Martin Eden: Last News

EXCLUSIVE: Wild Bunch International has made an eleventh-hour addition to its European Film Market slate, signing international sales on Swedish Morbius director Daniel Espinosa’s upcoming drama Madame Luna.

Kino Lorber has acquired MHz Networks, the owner and operator of subscription streaming outlet MHz Choice and a specialist in bringing international TV series to North American audiences.

Italian actor Luca Marinelli, who was seen recently in Cannes Jury Prize winner The Eight Mountains, will play Benito Mussolini in Joe Wright’s upcoming series M. Son Of The Century.

Elsa Keslassy International CorrespondentKino Lorber has acquired North American distribution rights to Pietro Marcello’s sprawling post-WWI film “Scarlet,” which opened Cannes’ Directors Fortnight.Represented in international markets by Orange Studio, “Scarlet” will have its North American premiere at the New York Film Festival, before a theatrical release in 2023.A loose adaptation of Alexander Grin’s novel, “Scarlet” marks Kino’s second collaboration with Marcello. It follows “Martin Eden,” which competed at Venice, won best actor for Luca Marinelli and went on to play at Toronto.Marcello, who rose to prominence as a documentarian with his film “The Mouth of the Wolf,” penned the script for “Scarlet” with his regular screenwriting partner Maurizio Braucci (“Martin Eden”) and Maud Ameline, with the participation of novelist Geneviève Brisac.

Nick Vivarelli International CorrespondentNeapolitan director Pietro Marcello, who made the transition from high-profile docs to fiction with his Naples-set 2019 adaptation of Jack London’s Martin Eden – that made a splash on the international art-house scene – has now tackled a France-set tale inspired by a Russian novel in his new film “Scarlet” (see review) that mixes fable, musical, historical and magical realism elements.The pic’s central character is Juliette, played by promising newcomer Juliette Jouan, an orphan girl raised by a community of women and by her father Raphaël, a burly soldier who returned from the First World War to find that his adored wife after giving birth had passed away. Marcello spoke to Variety about what he calls his first ‘feminine’ film. Excerpts.I’ve always made films that are quite masculine.

Peter Debruge Chief Film CriticA slight but satisfying choice to open Director’s Fortnight at the Cannes Film Festival, Pietro Marcello’s “Scarlet” isn’t quite a fairy tale, although it certainly feels like one at times. For example, roughly midway through the movie, a woman who might be a witch meets the film’s fanciful young heroine, Juliette (Juliette Jouan), in the woods and predicts her fortune, explaining that one day this girl — who’s destined for greater things than the provincial Normandy farm where she’s dutifully passed her adolescence — will be whisked away by a ship flying scarlet sails.Set in the years just after the Great War, this charming French-language fable — which hails from the celebrated Italian doc maker whose epic narrative debut, “Martin Eden,” was a critical success on the festival circuit just pre-COVID — is smaller, sweeter and more sensitive than Marcello’s earlier work.

Elsa Keslassy International CorrespondentPietro Marcello’s French-language period drama “Scarlet” is set to open the 54th edition of Cannes’ Directors Fortnight on May 18. Weaving musical and fantasy elements, the film is set in Northern Normandy, between the two world wars, a time of great inventions, and follows the journey of a young woman who was raised by her father, a widowed war veteran, and strives to find her own path in life.

Todd McCarthy Quite like the scorpion that stings the frog that’s offered to transport it to the other side of the river, simply because it’s in its perverse nature to do so, so does Martin Eden offer up an ultimately caustic view of human endeavor that gives the heave-ho to constant striving and the best intentions.This vividly rendered Italian take on Jack London’s 1909 novel brandishes a cutting intelligence and a powerful star turn by Luca Marinelli, whose performance earned him best actor kudos at last year’s Venice Film Festival, and who launched his American career earlier this year with The Old Guard.