The Match Factory Reports Red Hot Sales For Berlin Silver Bear Grand Jury Prize Winner ‘Afire’

Elsa Keslassy International Correspondent Kino Lorber has bought U.S. and Anglo-Canadian distribution rights to Nicolas Philibert’s poignant documentary “On the Adamant” which just won the Golden Bear at this year’s Berlin Film Festival. Kino Lorber is planning a theatrical release later this year followed by a digital and home video release on all major platforms. Sold by Films du Losange, “On the Adamant” takes place at a unique day-care centre for adults suffering from mental disorders. Located in a structure floating the middle of the Seine, in Paris, the center heals these adults with a blend of therapy, education, and culture rooted in music and the arts. The affecting documentary follows the team running the Adamant as they attempt to transform and uplift the lives for these people.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Chilean filmmaker Maite Alberdi’s documentary about love, memory and Alzheimer’s disease “The Eternal Memory” has scored a slew of international sales after making a splash at Sundance and Berlin. Dogwoof, the British sales company specialized in high-profile docs, has announced multiple deals on “Eternal Memory,” which won the Sundance Grand Jury Prize for World Documentary in January and was a recent standout at the Berlinale where it had its European bow. The hot doc is screening later this week at the CPH:DOX documentary film festival in Copenhagen. Dogwoof partnered with MTV Documentary Films to represent “The Eternal Memory” for international sales soon after its Sundance premiere. They have now scored sales on the doc to: Edge Entertainment (Nordics); Madman (Australia and New Zealand); Sherry Media (Canada); I Wonder Pictures (Italy); BTeam Pictures (Spain); Periscoop (Benelux); Atnine Film (South Korea); Synca (Japan); LEV (Israel), and Restart (Former Yugoslavia).

Marta Balaga European Film Promotion (EFP), an international network of film promotion institutes from 37 countries, is heading back to Hong Kong’s FilMart for its in-person return. “It wasn’t clear if the reopening of the market [post-pandemic] will immediately lead to business, but people want to reconnect with local companies,” observes deputy managing director Jo Mühlberger. This year, 28 sales companies from five European countries will be joining EFP’s Europe! Umbrella (22 onsite and six online). Most of them hail from France, as Unifrance won’t have its own stand, explains Mühlberger.

filmmaker Jarmusch and Carter Logan, announced their debut LP ‘Silver Haze’ with the release of their new single’s video. The new song and its video features footage and music from as long-ago as the late ’80s.“Jim created the basic guitar tracks first in his home studio, with memories of living in Berlin in 1987 floating around him,” the band said in a statement, as per Pitchforck.

Leo Barraclough International Features Editor The first image has been unveiled from Miguel Gomes’ upcoming late 1910s drama “Grand Tour,” which is being sold by The Match Factory. The film is currently shooting in Italy, and stars Gonçalo Waddington and Crista Alfaiate. “Grand Tour” comes after the successful international sales and distribution of Gomes’ critically acclaimed features “Tabu,” “Arabian Nights” and “The Tsugua Diaries” – all titles sold by The Match Factory. “Grand Tour” kicks off in Rangoon, Burma, 1917. Edward, a civil servant for the British Empire, runs away from his fiancée Molly the day she arrives to get married. During his travels, however, panic gives way to melancholy. Contemplating the emptiness of his existence, the cowardly Edward wonders what has become of Molly… Yet Molly, determined to get married and amused by his move, follows his trail on this Asian grand tour.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Italian sales company True Colours has closed a raft of sales following Berlin’s European Film Market. Italy’s box office hit “La Stranezza” (“Strangeness”) got picked up for a dozen territories and queer romantic drama “Norwegian Dream” also sold widely, including to North America. Directed by Roberto Andò, “Strangeness” (pictured) toplines Toni Servillo (“The Great Beauty”) as Nobel-prize-winning playwright Luigi Pirandello. This tragicomic period piece about how Pirandello found inspiration to write his masterpiece “Six Characters in Search of an Author” has been a sleeper hit at the Italian box office, coming from nowhere to pull more than €5.5 million ($5.8 million) and becoming the local 2022 box office champ.

Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy will be missing out on the Academy Awards for the second year in a row.

EXCLUSIVE: Paris-based Alpha Violet has posted fresh sales on Mexican director Lila Avilés’s family drama Tótem, which world premiered in competition at the Berlinale to acclaim in February.

At nearly 4 million residents, Berlin is the largest city in the European Union – and one of the coolest we’ve ever visited!

Sony Pictures Classics has picked up all rights in North America, Latin America and European Europe (excluding Hungary) to the Ilker Çatak drama The Teachers’ Lounge, which won both the Europa Cinemas Label award and the CICAE Arthouse Cinema award at this year’s Berlin Film Festival.

