Marrakech Director Mélita Toscan Du Plantier Returns To Producing With Four Features Underway, Pacts With Cheyenne Federation
18.11.2022 - 14:13
/ deadline.com
Mélita Toscan du Plantier has spent the best part of two decades running Morocco’s Marrakech International Film Festival.
This work carries on the legacy of her late husband, influential French producer Daniel Toscan du Plantier, who was the driving force behind the festival’s launch in 2001, overseeing two editions before his death in 2003 at the Berlin Film Festival.
Famously well-connected within the film world, Mélita Toscan du Plantier has since put the event on the international film festival map, pulling together starry juries and guest lists that would not look out of place at Cannes.
This year’s edition, running November 11 to 19, featured Paolo Sorrentino, Vanessa Kirby, Diane Kruger, Justin Kurzel, Nadine Labaki, Laïla Marrakchi and Tahar Rahim in the jury while other guests included Jim Jarmusch, Julia Ducournau, Leos Carax, Paul Schrader and Indian mega-star Ranveer Singh.
During the pandemic, this work was put on hold after the festival was cancelled in 2020 and 2021.
Toscan du Plantier has used this hiatus to reboot her producing activities. In the 2010s, she produced four features – spanning Neeraj Ghaywan’s Masaan, Fatih Akin’s In The Fade, Benoit Jacquot’s Eva and Eva Ionesco’s Golden Youth – but her festival duties had distanced her from production in recent years.
“I stopped producing for a while but during the pandemic, I decided it was time to start again,” she explains.
She now has four feature film projects on the boil under the banner of her new production company Tosca.
They include LA-based French directorial duo Hanna Ladoul and Marco La Via’s Funny Birds, which is executive produced by Martin Scorsese.
The comedy-drama, about three generations of women from the same family forced to live