Alanté Kavaité’s third film The Islanders, about a woman taking care of a group of elderly people on a remote island off the coast of France, has been acquired by Elle Driver, which will start selling the film at the EFM.
The Islanders is now in post. It stars Nadia Tereszkiewicz with Dali Bensallah, Daphné Pataki and veteran talents Miou-Miou and Patrick Chesnais. Tereszkiewicz won the Cesar breakout award in 2023 for roles in Forever Young and The Red Island. Bensallah’s credits include Athena.
Kavaité’s credits include the coming-of-age story The Summer Of Sangaile, for which she won the best world cinema director prize at Sundance in 2015.
The film is produced by Antoine Simkine’s Les Films d’Antoine, witt Estrella Productions’ Stéphanie Carreras and Philippe Pujo. Co-producers are Aurora Studios, Kalouche Cinema and Wild Bunch. Wild Bunch Distribution will release the film in France.
Lithuania-born, France-based Kavaite said she wrote the film because “I was haunted by questions about the end of life” and describes the film as “a modern tale that explores the fear of death in a sunny, lively, hedonistic way, with a stylised aesthetic” that “oscillates between anxiety and lightness, anguish and pleasure, a carnal and sensory film.”
Elle Driver’s EFM slate also includes market premieres Kid Snow, by Australian director Paul Goldman, set in the Outback world of tent boxing and Cédric Kahn’s comedy drama Making Of , and Arnaud Des Pallières’ period drama Party Of Fools starring Mélanie Thierry, Marina Fois, Carole Bouquet, Yolande Moreau and Josiane Balasko.
It is also handling Greek filmmaker Alexandros Avranas’ Apathy , a fiction film based on the real-life mysterious phenomenon of ‘resignation syndrome’ among refugee children in Sweden , Sarah Van Den Boom’s stop-motion and 3D-animated Seraphine set in 18th Century Paris ,and Sylvain Chomet’s animated The Magnificent Life Of Marcel Pagnol.
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