The French producer-distributor has had a successful year with auteur films at the theatrical box office.
Memento is one of the few French independent distributors thriving in a difficult theatrical climate. Its 2025 box office included 700,000 admissions for Jafar Panahi’s It Was Just An Accident and 440,000 for Joachim Trier’s international feature Oscar winner Sentimental Value.
It also achieved strong results last year for Guan Hu’s 2024 Un Certain Regard winner Black Dog, which reached 300,000 admissions.
Now the company boarded Turkish auteur Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s Weary Sun and Chinese filmmaker Diao Yinan’s Red Snow and will co-produce both titles as well as releasing them in France.
Weary Sun will start shooting in June in Ankara, Istanbul and the Aegean coast. It is about a father who joins his daughter and her son at their seaside home where they confront long-buried resentments and fractured relationships. Pinar Deniz, Altan Erkekli, Osman Sonant and Kerem Bursin star, and Ceylan produces via his company NBC Film.
Memento is co-producing with Arte France Cinema and Sweden’s Second Land. It is the company’s fifth collaboration with Ceylan.
Memento also reteams with Diao after co-producing the Chinese director’s 2019 Cannes Competition title The Wild Goose Lake with Arte France Cinema, and releasing 2014 Berlin Golden Bear winner Black Coal, Thin Ice.
Red Snow stars Jackson Yee (Resurrection) and Liao Fan (Black Coal, Thin Ice) and is currently shooting in northeast China. Diao produces via his company Green Ray Films.
The two films join another newly acquired title on Memento’s distribution slate, Monia Chokri’s Ni Le Jour Ni La Nuit, which will be the Canadian actress/filmmaker’s first film to shoot in France. An existential comedy about relationships, it is produced by Marie-Ange Luciani’s Les Films de Pierre and will shoot in Paris with a French cast later this syear.
The company’s upcoming distribution slate includes Competition titles Asghar Farhadi’s Parallel Tales, which it also produced, and Ira Sachs’ The Man I Love, as well as Ruben Ostlund’s The Entertainment System Is Down and Colm Beiread’s Mary Rose.
Memento was founded in 2003 by Alexandre Mallet-Guy and Emilie Georges, who went their separate ways in 2022 when Georges took the company’s international sales arm and rebranded it as Paradise City Sales.
Mallet-Guy has kept Memento’s focus on production and distribution, and the slate continues to reflect the focus on auteur-driven titles with commercial potential. “Often with political undertones,” he added.
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