EXCLUSIVE: Lucky Number has secured international sales rights to Greek filmmaker Jacqueline Lentzou’s second feature A Day In The Life Of Jo: Chapter Phaedra ahead of the film’s world premiere at Venice Film Festival in the Orizzonti strand.
The coming-of-age drama with metaphysical themes follows titular teenager Jo as she goes about an ostensibly ordinary day - missing the school bus, rebelling against her mother and hanging out with her friends - unaware that it is the last day of her life.
The film was shot in Greece and is produced by Greece’s Avion Films and Atalante Productions, Germany’s Kelek Film, and France’s 4A4 Productions. It stars Evita Andriopoulou, Eleni Vergeti, Anastasia Gouliamou and Ektoras Lygizos.
Lentzou’s debut feature Moon, 66 Questions premiered at the 2021 Berlinale in the Encounters section following several short films that played and won at a slew of festivals including Cannes’ Critics’ Week, Berlin and Locarno. Lentzou notably passed through Critics’ Week’s 2024 Next Step II programme to develop A Day In The Life Of Jo: Chapter Phaedra.
Lentzou described her film, inspired by the real-life death of a 15 year-old boy in Athens in 2008, as “heart-based, heart-made and hopefully heartbreaking”. She added: “I truly wish that Jo’s journey will be as moving, as joyous, as painful, as mysterious, as life on Earth and other realms and dimensions.”
Lucky Number co-founder Ola Byszuk said Lentzou has “everything we love about cinema: the poetry of her cinematic language, the subtlety of her storytelling, the depth of emotion she conveys, and the originality of her vision”.
Lucky Number is officially launching sales for the film in Venice next month and also heads to the festival with Sabu’s detective comedy Arrested Memory, starring Ethan Juan, playing out of competition, and Phuttiphong Aroonpheng’s The Burning Giants in the Horizons strand.
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