France tv distribution has acquired world sales rights to French filmmakers Andrea Bescond and Eric Metayer’s nursing-home-set comedy drama Big Kids starring Vincent Macaigne, Aissa Maiga and Marie Gillain.
It is the directorial duo’s second feature collaboration after award-winning child-abuse drama Little Tickles, which world premiered in Cannes Un Certain Regard in 2018 and sparked a public debate about the issue when it was released in France in 2019.
The duo’s new film revolves around the residents of a nursing home and a group of boisterous young pupils from a nearby school who are forced to share lunch facilities while the cafeteria of the latter institution is refurbished.
An intergenerational clash seems to be on the cards but instead shared interests and a series of comical situations result in friendships between the lonely geriatrics and the schoolkids, in an enriching experience for both parties.
Vincent Macaigne, Aissa Maiga and Marie Gillain play staff at both institutions with co-director Metayer also featuring in the cast.
The film is produced by Denis Pineau-Valencienne and François Kraus at Les Films du Kiosque, the Paris-based production house behind mainstream hits La Belle Epoque, Peaceful and How To Be A Good Wife. The company’s most recent production, Kung Fu Sohra, won the VPRO Big Screen award at Rotterdam.
Like many countries around the world, the plight of elderly people living in solitude in care homes in France has been under the spotlight during the pandemic. Like Little Tickles, the producers expect Big Kids to chime with current issues.
“Andrea and Eric are back with another poignant opus set in a nursing home that gets disrupted by a group of schoolchildren,” said Pineau-Valencienne and Kraus. “A powerful, moving, realistic and yet poetic movie, in their unique style.”
France tv distribution will introduce the film, which is currently in post-production, to buyers at the online EFM this week.
It will also continue sales on social drama Parisian Hustle, starring Raw actress Garance Marillier as a manicurist with a side hustle introducing her female clients to VIPs on the Paris party scene, and is market-screening thriller An Ordinary Mother and social drama Little Man Tom.
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