Screen Podcast_Fionnuala Jamison_YouTube

In this week’s episode of The Screen Podcast, Fionnuala Jamison, managing director at French sales and production powerhouse mk2 Films, speaks to Screen’s editor-in-chief Matt Mueller ahead of the Cannes Film Festival.

Watch above or listen below.

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Mk2 Films has eight films in this year’s Cannes lineup, including five in Competition: Marie Kreutzer’s Gentle Monster, Andrey Zvyagintsev’s Minotaur, Ira Sachs’s The Man I Love, Lea Mysius’s The Birthday Party and Koji Fukada’s Nagi Notes.

In the interview, Jamison discusses her ambitions for mk2’s Cannes festival and market slate, and her views on what the market is looking for.

“What we’re hearing from buyers is that they want the best films – great filmmakers on top of their form. Then we have to look at how difficult the subject is potentially and how demanding it might be on the audience in terms of filmmaking style. Then it’s factors like uniqueness, pitch, and whether there is an obvious marketing hook for distributors. But that is an additional thing – you can have excellent films without a hook that can still break through.”

Jamison also talks about mk2’s multi-year financing deal with investment fund manager IPR.VC, which kicked off in 2024; working with Justine Triet again on Fonda, the writer/director’s follow-up to Anatomy Of A Fall; and reviving Todd Haynes’ 1930s-set gay love story De Noche, which originally starred Joaquin Phoenix before he quit unexpectedly shortly before production.

Mk2 subsequently stepped in to finance the revived version with Pedro Pascal in the lead role.  “When [producers] Killer Films  then came to us about Pedro Pascal being ready to step in, which we thought was unbelievable and the most thrilling casting for the film you can think of, we were there to help figure it out basically from the beginning.”

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