Breaking News : SCREEN // BiFan winner ‘Black Hollow Cage’ sells to North America

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BiFan winner ‘Black Hollow Cage’ sells to North America

BY TOM GRATER8 SEPTEMBER 2017

BLACK HOLLOW CAGE

Paris-based Reel Suspects has scored an early TIFF deal for North American rights on its sci-fi horror Black Hollow Cage.

Toronto-based distributor levelFILM has picked up the title and is planning a theatrical release in early 2018.

Directed by Sadrac Gonzales Perellon, the film had its premiere in July at Switzerland’s Neuchatel International Fantastic Film Festival and subsequently played at Korea’s BiFan, where it scooped the grand jury prize.

The film follows a girl who lives secluded in a house in the woods with only the company of her father and a wolfhound. She finds a mysterious cubic device with the ability to change the past.

The deal has been negotiated by David Hudakoc and Leslie Semichon during the first day of TIFF.

David Hudakoc, managing partner at levelFILM, said: “We are excited to partner with Reel Suspects and to release Black Hollow Cage. Sadrac Gonzalez-Perellón is an incredible talent and this intelligent, stylized and gripping film is one we can’t wait to bring to audiences.”

Matteo Lovadina, Reel Suspects CEO: “We are happy to partner with levelFILM on this feature, and bring it to north American audiences. We are sure that it will attract the public thanks to its crossover potential and incisive narrative.”

“With Theatrical releases already planned in South Korea, Japan, Spain, UK, China and now USA and Canada, Black Hollow Cage confirms to be one of the most attractive genre films of the year”.

Breaking News : Cineuropa // The Man with the Magic Box in the line-up of Reel Suspects

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The Man with the Magic Box in the line-up of Reel Suspects

by Fabien Lemercier

 – Start of pre-sales at Toronto for the new film by Polish filmmaker Bodo Kox, showcased in Work in Progress at Karlovy Vary

The Man with the Magic Box by Bodo Kox (© Bartosz Mrozowski)

The Man with the Magic Box, the new film by talented Polish filmmaker Bodo Kox, will be the headliner at the Toronto Film Festival (from 7 to 17 September) for the French company Reel Suspects. The company is led by Matteo Lovadina and will launch the sales for the film in Canada. Showcased in July in Work in Progress at Karlovy Vary, this feature film (whose script has been written by the director) begins in a close and dystopian future. By moving into an old building and listening to a strange radio he finds in a closet, Adam travels in time back to the 1950s. But what begins as a hallucination or a dream becomes a politically subversive reality that threatens his existence in 2030.

“The Man with the Magic Box is an amazing film, very creative and original, with a cinematographic approach that surpasses boundaries,” highlights Matteo Lovadina. “The female character at the centre of the story fits in perfectly with this new movement that places women in the foreground, devoid of sexualisation, a heroine, a woman who inverts conventional roles. This film also reinforces our traditional attachment to avant-garde Polish directors, following Demon [+] de Marcin Wrona, and our editorial line, which has always focused on films from European genres.”

Icon of off-beat Polish cinema (Marco P. and the Bike Thieves, Doppelganger), Bodo Kox moved into the mainstream in 2013 with his previous opus The Girl from the Wardrobe [+], unveiled at Karlovy Vary and which, among other awards, notably took home the Eagle for Discovery of the Year at the Polish Film Awards in 2014.

With Piotr Palak and Olga Boladz in the lead roles, The Man with the Magic Box, which is currently in the final stages of post-production, has been produced by the Poles of Alter Ego Pictures and the Italians of Vargo Film, and has notably been supported by the Polish Film Institute and Creative Europe – Media Development.

The line-up of Reel Suspects at Toronto also includes the Portuguese production Levianoby Justin Amorim (a debut feature film on adolescents who join forces to find two family members who mysteriously disappeared on the same night), the Latvian psychological thriller Firstborn by Aik Karapetian (whose international premiere will take place next Thursday in Paris at the L’Etrange Festival), the Spanish film Black Hollow Cage by Sadrac González-Perellón (Prix du Jury this summer at BiFan – the fantasy film festival of Puchon, and which will be in competition at Sitges in October), and Children of the Night [+] by the Italian Andrea de Sica (crowned best young director by his country’s cinema journalists at the Nastri d’Argento 2017).

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