EXCLUSIVE: Paris-based sales outfit Lucky Number has acquired Venezuelan director Jorge Thielen Armand’s Death Has No Master starring Asia Argento and will kick off sales for the violent thriller at EFM.
It follows a woman who heads to Venezuela to sell her late father’s cacao plantation, only to find the family mansion occupied by its former workers, with a dangerous game of manipulation unfolding and long-buried secrets surfacing. The film is set against the backdrop of Venezuela’s collapse, colonial inheritance and class divisions.
Venezuelan actors Jorge Thielen Hedderich and newcomer Dogreika Tovar co-star.
Armand produced the film via his Canadian-Venezuelan company La Faena alongside Italy’s Volos Films Italia and Luxembourg’s Deal Productions with support from TeleFilm Canada, MIC, Film Fund Luxembourg, the Guggenheim Foundation, and Utah Film Center, among others.
It is Armand’s third feature after debut La Soledad in 2016 and La Fortaleza, which premiered at the International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR) in 2020.
He told Screen: “The film is about my love-hate relationship with Venezuela. I think these images will speak to the collective darkness Venezuelans feel, for the lack of agency in our future, the betrayal of domestic and international systems, and the impulse to resort to violence in the absence of rules – which ultimately will bring about an irreversible self-destruction.”
Lucky Number’s Olivier Barbier, Ola Byszuk and Lenny Porte said they were drawn to the film by the director’s “singular vision and atmospheric mise en scène, crafting a distinctive style that blends genre exploration with the very complex realities of his native Venezuela.”
Lucky Number heads to Berlin with two world premieres in the festival’s official selection, including festival opener Shahrbanoo Sadat’s No Good Men and Emin Alper’s Salvation in competition.
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