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Exclusive: AI firm Flawless, distributor-financier XYZ Films (Mandy), and producer Tea Shop Productions (The Fall) have acquired Michel Gondry’s 2023 Cannes Directors’ Fortnight movie The Book Of Solutions for all English-speaking territories.

Directed and written by Gondry, the French-language comedy is the first film in seven years from the Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and The Science of Sleep filmmaker.

It will be releases simultaneously in the original French language and converted to a director-approved English-language version using Flawless’ TrueSync AI technology, which became known after movies like The Fall. You can read about Flawless’ “visual translation” techniques and acquisitions strategy in our story here.

Pic stars Pierre Niney, Blanche Gardin, Francoise Lebrun and Vincent Elbaz and was produced by George Bermann at Partizan.

In the film, Marc (Niney), a bipolar and paranoid filmmaker, is having trouble with his latest project. With his editor as an accomplice, he manages...

Tech company and AI pioneer Flawless and the UK’s Tea Shop Productions have launched a production partnership in Cannes backed by an initial $100m fund.

Flawless Productions plans to produce and fully finance up to 10 commercial genre features in its first year. Flawless co-founders and co-CEOs Scott Mann and Nick Lynes announce the partnership and are taking meetings here with Tea Shop co-founders James Harris and Mark Lane will run the venture.

Tea Shop, which is currently in production in the UK on the Naseem Hamed boxing biopic Giant with AGC Studios and White Star Productions, will continue its own production work,...

A scene from ‘Property’ – Fantastic Fest 2023

Director Daniel Bandeire’s Property starring Malu Galli took home top honors at the 2023 Fantastic Fest held in Austin, Texas. This year’s festival kicked off on September 21st and wraps up on September 28th.

“We were graced with wonderful films from around the world this year,” said Annick Mahnert, Director of Programming for Fantastic Fest. “Curating this diverse showcase of cinema for our esteemed jurors was a real privilege. With so many incredible perspectives represented, their job reviewing these fantastic movies was undeniably challenging. Their thoughtful and professional critiques of each work embody the cinematic excellence we love to champion at Fantastic Fest.”

2023 Fantastic Fest Winners

“Main Competition” Features

Best Picture: Property, directed by Daniel Bandeire

Best Director: Robert Morgan – Stopmotion

Honorable Mention: Animalia, directed by Sofia Alaoui

“Next Wave” Features

Best Picture: Sri Asih, directed by Upi Avianto

Best Directors: David Kapac...

Fantastic Fest is currently winding down in Austin, Texas, with two more days of blood-splattered programming unfurling at the Alamo Drafthouse on South Lamar.

But before the festival concludes (with a closing-night screening of Nahnatchka Khan’s “Totally Killer”), TheWrap can exclusively reveal the winners from this year’s festival – in all of their gore-drenched glory.

“We were graced with wonderful films from around the world this year,” said Annick Mahnert, Director of Programming for Fantastic Fest, in an official statement. “Curating this diverse showcase of cinema for our esteemed jurors was a real privilege. With so many incredible perspectives represented, their job reviewing these fantastic movies was undeniably challenging. Their thoughtful and professional critiques of each work embody the cinematic excellence we love to champion at Fantastic Fest.”

Choosing the very best films of this year’s festival must have been though; not only were there a ton of...

In the age of "Stranger Things," everyone wants to make their nostalgia-soaked Amblin-esque movie. And every one of those movies arrives with a wink — Look at us! We're remixing and reheating that thing you love! That makes "UFO Sweden," an out-of-nowhere miracle of a science fiction adventure from the Swedish filmmaking collective Crazy Pictures, all the more satisfying. Everyone in Hollywood wants to capture those Spielberg-ian, those Donner-ian vibes. They lean so hard on the "Remember this thing you loved?" pump that they forget to make something that actually stands alone, capturing the quality that defined that kind of movie while eschewing the obvious trappings.

Leave it to a bunch of uber-talented Swedes to out-Hollywood Hollywood and craft the kind of character-centric adventure that used to be this industry's bread and butter. The 1996 setting of "UFO Sweden" isn't just an aesthetic (even though it is well utilized), but a...

Director Ryoo Seung-wan’s Smugglers has been acquired ahead of its Gala Premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival.

Flawless, along with XYZ Films and Tea Shop Productions, announced today their acquisition of the South Korean crime-action epic. Deadline reported in May that Flawless, co-founded by filmmaker Scott Mann (Fall), had partnered with U.S. seller and distributor XYZ Films (Run Rabbit Run) and UK producer Tea Shop Productions (47 Meters Down) to acquire rights to foreign-language films and convert them to English for distribution in English-speaking territories.

