Leipzig-based documentary sales outfit Deckert Distribution has taken on world sales duties for Venetian Nights selection Kristos - The Last Child, directed by French-Italian filmmaker Giulia Amati.
The observational film is set on a remote island in Greece’s Dodecanese which has only 30 inhabitants including Kristos, its last remaining child. He is the one pupil at the local school and about to start his final year of elementary school. To finish compulsory education, he needs to leave Arki and move to a larger island. His family can’t afford the expense and want him to stay on the island to become a shepherd.
Director Amati followed the 10-year-old boy for more than a year as he confronted a decision which potentially would have a huge impact not just for his own future but for that of his island.
Venetian Nights is part of Venice’s independent Giornate degli Autori sidebar, and is aimed at edgier, more experimental works.
The project takes its place on Deckert’s autumn market slate which also includes Outside by Ukrainian debut-filmmaker Olha Zhurba. The film is about a street boy abandoned by his family but who becomes a poster child for the Ukrainian revolution of 2014. When he turns 18, he is released from his orphanage with nothing but a lighter and a knife.
Dckert is also selling Elvis A-Liang Lu’s A Holy Family in which the director travels back to visit his family in the Taiwanese countryside and discovers how gambling, faith and illness have driven a wedge between him and his relatives. Last month, the film won several awards, including the Grand Prize, at the Tapei International Film Festival.
Also on Deckert’s slate are Francesco Montagner’s Brotherhood, about three young Bosnian brothers born into a family of shepherds, and Hanna Polak’s Angels Of Sinjar, about Yezidi women coming to terms with ISIS brutality.
Kristos - The Last Child is a co-production between Italy, France and Greece, produced by Amati from Blink Blink Prod, Quentin Laurent from Les Films de l’œil sauvage, and Nancy Kokolaki from Bad Crowd.
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