After a highly dynamic start to its business activities last year at Cannes with And Then We Danced [+leggi anche:
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intervista: Levan Akin
intervista: Levan Gelbakhiani
scheda film] by Levan Akin (the sales of which absolutely skyrocketed) and Land of Ashes [+leggi anche:
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scheda film] by Sofia Quirós Ubeda, young French international sales agent Totem Films, headed up by Agathe Valentin, Laure Parleani and Bérénice Vincent (read the interview), is really hitting its stride and will be rocking up at the European Film Market at the 70^th Berlinale (20 February-1 March 2020) with a jam-packed slate of 11 titles.

Standing out particularly on the menu are three market premieres, with Luxor [+leggi anche:
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intervista: Zeina Durra
scheda film] by Zeina Durra (a UK co-production that has just taken part in the World Cinema Dramatic Competition at Sundance, with British actress Andrea Riseborough in the lead role), the Finnish omnibus fiction Force of Habit (which has been made as both a film and a series, and which follows 11 women confronted with all possible facets of gender inequality) and Kiss Me Before It Blows Up, the feature debut by Shirel Peleg, a young Berlin-based Israeli director (see the news).

Produced by German outfit Fireglory Pictures, and starring Moran Rosenblatt, Luise Wolfram, Rivka Michaeli, Juliane Köhler, Bernhard Schütz, Irit Kaplan and John Carroll Lynch, Kiss Me Before It Blows Up is a subversive romantic comedy about a culture clash and a family conflict that arise when love crosses all boundaries. Chaos ensues when two generations of Israeli women fall for a German lady and a Palestinian man, respectively. The film will be distributed in Germany by X Verleih.

Also on Totem Films’ line-up are a clutch of titles in post-production: Gagarin [+leggi anche:
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intervista: Fanny Liatard e Jérémy Tro…
scheda film] by French duo Fanny Liatard and Jérémy Trouilh (see the article), Softie [+leggi anche:
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intervista: Samuel Theis
scheda film] by their fellow countryman Samuel Theis, the documentary We [+leggi anche:
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intervista: Alice Diop
scheda film] by Alice Diop, and Moneyboys [+leggi anche:
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intervista: C.B. Yi
scheda film] by China’s C.B Yi (produced by Austria’s KPG and French firm Zorba).

At the EFM, the Totem Films team will also be pre-selling two films currently in production: Compartment No 6 [+leggi anche:
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intervista: Juho Kuosmanen
scheda film] by Finland’s Juho Kuosmanen (whose feature debut, The Happiest Day in the Life of Olli Mäki [+leggi anche:
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intervista: Juho Kuosmanen
scheda film], scooped the Un Certain Regard Prize at Cannes in 2016), which is slated to be completed in spring 2021 and which whisks us away on a train travelling from Moscow to Murmansk with two characters who have absolutely nothing in common; and the animated flick My Sunny Maad [+leggi anche:
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intervista: Michaela Pavlátová
scheda film] by Michaela Pavlatova, which revolves around a young Czech woman who follows an Afghani man to Kabul purely out of love.