Fremantle’s The Apartment boarded Karim Ainouz’s next feature Rosebushpruning, as co-producer, with The Match Factory, Mubi, Kavac Film and Rai Cinema.
The cast for the film, first announced last year, includes Kristen Stewart, Josh O’Connor and Elle Fanning.
Brazilian director Ainouz is in Cometition at Cannes with Motel Destino, having last year premiered Firebrand in Compeition. Ainouz directs from a script written by Efthimis Filipou, Kinds of Kindness and Dogtooth 001010writer who adapted Marco Bellocchio’s debut feature Fists in the Pocket. Viola Fugen and Michael Weber are producing
Rosebushpruning for The Match Factory, who are also handling worldwide sales for the film.The film will begin production later this year.
The film is an adapation of Marco Bellocchio’s debut film,
Fist In The Pocket, considered an Italian classic and the winner of prizes when it screened at Locarno and Venice film festivals in 1964. The story revolves around a young epileptic man who plots to murder his dysfunctional family. Rachel Darravel from Crybaby Films co-produces in the UK. Mubi is financing production alongside Catherine Boily and Mitch Oliver’s Metafilms and Anna Films in association with Fremantle.
Film und Medienstiftung NRW, Medienboard and the German Federal Film Board are also supporting the film.
Ainouz said: “Marco Bellocchio’s astonishing debut,
Fists In The Pocket,
was released over 50 years ago and had a huge impact on Italian cinema and storytelling at the time. I’m excited to be collaborating with Efthimis Filippou to revisit this iconic work to create a contemporary parable about the explosion of the traditional patriarchal family — which I hope will be touching and provocative in equal measure.”Annamaria Morelli, CEO of The Apartment, said: “We deeply appreciate Karim Ainouz’s films and are enthusiastic of the way he and Efthymis Filippou adapted Bellocchio’s masterpiece, revisited with a strikingly bold and original vision.”US buyers in Cannes proving wary of hot topics
