Doc specialist has also taken on sales of Before You Know It about group of trailblazing gay seniors.

Paris-based documentary specialist Wide House has acquired international sales rights to Magicarena, capturing behind-the-scenes of a performance of Giuseppe Verdi’s opera Aida at the world famous Arena of Verona in Italy.

The work, by Andrea Prandstraller and Niccolò Bruna, revolves around a 2013 performance of Verdi’s Egypt-set masterpiece, featuring stage design by avant-garde Spanish theatre company La Fura dels Baus.

Both the performance and the documentary were commissioned to mark the centenary of Verona’s Opera Festival and the bicentenary of Verdi’s birth in 2013.

Rather than following the famous singers and directors, Magicarena recounts the stories of the men and women who have worked behind the scenes at the festival year after year, contributing in their own individual ways to its renown.

Andrea Prandstraller’s previous work includes the 2013 fiction No one is ever to blame, which toured festivals.

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Magicarena is among a trio of new feature documentaries, Wide House will unveil at Cannes.

The company will market premiere Patrick Dumont and François Hebrard’s About Anna’s Gate revolving around the carers and young patients at a child psychiatric hospital on the outskirts of Paris.

“Anna’s Gate is very cinematic and in the vein of Her Name is Sabine that Wide sold a couple of years ago,” commented Wide House chief Anais Clanet, referring to actress Sandrine Bonnaire’s work about her autistic sister.

Wide House has also just acquired sales of Before You Know It, about a trio of trailblazing gay septuagenarians in the US. The film, which has done the festival rounds in the US, makes its European premiere at the Marché.

Clanet will also consolidate sales on Ballet Boys, about a group of teenage ballet students, which has sold for theatrical release to Japan (Uplink), Canada (Kinosmith), ZED in French-speaking Europe (Zed), the UK (Matchbox) and German-speaking territories (CMV Laservision).

Her slate also includes Stefan Haupt’s hybrid The Circle, about Switzerland’s gay community in the 1940s and 50s, which was launched at Berlin where it sold to North America (Wolfe Video), the UK (Matchbox), Dutch-speaking Benelux (Cinemien), Thailand (Bioscop) and Macedonia (KT).

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