Lionel Baier’s ‘Continental Drift (South)’ Brings Europe’s Growing Pains to Cannes

Elsa Keslassy International CorrespondentCharades has closed a raft of deals on “Little Nicholas: Happy as Can Be,” an animated feature which world premiered at Cannes in the Special Screenings section and will go on to compete at Annecy festival. Directed by Benjamin Massoubre and Amandine Fredon, “Little Nicholas: Happy as Can Be” is based on author René Goscinny and New Yorker cartoonist Jean-Jacques Sempé’s popular children books from the 1960’s which have been translated into than 30 languages.

EXCLUSIVE: Ellen Wander’s Film Bridge International has sold shark survival thriller Maneater to a host of buyers during the Cannes market including Saban Films (North America, UK, Australia/NZ, Scandinavia and South Africa), Challan Films (Korea), Superfine Films (India), YouPlanet (Spain), ILY Films (France), Monolith (Poland), Suraya Filem (SE Asia), Blitz Film Group (Ex-Yugo), and Selim Ramia and Co. (Middle East).

Manori Ravindran International EditorCannes sensation “EO,” which tells the story of a donkey’s life, has been acquired for North America by Sideshow and Janus Films. The film is the latest collaboration for the U.S.

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.

Elsa Keslassy International CorrespondentMK2 Films has locked major territory deals on Leonor Serraille’s drama “Mother and Son” which world premiered in competition at the Cannes Film Festival and garnered strong reviews. “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.

Polish filmmaker Agnieszka Smoczynska (The Lure, Fugue) makes her english language debut with The Silent Twins, the strange and remarkable story of June and Jennifer Gibbons, twin sisters who only communicated with each other from 8 to later teen years when drugs and drinking led to petty theft and an arson charge that landed them in the tightly secured medical ward of Broadmoor  for 11 years before being released in the 1980’s. Creating their own puppetry and dolls, poems, and music which they only broadcast for each other on a fake radio program, the “twinies” as they were called by family fell into an odd void that became more pronounced, even when they were forced to go to separate schools at one point, and they carried on this way until becoming young women landing into legal troule  until incredibly being incarcerated for over a decade, five or six times as long as the longest sentence for the petty crimes of which they were accused.

Naman Ramachandran Indian actor Jackie Shroff (“Sooryavanshi”) will play the lead in Singapore-France-India co-production “Slow Joe,” it was revealed at the Cannes Film Market.Shroff will play the late Indian musician Joseph Manuel Da Rocha, known as Slow Joe, a former heroin addict and drug dealer who was born in Mumbai, was disowned by his family, heartbroken at 50 and who moved to Goa and cleaned up. On a trip to Goa in 2007, Lyon-based French musician Cédric de la Chapelle met Joe, now a frail 64-year-old who was making ends meet as a hotel room broker. Joe, also a poet and musician, sang for de la Chapelle, who was captivated by his voice and recorded some of his a cappella songs.Back in France, de la Chapelle played Joe’s songs for music producer Olivier Boccon-Gibod of Horizon Musiques, who was also entranced.

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.

YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki and Microsoft chief Satya Nadella were skedded to join 2,500 politicians, business and nonprofit leaders at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland this week as the annual gathering kneecapped by Covid is back in person. It reconvenes, a bit subdued, at a critical moment with the world staggering under food scarcity, raging fuel prices and war.

Kendall Jenner put her model physique on display on Friday while attending a family dinner at Ristorante Puny with her boyfriend Devin Booker in Portofino, Italy. The 26-year-old catwalk sensation showcased her long legs in a racy satin corset dress with a long sheer skirt and a pair of open-toe black heels. The model and her beau, 25, are at the picturesque location ahead of her sister Kourtney Kardashian's, 43, rumored Italian wedding to Travis Barker, 46.

Neon has landed North American rights at Cannes to La Chimera, the tomb-robbing drama from writer-director Alice Rohrwacher that stars Josh O’Connor and Isabelle Rossellini.

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 may be impossible for a human to truly imagine the mindset of a donkey, but veteran Polish director Jerzy Skolimowski for the most part does a very engaging job of imagining how a beast of burden sees and senses the world in EO.

EXCLUSIVE: As Roman Abramovich-backed Tchaikovsky’s Wife unspools this week at the Cannes Film Festival, the French Ministry of Economy and Finance has clarified its position regarding movies backed by sanctioned oligarchs.

exercice de style as the French would put it, “EO” has plenty on its mind and nothing much to say, idling through a series of vignettes than more often not end with a punch-line of a forbidden kiss or a sudden act of violence, capturing them all with a flashy and urgent style of a music video or Super Bowl car commercial. One need not look far to see in this tale of a lonely beast of burden traipsing across the countryside a condemnation of modern Polish society, especially in sequences when the titular donkey first witnesses and then succumbs to a bout of skinhead hooligan violence, or when it clops across a forest bed we soon learn was once a Jewish burial site. At the same time, Skolimowski – who shot this project over a two-year period – seems more interested in simply making his camera swoop and soar and generally perform its series of stupid pet tricks. In many ways, this rather silly (if quite entertaining) trifle makes for a fitting entry for Cannes’ 75th edition. Skolimowski approaches the material with the hunger and zeal of a young film student, lifting a framework from Robert Bresson and filtering through references to recent festival provocateurs like Lars von Trier, Refn, and Michael Haneke.

JD Linville Zürich-born writer, director and burgeoning auteur Jan Gassmann (“Chrigu,” “Europe, She Loves”) will bring his newest film, “99 Moons,” to the ACID sidebar at Cannes, and with it a voyeuristic glimpse into the lives of lovers in head-on collision. Produced by Reto Schaerli and Lukas Hobi at Zodiac Pictures in co-production with Swiss public broadcaster SRF, the film follows Bigna, a 28-year-old disaster prevention scientist and her chance encounter turned love affair with Frank, a 33-year-old DJ.