Brussels-based company Best Friend Forever has revealed a raft of deals for key territories for Ramata-Toulaye Sy‘s feature film debut, “Banel & Adama,” which played in competition in Cannes and makes its North American premiere in Toronto. Variety reviewed it as “a dreamlike debut” in May.
The film just won the Melbourne International Film Festival’s top prize, the Bright Horizons Award.
The film was sold in Benelux (Cherry Pickers), Switzerland (trigon-films), Scandinavia (Njuta Films), Australia and New Zealand (Ahi), South Korea (Green Narae Media), Spain (Filmin), Greece (Cinobo), Portugal (Alambique), Poland (Afrykamera), and Baltics (From Afar). North America, U.K. and Japan are in discussions among others.
Previously announced deals are Tandem Films for French distribution, who just released the title in France and Pathé BC Afrique is releasing in Senegal on Oct. 4.
Ahead of TIFF, Best Friend Forever also unveiled the international trailer in exclusivity with Variety.
The film just won the Melbourne International Film Festival’s top prize, the Bright Horizons Award.
The film was sold in Benelux (Cherry Pickers), Switzerland (trigon-films), Scandinavia (Njuta Films), Australia and New Zealand (Ahi), South Korea (Green Narae Media), Spain (Filmin), Greece (Cinobo), Portugal (Alambique), Poland (Afrykamera), and Baltics (From Afar). North America, U.K. and Japan are in discussions among others.
Previously announced deals are Tandem Films for French distribution, who just released the title in France and Pathé BC Afrique is releasing in Senegal on Oct. 4.
Ahead of TIFF, Best Friend Forever also unveiled the international trailer in exclusivity with Variety.
- 9/9/2023
- by Leo Barraclough
- Variety Film + TV
Sales banner Best Friend Forever has unveiled the teaser for Ramata Toulaye-Sy’s buzzed-about Senegalese drama “Banel & Adama,” which is the sole feature debut slated for the competition at the Cannes Film Festival.
The lushly lensed female emancipation drama, set to bow on May 20, takes place in a remote village of Northern Senegal where Banel and Adama are fiercely in love. Longing for a home of their own, they have decided to live apart from their families. When Adama refuses his blood duty as future chief and informs the village council of his intentions, the whole community is disrupted and chaos ensues.
The film was shot in Pulaar language with a cast of local non-professional actors, including Khady Mane, Mamadou Diallo, Binta Racine Sy and Moussa Sow.
Toulaye-Sy said she wanted the film to tell a tragic love story that would be relatable to everyone. The helmer, who studied...
The lushly lensed female emancipation drama, set to bow on May 20, takes place in a remote village of Northern Senegal where Banel and Adama are fiercely in love. Longing for a home of their own, they have decided to live apart from their families. When Adama refuses his blood duty as future chief and informs the village council of his intentions, the whole community is disrupted and chaos ensues.
The film was shot in Pulaar language with a cast of local non-professional actors, including Khady Mane, Mamadou Diallo, Binta Racine Sy and Moussa Sow.
Toulaye-Sy said she wanted the film to tell a tragic love story that would be relatable to everyone. The helmer, who studied...
- 5/11/2023
- by Elsa Keslassy
- Variety Film + TV
The Seattle Film Festival wrapped Sunday with top Golden Space Needle audience awards going to “Tel Aviv on Fire” for best film and “We Are the Radical Monarchs” for best documentary.
Ulaa Salim won best director for “Sons of Denmark,” while Damla Sonmez won best actress for “Sibel” and Julius Weckauf won best actor for “All About Me.” Best short film went to “Stepdaddy.”
Juried award winners included “House of Hummingbird” for the official competition, “The Extraordinary Journey of Celeste Garcia” for New Directors; “The Awakening of the Ants” for the Ibero-American Competition, “International Falls” for the New American Cinema competition and “Q Ball” for documentary.
The largest festival in the United States, it featured more than 400 films from 86 countries including 12 feature premieres.
“It’s been an incredible 25 days full of important stories from around the world. We’re incredibly proud to showcase women in comedy, from jump starting the...
Ulaa Salim won best director for “Sons of Denmark,” while Damla Sonmez won best actress for “Sibel” and Julius Weckauf won best actor for “All About Me.” Best short film went to “Stepdaddy.”
Juried award winners included “House of Hummingbird” for the official competition, “The Extraordinary Journey of Celeste Garcia” for New Directors; “The Awakening of the Ants” for the Ibero-American Competition, “International Falls” for the New American Cinema competition and “Q Ball” for documentary.
The largest festival in the United States, it featured more than 400 films from 86 countries including 12 feature premieres.
“It’s been an incredible 25 days full of important stories from around the world. We’re incredibly proud to showcase women in comedy, from jump starting the...
- 6/9/2019
- by Pat Saperstein
- Variety Film + TV
In a remote village nestled in the hills of Turkey’s northern Black Sea region, what appears to be the sound of songbirds calling out to each other is actually the chatter of locals communicating by using an extremely rare whistled language that only they can speak. The village, which is called Koskoy, has passed on its distinct mother tongue from generation to generation, along with a host of other longstanding traditions carried out in isolation from the rest of Turkey and the world at large.
Such is the setting for the captivating and deeply felt coming-of-age fable Sibel, which follows ...
Such is the setting for the captivating and deeply felt coming-of-age fable Sibel, which follows ...
