Marcel Pagnol: Last News

Leo Barraclough International Features Editor As Cannes Film Festival kicks off, the Paris-based international sales company MK2 Films has revealed it has acquired three films and made substantial investments in new restorations, set against the backdrop of a strong presence at Cannes Classics. MK2 Films has entered into a collaboration with the Niki Charitable Art Foundation on the global rights (excluding the U.S.) for two films directed by artist Niki de Saint Phalle: “Un Rêve plus long que la nuit” (1976) and “Daddy” (1973).

Thank god for Alexander Payne. The filmmaker is, and always have been, a true humanist. A writer/director more interested in human beings, something that has always been the special effect of his movies. A two-time Oscar winning writer, his latest film, The Holdovers, which had its World Premiere Thursday at the Telluride Film Festival, is one of the rare movies in which he doesn’t also have a writing credit. David Hemingson did the screenplay, but the idea, an inspired one, came from Payne, a real film buff who was always intrigued by Marcel Pagnol’s 1935 French film Merlusse about a group of boarding school students stuck over the holidays with a much-despised teacher. The director thought it had the bones for a new story and developed with Hemingson. Still, set in 1970, it is Payne’s first period film after a celebrated career for movies like Sideways, The Descendants, and many others. He has made some contemporary classics, no doubt, but the warm humanity of a trio of people left alone at Christmas in a snowy boarding school, ranks right up there with his very best. It is funny, sad, witty, poignant, filled with snark and heart and great acting. It also manages to be a film set at the holidays that offers something truly new for the genre, and also delightfully not only evokes the period in which it is set, it also purposely looks like a movie made then.

Jacqueline West is one of Hollywood’s most respected costume designers with four Oscar nominations for Philip Kaufmann’s Quills, David Fincher’s The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button, Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s The Revenant and Denis Villeneuve’s Dune: Part One.

Elsa Keslassy International CorrespondentMediawan, the fast-rising pan-European production and distribution group behind “The Little Prince,” has launched a new division, Mediawan kids & family, to ramp up its activities dedicated to youth entertainment content and become a global one-stop shop. Unveiled during the Annecy Animation Film Festival, this new division will bring together Mediawan’s topnotch labels, including Aton Soumache’s thriving banner Method Animation, whose track record spans 25 years and comprises worldwide hits such as “Miraculous – Tales of Ladybug and Cat Noir” (co-produced with ZAG) and “Robin Hood – Mischief in Sherwood; ON Classics, the banner behind the BAFTA-nominated, Cesar-winning “The Little Prince,” which sold 50 million tickets worldwide.

Sony Pictures Classics has acquired all rights in North America, Latin America, Scandinavia, the Middle East, Israel, India and Italy, and aboard airlines and ships worldwide, to the animated film The Magnificent Life of Marcel Pagnol, from writer-director Sylvain Chomet. The deal for Chomet’s English-language feature follows SPC’s distribution of his past films The Triplets of Belleville and The Illusionist.