08/05/2025 - The French sales agent is betting on I Only Rest In The Storm from Portuguese director Pedro Pinho and on Homebound by Indian director Neeraj Ghaywan

In action for the first time on the Croisette under its new name, French sales company Paradise City Sales (formerly Memento International), headed by Émilie Georges, will be surfing the waves at the 78th Cannes Film Festival Marché du Film (13-21 May) with two films from its line-up selected in the Official Selection in Un Certain Regard.

The first is I Only Rest In The Storm by Portuguese director Pedro Pinho (noted at the Directors' Fortnight in 2017 with The Nothing Factory [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Pedro Pinho
film profile] and in the Generation programme at the Berlinale in 2013 with Um Fim do Mundo). Starring Sérgio Coragem, Cleo Diára and Jonathan Guilherme, the film centres on Sergio, who travels to a West African metropolis to work for an NGO as an environmental engineer on a road project between desert and forest. There, he becomes involved in an intimate but unbalanced relationship with two local residents, Diara and Gui. As the neo-colonial dynamic within the expatriate community unravels, this fragile bond becomes his only refuge against an imminent collapse into loneliness or barbarism... The film was produced by Terratreme Filmes (Portugal) with Still Moving (France), deFilm (Romania) and Bubbles Project (Brazil). French theatrical distribution rights have been acquired by Météore Films.

During Un Certain Regard, the Paradise City Sales team led by Alexandre Moreau will also be counting on Homebound by Indian director Neeraj Ghaywan (who returns to a Cannes selection where he won a Special Prize in 2015 with Masaan [+see also:
trailer
film profile]), a film centred on two childhood friends from a small North Indian village who chase a police job that promises them the dignity they’ve long been denied. But as they inch closer to their dream, mounting desperation threatens the bond that holds them together… This Indian production was co-produced by France's Mélita Toscan du Plantier and Martin Scorsese is credited as executive producer.

Joining the line-up is Australian director Warwick Thornton's Wolfram, a sequel to Sweet Country (Special Jury Prize at Venice and winner of the Platform competition in Toronto in 2017).

Paradise City Sales will also be negotiating for American Alexandra Pechman's The Murderous Miss Highsmith (in pre-production with Shailene Woodley, Cara Delevingne and Noémie Merlant in the cast) and in post-production on Saudi Arabian Haifaa Al-Mansour's Unidentified, Damiano Michieletto's Italian-French co-production Primavera and Belgian Laurent Micheli's Nino In Paradise (article).

Let’s not forget recent titles Atropia (Grand Jury Prize in the US Cinema Dramatic Competition at Sundance) by Hailey Gates, the documentary Ancestral Visions of the Future [+see also:
film review
film profile] by Lemohang Jeremiah Mosese from Lesotho and The Ugly Stepsister [+see also:
film review
film profile] by Norwegian Emilie Blichfeldt (which played in the Midnight section at Sundance and the Panorama at the Berlinale).

(Translated from French)