Award-winning Turkish actress Damla Sönmez (“Sibel”) will star in the upcoming six-part Netflix docudrama “Ottoman Rising,” set during the reign of Mehmed II, also known as Mehmed the Conquerer. The series will be helmed by Emre Şahin.
The Circassian beauty is also producing several short films, directed by Ali Tansu Turhan. “Don’t Get Me Wrong” is completed and about to start its festival journey, while “Second Night,” inspired by Doestoyevski’s “White Nights,” is in post.
Meanwhile, “Sibel,” a prize-winner in Locarno, Adana and Hamburg, will open in Turkey on Feb. 22 and in France March 6.
The Circassian beauty is also producing several short films, directed by Ali Tansu Turhan. “Don’t Get Me Wrong” is completed and about to start its festival journey, while “Second Night,” inspired by Doestoyevski’s “White Nights,” is in post.
Meanwhile, “Sibel,” a prize-winner in Locarno, Adana and Hamburg, will open in Turkey on Feb. 22 and in France March 6.
- 2/14/2019
- by Alissa Simon
- Variety Film + TV
Fall festival favorites including “Manta Ray,” Jinpa,” and “Cities of Last Things” will line up in the main competition of next month’s Tokyo Filmex festival. The event runs Nov. 17-25 at venues in the Hibiya and Yurakucho suburbs of Tokyo.
Directed by Phuttiphong Aroonpheng “Manta Ray” recently won the Horizons award at the Venice festival. Pema Tseden’s “Jinpa” won the best screenplay award in the same section. Ho Wi Ding’s “Cities” won the best film prize in the Platform section at Toronto.
Other films making up the ten title competition section include: “Sibel,” by Turkey’s Cagla Zenkirci and Guillaume Giovanetti; “Ayka,” by Russia’s Sergei Dvortsevoy; Yeo Siew Hua’s Locarno Golden Leopard winner “A Land Imagined”; “A Family Tour,” by Ying Liang; “Long Days Journey Into Night,” directed by China’s Bi Gan, which had its premiere in Un Certain regard at Cannes; “An Elephant Sitting Still,...
Directed by Phuttiphong Aroonpheng “Manta Ray” recently won the Horizons award at the Venice festival. Pema Tseden’s “Jinpa” won the best screenplay award in the same section. Ho Wi Ding’s “Cities” won the best film prize in the Platform section at Toronto.
Other films making up the ten title competition section include: “Sibel,” by Turkey’s Cagla Zenkirci and Guillaume Giovanetti; “Ayka,” by Russia’s Sergei Dvortsevoy; Yeo Siew Hua’s Locarno Golden Leopard winner “A Land Imagined”; “A Family Tour,” by Ying Liang; “Long Days Journey Into Night,” directed by China’s Bi Gan, which had its premiere in Un Certain regard at Cannes; “An Elephant Sitting Still,...
- 10/4/2018
- by Patrick Frater
- Variety Film + TV
A strong showcase of German cinema was on offer at the Toronto Film Festival with a slew of films tackling such timely issues as sexual violence, the plight of refugees, the end of the Soviet Union and Germany’s recent turbulent history.
This year’s selections included works from such prominent names as Werner Herzog, Margarethe von Trotta, Christian Petzold, Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck and Sven Taddicken.
In Herzog and André Singer’s doc “Meeting Gorbachev,” the prolific filmmakers offer a portrait of Mikhail Gorbachev, the last president of the Soviet Union, and his lasting impact on world politics.
In “Searching for Ingmar Bergman,” which also unspools in the Tiff Docs sidebar, von Trotta explores the Swedish director’s cinematic legacy.
Von Donnersmarck, who won the foreign-language film Oscar for 2006’s “The Lives of Others,” revisits East Germany in “Never Look Away,” which follows the life of an artist struggling...
This year’s selections included works from such prominent names as Werner Herzog, Margarethe von Trotta, Christian Petzold, Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck and Sven Taddicken.
In Herzog and André Singer’s doc “Meeting Gorbachev,” the prolific filmmakers offer a portrait of Mikhail Gorbachev, the last president of the Soviet Union, and his lasting impact on world politics.
In “Searching for Ingmar Bergman,” which also unspools in the Tiff Docs sidebar, von Trotta explores the Swedish director’s cinematic legacy.
Von Donnersmarck, who won the foreign-language film Oscar for 2006’s “The Lives of Others,” revisits East Germany in “Never Look Away,” which follows the life of an artist struggling...
- 9/17/2018
- by Ed Meza
- Variety Film + TV
Three years ago, Deniz Gamze Ergüven’s handsomely made yet exoticizing “Mustang” reinforced a Western idea of rural Turkish life and was received with general acclaim away from home, proving that a filmmaker’s local origins don’t exclude an internalized brand of orientalism. That’s even truer with “Sibel,” Çagla Zencirci and Guillaume Giovanetti’s third feature, the first one shot in Zencirci’s country of birth. Weaving together folklore, gender roles and a fitful kind of emancipation in the story of a mute young woman desperate to counter the ostracism of her fellow villagers, the writer-director couple have created an attractive package that doesn’t hold up to close inspection. Even so, thanks to the extensive use of an intriguing whistle language, and given the way it buttresses Western narrative notions of Asia Minor, the film has a good chance of garnering international art-house attention.
The movie’s...
The movie’s...
- 8/30/2018
- by Jay Weissberg
- Variety Film + TV
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