Ryoo Seung-wan has helmed some of South Korea’s most commercially-successful titles and earned seven nominations from the Grand Bell Awards, the country’s equivalent of the Academy Awards. Set in the 1970s, the film tells the story of a pair of haenyeo — women free divers who harvest shellfish — who are driven to underwater smuggling and must battle it out with a...

Flawless, XYZ Films and Tea Shop Productions have acquired the Cannes Critics’ Week selection “Vincent Must Die” for all English-speaking territories from Goodfellas.

Flawless, the pioneering film technology company and a leader in the field of visual translation, recently announced it has launched a partnership with XYZ Films and Tea Shop Productions to acquire rights to foreign-language films, converting them to English for distribution in relevant markets.

Directed by Stéphan Castang, “Vincent Must Die” is written by Mathieu Naert, produced by Thierry Lounas and Claire Bonnefoy, and stars Karim Leklou and Vimala Pons. In the film, an ordinary man finds himself fighting for his life after he goes out one day and is mysteriously attacked by random strangers in the street with the intent to kill him.

This is the first film from the production company Wild West. Goodfellas and Capricci joined forces to create Wild West, a production company...

Sf Studios is set to co-produce and distribute “UFO Sweden,” a sci-fi adventure from Crazy Pictures, a Swedish film collective whose past credits includes the 2018 hit movie “The Unthinkable.”

Reinvent will handle international sales on “UFO Sweden,” which is scheduled to start shooting in the fall. Sf Studios will distribute the film in the Nordics in December 2022.

Described as a mix between “X-Files” and “Stranger Things,” “UFO Sweden” is set in a small town and follows a teenage rebel placed in foster care, who suspects that her father is not dead, but has been kidnapped by UFOs. With the help from a UFO association, she is determined to find out the truth.

Crazy Pictures got the idea for the film after learning about UFO-Sweden, which investigates mysterious phenomena and manages the world’s largest UFO archive, Archives for the Unexplained in Norrköping, Sweden.

“We understood that they were working on...

In her 1965 essay “The Imagination of Disaster,” Susan Sontag wrote that the allure of “exotic dangerous situations” came down to the way they “normalize what is psychologically unbearable.” It would have been intriguing to get Sontag’s take on “The Unthinkable,” , and doesn’t so much delight in world-ending events as it recognizes that surviving them never ensures a happy ending. Getting through the ordeal is only half the battle.

But what a battle: In this fast-paced adventure from Swedish director Victor Danell, an unsuspecting public contends with toxic rain that renders its victims into puddles of dementia who slam their cars into epic pileups as a mystery international threat invades from the skies. Like Jeremy Saulnier’s “Green Room,” the movie oscillates from stark survival drama to outright war movie and back again, speeding through taut, claustrophobic shootouts and exploding helicopters even as it shoehorns the spectacle into a...

If there were Oscars for chutzpah, “The Unthinkable” would be a cinch: The first feature for a Swedish collective who’ve been making short films together since childhood, it manages a sprawling story with considerable spectacular action to technically commanding effect on a relatively miniscule, partly Kickstarter-funded budget.

Yet Crazy Pictures’ disaster movie/thriller/romance/dysfunctional family drama is more laudable for its ambitious resourcefulness on limited means than for actual achievement or impact. Despite some strikingly accomplished elements, the awkward whole never quite gels, sewn-together parts from “Red Dawn,” “Independence Day,” et al., failing to cohere amid major logic gaps, not to mention lead characters more off-putting than interesting.

At once impressive and misconceived, this is truly an odd duck whose ungainliness may explain why the U.S. took so long to catch up with a film that’s launched in numerous other territories since its 2018 home-turf premiere.

The creative and tireless team at Screamfest has always done an amazing job of celebrating the horror genre's present while honoring its past, and their second wave of programming certainly confirms this notion, as this year's Hollywood-based festival will include anniversary screenings of Bride of Chucky and The Serpent and the Rainbow, in addition to special screenings of Aliens and The Terminator to commemorate Gale Anne Hurd being presented with a Career Achievement Award.

Press Release: "Hollywood, Calif. – October 4, 2018 – Screamfest Horror Film Festival, America’s largest, and longest running horror movie festival, announces the second wave of its festival line up. The fest, which will run from Oct. 9-18, 2018 at the Tcl Chinese 6 Theatres in Hollywood, will showcase the West Coast premiere of The Unthinkable, the West Coast premiere of Welcome to Mercy and the U.S. premiere of the animated feature “Chuck Steel: Night of The Trampires.”

This year,...

Disaster thriller was a box-office hit in Sweden this summer.

Swedish thriller The Unthinkable (The Blomstertid Now) has sold to Signature Entertainment for the UK and Mongrel Media for Canada.

