The Impossible to launch into international market in Toronto

by Sergio Ríos Pérez

10/08/2012 - Spain’s most ambitious production of the year, The Impossible, Juan Antonio Bayona (Barcelona, 1975)’s second feature after his successful The Orphanage [trailer] (2007), is finally in its launching phase before its worldwide release. The Toronto Film Festival is to be a platform for the film’s worldwide launch, a perfectly logical choice for a film shot in English with an international cast and a story set during a tragedy that shook the whole world.

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After being presented at the Canadian event’s international market during the first half of September, The Impossible is then to go to the San Sebastián Film Festival during the second half of the same month. Its screening at the event, where it will appear in the Official Selection out of competition, will be mostly intended for the film’s promotion before Warner Bros releases it on the Spanish market on October 11.

Written by Bayona himself with Sergio G. Sánchez, The Impossible is based on real events, the December 2004 tsunami that devastated the Thai coastline. The film’s main characters are Maria (Naomi Watts) and Henry (Ewan McGregor) who are spending a few days on holiday with their three children in the Asian country. On the morning of December 26, an enormous wall of black water makes its way from the sea to the coastline. The couple start a desperate search to find their children.

The Impossible is produced by Belén Atienza and Enrique López Lavigne for Apaches Entertainment with Álvaro Augustín for Telecinco Cinema on a budget of around €40 million. Its distribution rights have been acquired by Entertainment One (United Kingdom and Canada), Nordisk Film (Scandinavia), Independent Film (the Netherlands), TMG (Germany), Ascot Elite(Switzerland), IDC (Latin America), Lotte Entertainment (South Korea), Mongkol Major (Thailand), and CatchPlay (Taiwan) among others.

(Translated from Spanish)