LevelK Boards Venice Gap-Financing Market Project ‘Cold’ (EXCLUSIVE)

Liza Foreman Boutique distributor Juno Films has picked up North American distribution rights to the Irish-language feature “Róise and Frank,” (“Mo Ghrá Buan”), the company confirmed on Friday. Written and directed by Rachael Moriarty and Peter Murphy, the drama tells the story of an imaginative widow, played by Irish actress Bríd Ní Neachtain, who decides that a stray dog she befriends is the reincarnation of her deceased husband Frank. As time passes, Róise slowly begins to open herself back up to the outside world and reconnect to friends and family. Her canine companion starts to coach the local junior high school’s hurling team with great success for the team and its players, under Frank’s guidance. 

Elsa Keslassy International Correspondent Les Films du Losange has closed a raft of major deals on Kasja Naess’s animated feature “Titina” which is produced by the teams behind the Oscar-nominated film “The Triplets of Belleville” and Oscar-winning short “The Danish Poet.” “Titina” will world premiere at Animation Is Film Festival, which takes place Oct. 21-23, and is produced by GKids, in collaboration with Annecy International Animation Film Festival and Variety. Budgeted at $8.5 million, the Norwegian animated movie was produced by Mikrofilm (“The Danish Poet”) and Vivi Film (“The Triplets of Belleville”). The film tells the real-life story of a fox terrier that accompanied her master on an expedition to the North Pole in an air balloon in the 1920’s. It will be released in Norway by Norsk Film Distribusjon, and in France by Les Films du Losange.

Marta Balaga LevelK has boarded Icelandic thriller “Natatorium,” directed by Helena Stefánsdóttir Magneudóttir. The film started shooting on Sept. 14, and is expected to bow locally next year. Produced by Sunna Gudnadóttir for Bjarstýn Films, marking the company’s first feature film, it’s financed with the support from the Icelandic Film Center and the Finnish Film Foundation. Scanbox, Sena and RUV YLE are behind the project as well. “I am mostly interested in working on films with female directors and/or scriptwriters, [projects] with high artistic integrity and universal appeal,” says Gudnadóttir, who previously worked on “A White, White Day,” and Iceland’s Oscar submission “Beautiful Beings.” She adds that “Natatorium” has three complex female leads, and 60% of the crew is female as well.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Italian producer Andrea Iervolino (“Waiting for the Barbarians”) has acquired a controlling stake in central London’s Mercato Metropolitano food market and teamed with British music producer David Tickle’s Tickle Entertainment on a doc series set there about global food culture. Iervolino, whose Iervolino and Lady Bacardi Entertainment (ILBE) company produces feature films including Bobby Moresco’s upcoming “Lamborghini,” is also the founder of innovative digital entertainment platform TaTaTu, a social media platform that uses a form of rewards points called TTU Coins. TaTaTu recently acquired a controlling stake in London’s Mercato Metropolitano from its founder Andrea Rasca who in 2016 established this pioneering community market as a space for social exchange and environmental sustainability. The Mercato is now being used as the location for an upcoming docu-series chronicling the journey of four chefs who sought refuge in the United Kingdom respectively from Syria, Namibia, Nepal, and Uzbekistan.

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Elsa Keslassy International Correspondent Loco Films has boarded international sales rights to actor-turned-helmer Dinara Droukarova’s feature debut “Woman at Sea” which will world premiere in the New Directors section at the San Sebastian Film Festival. Produced by Marianne Slot and Carine LeBlanc at Paris-based Slot Machine (“Melancholia”), “Woman at Sea” stars Droukarova as Lili, who has left everything behind to travel to the end of the earth to fulfil her dream of fishing in the northern seas, in Iceland. She convinces Ian, a fishing boat skipper, to give her a chance and embarks on the Rebel. She is the only woman in the crew but she will win everybody’s respect thanks to her determination and courage. “We are proud of this first film, shot on the harsh northern seas about a young woman seeking the fresh air of freedom. A beautiful and free film and the birth of a new director,” said Laurent Danielou, founder and president of Loco Films.