Sideshow and Janus Films have acquired North American rights for German director Christian Petzold’s new film Afire, following its award-winning world premiere in competition at the Berlin Film Festival.

Bill Murray and star Jeannie Berlin set foot on the red carpet of the 2023 SAG Awards holding hands.Murray and Berlin appeared quite close when they arrived together for Sunday's soiree at the Fairmont Century Plaza in Los Angeles. The star wore a black tuxedo with a colorful bow tie, while Berlin sported an all-black suit and shades.Berlin, who portrayed Hadassah Fabelman in the Steven Spielberg film, was there for the film's nomination in the Best Ensemble Cast in a Motion Picture category.

Film at Lincoln Center and the Museum of Modern Art have set Savanah Leaf’s Earth Mama and Vuk Lungulov-Klotz’s Sundance Special Jury Award winner Mutt, both debut features, as opening and closing film at the 52st edition of their collaboration, New Directors/New Films, running March 29–April 9 in NYC.

With the delicacy of a bee probing a flower for pollen, Basque director Estibaliz Urresola Solaguren picks her way through the tensions and dilemmas within a family where the youngest member, an 8-year-old boy called Aitor, is feeling his way toward a new identity as a girl. Sofia Otero, who deservedly won the Silver Bear for a lead performer at the Berlinale’s award night Saturday, shows an instinctive, unforced and generous understanding of how difficult her character’s life must be. As Coco – the between-stools nickname the family has devised to avoid anything too specifically gendered – Otero is alternately obstinate, tearful, mischievous and withdrawn. She craves her mother’s comprehension but pushes her away when she tries to talk to her about why she doesn’t want to go to school.  

EXCLUSIVE: HBO Films has closed a deal for U.S. rights to the Berlin Film Festival buzz competition title Reality. Directed by Tina Satter, the docudrama is a breakout turn for Sydney Sweeney as convicted classified document leaker Reality Winner. Sweeney stars in the hit HBO series Euphoria.

EXCLUSIVE: Smokehouse TV and 101 Studios have made a multiyear overall deal for original scripted and unscripted content for television.

Martin Dale Contributor Portuguese producers Pandora Cunha Telles and Pablo Iraola, of Ukbar Filmes, are bringing a delegation of six Portuguese women helmers to the Berlinale, to showcase their ambitious project “Told by Women,” – a slate of 10 TV movies by 10 first-time women filmmakers – coproduced with Portuguese public broadcaster, RTP. The producers have lined up an intensive mentoring experience with leading international women producers that aims to endow them with the tools to embrace new challenges. The first season of five films of “Told by Women” was broadcast by RTP in October 2022, to strong ratings, and the second season of five films will bow this spring.

Naman Ramachandran Berlin’s just concluded European Film Market (EFM), which had a physical edition this year after two online editions in 2021 and 2022 due to the pandemic, has reported “record results” according to the organizers. There were 230 stands and 612 companies from 78 countries and more than 11,500 market participants from 132 countries. Some 773 films were shown in 1,533 screenings, including 647 online screenings and 599 market premieres. The total number of buyers also rose to 1,302. 629 film projects were presented on the new Producers & Project Pages. “After the past two irregular years, we’re pleased to return to the physical in full force, and with a vibrant, bustling and strong market. The exhibition areas at Gropius Bau and the Marriott Hotel were sold out, and the exhibitors reported strong sales and good business. The decision to group all the market happenings together with the Berlinale Series Market and the market screenings at Potsdamer Platz, and to provide the industry with an efficient infrastructure, was extremely well-received by our market participants,” said EFM director Dennis Ruh.

Doctor Zhivago, Casablanca, Amour. Over the decades, cinema has produced some fictional love stories of enduring beauty and resonance. But for sheer emotional force, even those classics may not rival the true love story told in The Eternal Memory.

John Hopewell Chief International Correspondent “A Cielo Abierto,” the latest film from Oscar-nominated Mexican screenwriter Guillermo Arriaga (“Babel”), is being brought onto Berlin’s European Film Market by Film Factory Entertainment. Produced by Argentina’s K&S Films, whose credits include “Wild Tales,” “The Clan” and “The Summit” — the last by “Argentina, 1985” director Santiago Mitre — “A Cielo Abierto” is directed by Mariana Arriaga and Santiago Arriaga, Guillermo Arriaga’s daughter and son, making their feature film debut.   “A Cielo Abierto” turns on two teen brothers who take a road trip to the Mexico-U.S. border to track down the man responsible for the car accident that caused their father’s death.