Post – Cannes, Distribution Updates For Uncle Boonmee, Poetry, And More

With the Cannes Film Festival now officially in the books, it appears as though sales for films that premiered at the festival are about to reach a peak.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, the festival’s best picture, the Palme d’Or winning film Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives, has now officially found a distributor. The newest film from director Apichatpong Weerasethakul will be distributed by Pyramide in France, New Wave Films in the U.K., Karma Films in Spain and BIM Distribuzione in Italy. This follows deals with most of Europe and Canada were struck coming out of the festival.

The film follows Uncle Boonmee, who is diagnosed with a mental illness, and decides to make a trip through a mysterious cave, where his first life was born. Hopefully a deal can be struck stateside (IFC, I’m looking at you), because while critics seemed a bit mixed on the film, I know that this is one I can’t wait to check out.

One that I know we will be able to check out, is the recent Best Screenplay winner from the Cannes Film Festival, a film callend Poetry, from director Lee Chang-dong. According to IndieWire, the film has been picked up for U.S. distribution by Kino International. Poetry follows Mija, a grandmother who lives with her grandson in a small town located along the Han River. I haven’t heard much about the film, but it did seem to score well with critics, as it garnered a B+ on an IndieWire critics pole coming out of the festival. Also, Kino International knows how to release a film, so this is definitely in good hands.

Finally, Alta Films, Spains number one arthouse film distributor, has nabbed up rights to a massive collection of Cannes films. They have bought up Carlos, Tamara Drewe, Abel, Le Quattro volte, and Take This Waltz. They also have the rights to Ken Loach’s new film, Irish Route, so this is definitely one of the better collections of films to be bought up for distribution. Granted, it’s in Spain, it’s also an interesting story as a whole, as most of these films were not in competition, leaving many people to believe that this year had better quality in their out of competition program than in competition. With the likes of the Carlos and Tamara Drewe out of competition, Abel being a special screening, and Volte a part of the Director’s Fortnight, one can only think that this year’s out of competition program was vastly superior.

Source: THR / IndieWire / Variety