Elsa Keslassy International Correspondent Keshet International (KI) has boarded the three-part true crime documentary “My Name Is Reeva: And I Was Murdered by Oscar Pistorius” in the run-up to Mipcom. Directed by Warren Batchelor (“204: Getting Away With Murder”), the documentary series tells the intimate story of Reeva Steenkamp’s life and her murder at the hands of her then-boyfriend Oscar Pistorius – AKA the Blade Runner – on Valentine’s Day in 2013. It’s penned by Justin Strydom (“Isidingo, High Rollers”), and is produced by WB Productions, in partnership with Cactus Tree Entertainment, Bloodrose Productions and Australia’s Global City Group. Reeva’s parents, Barry and June Steenkamp, said they “fully endorsed the truth in this documentary and show the world who Reeva really was.” The film follows them on an emotional journey as they endure a victim offender dialogue with their daughter’s murderer.

Manori Ravindran International Editor Ulrich Seidl’s “Sparta” has been pulled from the Toronto International Film Festival amid allegations of impropriety and child exploitation against the director, but its premiere at next week’s San Sebastian Film Festival will continue as planned, Variety can reveal. A spokesperson for the Spanish festival tells Variety on behalf of festival management that “Sparta” will remain in competition. Providing a three-point list explaining their reasoning, San Sebastian said “the festival team assesses the films after their viewing according to their interest and quality” and that the event “does not have the ability to judge how a film has been shot and whether a crime has been committed in the course of the filming. If anyone has any evidence of a crime, they should report it to a judge.”

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.

Leo Barraclough International Features Editor Production, finance and sales company Film Constellation has boarded sales on the upcoming romantic thriller “Haunted Heart” by Academy Award winning director Fernando Trueba (“La Belle Époque,” “The Queen of Spain”). The film stars Academy Award nominee Matt Dillon (“The House That Jack Built”), Goya-nominated Aida Folch (“The Artist and the Model”), and Juan Pablo Urrego (“Memoria”). The English-language film is set to start shooting in Greece in September. The film is set on a beautiful remote island in Greece, where young and spirited Alex joins the team of a boutique seaside restaurant as their new waitress. Despite her femme-fatale charm quickly winning the heart of the charismatic Enrico, she instead falls for the enigmatic restaurant manager Max, a reclusive American, who settled on the island decades ago.

Leo Barraclough International Features Editor Alexander Rodnyansky, the producer of Oscar nominated films “Leviathan” and “Loveless,” has boarded the next project from Kazakh director Adilkhan Yerzhanov (pictured), whose film “Goliath” has its world premiere at Venice Film Festival on Thursday in the Horizons Extra section. The new project, “Nosorog,” tells a contemporary story of Tamara, a distraught woman on a desperate search for her missing son in a small town consumed by violent riots. To help get her son back, she hires a shady detective, Brayuk, with unexpected consequences. Rodnyansky joins producers Aliya Mendygozhina and Olga Khlasheva on the project, which is a co-production between the State Center of Support of the National Cinema of Kazakhstan and Kazakh film company Golden Man Media.

Holly Jones Coinciding with its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival, Warsaw-based New Europe Film Sales has provided Variety with an exclusive peek at the trailer for Chilean writer-director Fernando Guzzoni’s (“Jesus”) thriller, “Blanquita.” Based on the young witness at the center of the Spinak case, a scandal involving Chilean pedophilia and prostitution networks that rocked the country, the film grapples with morality and the struggle towards justice for those without means. In the film, Blanca (Laura López) leads investigators, and the public, on a baffling journey as she plants herself at the center of a trial against powerful politicians.

Naman Ramachandran Bhutanese filmmaker Dechen Roder’s new film, “I, The Song,” which is selected at the Venice Production Bridge’s gap financing market, will commence principal photography in December. Roder’s debut feature “Honeygiver Among the Dogs” premiered at Busan in 2016, and went on to have a successful festival run including at Berlin, Locarno, Hong Kong, Taipei and Fribourg, where it won three major awards. “I, The Song” was born when two friends of Roder experienced the horror of being in non-consensual pornographic videos and photos in Bhutan, where in both cases it was recorded and shared without their knowledge or consent.

