Locarno’s Match Me! Projects Feature Steven Bauer, Alba Flores, Alfredo Castro, ‘Flow’ Co-Writer
John Hopewell
Locarno’s Match Me! showcases projects from 36 producers worldwide, highlighting the audience ambitions of a new generation of filmmakers.
https://variety.com/wp-content/themes/pmc-variety-2020/assets/app/icons/apple-touch-icon.png
Variety
Spangled by stars – Steven Bauer in “My Uncle’s Movie,” Alba Flores in “The Shepherdess,” Larraín regular Alfredo Castro in “Dog Legs,” – the projects brought to Locarno’s networking confab Match Me! underscores the wealth of riches offered by emerging non-English language filmmakers from around the world.

Featuring slates from 36 producers, this year’s lineup also takes in next titles from Matīss Kaža, co-writer of Gints Zilbalodis’ Cannes hit and Annecy multiple winner “Flow,” and Chile’s Oro Films, France’s Wrong Films and the Dominican Republic’s Mentes Fritas Film Production, who backed respectively Argentine genre auteur standout “To Kill the Beast,” Sundance Sundance Jury Prize winner “Animalia” and SXSW Audience Award laureate “Bionico’s Bachata.”

A quick take on 2024’s Match Me! also underscores how how a global arthouse sector is increasingly – and excitingly – ever more mixing it up.

That cuts multiple ways. Doc/fiction titles and genre tropes and blending abound.

Cannes saw movies of both large artistic and audience ambition, given their U.S. distributors. Introducing often titles made on a fraction of Cannes standouts’ budgets, Match Me! producers echo that gameplays.

“In the case of ‘Dog Legs,’ we believe that it is in a middle ground between a film that explores an authorial and audience vocation,” enthuses Chile’s Tomás Gerlach.

“Audiences worldwide have picked on what we now call “elevated arthouse” films which show that there is an appetite for different ways of making films,” adds France’s Solal Coutard.

In Germany, Hakim + König Film aims to create “pop arthouse – working on arthouse films “but finding a huge audience for them, in the big cineplex,” in Germany and abroad, explains Ali Hakim.

Near all producers embrace mixed financing models. “We will explore hybrid release strategies, combining limited theatrical releases with online premieres to maximize reach and audience engagement,” says Umberto Maria Angrisani at Italy’s Mompracem, at Locarno with another crossover title, “Fucking Bonaparte,” a sex-sluiced smackdown between toxic masculinity and female libertinism.

Some will ring their options in the kinds of films they produce.

“My business model is to focus on producing films with distinct female and LGBTIQ+ voices, together with commercial projects to balance the risk in the market,” says Taiwan’s Amanda Manyin Tseng, at Match Me! With “Honey Milk.”

The net effect is a broadening of horizons on the non English-language movie scene.

A drill-down of lead projects brought to market at this year’s Match Me!:

Brazil

Daniela Azeredo, Druzina Content

Representing at Match Me! a groundbreaking force in production/sales not based out of São Paulo nor Rio: the

the Porto Alegre-based Druzina Content. One of the best known of Brazilian kids/teen content producers which also backs general audience sci-fi and doc series, Druzina’s slate is lead by “Three Times,” from Bruno Bini – whose first feature, 2020’s “Loop,” was associate produced by Fernando Meirelles. “Three Times” turns on a man who, discovering his fate, battles to avoid it.

Rosa Caldeira, Maloka Filmes

Focusing on Black LGBTQ narratives from São Paulo’s favelas as well as organizing the city’s Festival Cuir, Caldeira, who directed the multi prized short “Perifericu,” will talk up “Eke.” Caldeira’s first feature, it centers on Ayo, a young trans capoeira-vogue dancer rescued from despair by Bárbara, an orphaned trans teenager. Also on Maloka’s Locarno slate: “Saudades Maloqueira, directed by Well Amorim, about a young Black trans who, after years of absence, returns to his father’s favela home on Christmas Eve.

Chile

Tomas Gerlach, A Simple Vista

“At least in my generation, auteur cinema is no longer the only option, there is a tendency to explore genres, to mix them, to turn them around, and so perhaps reach more audiences,” says Gerlach at the Valdivia-based A Simple Vista. Focusing on works based on Chilean IP, such as “Dog Legs,” adapting a 1960 novel by Chile’s Carlos Droguett, starring Pablo Larraín regular Alfredo Castro as a man who adopts a child born with dog legs. Matías Rojas Valencia (“A Place Called Dignity”) directs; Colombia’s Rhayuela Films (“Rebellion”) produces.

Florencia Rodríguez Araya, Oro Films

A Chilean producer on Argentinian Agustina San Martín’s genre auteur standout “To Kill the Beast.” Now backing “The Evil That Binds Us,” a hidden family secret drama from Nicolás Postiglione, following on his acclaimed first feature “Immersion”; and hailing into Locarno with another production to track: Diego Breit’s “The Flames of a Thousand Fires,” a boy scout camp-set drama which questions the ameliorist vision of most coming-of-age narratives.

Barbara Valdés, Periferia Audiovisual

Moving at Locarno “The Shorn Sheep,” the feature debut of Rossana Castillo (“Piter,” Humedal”). Amanda, 15, withdrawn, a teen from northern Chile, is visited by her cousin from Santiago who abused her as a child. She plans a crime by way of seeking justice. Looking to provide collaborative workspaces with emerging filmmakers, Valdés aims to “secure both national and international funds and financing to develop feature films, documentaries, series, and short films,” she told Variety.

Dominican Republic

Cristián Mojica, Mentes Fritas Film Production

Mojica aims “to make entertaining films, with fun stories and a strong dramatic charge. Light films in very complex contexts,” he tells Variety. The gameplan seems to be working out. Yoel Morales’ “Blue Magic” (2017) had 8.7 million streaming views; “Bionico’s Bachata,” again from Morales, won a SXSW Global Audience Award this year, and now screens at Locarno’s Open Doors. He will introduce at Locarno Morales’ latest, “The Baker,” which he co-wrote. “This particular story will be like taking ‘Mean Streets’ and adding Rohrwacher’s beautiful poetry, only to ruin it all with urban Dominican music: Dembow,” Mojica jokes.

Nidsbelle Guzmán, Cronos Films & Production

Trained as an actress but making her impact as a producer-director-screenwriter behind “Beyond the Mist,” (“Después de la Niebla,” a “sensory cinema,” she says, that “connects with the deepest aspects of being through the senses and nature, as David, battling the pain of the death of his grandmother, travels to the depth of a forest and his memories.” Production design will use various states of water to symbolize the main characters, she adds.

Estonia

Madis Tüür, Münchausen Films

Offering production services and making original films, as Estonia’s industry at large, Münchausen served as an associate producer on Danish thriller “Boundless,” a big box office and sales hit from Ole Christian Madsen. Coming to Locarno with “Aurora,” from Rain Tolk and Andres Maimik, and Estonia-Norway co-pro “Container,” a refugee survival thriller from Estonian Enfant terrible Arun Tamm, unveiled at Haugesund’s 2022 New Nordic Films.

Volia Chajkouskaya, Allfilm

The company behind 2013’s Estonian film industry milestone “Tangerines,” an Academy Award and Golden Globe nominee, Allfilm is represented at Locarno by hyphenate Chajkouskaya, a producer on “Pure Art” and director of “Mono,” about a 36-year-old woman, trying to understand what happened to her as a 14-year old girl when she felt live unbearable and lost half of her hearing.

Finland

Inka Hietala, Made

Made is behind Isabella Eklöf’s “Kalak,” a San Sebastian 2023 Special Jury Prize winner, and Aino Suni’s 2022 queer coming-of-age love story “Heartbeast,” two memorable movies from emerging Scandinavian talent. At Locarno with “7 p.m. on a Sunday,” the debut feature of Finnish-Turkish filmmaker Sevgi Eker, described by Hietala, who joined Made as a producer this year, as “a nuanced drama that tackles pressing societal issues such as youth violence, mental health struggles, and gender norms.”

Anita Hyppönen, It’s Alive Films

Based at one of the most inventive, sometimes hilarious and 0ften successful production companies in Finland, behind Oscar submission “Euthanizer,” and “Snot and Splash – The Mystery of Disappearing Holes,” a sales hit at Locarno last year. At Match Me! with potential highlight “Halima,” Naima Mohamud’s debut “about a Somali Girl in a ‘90s Finland of boybands, tamagotchis and popper pants,” Variety has announced. “The narrative is full of humor and the innocent charm of childhood dreams,” says Hyppönen.

France

Walid Bekhti, Malfamé

Highlighting the social margins, Malfamé’s projects “focus on territories with bad names but which are becoming creative epicentres,” Bekhti says of Malfamé whose credits include “Better,” about Moroccan pro skateboarder Nassim Lachhab. Reunion Island doesn’t seem that bad a territory but will provide the setting for a grounded crime thriller, “Bouzaron.” Vincent Fontano, a Palm Springs ShortFest 2023 winner with “Set Lam,” is set to direct.

Solal Coutard, Collective Cinema

The feature debut of Lebanon’s Kim Lêa Sakkal – whose short Immaculata, produced by Collective Cinema, played Cannes’ 2024 Directors’ Fortnight – “A Paradise Lost, charting the decadence of a once great Beirut family, has also been selected for Alliance 4 Development. It will be “an epic experiment on privilege, cross-class encounters which will to delve into complicated human co-dependencies,” says Coutard.

Mathilde Warisse, Wrong Films

Enjoying an impeccable 2023, Wrong Films backed Sofia Alaoui’s “Animalia,” a Sundance Jury Prize winner, and shorts “Bolero,” by Nans Laborde-Jourdáa, which walked off with a Queer Palm, and Morad Mostafa’s “I Promise You Paradise,” which scooped a Cannes Festival Nikon Discovery Prize. Now at Locarno with “Thaoura,” from David Arslanian (“Underdogs”), a contempo thriller set in Lebanon’s worst economic crisis since 1850. A company to keep tabs on.

Germany

Maritza Grass, Carousel Film

Cosmopolitan, with director and producer-driven projects in development or financed with Mexico, Brazil, Belgium, France and the MENA region. At Locarno with “How to Walk on Water,” from Sofía Ayala (“Returning South”), about a girl spending a summer weekend at a friend’s oceanfront villa on the Mexican coast. There she discovers that her wealthy classmates can inexplicably walk on water. “The story of an intimate father-daughter relationship, addresses issues such as social inequality, classism, and racism,” says Grass.

Ali Hakim, Hakim + Konig Film

A founder in 2023 and managing director of Hakim + Konig, which has begun to make “pop arthouse” – arthouse for multiplexes. First up, “700 Days in Homs,” written and directed by Hakim and Sulaiman Tadmory, and lent authenticity by Tadmory’s own experience. A young film student is trapped with his friends by Syrian government troops in the besieged city of Homs. “A two-year struggle for survival begins, with no way out and little hope.” In advanced development, produced with Epikfilm and set to shoot in 2026.

Felix Schreiber, Sommerhaus Filmproduktion

Based out of Sommerhaus (“Berlin Alexanderplatz”) with oversight over international first features such as “Pas ta maman,” from Locarno winner Michèle Flury (“Heartbeat”). It focuses on working-class Mandy (24) who takes a job as a new nanny for diplomats on the Mediterranean coast. A “gripping psychological drama,” “Michèle’s powerful and electrifying story revolves around class differences and the abuse of power, sexual curiosity and sexualized violence, and finally, rape and murder,” Schreiber promises.

Italy

Umberto Maria Angrisani, Mompracem

Backed by Beta Film, run by Antonio and Marco Manetti and Pier Giorgio Bellochio, and best known for its Diabolik adaptations, Mompracem brings to Locarno “Fucking Bonaparte.” A film of “dark comedy and eroticism,” it turns on Olga, a top student at Padova U with an OnlyFans profile who rebels against her tutor, an expert on Napoleon behaving like his subject of expertise. High-concept crossover potential.

Michele Cherchi Palmieri, MattoFilm

Launched in 2022, after three shorts, now developing two doc features, one “Voi come Noi,” by Lilian Sassanelli, exploring the personal impact of Berlusconi’s cannons of female beauty on her own mother, and the director’s relationship with her. A further title: “Mensch, MSCH!” a portrait of the Italian artist, asking whether the artist has become part of his art. Also working in the very early stages of a fictional series and another feature, says Cherchi Palmieri.

Francesca Vargiu, Diero

Winner of a 2020 David di Donatello for best Italian short and behind 2023 Venice title “The Year of the Egg,” a small company aiming to work with young auteurs granted the right to artistic freedom, says Vargiu. Introducing at Locarno “Shooting Watermelons,” by Antonio Donato, set on the Golden Coast of Sardinia, where an Italian father and two sons meet a wealthy English family, the Ashbys, who expose their vulnerabilities. At the same time, the Italians “grapple with a patriarchal and performance-driven culture which ultimately stifles and emotionally suppresses them,” says Vargiu.

Latvia

Zane Gulbe, White Picture

“Dedicated to supporting emerging and established directors whose human-level narratives illuminate the broader political and societal context,” says Gulbe, White Picture produced “Oleg,” which played Cannes’ 2019 Directors’ Fortnight. A top Latvian shingle, it can look to combine the country’s cash rebate and international co-production coin – such as on sibling friction tale “Summer Blues,” partnered by Germany’s FilmFaust. Brought to Locarno, it’s the first feature of Anna Ansone, whose “Can’t Help Myself” was nominated for a best short 2022 Latvian Film Prize.

Nikola Ozola, Trickster Pictures

A force in Baltic production run by director-producer-playwright Matīss Kaža who co-wrote and produced Gints Zilbalodis’ Cannes hit and Annecy winner “Flow” out of animation studio Dream Well Studio. Having co-produced Laurynas Bareisa’s “Drowning Dry,” which plays in Locarno main competition, Trickster is also now in post on Kaža’s next film as a director, “I Love You, Lex Fridman.” It is based on a bizarre but arresting set-up: Distinguished Latvian actress Iveta Pole becomes so infatuated with Fridman that she travels to America to propose to the podcaster. Pole co-directs.

Lithuania

Justinas Pocius, Smart Casual

Launching Vilnius-based Smart Casual in 2022 with fellow producer Rūta Petronyte, Pocius will bring to Match Me! two early feature film projects. One, Irma Pužauskaitė’s “Hold Me Closer,” turning on how a wife reacts to discovering her husband’s sex addiction, is already structured as a Lithuania, Latvia (Mima Films), France (Dolce Vita Films) co-production with seasoned scribe Birutė Kapustinskaitė on board. “Hold Me Closer” “delves into themes of intimacy, love expressions, and the boundaries of affection,” Pocius tells Variety.

Lineta Lasiauskaite, Plopsas

The selection of Egle Razumaite’s “Ootid,” Plopsas’ first arthouse short, for Cannes competition this year, has inspired Lasiauskaite to keep the direction of her creative work, focusing on high-quality non-mainstream films, she tells Variety. One such feature she will introduce at Match Me!: “Dead Among the Living, Alive Among the Dead,” Rinaldas Tomasevicius’ autobiographical account of 20 years of street gang life, heroin addiction and prison, before recovery and a nascent film career.

Poland

Maria Leźnicka, Haja Films

Lodz-based, the company uses “comedies or thriller structures as a foundation, then breaks free of their restraints to address serious matters such as personal relations or family crises,” says Leźnicka. A case in point, backed by Viaplay and awarded at a Studio+ workshop at IFF New Horizons, “Seasons,” one of three projects from Michał Grzybowski (“Beloved Neighbours”), is described as a “bittersweet dramedy” about two local actors whose relationship unfolds across three plays, influenced by their characters.

Kinga Tasarek, Madants

A producer at Madants, at the forefront of Poland’s vibrant international co-production scene having produced Agnieska Holland’s “Charlatan,” Valdimir Johannsson’s “Lamb” and “Silent Twins” from Agnieszka Smoczyńska. At Locarno with “The Lawyer,” from Maciek Bochniak, about Brian Mwenda, a star lawyer on Kenya’s legal scene who fabricated his legal training learning law from YouTube and shows like “Boston Legal.” “For us this documentary is not just about a man who defied the odds; it’s about the complexity of the human spirit and the blurred boundaries between right and wrong,” says Tasarek.

Ludwika Waszkiewicz, Film Produkcja

A producer on Robert Hloz’s sci-fi thriller “Restore Point,” which swept tech awards at the Czech Lions, and Locarno Piazza Grande title “My Neighbour Adolf,” with David Hayman and Udo Kier, and Agnieska Holland’s “Mr. Jones.” Now working on “Until the Heart Burns,” the feature debut of Agnieszka Mania, billed as a thrilling tale about the destructive power of despair, depression, guilt and love that could overcome them.”

Portugal

Liliana S. Lasprilla, Sabina Films

Based out of Porto and serving as minority partners on international titles such as Spain’s “Head on the Wall,” as it readies its first feature, Vanessa Ribeiro Rodrigues doc “The Sand Spell,” a vision of Portugal’s colonial war in Mozambique, told by voices from Mozambique. It is produced by Sabina Films and Real Ficção, also based in Portugal, and supported by Portugal’s state agency ICA, Sony Portugal and Colorfoto. “As an emerging producer, I am working both with new national talents with fresh ideas, but mainly with international projects, as a minority partner,” Lasprilla tells Variety.

Sofia Mirpuri, Story in a Box

A film-TV company at Locarno with a potential TV series, “Listen to My Lips,” directed and starring actor-producer Mirpuri as an ambitious hard-of-hearing millennial who moves to Lisbon to pursue a career in filmmaking. Her diverse roomies become friends. “In portraying each character’s particularities as part of a complex and rich life, I aim to challenge stereotypes and champion inclusion and diversity,” Mirpuri says.

Bruno Moraes Cabral, Wonder Maria Filmes

Co-founded by Moraes Cabral, bringing to market at Match Me! “The Last Summer,” the third feature from company partner João Nuno Pinto (“Mosquito”), also the director of RTP premium series “Natural Law.” The project is set at an about-to-be-sold old family farm. When a forest fire rages through the countryside, two sisters and the daughter of the aged family maid have to confront and reconcile their differences. “The Last Summer” is produced by Wonder Maria Filmes, Italy’s Albolina Film and Aurora Cine in Argentina.

Spain

Charli Bujosa, Mansalva Films

At Locarno with “The Shepherdess” (“La Pastora”), with a cast that includes Alba Flores of “Money Heist” fame. A movie that resurrects the figure of Florenci Pla, an intersexual post-Spanish Civil War maqui whose haunting, fascinating – and very human – life story intertwines with that of the film’s writer-director Cande Lázaro during the later’s medical and administrative transition. Selected for San Sebastian’s prestigious Ikusmira Berriak development program. Mansalva is also moving alternative procedural “Flesh” and stop-motion animation via Bujosa’s partner David Castro. A broad and ground-breaking agenda.

Carlota Darnell, Cornelius Films

Aiming to produce “ambitious animated films for all audiences within the framework of auteur cinema,” such as anticipated stop-motion feature “Olivia and the Invisible Earthquake,” Cornelius also plans to fire up “increasingly ambitious fiction projects” and board titles as a minority co-producer, says Darnell. One case in point: “My Uncle’s Movie,” from Dominican Republic-based filmmaking duo Oriol Estrada and Natalia Cabral (“Miriam Miente”), directed by Cabral and backed by Lantica Studios and co-starring Stephen Bauer.

Laura Egidos Plaza, Contraria

“We don’t look for a specific genre or style, but rather that the message of the stories makes an impact and leads the viewer to reflect on a topic that’s important to us,” Egidos Plaza told Variety last September. A Locarno slate led by “March 14th” (“Catorce de marzo”), developed at the ECAM film school’s Incubator with mentorship of “Verónica” director Paco Plaza and “Lullaby” producer Marisa Fernández Armenteros. Directed by Alberto Gross, it pictures a parents’ divorce, as experienced by their 11-year-old son.

Taiwan

Ivy Y.H. Chiang, 1510 Workshop Co.

Set to shoot in Taiwan Estonian director Rainer Sarnet’s 2023 Locarno breakout, zany kung fu comedy “The Invisible Flight,” before the pandemic scuppered plans, Chiang will bring to Match Me! two of her own projects. “Indigo Boy,” the feature debut of famed music vid director Bill Chia, comes in at depression via a fantasy film; “Counterpunch Boxing” weighs in as a second chance social drama about a Taiwanese Atayal boxer teaching indigenous children boxing, building their integration.

Susan Huang, Mercury The Third Production Co.

Founding Mercury this year, Huang has in post “Eel,” Chu Chun-Teng’s first feature, a “fantastical love story about desire and belonging,” the director says. In it, Liang’s humdrum existence on his dilapidated boathouse is shattered by a mysterious young woman he saves from drowning. Mercury has three strategies, says Huang: “Working with good stories from development to make fascinating films to bring to the world”; co-production of third-party projects; services in Taiwan.

Amanda Manyin Tseng, ENLA Media