20/10/2006

Releasing a film the opening week of the London Film Festival (LFF), the UK capital’s biggest film celebration of the year, is a challenge being taken on by 10 distributors today, including Sony Pictures, with Sofia Coppola’s highly-anticipated Marie-Antoinette; independent distributors Artificial Eye, with the French/Moroccan/Spanish film I Saw Ben Barka Get Killed; Tartan Distribution with the UK film The Great Ecstasy of Robert Carmichael; and Lionsgate UK with the other UK feature film debut, Gypo.

Artificial Eye will launch Serge Le Péron’s drama I Saw Ben Barka Get Killed on four prints while handling nine other titles at the LFF, such as Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s Climates [+see also:
trailer
interview: Zeynep Ozbatur
film profile], Paolo Sorrentino’s The Family Friend, Aki Kaurismäki’s Lights in the Dusk [+see also:
trailer
film profile] and Otar Iosseliani’s Gardens in Autumn.

The Great Ecstasy of Robert Carmichael by promising UK filmmaker Thomas Clay (read interview) is finally being released in the UK by Tartan Films, although with only one London print. The film raised much controversy when it premiered at the Critics’ Week in Cannes 2005, and was quickly sold to a handful of key European territories. But its chances to create the same level of awareness in the UK – especially the week of the LFF – seem rather remote.

Gypo, by the other upcoming UK filmmaker, Jann Dunn, was also made in 2005 and has since won several awards at festivals around the world. The film was shot in a pseudo-documentary style, and is the first UK feature film to be certified as an official Dogme95 film. Lionsgate UK is bringing it to UK audiences on a handful of screens.

The fourth European release of the day, KZ by Rex Bloomstein, is a documentary about the former concentration camp in the small Upper Austrian town of Mauthausen. The film is being released by the independent filmmaker’s brand Shooting People Films at the ICA and will be available on retail DVD at the end of the month.