Venice Film Festival officially kicked off the fall Oscar race on Thursday afternoon with Todd Field’s “Tár,” a drama starring Cate Blanchett as a famous composer embroiled in a public scandal. The film was showered with an ecstatic six-minute standing ovation as the crowds at the Sala Grande Theatre kept chanting “Bravo!“ even surprising Blanchett at times.As Venice chief Alberto Barbera took her hand, Blanchett bowed — but the clapping went on. When the applause finally ended, a misty-eyed Blanchett turned to someone on her team and said: “Let’s get a drink.”Surely, Blanchett’s work in “Tár” will be one of the most toasted performances of Oscar season. The rave reviews for the film all but guarantee the actor, who has two Academy Awards acting wins, will land her eight Oscar acting nomination this winter.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent The Venice Film Festival’s market is kicking off with an attendance level close to its 2019 pre-pandemic days and strong interest in feature films and VR works being pitched at its gap-financing platform “We already have a total of more than 2,400 industry professionals registered to attend, which is close to pre-pandemic levels since in 2019 the number was 2,700 [at the end of the market],” says Pascal Diot, head of the Venice Production Bridge, as the informal mart is known. Of these, 1,700 are accredited with the VPB’s Golden Trade pass, while the remaining 1,000 are registered as part of film delegations.

Elsa Keslassy International Correspondent SND has picked up the international distribution rights to “Visions,” Yann Gozlan’s (“Black Box”) psychological thriller starring Diane Kruger (“Inglorious Basterds”) and Mathieu Kassovitz (“The Bureau”).  The French Riviera-set movie, produced by Eagles Team Entertainment, 24 25 Films and SND, just finished shooting in the South of France and Japan. SND handles French distribution and worldwide sales rights. The theatrical release is planned for 2023.  Kruger stars as Estelle, a brilliant airline captain who leads a seemingly perfect life with her husband Guillaume, a renowned doctor. When she accidentally bumps into Ana, a former flame, Estelle falls in love all over again. As their affair gets more intense, Estelle has recurring visions, nightmares and hallucinations, and when Ana disappears mysteriously, she starts losing grip on reality.

Manori Ravindran International Editor Hilary Clinton and Chelsea Clinton’s HiddenLight Productions is co-producing a new feature documentary with the team behind Sundance 2019 title “Gaza.” “In the Shadow of Beirut” is a cinematic portrait of modern-day Lebanon as seen through the eyes of four families living in the impoverished Sabra and Shatila neighbourhoods of the city, the scene of an infamous massacre in 1982. The film will be executive produced by Hillary Clinton, Chelsea Clinton and Siobhan Sinnerton for HiddenLight. The doc is filmed over four years with unique access to the families within these largely restricted areas and co-directed by Stephen Gerard Kelly, in his debut, and Garry Keane (“Gaza,” 2019). Kelly built up his relationship with the families over a six-year period.

Naman Ramachandran Guy Davidi, known for Sundance and Emmy winning and Oscar nominated documentary “Five Broken Cameras,” is Venice bound with his next film “Innocence.” The film, which is in the festival’s Horizons strand, the only documentary selected in the section, tells the story of children who were unwillingly enlisted into the Israel military service, and many of them died. Through a narration based on their diaries, the film depicts their inner turmoil and interweaves first-hand military images, key moments from childhood until enlistment and home videos of the deceased soldiers. “Nothing touches me more than a child’s sensitivity when they discover the world, and nothing hurts me more than seeing it getting crushed. Israel is not a place that values innocence. Its militarized identity requires the breaking down and distorting of the gentle lines of childhood. This commitment to violence has many victims, but there’s also a hidden tragedy – the collapse of parenthood,” says Davidi in his director’s note on the film, which has been 10 years in the making.

Christopher Vourlias Former Netflix executive Tania Zarak Quintana has joined Iceland’s Truenorth, one of the leading production services companies in the Nordics, as it looks to ramp up development of original content. The production outfit is developing a slate of original shows including “Starlungar,” a 10-part series it’s dubbed “‘The Godfather’ of the 13th century” that follows four wealthy and powerful clans as they fight to gain power over Iceland, and “Eyland,” a dystopian series set in present-day Iceland that questions what would happen if communication with the rest of the world suddenly stopped. Truenorth is also attached to co-produce a feature-film adaptation of bestselling Icelandic author Ragnar Jónasson’s thriller “Outside,” which was optioned by Scott Free Productions.

The Toronto Film Festival has named Oscar-winning Icelandic composer Hildur Guðnadóttir (Women Talking) and award-winning Welsh Egyptian filmmaker Sally El Hosaini (The Swimmers) as honorees of the 2022 TIFF Tribute Awards, which return to an in-person gala fundraiser for its fourth edition at Fairmont Royal York Hotel on September 11th. The former will receive the TIFF Artisan Award, with the latter claiming the TIFF Emerging Talent Award.