08/01/2024 - The Spanish filmmaker’s upcoming movie will be co-produced by the French-German TV network, as will new projects by Tarik Saleh, Kleber Mendonça Filho and Hafsia Herzi

Director Albert Serra (© Fabrizio de Gennaro/Cineuropa)

The 4th selection committee of 2023 organised by Arte France Cinéma (steered by Olivier Père) has pledged to commit to co-producing and pre-purchasing four projects. Standing tall amongst these is Out Of This World, which will be the 9th feature film by Spanish director Albert Serra, who has previously presented five films in Cannes (Honour of the Knights (Quixotic) [+see also:
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film profile] in a special screening within the 2016 Official Selection, Liberté [+see also:
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interview: Albert Serra
film profile] in competition in 2022) and who triumphed in Locarno 2013 with Story of My Death [+see also:
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interview: Albert Serra
film profile]. This time round, the filmmaker will be exploring the eternal rivalry between Russia and the USA, following in the wake of an American delegation travelling to Russia at the height of the Russia-Ukraine War to try to find a solution to a sanctions-related economic dispute… The production brings together French firms Idéale Audience Group and Films du Losange with Latvia’s Forma Pro, Germany’s Pandora, Spain’s Andergraun Films and Portugal’s Rosa Filmes, and will be shot in Latvia in June and July of 2024.

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Arte France Cinéma are also throwing their weight behind Les aigles de la République which will be Swedish director Tarik Saleh’s 6th feature film after Metropia [+see also:
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interview: Tarik Saleh
film profile] (awarded the World Cinema Dramatic Grand Prize in Sundance 2017) and Boy from Heaven [+see also:
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film profile] (the winner of the Best Screenplay Prize in Cannes 2022), to name but three. The pitch for his latest opus, which is set to star Fares Fares and Lyna Khoudri, revolves around the most adored actor in Egypt, George Fahmy, who falls out of favour with the authorities overnight. On the verge of losing everything, George is forced to play the part of President Al-Sissi in a biopic in his honour. He subsequently finds himself jettisoned into the most closed-off inner circle of power and soon realises that he not only stands to lose his soul, he’s also forced to negotiate a dangerous dance of death… The film is due to be shot between 22 April and 19 July 2024 in Morocco and Sweden, produced by Memento Production (France), Unlimited Stories (Sweden) and Ström Pictures (Denmark).

Arte France Cinéma will also be co-producing L’agent secret by Brazil’s Kleber Mendonça Filho (who competed in Cannes 2016 with Aquarius [+see also:
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interview: Kleber Mendonça Filho, Juli…
film profile]). Produced by MK Productions (France) and CinemaScopio (Brazil), the movie takes us back to 1977, following in the footsteps of Marcelo, a forty-something man who’s running away from a troubled past and who rocks up in the city of Recife where he hopes to build a new life for himself and reconnect with his family, albeit with death threats continually hanging over his head…

Last but not least, Arte France Cinéma are set to shore up La petite dernière, which will be French director Hafsia Herzi’s 3rd feature film after You Deserve A Lover [+see also:
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film profile] (both unveiled in Cannes: the former in Critics’ Week 2019 and the latter in the Un Certain Regard section in 2021). Loosely based on Fatima Daas’ novel, also called La petite dernière, the story revolves around Fatima, the youngest child of a family of Algerian immigrants, who leaves her high school in the inner city suburbs to join a posh preparatory class. Negotiating social divides and struggling to accept her desire for women which clashes with her Muslim beliefs, Fatima must come to terms with her multiple identities. But as she moves away from family traditions and begins her life as a young woman, she discovers new codes… Produced by June Films (France) and Katuh Studio (Germany), the film will commence shooting in the first semester of 2024.

For the record, Arte France Cinéma are also backing upcoming films by Andrea Arnold, Joachim Trier, Nadav Lapid, Miguel Gomes, Kaouther Ben Hania, Abderrahmane Sissako, Walter Salles, Dea Kulumbegashvili, Alain Guiraudie, Emmanuel Mouret, Fernando Trueba, Thierry de Peretti, Lucile Hadzihalilovic, Patricia Mazuy, Emmanuel Finkiel, Gaël Morel, Bruno Podalydès, Justyna Tafel, Johanna Pyykkö, Payal Kapadia, Diego Céspedes, Gints Zilbalodis, Arnaud and Jean-Marie Larrieu, Francesca Comencini, Karim Moussaoui, Mareike Engelhardt, Momoko Seto, Jérémy Comte, Jonathan Millet, Louise Hémon and the duo Caroline Poggi and Jonathan Vinel.