Cinefrance Studios is in Cannes with Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s competition entry All of A Sudden, the title of which is an apt description of the Paris-based producer and sales company. Quickly and quietly, it has arrived on the global sales scene with an increasingly robust slate of titles.
The company was founded in 2018 by David Gauquié and Julien Deris and has produced 25 films. They range from festival fare such as Emmanuel Carrere’s Between Two Worlds and Charlotte Le Bon’s Falcon Lake,. More commercially oriented features include Philippe Lacheau’s 2022 superhero comedy Superwho? and Anne Fontaine’s Maurice Ravel biopic Bolero.
Cinefrance has also become known as a go-to producer in France for Japanese filmmakers like Naomi Kawase, whose Yakushima’s Illusion world premiered at Locarno last year, Kiyoshi Kurosawa, who remade his 1998 thriller Serpent’s Path in France with the company, and Hamaguchi whose All Of A Sudden starring Virginie Efira and Tao Okamoto shot and is set between Paris and Kyoto. The company is also selling the film, with Neon scooping up the US and UK-Ireland.
Producer Renan Artukmaç joined the company in 2023 and spearheaded a shift in strategy that began with Oscar-winner Regis Wargnier’s dramatic thriller Redress.
“We decided to sell it ourselves to help bolster the financing with pre-sales. The French market is no longer sufficient to completely finance films as production costs continue to rise,” Artukmaç explains.
That film has since sold to around 30 territories, with pre-sales making it possible to begin production.
The company is at the 2026 market with eight titles on its sales slate, including Micro Star, the debut feature from French director Leopold Kraus, is about a beauty influencer who wants to be an actor starring a rising French cast including Abraham Wapler, Felix Lefebvre and Raika Hazanavicius. Cinefrance co-produced with Topshot Films and Les Films du Kiosque.
While Cinefrance plans to produce around five or six films per year, Artukmaç is in Cannes to expand the sales lineup of third-party acquisitions. First up is Luc Picard’s Redemptions from Canada’s Christal Films, starring Jean-Simon Leduc and Louise Codelfy, about a retired hitman forced to return to Montreal to commit two murders.
“We are looking mostly for English-language films,” says Artukmaç. “But we are open to a range of director-driven upscale arthouse films from all territories.”
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