Politics continues to trump business at this year’s Cannes film festival, with little in the way of deals out of the Marché, but lots of activist agitation on the red carpet and beyond.
Cannes’ first weekend, traditionally the period when the bidding wars begin and the first big buys are announced, has been almost frighteningly quiet. There was a single big deal — Mubi’s $20 million multi-territory deal, including North America, the U.K., Latin America and other countries — for the Lynne Ramsay’s Jennifer Lawrence Robert Pattinson starrer Die, My Love. It was a major deal for a finished film but also threw into sharp relief the lack of major pre-sales at Cannes so far, despite a market featuring jam-packed with hot packages.
The cautious, wait-and-see approach from buyers — already in evidence in Sundance and Berlin — continues amid growing uncertainty over financing and distribution models and, let’s face it, over the future of the movie business itself.
Donald Trump’s plan to impose tariffs on “foreign-made” films, launched just ahead of Cannes, went off like a bomb under the already shaky foundations of the indie industry. Just how much damage has been done will only be possible to assess post-market when the dust has settled.
“The idea of tariffs is spooking people, especially financiers,” said one veteran indie producer. “Financiers are already a jumpy bunch, and anything that gives them a reason to doubt the viability of the domestic market, the value of a U.S. presale, is poison.”
Most sales execs don’t expect the Trump pronouncement to adversely affect deals — there are no tariffs yet, and it isn’t clear if there ever will be — but the news killed any positive vibes sellers had going into Cannes. Not that things were sunny on the sales front. On the domestic side, the Sundance Film Festival had some of its slowest dealmaking in recent memory. Neon’s deal for thriller Together, Netflix’s for likely awards hopeful Train Dreams and A24’s for Eva Victor’s Sorry, Baby (also screening in Cannes) were the standouts of an otherwise demoralizing market. In the months after the Park City fest, smaller operations like Magnolia, Briarcliff, Greenwich and Mubi have scooped up a handful of the best-reviewed of the fest, leaving the majority still in limbo.
Berlin also started out slow — most of the deals reported during the EFM were smaller domestic pickups of international art house features, with Sony Pictures Classics taking Rebecca Zlotowski’s French-language murder mystery Vie Privée starring Jodie Foster (a Cannes premiere), Mubi snatching up North American rights to Oliver Hermanus’ gay romance The History of Sound (a Cannes competition title), and IFC Films and Shudder jointly acquiring Sean Byrne’s shark and serial killer thriller Dangerous Animals, which also screened at the Marché.
But a pre-buy bidding war that started in Berlin over the Lena Dunham-directed rom-com Good Sex, set to star Natalie Portman, closed in the weeks after the market, with Netflix emerging victorious, inking a worldwide deal with CAA Media Finance and FilmNation reportedly priced at the $55 million mark.
So it may be with the Marché. Several festival titles, still unsold for the U.S., are attracting interest, and if deals aren’t signed on the Croisette, many will likely close by the summer. Sean Baker, who triumphed here last year with Anora, winning the Palme d’Or en route to awards season glory and a best picture win at the Oscars, is drawing interest for Shih-Ching Tsou’s Left-Handed Girl, the feature Baker co-wrote, and edited, which screened in Cannes Critics Week. The drama follows a single mother and her two daughters who return to Taipei after several years of living in the countryside to open a stand at a buzzing night market. Le Pacte is handling sales.
Frank Dillane in ‘Urchin.’
Courtesy of Charades
Urchin, the directorial debut of Babygirl and Triangle of Sadness star Harris Dickinson, which had its bow in Un Certain Regard, also has multiple buyers circling. Frank Dillane plays a self-destructive addict in the dark drama, which Charades is selling worldwide. THR’s review said the film gives Dickinson “a convincing claim for multihyphenate status.” The jury is still out on Kristen Stewart’s claim to that title. The Twilight star’s hotly anticipated turn behind the camera, The Chronology of Water, bowed in Un Certain Regard to mixed reviews and a muted response from the premiere crowd. The film, adapted from Lidia Yuknavitch’s acclaimed 2011 memoir of the same name, stars Imogen Poots, Thora Birch, Nick Cave’s son Earl Cave and Sonic Youth bassist Kim Gordon.
Stewart has acknowledged she rushed to finish the film for Cannes, so she may be going back to the editing suite before a final cut emerges. Whatever the critical response — and many seem to love the movie — Stewart’s global fan base means the title will sell (WME Independent are handling North American sales, Les Films du Losange international). It’s only a question of when and for how much.
‘Sirat’
Quim Vives
On the foreign-language side, Óliver Laxe’s Sirat is heating up, with sales outfit The Match Factory fielding multiple offers. In the French-born Spanish director’s fourth feature, his first in Cannes competition, a father and son join a group of itinerant ravers in the deserts of Morocco. The Hollywood Reporter’s review called it a “techno-infused meditation on death and grief.” Shot entirely on Super 16mm, Sirat may be too art house for studio speciality labels, but expect the indie buyers to step up.
Fatih Akin’s Amrum, an out-of-competition title, sold well ahead of Cannes, with Beta Cinema closing multiple international deals, including for France, Spain, Japan and Brazil. Beta says it is in negotiations with multiple domestic buyers for the period coming-of-age tale, set on a picturesque, windswept German island in the final days of World War II. Diane Kruger, who last teamed with Akin for In the Fade (2017), which won her the best actress honor in Cannes, has a supporting role in Amrum.
Business aside, the festival is getting high marks from the critics, with the competition line-up already throwing up multiple Palme d’Or contenders. At the half-way mark, Sirât is a strong contender for the top prize, as is The Sound of Falling, the second feature from German director Mascha Schilinski (Dark Blue Girl), which depicts four generations of young women inhabiting the same farmhouse in northeast Germany. In a rave, THR called the drama a “haunting meditation on womanhood and rural strife that heralds the arrival of a bold new talent.” But the film’s slow pace and long running time — it clocks in at 2 hours 29 minutes — had some viewers stifling yawns.
Joaquin Phoenix (left) and Pedro Pascal in ‘Eddington.’
Courtesy of A24
Ari Aster’s Eddington, arguably the most-hyped movie coming into Cannes, split audiences. Joaquin Phoenix, Pedro Pascal, Emma Stone, Austin Butler, Micheal Ward and Luke Grimes star in the drama, which is set in a small town in New Mexico in May 2020 and depicts a mayoral campaign between the COVID-sceptic sheriff Joe Cross (Phoenix) and the COVID-conscious incumbent Ted Garcia (Pascal). As the campaign intensifies, so does the pandemonium of the pandemic era, with news coverage and social media posts stoking the flames of right-wing conspiracy, rising racial reckoning and protests against police brutality. The film drew raves and pans in equal measure. THR was definitely in the pan camp. “A neo-Western, which confuses absurdism with incoherence,” was our verdict (see page 34).
But the critics have never been great at predicting which film the Cannes jury will go for. In a week’s time, the nine jury members under president Juliette Binoche could surprise us all.
