EXCLUSIVE: London-based Reason8 Films has boarded world sales for Anglo-Dutch director Dan Geesin’s A Messy Tribute To Motherly Love, which receives its world premiere in International Film Festival Rotterdam’s Tiger Competition on February 2.
Reason8 will be introducing the title to buyers at this year’s European Film Market in Berlin.
Produced by Geesin and his partner Esther Rots through One Day Film and Rots Filmwerk, the film is a dark, surrealist drama set in a world where parents make huge sacrifices on behalf of their children - and where some kids are cooked up from the finest parts of their mums and dads.
The cast is led by Juda Goslinga, Yang Ge, and Frieda Pittoors.
British-born director Geesin told Screen that the film, which features people who spontaneously explode from emotional overload, is “more dark comedy and less body horror” and is inspired by TV shows he watched growing up in the UK, such as Blake’s 7 and Doctor Who.
“I don’t like to see explicit violence or sex,” he said. ”I like cinema’s ability to insinuate, to use sound and things that happen off-screen. Having said that, there are explosions of people on screen…but when they explode, they explode like they’re jam. It’s a big squirt, not like stepping on a landmine.”
Anna Krupnova, co-managing director Reason8, commented: “Bold, emotionally sharp, and unafraid to push genre boundaries, A Messy Tribute To Motherly Love is exactly the kind of fearless cinema we’re drawn to. The film’s twisted sense of black humour and horror elements are grounded in an unexpectedly tender exploration of motherhood, making it both unsettling and deeply relatable.”
Messy Tribute is a Dutch-German-Belgian coproduction. The coproducers are Leitwolf in Germany and Quetzalcoatl in Belgium. Backing comes from Netherlands Filmfonds, Netherlands Film Production Incentive, Belgian Tax Shelter, Nord Media, Creative Europe Media, Kunstraad Groningen, and L’Atelier de la Cinéfondation. The Dutch release through distributor O’Brother is set for late April.
Geesin, a filmmaker, musician and artist, first came to the Netherlands as a student in 1994 and has lived there for over 30 years. He took part in the 2020 edition of Cannes Cinefondation’s Atelier co-production meeting with Motherly Love, and has screened several shorts at IFFR.
He is now working on developing a new feature, Tree Shaggers, about two brothers who think their own sperm can cure a tree-killing disease. He will be discussing the project during CineMart.
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