16/05/2023 - Shining especially bright in the line-up is Anatomy of a Fall in competition, alongside four titles in the Un Certain Regard section by Molly Manning Walker, Monia Chokri, Felipe Gálvez and Wei Shujun

The Marché du Film (16 – 24 May), unspooling within the 76th Cannes Film Festival, has started very well today for the mk2 Films international sales team, steered by Fionnuala Jamison, who’ll be relying on a promising squadron of seven feature films set for the Official Selection showcase.

Standing tall amongst them is a title in contention for the Palme d’Or: Anatomy of a Fall [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Justine Triet
film profile] by Justine Triet. Her 4th feature, starring Germany’s Sandra Hüller in the lead role (alongside Swann Arlaud, Milo Machado Graner, Antoine Reinartz, Samuel Theis, Jehnny Beth and Saadia Bentaieb, among others), sees the French filmmaker taking her 4th bow on the Croisette after Age of Panic [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile] (revealed in the 2013 ACID line-up), In Bed With Victoria [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Justine Triet
film profile] (Critics’ Week 2016) and Sibyl [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Justine Triet
film profile] (gracing the official competition in 2019). The film is produced by Les Films Pelléas and Les Films de Pierre, with distribution in France entrusted to Le Pacte.

Young international talents are also clearly valuable to mk2, with two of their first feature films and two second works selected for the Un Certain Regard section. Stealing focus in the first films line-up is How To Have Sex [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Molly Manning Walker
film profile] by English director Molly Manning Walker (awarded the 2021 Next Step Prize at Cannes’ Critics’ Week) and The Settlers [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Felipe Gálvez
film profile] by Felipe Gálvez (another former Next Step contender), which is produced by Chile (Quijote Films) in co-production with Argentina (Rei Cine), Denmark (Snowglobe), the UK (Quiddity Films) and France (Ciné-Sud Promotion). Likewise in on the action are second features The Nature of Love [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Monia Chokri
film profile] by Quebec’s Monia Chokri (who presented her first feature film A Brother’s Love in the Un Certain Regard section in 2019), co-produced by France’s MK Productions, and Only the River Flows by Chinese director Wei Shujun (awarded the Official Selection Label in 2020 for Striding Into the Wind).

Mk2 will also be wagering on the French documentary Room 999 by Lubna Playoust, who interviewed 30 famous filmmakers in Cannes last year on the subject of the future of cinema. Familiar faces in the film include Wim Wenders, Audrey Diwan, Joachim Trier, David Cronenberg, James Gray, Arnaud Desplechin, Lynne Ramsay, Asghar Farhadi, Nadav Lapid, Claire Denis, Baz Luhrmann, Alice Winocour, Olivier Assayas, Paolo Sorrentino, Agnès Jaoui, Kirill Serebrennikov, Cristian Mungiu, Kleber Mendonça Filho, Albert Serra, Pietro Marcello, Rebecca Zlotowski, Ruben Östlund and Alice Rohrwacher.

Last but not least, Jérémie Périn’s animated French movie Mars Express [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Jérémie Périn
film profile] is set to world premiere in the Cinéma de la Plage line-up.

In terms of market screenings, titles on the agenda include the American-French-Luxembourg-Irish animation The Inventor, by Jim Capobianco (selected in competition for the upcoming Annecy Animation Film Festival), and as yet unseen promo reels for post-production titles The Successor [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Xavier Legrand
film profile] by Xavier Legrand and Irish dramedy Four Mothers by Darren Thornton. Pre-sales will also be continuing on three other feature films in post-production (the French-Belgian production The Falling Star [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Dominique Abel & Fiona Gordon
film profile] by Dominique Abel and Fiona Gordon, And The Party Goes On by Robert Guédiguian (article), and Silent Roar [+see also:
film review
film profile] by British director Johnny Barrington), as well as on Alex Helfrecht’s animated movie in production A Winter’s Journey and, in pre-production, Paul Bolger’s Outfoxed!, not to mention the sales set to wrap on American director Tina Satter’s offering Reality (unveiled in Berlin’s Panorama line-up) and on Sophie Barthes’ The Pod Generation [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile] (discovered at the Sundance Festival). In short, it’s a full-bodied and impossibly promising line-up touted by mk2 Films in Cannes, which is soon to be bolstered by further announcements yet to be made.

(Translated from French)