Reel Suspects teams with ‘Broken Circle Breakdown’ producer
25 January, 2016 | By Geoffrey Macnab
EXCLUSIVE: Paris-based sales outfit adds Rotterdam premieres and sales manager.
Matteo Lovadina’s Paris-based sales outfit Reel Suspects has added two titles to its slate, both set to premiere at International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR) later this week.
The first is Paloma Aguilera Valdebenito’s debut feature,Out Of Love, screening in IFFR’s Bright Future strand.
The film is the latest production from Dutch outfit Topkapi and is produced by company principals Frans van Gestel, Arnold Heslenfeld and Laurette Schillings.
The psycho-drama, about an intense relationship, is supported by the Netherlands Film Fund, Mediafund, CoBO, NTR (part of De Oversteek), Netherlands Film Production Incentive, MEDIA Programme of the European Union. Pim Hermeling’s September will release in the Netherlands.
Dutch-Chilean writer-director Valdebenito was nominated for best short film at the European Film Awards for her 2009 short Stay Away.
Topkapi are also the Dutch producers on Felix van Groeningen’s Sundance entry Belgica and partnered on van Groeningen’s Oscar-nominated The Broken Circle Breakdown.
The second new pick-up from Reel Suspects is Babak Jalali’s US/Iranian coproduction Radio Dreams.
Produced by Marjaneh Moghimi, the IFFR world premiere features Lars Ulrich from heavy rock band Metallica in the supporting cast.
The film follows an eccentric Iranian writer at a San Francisco radio station as he struggles to bring togetherMetallica and Afghanistan’s first rock band. The cast is led by Mohsen Namjoo, Ulrich and Kabul Dreams.
Reel Suspects is handling world sales excluding North America.
New hire
On the eve of IFFR and Berlin’s European Film Market (EFM), Reel Suspects also confirmed a new appointment.
Former Richmond French Film Festival coordinator, and ex-Acajou film assistant producer Leslie Semichon has joined the outfit as sales manager.
https://www.reelsuspects.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/OUT06.jpg7681024Matteo Lovadinahttp://www.reelsuspects.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/logo-def.pngMatteo Lovadina2016-01-27 08:17:032022-10-19 14:56:20Breaking News : SCREEN – Reel Suspects teams with ‘Broken Circle Breakdown’ producer
Inarritu, Reygadas Back Emiliano Rocha Minter’s ‘We Are the Flesh’ (EXCLUSIVE)
Reel Suspects sells post-apocalypse horror fantasy which world premieres at Rotterdam Fest
John Hopewell
Chief International Correspondent@john_hopewell
“The Revenant” director Alejandro Gonzalez Iñarritu and Carlos Reygadas, whose 2002 debut “Japan” brought down the flag on a new generation of filmmakers that have revolutionized filmmaking in Mexico, are backing horror thriller “Tenemos la carne” (We Are the Flesh), a flagship title from another new wave of Mexican producers and directors.
Broadening its portfolio of envelope-pushing genre titles, Matteo Lovadina’s Paris-based sales company Reel Suspects has acquired world sales rights to “We Are the Flesh.” It will world premiere Feb. 2 at the Rotterdam Fest’s Bright Future section, with Inarritu and Reygadas taking a “present” credit. Post-production work was carried out at Reygadas’ Splendor Omnia ranch-facility nestling in the Mexican hills one-hour’s drive south of Mexico City. Reygadas, Splendor Omnia’s Natalia Lopez and Splendor Omnia take co-producer credits.
Mexican Emiliano Rocha Minter’s first feature, “We Are the Flesh” is set in a post-apocalypse Mexico, where a brother and sister, Lucio and Fauna, wander a ruined city for years in search of food and shelter. They find their way into one of its last surviving buildings, where a man makes them a dangerous offer to survive the outside world. As they help him transform the building into a womb-like cave, a disquieting sexual relationship emerges, along with a dynamic in which darker instincts do their destructive work.
“We Are the Flesh” is billed as a reaction to – and product of – a culture in which cruelty and lust are linked in a shocking way, as well as a poignant and provocative analysis of Mexico.
“We are very thrilled to work on Emiliano’s first feature that perfectly embodies the rise of a new wave of Mexican cinema,” Lovadina said.
He added: “We Are The Flesh’ is bold and provocative, raw and meaningful, playing with cinema genres in a very modern yet unseen way. I am sure the public will be mesmerized. Festival programmers and buyers will be intrigued by Emiliano’s visual style and direction.”
Rocha Minter broke through to attention – and revealed his technical chops and use of genre tropes with his third short, “Inside,” screened at 2013’s Rotterdam Festival, a B&W suspense-laden drama in which two young men friends dig a hole in the ground in a forest.
