Source: Cannes
'The Most Precious Of Cargoes'
Paris production house Agat Films - Ex Nihilo, which has six films in Cannes, is now in various stages of production on six more titles including Robert Guedigian's drama Stealing Angel, starring Ariane Ascaride and Jean-Paul Darroussin that is in post. Playtime handles sales.
Agat films- Ex Nihilo is a separate entity operating under the same label. Nicolas Blanc, producer of the film, said: "We are a home for auteur cinema." "We are at the service of auteurs - we like what they think, what they say and how they say it."
International titles in the works include Thierry Machado's Inuit -language Yura, a Greenland-set family adventure about a young girl learning the art of dog sledding. The co-production is currently in development.
The company is also co-producing Pierre Le Gall's Made of Flesh And Fuel with Poland's Lumisenta, a love story about two male truck drivers, and is in post on Lola Doillon's romantic comedy Differente.
Also in post is Michel Leclerc's #metoo-themed Pourvu qu'il Soit Doux, starring Lea Drucker, Benjamin Lavernhe and Vincent Elbaz, while Amine Adjina's La Petite Cuisine de Mehdi stars Hiam Abbas in the comedy drama about a woman who fears her adult son is losing track of his Algerian heritage.
Wednesday dinner
The two companies merged 30 years ago and downsized in 2021 when any partners over age 65 stepped down, leaving Blanc, Marc Bordure, Muriel Meynard and David Coujard to run the show. Meynard said that other past partners such as Patrick Sobelman, Guedigian and others continue to produce under the banner. They meet every Wednesday for a "mass", where they discuss the projects they are working on. "We all know every detail about every project, but we each have our own autonomy and freedom."
Sobelman explains that each producer operates independently based on a "common idealogy, but individual tastes."
They often do not agree. Sobelman said, "I've made many films in this company that nobody liked." The producer most recently spearheaded production on Michel Hazanavicius'
The Most Precious Of Cargoes, optioning the book rights and attaching the filmmaker to what has been a passion project six years in the making.The companies' Cannes films are:
The Most Precious Of Cargoes (Competition), The Marching Band (Un Certain Regard) Holy Cow (Directors' Fortnight) Eat the Night (Critics' Week) Block Pass ( Critics' Week), and Jacques Demy: Le Rose Et Le Noir (Classics), a likely record for an indie production company.Future Leaders 2024: film festival programmers and curators to watch
