Paris-based sales company Pyramide International has boarded Anna Novion’s Le Théorème de Marguerite and Marie Garel-Weiss’s Sur La Branche and will kick off pre-sales for the French dramas at the upcoming EFM.
Novion’s Le Théorème de Marguerite stars Ella Rumpf as the titular character, a brilliant mathematics student at France’s top university the Ecole Normale Supérieure. On the day of her thesis presentation, a mistake shakes up all the certainty in her planned-out life and she decides to quit everything and start afresh.
Rumpf notably starred in Palme d’Or winner Julia Ducournau’s 2016 first feature Raw which premiered in Cannes. The film also stars actor Jean-Pierre Darroussin (The Dazzled, Gloria Mundi) and Julien Frison (The Night of the 12th, Happening). Novion also wrote and directed 2011 film Rendez-Vous in Kiruna and 2008’s Grown Ups that also starred Darroussin.
Le Théorème de Marguerite is produced by France’s TS Productions and Switzerland’s Beauvoir Films. Pyramide Distribution will release the film in France and Outside the Box in Switzerland.
Sur La Branche is the sophomore feature from Garel-Weiss following her 2018 release The Party Is Over. The film follows a young woman hitting a rough patch in life who ends up helping a lawyer threatened with disbarment by convincing him to represent a small-time crook claiming he is innocent. As Paul attempts a career comeback, Mimi makes it her mission to seek justice and find herself along the way.
The film stars Daphné Patakia (Benedetta, The Five Devils) alongside Benoît Poelvoorde (Sink or Swim, Normal, The Colors of Fire) and Agnès Jaoui (Fifty Springtimes, Best Intentions, Singing Jailbirds).
The film is produced by France’s Elzevir Films, the Paris-based production company behind Alice Zeniter and Benoit Volnais’ upcoming Before We Collapse also sold by Pyramide at the market.
Before We Collapse stars Niels Schneider (Love Affair(s)), Ariane Labed (The Lobster) and Souheila Yacoub (The Salt of Tears) in a story about a campaign manager during a legislative election who receives an anonymous letter containing a positive pregnancy test and he sets out to find out if it is a joke, revenge, a cry for help or a political ploy, risking his professional and personal life in the process.
Pyramide International’s head of sales Agathe Mauruc said the company is “very happy to renew our relationship with these two directors whose previous films we had the pleasure of distributing.” She called both films “two beautiful projects that will find their place internationally, boosted by an impressive group of French actors.”
Also on Pyramide’s EFM slate are first look images and a promoreel for Catherine Breillat’s anticipated Last Summer about a lawyer and mother who ends up having an affair with her 17-year-old stepson. Produced by SBS Productions, Last Summer stars Léa Drucker (Custody), Olivier Rabourdin (Benedetta), Clotilde Courau (In the Shadow of Women) and Samuel Kircher.
The company will market premiere Léa Fehner’s Berlinale title Midwives in parallel to its world premiere screening in the festival’s Panorama section. Produced by Geko Films, Midwives (French title: Sages-Femmes) stars two young women (played by Khadija Kouyaté and Héloïse Janjaud) just starting out as midwives as they take on the huge responsibilities and frenetic pace that come with birth, motherhood and even death.
It also market premieres Lucie Borleteau’s strip club-set My Sole Desire produced by Apsara Films and starring Zita Hanrot (Fatima, School Life and Netflix series The Hook Up Plan) and Louise Chevillotte (Synonyms, The World After Us, Happening). Borleteau said the film is filled with “a joyful sexuality” and added: “I wanted the audience to feel what a young woman who starts stripping can feel.”
Eve Duchemin’s Franco-Belgian co-production Time Out follows prison inmates on weekend leave and Karim Leklou (The Stronghold, The World is Yours) and Issaka Sawadogo (Samba). Produced by Belgium’s Kwassa Films and France’s Les Films de l’Autre Cougar, Duchemin chose to focus the film outside of the prison walls “to keep the jail off-camera, and sketch out an intimate family drama, subject to the inescapable passing of time.”
Also new at the market is Rotterdam title Matthias Luthardt’s German-French period drama Luise set in 1918 Alsace about a woman on an isolated farm who shelters a young French woman and an injured German soldier. Luise stars Christa Theret (Renoir, The Rope), Luise Aschenbrenner (Fabian: Going to the Dogs) and Leonard Kunz (The Most Beautiful Couple) and is produced by Germany’s 27 Films Production and France’s Les Films de l’Etranger. Luthardt’s fiction feature Pingpong screened in Cannes’ Critics Week in 2006 and documentary Der Tag premiered in Berlin in 2009. The director says Luise “tells the story of an awakening love, of emancipation and liberation.”
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