Michel Gondry’s The We and the I smiles for Kinology

15/02/2012

The European Film Market at the 62nd Berlinale was buzzing for Franco-American production The We and the I by Michel Gondry (photo), pre-sold by the Parisian company Kinology. The new film by the director of Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind was filmed last year in New York in the Bronx, and follows high school students on the bus home on the last day of the school year. The film is a sort of study of group dynamics and the evolution of relationships as the bus gradually becomes emptier, and has been acquired in Berlin for several small territories, according to Grégoire Melin, who will unveil footage from the film a few weeks before Cannes, where he will also be counting on Cosmopolis by David Cronenberg (article), already pre-sold practically everywhere in the world.

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Kinology also worked fruitfully in Berlin with Wrong [+see also:
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film profile] by Quentin Dupieux (discovered in competition at Sundance - article), a film that should find buyers all over the world, and interest was shown in La vie d’une autre [+see also:
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film profile] by Sylvie Testud (article) as well as Emergo by Carles Torrens (written and produced by Rodrigo Cortés) to benefit from a great American launch in June.

As for the market’s general tendencies, Grégoire Melin considers it to be “a little restrained, like the previous markets, with distributors being cautious but sensitive to well-finished productions.”

“There are a lot of meetings,” he said, “but they are waiting for the right moment. Of course there have been favourites, but there have also been surprises such as the international success of Untouchable [+see also:
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film profile] that has made all buyers look for French comedies, to the loss of other innovative films that they may look at in six months time.”

In Kinology’s festival line-up are also films in post-production: Fly me to the Moon by Pascal Chaumeil (readmore - with Dany Boon and Diane Kruger) to premier at Cannes, Welcome to Argentina by Edouard Deluc (article), and Ce que le jour doit à la nuit by Alexandre Arcady. Still in production, Overdrive [+see also:
trailer
film profile] by Antonio Negret, the documentary Terre des ours by Guillaume Vincent, and Mune by the duo Alexandre Heboyan and Benoît Philippon stand out, alongside the mysterious Upside Down by Juan Solanas with Kirsten Dunst, already finished and waiting for its time to shine.