27/05/2006

Paris-based Onoma, under the aegis of veteran French sales executive Pascal Diot, headed Cannes with three appealing feature films offered for the first time to buyers, closing major deals on all of them. Hungary’s White Palm [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Szabolcs Hajdu
film profile] by Szabolcs Hadju, winner of five tops awards at the latest Hungarian Film Week, was still waiting to have its official presentation at the Directors’ Fortnight at press time. But thanks to two previous buyers-only screenings at the Market, Diot was very close to finalising sales for Canada, Italy, Spain, Scandinavia, Japan and the US.

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Belle Toujours [+see also:
trailer
film profile], by Portuguese maestro Manoel de Oliveira, was unveiled to selected buyers at two private screenings and won over Italy (Mikado), the US (New Yorker), Quebec (Fun Films) and Japan. As for French children’s adventure film Red Needles [+see also:
trailer
film profile] (Les aiguilles rouges) by Jean-François Davy, which just opened in France through Carrère Distribution and garnered 172,280 admissions from 266 prints, it was sold to Spain (Baditri), Turkey, Brazil and Thaïland.

“All the buyers were here, perhaps fewer from Korea, but it remains a difficult territory”, stressed Diot. “The same goes for the UK, which remains quite difficult for French films.” Makes a point of distributing films that he loves, Diot started negotiations on Nora Hoppe’s second feature film, La fine del mare, a French/Italian/German co-production that will be available next autumn.