02/05/2024 - The French international sales agent will be pinning its hopes on Payal Kapadia’s competition title All We Imagine as Light and on Simon of the Mountain in the Critics’ Week

For the second time since it was founded in 2016, French international sales agent Luxbox (headed up by Fiorella Moretti) will be brandishing a Palme d’Or contender on its line-up. After The Restless [+see also:
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The second feature by the Indian filmmaker, and her first fiction film, following the documentary A Night of Knowing Nothing [+see also:
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film profile] (which was first unveiled in the 2021 Directors’ Fortnight and was singled out with the Golden Eye for Best Documentary at Cannes that year), All We Imagine as Light (the screenplay for which was penned by the director herself) revolves around a Mumbai-based nurse called Prabha, whose routine is disrupted when she receives an unexpected gift from her estranged husband. Her younger roommate, Anu, tries in vain to find a spot in the city to be intimate with her boyfriend. A trip to a beach town allows them to find a space for their desires to manifest themselves.

Produced by Thomas Hakim and Julien Graff for French outfit Petit Chaos, the film was co-produced by Arte France Cinéma, Baldr Film (Netherlands), Chalk & Cheese (India), Another Birth (India), Les Films Fauves (Luxembourg) and Pulpa Film (Italy). It has been backed by the CNC’s World Cinema Support and by the Gan Foundation for Cinema. It was developed in partnership with Geko Films. The French theatrical release will be handled by Condor.

The sales team at Luxbox, led by Jennyfer Gautier, also fully intends to seal some fruitful deals for its second title selected to tread the Croisette: Simon of the Mountain by Federico Luis, a production bringing together Argentina, Chile and Uruguay that will be showcased in competition in the Critics’ Week.

Also on the line-up is The Dog Thief by Chile’s Vinko Tomičić Salinas, which will have its world premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival (5-16 June), in the international competition. The feature, which focuses on a shoe-shiner working on the streets of La Paz, Bolivia, who decides to steal the dog belonging to his best client, a solitary tailor whom he has started to think of as a father figure, was co-produced by French firm Easy Riders Films and by Italy’s Movimento Film.

Also of note, currently in pre-production, is Red Rocks by Bruno Dumont (produced by Paris-based company Tessalit Productions, together with Italy’s Nightswim, Belgium’s Novak Prod and Portugal’s Rosa Filmes) and, in post-production, Lazy Girls by Karim Dridi (Bye-Bye, Khamsa [+see also:
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film profile]), which follows the misadventures of two girls who are evicted from their squat (a production by French companies Mirak Films and Les Films du Veyrier). And that’s not to mention a clutch of movies selected for Berlin, such as the competition title Who Do I Belong To [+see also:
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film profile] by Argentina’s Lola Arias (selected in the Forum), and Through Rocks and Clouds by Peru’s Franco García Becerra (selected in Generation).

(Translated from French)