Sf International has now sold the disaster thriller to more than 70 countries. The film was a box-office hit in Sweden this summer for the company’s distribution arm, Sf Studios, racking up more than 100,000 admissions.

Other deals struck include German-speaking territories (Ascot Elite), French-speaking territories (Wild Bunch), Italy (Bim Distribuzione), Spain (Adso), Turkey (Filmarti), Japan (New Select), China (Times Vision), Taiwan (Movie Cloud) and South Korea (Lumix).

The Unthinkable will...

In Swedish film collective Crazy Pictures’ feature The Unthinkable (Den blomstertid nu kommer), Sweden faces a mysterious attack while Alex (Christoffer Nordenrot) tries to reunite with his youth love, Anna (Lisa Henni). Directed by Victor Danell, here’s the brand new international trailer from the indie partly-funded by fans on Kickstarter. There’s not much here but it promises to […]...

Wild Bunch has bought high-concept Swedish disaster film “The Unthinkable” for distribution in France and Italy from Sf Studios.

Directed and produced by Swedish film collective Crazy Pictures, “The Unthinkable” takes place in the aftermath of a mysterious attack in Sweden. Amid the chaos, a young man (Christoffer Nordenrot) is forced to return to his hometown, where he crosses path with his high school sweetheart (Lisa Henni) and falls back in love with her.

The film was helmed by the filmmakers who are part of the Crazy Pictures collective: Hannes Krantz, Albin Pettersson, Olle Tholén, Rasmus Råsmark and Victor Danell. Nordenrot co-wrote the script with Danell, whose 2015 short “Gilla” played at Tribeca.

Budgeted at an estimated €1.8 million ($2.2 million), the film was financially backed by Film i Väst. Crazy Pictures raised nearly half the budget via a Kickstarter campaign.

The film has been getting strong word-of-mouth on social media since the release of its teaser,...

Okay, Quiet Earthers, I know you're going to fall in love with this trailer as much as I did. It's for a new apocalyptic alien invasion film from Sweden called a new sci-fi film from Sweden titled Den Blomstertid Nu Kommer(or "Now the time of Blossoming Arrives" translated).

The gritty flick comes from director Victor Danell and was originally a crowed funded picture on some level though you wouldn't know it.

Synopsis:

At the same time as Sweden is shocked by a mysterious attack, Alex is forced back to his childhood home. There he must reconcile with his father and his youth love, Anna, while they struggle to survive.

The film stars Christoffer Nordenrot, Lisa Henni, Jesper Barkselius, Pia Halvorsen, and Magnus Sundberg.

Thanks to...

"We never thought it would happen to us." Whoa. This looks cool. A full-length official trailer has debuted for a new sci-fi film from Sweden titled Den Blomstertid Nu Kommer, which translates directly to Now the time of blossoming arrives. The film is called The Unthinkable in English, and is about a mysterious attack on Sweden. This film, from director Victor Danell, was crowd-funded originally but has a huge big-budget Hollywood look to it, especially with some of the action sequences seen in this full trailer. Starring Christoffer Nordenrot, Lisa Henni, Jesper Barkselius, Pia Halvorsen, and Magnus Sundberg. I don't know what exactly is going on, possibly aliens or something else, but it looks crazy good. Watch below. Here's the full trailer (+ teaser trailer) for Victor Danell's Den blomstertid nu kommer, found on Vimeo: At the same time as Sweden is shocked by a mysterious attack, Alex is forced back to his childhood home.

From the looks of things, if there’s one Swedish genre film that’s sure to make a splash in the next few months, it’s Den Blomstertid Nu Kommer (aka The Unthinkable, although it literally translates to ‘Now the time of blossoming arrives’). The teaser hyped us up considerably. How could it not considering this is a crowdfunded film with the look and feel of a big budget popcorn flick? While the first glimpse suggested a dire turn of events in Sweden, the first full-length trailer posits a sci-fi origin to the impending doom. In the mood for some well-crafted and rather atmospheric footage? Check the mouth-watering trailer below. Swedish audiences are lucky since they get to experience writer-director Victor Danell’s film in select cinemas sometime this...

[Read the whole post on screenanarchy.com...]...

Titles include Neil Jordan’s The Widow.

Zurich-based distributor Ascot Elite has secured rights to a quartet of titles from the European Film Market, which took place last month in Berlin.

The company has taken The Widow, Destination Wedding, The Unthinkable and The Guilty for German-speaking Europe and Switzerland.

Directed by Neil Jordan (The Crying Game) The Widow was produced by Quentin Tarantino’s longtime collaborator Lawrence Bender, the film depicts the friendship between a young woman (Chloë Grace Moretz) whose mother has died and a lonely widow (Isabelle Huppert). The deal was struck with sales agent Sierra/Affinity.

Romantic...