Brussels-based sales company Best Friend Forever (BFF) has acquired Michaël Dichter’s pre-teen feature The Fantastic Three and Angela Ottobah’s genre drama Rapture.
BFF will also market premiere Nicolas Silhol’s Anti-Squat at the Unifrance Rendez-Vous in Paris this week.
The Fantastic Three (Les Trois Fantastiques) is Dichter’s feature debut and is a continuation of his César-nominated short film Pollux.
Set in contemporary Eastern France, the film follows a group of pre-teen boys, aka “the fantastic three,” who lean on each other amidst their complicated home lives. When the brother of one of the boys returns home from jail and brings trouble with him, the trio of friends get embroiled in the drama.
The Fantastic Three is produced by Rectangle Productions, the prolific Paris-based production house behind Audrey Diwan’s Venice Golden Lion-winning Happening, Gaspard Noé’s Vortex and Valérie Lemercier’s Aline alongside Les Films Norfolk.
The film stars fresh French talents Diego Murgia (Love According to Dalva), Jean Devie and Benjamin Tellier alongside renowned French actress and director Emmanuelle Bercot and Raphaël Quenard. Tandem will release the film in France.
BFF’s Charles Bin describes the film as “Stand By Me meets Stranger Things” and says it“brings back the thrill of early teenage years.”
Rapture (Paula) is Ottobah’s first feature. The director is currently shooting ambitious Arte series Blood River. The film follows an 11 year-old girl whose father takes her to a lake house for the summer. The would-be relaxing getaway turns into a suffocating, isolating experience as her father becomes increasingly oppressive and radical.
Rapture is produced by rising French production company Kidam (Zero Fucks Given, Hunted). Arizona Distribution will release the film in France later this year. Rapture stars Finnegan Oldfield, new talent Aline Hélan-Boudon and French LGBTQ+ icon Océan.
BFF’s Martin Gondre calls the film “a new look on childhood dramas, playing with the codes of genre so as to make the audience experience everything from the point of view of a little girl” and adds that it is “an experience that will mess with audiences’ minds and guts.”
BFF will also host the first market premiere for buyers of Anti-Squat ahead of the film’s release via Diaphana in France in the second half of 2023. Silhol’s last film Corporate notably made a strong showing at the local box office when it was released in 2017 with 260,000 tickets sold.
The film stars Louise Bourgoin as the single mother of a teenager who is threatened with eviction from their apartment, but finds temporary housing thanks to a new French start-up. She takes them up on their dazzling offer, but soon finds herself part of a corrupt system that leaves her torn between her personal values and the need to provide financial stability for her son. Anti-Squat is produced by Kazak Productions, the team behind Corporate and Cannes Palme d’Or-winner Titane.
Sister company of Indie Sales, BFF was founded by two school friends, former marketing manager at Indie Sales Martin Gondre and entertainment lawyer Charles Bin, who run the company alongside Indie Sales co-founder Nicolas Eschbach.
Based in Brussels with an arm in Paris via Indie Sales, the company was founded in 2019 and has managed to carve out a niche in an increasingly competitive landscape with a balance between audience-driven fare like Anti-Squat and more festival-friendly titles that have sold steadily abroad. These include Bertrand Bonello’s Coma that screened at the Berlin, New York and BFI London film festivals, Andrea Bagney’s Ramona that world premiered in Karlovy Vary and took home awards in Rome and Jean-Christophe Meurisse’s Bloody Oranges that had a Midnight screening in Cannes.
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