EXCLUSIVE: Gaumont has acquired international rights to François Ozon’s Summer Of Fire (Le Mal Est Fait), a psychological drama starring Pio Marmaï and Sandor Funtek that shot this summer in Normandy. The company will start talking to buyers about the film at Venice and TIFF: The Market.
It will also release the film in France on February 10, 2027.
Summer Of Fire is about a 12-year-old boy, played by Grégoire Danvin-Sellier, who is sent by his mother to spend the summer in Normandy with his father and his father’s boyfriend after setting fire to his school bathroom. Struggling with this new family dynamic, unsettling encounters and local village kids. He hurtles into adolescence and a violent battle between good and evil.
“Like Stephen King’s stories about childhood, we will enter the mind of a boy overwhelmed by dark impulses,” said Ozon of the film. “Fear and dread will shape [his] way of seeing things, creating suspense and a growing sense of tension.”
Ozon’s production outfit Foz produces alongside co-producers France 2 Cinéma and Scope Pictures. Ozon reteams with The Stranger cinematographer Manuel Dacosse and with composers Evgueni and Sacha Galperine who are behind the scores of Loveless and When Fall Is Coming, and won this year’s Cannes Soundtrack Award forMinotaur.
Ozon’s most recent film was an adaptation of Albert Camus’ classic The Stranger that world premiered in competition in Venice in 2025 and grossed €10.8m worldwide.
Marmaï has had starring roles in Cannes Film Festival opening titleThe Electric Kiss and 2026 Cesar-winning The Ties That Bind Us, while Funtek is known for Blue Is The Warmest Colour, The Story Of My Wife and recent HBO Max series Privileges.
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