UK-Ireland arthouse buyers are heading to Toronto at a time in which they have had to sharpen their focus on English-language films, and on pre-buying at script stage.
“Picturehouse was very predominantly arthouse, foreign language, and the odd British or American film. Over the past couple of years, we’re trying to find a much more structured, 50-50 approach,” said James Brown, Picturehouse Entertainment’s head of acquisitions.
Finding TV deals for non-English language films has, in the past couple of years, become very difficult.
“It’s not because we’re less passionate about the foreign-language films, but more a reflection of, particularly in the streaming landscape, there is a very significant reticence from the likes of an Amazon, a Netflix, or even a Sky to be considering foreign-language titles,” says Brown. “It’s important to have that slate balance, and so [English language is] really where our pre-buy focus is. It’s not to say we would never pre-buy a foreign-language film, but there would have to be an incredibly compelling reason for us to do so.”
Recent non-English language films pre-bought by Picturehouse include Cannes premieres Cristian Mungiu’s Palme d’Or winner Fjord and Hirokazu Koreeda’s Sheep In A Box.
Curzon has similarly seen a decline in TV sales support for non-English-langauge films. “I’m not saying that foreign-language films are not working altogether, but the market trend for the last few years has shown such a feast or a famine. There is a handful that end up making a real splash,” said Eleonora Pesci, Curzon’s head of acquisitions.
She recalls Francois Ozon’s Venice 2025 premiere The Stranger being a recent theatrical success, grossing over £360,000 for Curzon after its release in April of this year. “If you have titles that do well at the box office, but then that doesn’t translate to TV sales, that’s a problem.”
“Younger generations are very happy to watch [Netflix series] Squid Game in Korean with subtitles, and it’s not an obstacle to them,” added Brown. “I would hope that that would have a knock-on effect when it comes to buying foreign language [films] for the platforms, but currently that just doesn’t seem to be the case. It’s much more likely to be someone like the BFI Player or Mubi who would end up doing the pay-one window for us on the foreign-language film.”
This year, Curzon has also become focused more on pre-buying at script stage, such as Ryûsuke Hamaguchi’s All Of A Sudden, with Pesci saying bidding wars at festivals like Cannes becoming “absolutely crazy, according to my maths”.
On the ground
In the absence of a flurry of buzzy new packages announced for the market, buyers are focusing their activity on screening films. As well as Curzon and Picturehouse, UK-Ireland buyers attending the market include Sky, MetFilm and Vertigo Releasing,
Festival titles of interest for UK-Ireland buyers include Cornerstone’s Stuffed, mk2’s Closing Night and Alpha Gang and HanWay’s The Julia Set and Bucking Fastard.
Picturehouse is taking a bigger team than in previous years to the inaugural TIFF: The Market, owing to extra financial support this year from TIFF to lure in top-tier execs. But still, balancing the market and festival screenings will be a challenge.
“There’s a large number of films screening in the market that aren’t officially selected in the festival,” says Brown. “And I think from a theatrical-facing distributors’ perspective, that’s a really interesting conundrum. How deeply do we dive into the market screenings? At this point, it’s slightly haunting us that there might be some gems buried in the market that aren’t officially selected in the festival, for whatever reason.”
Brown continues, “The most straightforward way for us to address the market screenings question is based predominantly on our relationships with sales agents. We’re reaching out ahead of time and having those conversations. There is an enormous number of officially selected projects to be covering as it is. When you add the market screenings on top of that, it starts to become quite the behemoth in terms of content.”
He says they are actively looking to fill slots on their slate at TIFF, after many of the strongest films at Cannes and Sundance had been pre-bought prior to the festivals.
Pesci is keeping an open mind to acquiring titles at TIFF but says Curzon has a “pretty full, pretty good slate coming up”. One person from the cinemas team alongside Pesci, with a focus on using TIFF as an opportunity to have informal catch ups with her network.
“It doesn’t feel like my plan for the for the festival is significantly different than previous years,” she says.
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