Editor

The Industry Office of the Locarno Film Festival is proud to announce that the international distribution rights for five films in the International Competition have been acquired after the announcement of the line-up mid-july 2008.

Just a few days after its official screening, the Swiss film in the International Competition "Un autre homme" by Lionel Baier got picked up by the French sales agent Wide Management at the Locarno Film Festival. "Un autre homme" celebrated its world premiere last Saturday August, 9th 2008. All of the screenings were sold out and the reactions from both press and buyers were very good. The rights for the film were immediately bought for India.

The new Berlin based sales agent m-appeal just picked up international rights to the Russian-German co-production "Yuri's Day" by Kirill Serebrennikov, screened on Tuesday, August 12th. Furthermore, the Korean film "Daytime Drinking" by NOH Young-seok has been acquired by Finecut who are handling the international rights. The Senior Manager of Finecut, E.J. Cho said: " After the screening at Locarno, we’ve received good response and strong interest from festivals and buyers."

In the weeks prior to the Festival, two other films in the International Competition have been sold. The Italian worldsales company Intramovies picked up rights to the Italian film "Mar Nero" by Federico Bondi (Italy) and German based Medialuna acquired the world rights to "Sonbahar" ("Autum") by Özcan Alper (Turkey/Germany).

Nadia Dresti, Head of the Industry Office, comments: "This is an extraordinary year. The Locarno Film Festival has never had such a strong reaction from buyers regarding the International Competition and so many deals made. For the first time five titles presented in our international competition found worldsales during the Festival. Others are in discussion. The buzz of the buyers regarding the quality of the Competition is excellent. We have a record-breaking number of buyers attending the Festival: 215 coming from 29 different countries, including new companies such as the US Focus, Ondamax and IFC, the UK based The Works or Artificial Eyes, or the Brazilian Vereda among others".