There’s a strange, but not surprising disconnect going on at the Cannes Film Festival. Once known as the Olympics of filmmaking, the prestige of the festival hasn’t diminished (although this year was clearly even weaker than last year), but it’s evident that the only North American buyers acquiring films at one of the most illustrious film festivals in the world are indie studios.
Arguably, that’s always been the case, but it’s even more pronounced this year. Case in point, IFC Films are on a tear and have been buying up film left, right and center. But when was the last time a major studio or even a mini-major acquired a big picture that bowed at Cannes and yet, films like “Robin Hood” make their world premieres there too. Odd…
Either way, IFC Films, the company that is making the world safe for indie films in North America — even though their distribution arm throughout the U.S. doesn’t seem huge — just picked up Gregg Araki’s latest film, “Kaboom.”
Called a comical thriller, the film centers on an ambisexual 18-year-old college freshman (Thomas Dekker) who stumbles upon a monstrous conspiracy in a seemingly idyllic Southern California seaside town. The picture was on our Cannes 2010 most anticipated list, and reviews were mixed (a lot of love or hate), but we have to say clips from the picture made it look sort of awful (and this writer loves this guy’s comment).
Back to IFC Films, they’ve been buying Cannes 2010 pictures like they’ve been going out of style. So far they’ve bought (to our count and we may be missing a few) Xavier Dolan’s sophomore directorial effort “Heartbeats” (read some collated reviews), they made a deal with the Sundance Channel for the theatrical release of Oliver Assayas’ “Carlos” (read our review), they’ve nabbed Bertrand Tavernier’s “The Princess of Montpensier,” and also bought Abbas Kiarostami’s “Certified Copy” starring Juliette Binoche (read our review).
The film also stars Juno Temple (we’re big fans of her, keep an eye out for her), Haley Benet, James Duval, Chris Zylka, Andy Fisher Price, Kelly Lynch and Roxanne Mesquida. The aforementioned clips do look… ungood, but hell, we’ll give it a shot regardless.
Also, this just in from a press release, Xavier Beauvois’ “Of Gods And Men” was just acquired by Sony Pictures Classics (read our review), so while the majors aren’t biting, the indie market seems to be a bit healthier than it was last year.