Australia's Dendy Films picked up six titles while at Cannes including two from Renaissance, director John Curran's We Don't Live Here Anymore, starring the homegrown Naomi Watts alongside Laura Dern, and The Mother, another collaboration between Notting Hill director Roger Michell and controversial writer Hanif Kureshi. Curran's first film, Praise, was made in Australia.

The arthouse distributor also acquired two films from Pandora. John Sayles' Casa Del Los Babys is about six women who travel to South America to adopt children, while director Michael Cunningham's A Home At The End Of The World, starring Colin Farrell, Robin Wright Penn and Sissy Spacek, is the tale of three friends. Cunningham wrote the book of The Hours.

Acquired from Wild Bunch was Masai, from the creators of Himalaya, and the final film in the bunch is Michael Winterbottom's people smuggling story In This World, which was this year's Golden Bear winner.

Most of them will be released in 2004. Dendy kicked off its buying spree with the acquisition of Lars von Trier's Dogville just before Cannes from Trust.

Rialto Entertainment also had its cheque book out during Cannes, picking up the docudrama American Splendor, winner of the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance and directed by Shari Springer Bergman and Robert Pulcini, Dagur Kari's debut film Noi Albinoi from Iceland, and Alexandr Sourov's FIPRESCI winner Father & Son. Sourov's earlier film, Russian Ark, has been doing very strong business in Australia on only eight screens.