12/05/2025 - The German company takes the sophomore feature of Portuguese director Pedro Cabeleira, a crime drama that promises to thrill, to the Marché du Film

Berlin-based sales outfit Pluto Film will be selling Portuguese-French co-production Night Passengers by Pedro Cabeleira at Cannes' Marché du Film (13-21 May), which is also world-premiering in Cannes’ ACID sidebar. The ACID programme describes the Portuguese-language film as a “gangster film like no other”, playing with tropes of the genre and blending crime and thriller elements.

Cabeleira’s first feature, the low-budget film Damned Summer [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Pedro Cabeleira
film profile], premiered at Locarno in 2017. The director himself was born in the town of Entroncamento, which is the original title of the film and where it is set. In Night Passengers, Laura arrives in Entroncamento, described as a place where “violence, misfortune, greed and loyalty rule the streets”. In this small town, she plans to escape her troubled past and rebuild her life, only to be drawn back in by the promise of fast-earned money and crime.

The film was penned by Cabeleira together with Diogo Figueira. The cast features Ana Vilaça, Cleo Diára, Rafael Morais, Tiago Costa, Sérgio Coragem, André Simões and Henrique Barbosa. Cinematography is by Leonor Teles. The film was produced by Abel Ribeiro Chaves for Portugal’s OPTEC Filmes and co-produced by Edyta Janczak-Hiriart of France’s Kometa Films.

In Cannes, Pluto Film will also continue to sell German thriller Hysteria [+see also:
film review
interview: Devrim Lingnau
interview: Mehmet Akif Büyükatalay
film profile] by Mehmet Akif Büyükatalay and German family film Circusboy [+see also:
film review
interview: Julia Lemke, Anna Koch
film profile] by Julia Lemke and Anna Koch, which it brought to the Panorama and Generation K+ sections in Berlin, respectively. Hysteria secured the Europa Cinemas Label Award for Best European Film. It will also showcase Xiaoxuan Jiang’s Venice-premiered To Kill a Mongolian Horse, Mathijs Poppe’s intimate documentary The Jacket [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Mathijs Poppe
film profile], Roya Sadat’s Afghanistan-set historical drama Sima’s Song [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile], Eric Lamhène’s psychological sister tale Breathing Underwater [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Eric Lamhène, Rae Lyn Lee
film profile], Egil Pedersen’s My Father’s Daughter [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile], Finbarr Wilbrink and Martijn Blekendaal’s The Underground Railroad, Soleen Yusef’s Winners [+see also:
interview: Soleen Yusef
film profile] and Josef Hader’s Austrian comedy Andrea Gets a Divorce [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile].