​Newen Connect’s new sales head Alice Damiani talks Cannes slate and fresh strategy (exclusive) | News – Armessa Movie News

Newen Connect, the international sales arm of the TFI Group’s Newen Studios, has snapped up rights to star-powered French features Take Me Home and Under the Rainbow and will kick off sales in Cannes. Both will be released in France by UGC Distribution.

Take Me Home is the first feature from directing duo Karine Blanc and Michel Tavares and stars Clovis Cornillac, alongside Eyé Haïdara in a story about a struggling country singer who moves with her children to a mountain village and turns the life of the mayor and the whole town upside down. The feel-good story is produced by Yves Marmion’s Les Films du 24.

Also adding colour to Newen Connect’s Cannes slate is Bryan Marciano’s drama Under the Rainbow, another debut feature produced by Christine Rouxel of Eliph Productions with TF1 Studio and starring Valérie Lemercier, and Finnegan Oldfield and set for a fourth quarter release in France. The ensemble film takes place at a shelter where exhausted social workers try their best to combat homophobia with human love and connection.

Alice Damiani, SVP of international film sales for Newen Connect since February, describes a Newen Connect film as ”mainstream, but European in spirit…We’re mostly mainstream, but we also work with auteur cinema. We want to expand our reach as much as possible but want to stay true to our identity.”

Damiani spearheads film projects from TF1 Studio and oversees international distribution and sales for Newen Connect’s current and future slate of titles and back catalogue.  She said the current structure and distribution deals created “a real synergy” for the company, laser focused on an editorial strategy devoted to “films made for wide audiences from comedies to drama to action films and family films.”

She said she expected to handle around five to six films per year, complemented by a handful of international acquisitions – “ambitious projects in the English language and international co-productions” and the four to five UGC titles a yearr that Newen Connect sells as part of a distribution deal with UGC to release most of films Newen Connect develops with TF1 Studio in France. Rounding out the slate are films from the group’s global production houses that will make up around two to three films a year. 

Eclectic slate 

In Cannes, Damiani’s department is showing fresh footage from several upcoming titles co-produced by the group’s production arm TF1 Studio including French wildlife director Guillaume Maidatchevsky’s Kina & Yuk. The film, produced by Valdès (also behind Guillaume Maidatchevsky’s Ailo’s Journey) is a live-action adventure tale following a couple of foxes surviving and founding a family against the odds in the current evolving Arctic conditions.

The sales company has new footage of Kevin Macdonald’s High & Low – John Galliano about the rise and fall of the controversial fashion designer from KGB Films alongside TF1 Studio and with the support of the Conde Nast Group. Macdonald notably won the Oscar for One Day In September and is behind Whitney, Marley, The Mauritanian and The Last King Of Scotland.

TF1 Studio has also teamed with producers Julien Madon, Aimée Buidine, Melita Toscan du Plantier and Raphaël Gindre for Marco La Via and Hanna Ladoul’s Funny Birds starring Andrea Riseborough, Catherine Deneuve and Morgan Saylor in a story about about the building of family relationships by three generations of women also set for release via UGC in France. Martin Scorsese is the executive producer of the English-language film.

Newen Connect is bringing new footage to Cannes of Piero Messina’s English-langugae love story Another End starring Gael Garcia Bernal and The Worst Person in the World’s Renate Reinsve alongside Berenice Bejo ). The film is set in a near future where technology can put the consciousness of a dead person back into a living body in an attempt to ease the grief of separation and give loved ones a little extra time to say goodbye. Italian director Messina’s first feature The Wait screened  in Venice in 2015. Messina joins forces once again with that film’s producers Indigo Film (Youth, The Great Beauty) and Rai Cinema.

Among its comedy line-up is new footage from Pierre-François Martin-Laval’s French comedy Mr. Putifar’s Wacky Plan featuring a starry local cast including Christian Clavier and Isabelle Nanty.  produced by the producer behind French box office hit Serial (Bad) Weddings Romain Rotjman for UGC and Les Films du 24.

Newen Connect also has market premieres of two titles” Olivier Vanhoofstadt’s The Madness Express from Vendome Films starring Artus, Elsa Zylberstein; and Frederic Forestier and Antonin Fourlon’s ensemble comedy Open Season with Camille Lou and  Hakim Jemili, that is produced by Curiosa Films and Starman Films.

French focus

Damiani said the company is also giving pride of place to its French identity and more than 800 catalogue titles. It has two films selected in Cannes Classics (Claude Sautet’s 1960 film Classe Tous Risques and Emir Kusturica’s 1995 feature Underground. “Heritage is very important to us at TF1,” she said. ”We are constantly restoring films and continue to sell well to key territories like the US, UK, Germany and Japan.”

While she has been at the company for several years, the 2023 Cannes market will be the first for Damiani in her current role. “I’m heading in with a positive attitude, high expectations and optimism.”

Newen Connect launched in 2020 when TF1 acquired French production powerhouse Newen Studios, a fusion of Newen Distribution and TF1 Studio and is headed by CEO Rodolphe Buet.  Newen Connect sells films produced by TF1 Studio.