19/08/2020 - In Venice, the French sales will be betting on Susanna Nicchiarelli’s Miss Marx and Majid Majidi’s Sun Children, and in Toronto on the Cannes Label recipient Memory House

The Lido will be, as it often is, a launchpad of choice for French international sales company Celluloid Dreams, whose line-up includes two films competing for the Golden Lion at the 77th Venice Film Festival (2-12 September): Miss Marx [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Susanna Nicchiarelli
film profile] from Italian director Susanna Nicchiarelli, and Sun Children by Majid Majidi. A duo of films selected in competition similar to those of 2019 (Milla and The Painted Bird [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Václav Marhoul
film profile]) and 2017 (Custody [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Xavier Legrand
film profile] and Lean on Pete [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile]), Venice having often been a profitable festival for the Parisian company (in particular with the victory of From Afar in 2015).

Following Nico, 1988 [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Susanna Nicchiarelli
film profile] which won in the Orizzonti section of the 2017 edition, Celluloid Dreams once again teams up with Italian director Susanna Nicchiarelli and with Roma-based production company Vivo Film (again in co-production with Rai Cinema and Belgian company Tarantula) for Miss Marx. English actors Romola Garai and Patrick Kennedy are in the lead roles for a story (with a script written by the director) centred on Eleanor, Karl Marx’s youngest sister, a brilliant personality, intelligent, passionate and free, who was one of the first women to link issues of feminism with socialism, taking part in workers’ struggles and in the fight for women’s rights and the abolition of child labour. But in 1883, she met Edward Aveling and her life was blown apart by an explosive and tragic love story… The photography is handled by French cinematographer Crystel Fournier (Tomboy [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Céline Sciamma
film profile], Bande de filles [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Céline Sciamma
interview: Céline Sciamma
film profile], Nico, 1988).

The Celluloid Dreams team headed by Hengameh Panahi will also be present with another candidate to the 2020 Golden Lion: Sun Children, from Iranian director Majid Majidi. The French sales agent thus reunites with a filmmaker they’d already worked with on his feature debut, Baduk (discovered in Directors’ Fortnight in 1992). Winner of the 1996 Jury Prize in San Sebastian with Father, nominated for the 1998 Best Foreign Film Oscar for Children of Heaven, and selected in Competition in Berlin (winning the Best Actor award) in 2008 with The Song of Sparrows, Majid Majidi returns this time with the story of 12-year-old Ali and his three friends. Together, they work hard to survive and to support their families, doing small jobs in a garage and committing petty crimes to make fast money.  In a turn of events that seems miraculous, Ali is entrusted to find a hidden treasure underground.  He recruits his gang, but first, in order to gain access to the tunnel, the children must enrol at the Sun School, a charitable institution that tries to educate street kids and child laborers, situated close to where the treasure is located.

The third film in the Celluloid Dreams lineup is another prestigious title: Memory House [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile], by João Paulo Miranda Maria. Produced by Brazil and co-produced by French company Maneki Films, the director’s feature debut, which already received the Official Selection Label from Cannes 2020, will have its physical world premiere at the 45th Toronto International Film Festival (10-19 September) in the Discovery section, before playing in the New Directors competition of the 68^th San Sebastian Film Festival (18-26 September).

(Translated from French)