As his 24 thanks in IMDB suggests, Inarritu has a long history of encouragement, advice or aid to fellow Mexican and Latin American filmmakers whether Alfonso Cuaron, Guillermo del Toro Reygadas or on Sundance player “The Last Elvis,” from Argentina’s Armando Bo,Inarritu’s co-scribe on “Birdman” and “Biutiful.”
Inarritu and Reygadas’ public enthusiasm for “Flesh” also links them with “Flesh” producers Julio Chavezmontes and Moises Cosio, lynchpin figures in a new second Mexican industry wave which broke through a near decade after Inarritu’s debut, 2000’s “Amores Perros.”
Debuting as a producer with “Halley,” from Sebastian Hoffman, and the lead-producer on “Flesh,” Piano’s Chavezmontes’ Mexico City producer-distributor Piano also produced “”Echo of the Mountain,” Nicolas Echeverria’s 2014 Guadalajara winner, exec produced by Michael Fitzgerald, who produced John Huston’s “The Dead.”
Chavezmontes is currently firing up an ambitious slate of movies, including Hoffman’s “Tiempo Compartido,” a step-up-in-scale follow-up to “Halley,” plus Daniel Graham’s “Opus Zero,” which will star “an important American actor,” and with Reygadas, 2012 Cannes best director winner for “Post Tenebras Lux,” again on board, this time as associate producer.
A producer on Atom Egoyan’s “Remember,” Alejandro Jodorowsky’s Cannes 2013 Directors’ Fortnight hit “The Dance of Reality” and a co-producer of Samuel Jackson-starrer “Kite,” Detalle Films head Cosio teamed in March 2015 with Gerardo Gatica and Alberto Muffelmann to launch Latino indie conglom Panorama Global.
“We Are the Flesh” is co-produced by French director Yann Gonzalez, helmer of Cannes Critics’ Week Special Screening “You and the Night.” Simplemente’s Rune Hansen and Monica Reina serve out of Mexico as associate producers, as does Celia Iturraga.
https://www.reelsuspects.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/WEA04.jpg7681024Matteo Lovadinahttp://www.reelsuspects.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/logo-def.pngMatteo Lovadina2016-01-25 10:11:352022-10-19 14:56:20Breaking News : Variety – Inarritu, Reygadas Back Emiliano Rocha Minter’s ‘We Are the Flesh’ (EXCLUSIVE)
PARIS – Underscoring major territory thirst for world cinema auteur genre, here laced with gleefully oddball humor, Paris-based Reel Suspects has licensed Hungary’s “Manieggs” and Finland’s “Lovemilla” to major territories in Europe and Asia and Latin America, French sales agents’ rising export markets.
A Hollywood action movie spoof and tribute whose characters are all literally eggs which reps Reel Suspects’ first animation acquisition, “Manieggs” has closed Scandinavia (Njuta Films), Russia and CIS (All Media Company), China (Lemon Tree) and South Korea (Alto Media). Per Reel Suspects’ founder Matteo Lovadina, it will be released theatrically in South Korea first quarter 2016. Deal was negotiated by sales exec Alberto Alvarez Aguilera.
Typifying Reel Suspects line in envelope pushing world cinema auteur genre, “Manieggs” turns on Johnny Cupido, wrongfully sent down by law for two weeks. He emerges from jail with sidekick Harry, in an unidentified big American city, to satiating his lust for vengeance. At a tilt action takes in a dastardly Chinese Dragon Clan, cage fights a bank robbery and, in a sub-plot, police corruption.
Directed with scatological abandon by Hungarian Zoltan Miklosy, and produced by Budapest’s Umatik Entertainment, “Manieggs” played France’s Annecy Animation Fest.
“Manieggs” sales come as Reel Suspects continues to roll out Teemu Nikki’s “Lovemilla,” a Finnish fantasy romcom seen at 2015’s Fantastic Fest. Set in an alternative universe, where some people fly, others morph into harmless-enough zombies, “Lovemilla” centers on a highly familiar couple crux: A man who goes out of his way, but the wrong way, to impress his girlfriend, whose affections he doesn’t think he deserves.
A Cannes market hit, then fest fave, “Lovemilla” has recently clinched Colombia (Cinemaran), where it is set for an early 2016 theatrical release, Japan (Transworld Associates) and Australia (SBS).
https://www.reelsuspects.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/MAN_04.jpg7681024Matteo Lovadinahttp://www.reelsuspects.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/logo-def.pngMatteo Lovadina2016-01-17 16:45:312022-10-19 14:55:06Breaking News : Variety – Reel Suspects Rolls Out ‘Manieggs’ and ‘Lovemilla’ (EXCLUSIVE)
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