Charades

Source: Julien Liénard

Charades team

French international sales outfit Charades and its co-founder and chairman Yohann Comte are to be honoured with the best international innovation distribution award 2025 at the fourth International Film Distribution Summit, which takes place in Hamburg from September 30 to October 2.

Carole Baraton, Yohann Comte and Pierre Mazars founded Charades in 2017, following tenures as head and VPs of international sales at Wild Bunch, Gaumont and StudioCanal respectively.

This year Charades had five films – Vermiglio, Armand, Kneecap, Flow and The Glassworker – selected to compete in the best international feature film Oscar race. Flow won the Oscar for Best Animated feature.

Charades also premiered four films at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, including Alpha by Julia Ducournau and Case 137 by Dominik Moll in main competition. Urchin by Harris Dickinson, and The Mysterious Gaze Of The Flamingo by Diego Céspedes both played in Un Certain Regard.

Previous films handled by Charades include Aftersun by Charlotte Wells, Scrapper by Charlotte Regan, Disco Boy by Giacomo Abbruzzese, Sorry, Baby by Eva Victor and Armand by Halfdan Ullmann Tøndel.

Past winners of the best international innovation distribution award include Elissa Federoff from US distributor Neon in 2022 and Enrique Costa, founder and CEO of Spanish Elastica Films in 2023 and Andrea Occhipinti, CEO of Italian distributor Lucky Red.

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