EXCLUSIVE: Paris-based Bac Films is kicking off Cannes with a reinforced international sales team this year following the arrival of Clémentine Hugot on the eve of the market.
Hugot, who was formerly at Wide Management, will work alongside head of sales Gilles Sousa [pictured] and festivals coordinator Franka Schwabe, who has also recently taken on sales responsibilities.
Her appointment is part of an on-going expansion drive put in motion by Sousa when he took the reins of the international sales team two-and-a-half years ago.
“When I arrived the sales department mainly dealt with films that Bac France had acquired for its own distribution slate,” explains Sousa. “It used to be that Bac France fed the international slate, today it’s the reverse.”
Aside from selling, Sousa has been busy networking at co-production markets and festivals to pull together a Cannes slate of upcoming films quite literally from the four corners of the world.
“We want to establish a strong editorial line, which doesn’t have limits in terms of content and budget as well as increase the slate from five to eight to ten titles a year.”
The new dynamic is already bearing fruit. The Cannes slate features Mexican Argentine Pablo Fendrik’s buzzy rainforest thriller Ardor starring Gael Garcia Bernal and Alice Braga.
A co-production between Argentina, Mexico, Brazil, and France with the backing of Participant Media, the production has just wrapped shooting. Bac will be showing first images.
The company will also show first promos for Italian Paolo Virzi’s classy whodunit Human Capital, Belgian Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani’s giallo The Strange Color of Your Body’s Tears and Swedish Henrik Hellstrom’s The Quiet Roar - an English-language drama about a terminally ill woman meets her 25-year-old self when she takes LSD to relieve the pain of her illness.
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