International Disruptors: Paradise City’s Emilie Georges & Naima Abed Talk Company Slate, Moving Into Management & Branded Content & Why They’ll Keep Their Boutique Approach
deadline.comWelcome to Deadline’s International Disruptors, a feature where we’ll shine a spotlight on key executives and companies outside of the U.S.
who are shaking up the offshore marketplace. This week, we’re speaking with Memento Films International founder Emilie Georges and producer Naima Abed about their company Paradise City, its slate and why now is the time to move into the management and branded content spheres. Eight years ago, Emilie Georges’ Memento Films International and its production arm La Cinéfacture quietly launched Paradise City, a specialty label for the outfit, with respected producer Naima Abed helping curate the slate.
While the banner co-financed and co-produced a number of genre titles including Jim Mickle’s 2013 Sundance hit We Are What We Are, it was only when the duo worked on Luca Guadagnino’s 2017 Oscar-nominated hit Call Me By Your Name that Georges and Abed began to think about how they would pivot the Paradise City division (a nod to Memento’s Paris headquarters) for the new world.“The project came to us at development stage – in a similarly organic way to other projects we had worked on – and it was at a time when the sales business was really starting to deliver on certain ambitious, U.S.
market-centric, English-speaking projects,” says Abed of Call Me By Your Name. “It was clear that this was an area that needed support and growth so we started thinking about how we could formulate the business to meet this demand.”This year in Cannes, Georges and Abed unveiled a new iteration of Paradise City: a London and Paris-based film, TV drama and branded content production management company.
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