French independent sales outfits Roissy Films and Celluloid Dreams are merging their international sales activities aiming to consolidate what both see as complementary businesses.

Catalogue sales accounted for the majority of Roissy Films' activities before the merger while Celluloid Dreams specialises in niche titles and fresh talent which sell best on the international theatrical market.

The new outfit will benefit from Roissy Films' classic catalogue - some 400 titles including works by such French film-makers as Robert Bresson, Claude Chabrol Eric Rohmer and Claude Zidi, as well as films from Wim Wenders and Costa Gavras. The catalogue also includes 200 titles to which Roissy holds French-speaking rights.

Celluloid Dreams will contribute its roster of both confirmed international auteurs - Otar Iosselani, Takeshi Kitano, Tsai Min Liang - and talented newcomers including Ozon and Antoine Desrosieres whose first effort, Banqueroute, has been selected for the upcoming Rotterdam film festival. The outfit's sales slate will also be complemented by films co-produced by Roissy.

Three titles handled by Roissy Films-Celluloid Dreams have been selected for the Berlin Film Festival. French film-maker Francois Ozon's Water Drops On Burning Rocks joins official selection candidate The Captain's Daughter directed by Alexander Proshkin and France's Kennedy and I, a first feature by Sam Karmann in the Panorama section completes the trio.

Upcoming projects include Amos Kolleck's Fast Food, Fast Women, Aktan Abdikalikov's The Monkey, Ning Ying's I Love Beijing, as well as two animated features, Andrei Khrjanovsky-directed The General And Bonapart, written by Italy's Tonino Guerra and The Three Old Ladies by France's Oscar-nominated Sylvain Chomet.