Fortissimo Films has soldTsui Hark's martial arts epic SevenSwords to Canada's Seville Pictures, one of several deals that the Dutch/HK-based salesagent concluded at last week's Filmart in Hong Kong.

Seville, a Montreal-based distributor, is planning a theatricalrelease for the film in late summer or early autumn this year. The dealcontinues a long-standing relationship between Fortissimo and Seville, which also distributed In The Mood For Love and more recently acquired Zhang Yang's Sunflower.

Produced by Hong Kong's Film Workshop and Mandarin Films with Chinese and Korean partners, Seven Swords was released in severalAsian territories last summer and was a huge hit in China where it grossed more than $10m. It then went on toopen the Venice International Film Festival.

Both Seven Swords and Peter Chan's PerhapsLove lead the race for next week's Hong Kong Film Awards with 11nominations each. Tsui Hark is planning a sequel to the film.

Fortissimo co-chairmanMichael Werner described this edition of Filmart as the company's mostsuccessful ever. "We did substantial business which was a combination of thefact that more and more Western buyers are becoming interested in Asian cinema andthe Asian buyers were also active," Werner said.

Among other sales that Fortissimosealed at the market, Spain's Dionet (formerly Diorama) picked up three titles -Invisible Waves, Little Red Flowers and Berlin opener SnowCake. Singapore's Cathay also bought LittleRed Flowers and Snow Cake while Sunflower went to Korea's Entremode and Thailand's J-Pics.

Jacob Cheung's Battle Of Wits, which sold to severalterritories at Berlin, went to the Czech Republic's Hollywood Classic Entertainment. Like Seven Swords, the film is a big-budgetmartial arts epic in which Fortissimo is an equity investor as well asdistributor.

Fortissimo also announced atFilmart that it's boarded Chinese master Tian Zhuangzhuang's highly-anticipatedThe Go Master, taking internationalrights outside China.