Philippe Bober’s Coproduction Office has boarded worldwide sales of Lou Ye’s An Unfinished Film ahead of its premiere at Cannes and has already closed two major deals.
The film, which is set to play in the Special Screenings section of the festival next month, has been snapped up by Bac Films for France and Lucky Red for Italy. A first look at the film can be seen above.
Set in January 2020, the story follows a film crew that reunites near Wuhan to resume shooting a film halted 10 years earlier, only to share unexpected challenges as cities are placed under lockdown. Wuhan is the city in China where the coronavirus that caused the Covid-19 pandemic was first discovered and became the first location to go into lockdown.
Producers are Yingli Ma for Singapore’s Yingfilms and Bober through his German production house Essential Filmproduktion.
It reunites director Lou with Bober for the first time since the Chinese filmmaker’s second feature Suzhou River, which won the top Tiger Award at International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR) in 2000 and proved his breakout feature. Bober’s producer credits also include Ruben Ostland’s Palme d’Or winner Triangle Of Sadness and The Square.
Bober described An Unfinished Film as Lou’s “most personal film… a film diary and the testimony of an intellectual. It is an inside look into China’s recent history.”
Paris-based Coproduction Office is also selling a restoration of Suzhou River, which it oversaw and unveiled in the Berlinale’s Classics section in 2022.
Lou was previously in Competition at Cannes with Purple Butterfly in 2003, Summer Palace in 2006 and Spring Fever in 2009, which won the best script prize. His 2012 feature Mystery played in Un Certain Regard.
Lou and producer Nai An received five-year filmmaking bans from the Chinese government over Summer Palace, which depicted the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests and was screened at Cannes without the permission of Chinese censors. It also caused controversy for containing explicit sex scenes. Lou had previously been banned for making films for two years over Suzhou River, which was also produced without official approval.
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