carryover – both from current fests as well as fests such as Cannes and Sundance from earlier in the year – there’s plenty more to seek out arriving on the big screens.  The first of two “Pinocchio” adaptations premieres this month, along with two of the scariest movies you’re likely to see this year, alongside a documentary about the legendary singer David Bowie.

Emiliano De Pablos Global film sales agency and U.S. domestic distributor Blue Fox Entertainment has announced that production has wrapped on family comedy “Popular Theory,” starring Cheryl Hines (“Curb Your Enthusiasm”), Marc Evan Jackson (“The Good Place”), Sophia Reid-Gantzert (“The Baby-Sitters Club”), Lincoln Lambert (“Nope”), and Chloe East (“The Fabelmans”). Century City-based Blue Fox Entertainment is handling worldwide sales and will release the film theatrically in the U.S. in 2023, the company said in a statement. “Popular Theory” is a coming-of-age comedy that plumbs the complexities of companionship and ambition.  In the film, Erwin (Reid-Gantzert) is a 12-year-old girl genius completely out of sorts as the youngest student in high school. She’s faced with only one problem she can’t solve: Social isolation. With fellow outcast and chemistry guru Winston (Lambert), the duo team up to invent a chemical that will change the high school hierarchy forever.

Annika Pham New Europe Film Sales has added U.K. distributor Signature Entertainment to the slew of global buyers won over by Guðmundur Arnar Guðmundsson’s “Beautiful Beings,” which has racked up awards from Poland, Bulgaria, Italy and Taiwan, since its first bow at the last Berlinale Panorama. Earlier deals were closed with the U.S. (Altered Innocence), Hungary (Vertigo), Benelux (Arti Film), Germany/Austria (Salzgeber), Spain (Filmin), and CEE (HBO).Billed by Variety reviewer Jessica Kiang as an “Icelandic coming-of age, radiant with violence and tenderness,” Guðmundsson’s drama revolves around a young boy raised by a clairvoyant mother who decides to adopt a bullied misfit into his gang of outsiders.