NEWS

CANNES BRIEFS

Australia lures international projects

Australia’s Producer Offset Scheme for film tax credits is changing in an attempt to attract more international productions, the country’s new Budget has revealed. It will remove the requirement under the Location Offset for productions valued between $15m-$50m to spend a minimum of 70% of their budget in Australia. The Post, Digital and Visual Effects Production threshold will also be cut from $5m to $500,000. Both changes will apply from July 1.

Locarno courts industry with Days

The Locarno film festival has unveiled its first Industry Days programme (August 7-9). The Industry Days will offer special buyers-only screenings and previews of films screening during the festival. There will also be workshops, roundtables and events associated with Europa Distribution and the Open Doors Factory. Locarno runs August 4-14.

Taormina to toast De Niro, Kusturica

Robert De Niro is set to receive a special tribute at the Taormina Film Fest (June 12-18), where he will host a masterclass. Emir Kusturica will be on hand on closing night to receive a special award for Dialogue Between Cultures.

Sarah Bolger

BY GEOFFREY MACNAB

Paolo Sorrentino and Sean Penn are collabo- rating on Sorrentino’s English-language

debut, This Must Be The Place, which Pathé

International is introducing to buyers dur- ing the market. The pair met at Cannes two years ago,

when Sorrentino’s Il Divo was in Competi- tion and Penn was jury president. “I’d seen Il Divo and told him to please count me among the actors who would love to work with him. A year later, he sent this wonder- ful script,” Penn told Screen International. ARP and Element Pictures have come on board as co-producers, with fi nancing com-

ing from the Irish Film Board and Section 481. The Italian producers are Indigo Film and Lucky Red. The fi lm will shoot for three weeks in Dublin and the rest in the US. Penn plays a rock star on a mission to track down his father’s executioner, an ex-Nazi war criminal hiding in the US. Here in Cannes, Pathé will also be pre-

selling Kelly Asbury’s 3D animated fantasy comedy Gnomeo And Juliet, produced by Elton John’s Rocket Pictures, which features classic Elton John songs. The singer is due in Cannes at the weekend to introduce the project to buyers and is expected to perform for them.

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Sorrentino, Penn find their Place

Sean Penn

Paolo Sorrentino

Bolger flies with Harron, Pressman for Moth Diaries

BY JEREMY KAY

Sarah Bolger has joined Lily Cole and Scott Speedman in The Moth Diaries, which reu- nites Ed Pressman and his American Psycho director Mary Harron. The Moth Diaries is based on the cult

novel by Rachel Klein about an elite girls boarding school. Bolger plays a student who suspects a new girl (Cole) is a vampire. Speedman plays a crush-worthy literature teacher.

Pressman will serve as executive pro-

ducer and is lining up a summer shoot in Montreal, with post-production scheduled for Dublin in the autumn. The Moth Diaries is being co-produced with David Collins of Samson Films. Bolger’s credits include The Tudors, The

Spiderwick Chronicles and In America. She is

represented by CAA, which brokered the deal with Pressman Film Corp’s Jon Katz, and by Hamilton Hodell in the UK.

HanWay promotes Westerhoff

BY GEOFFREY MACNAB

In a corporate reshuffl e, UK sales company HanWay has promoted Fabien Wester- hoff to lead its multimedia division. Mark Lane has also been promoted to sales manager and Kate Hide brought in as business and content manager. Hide joins from the busi-

ness affairs department at the UK Film Council and the British Film Institute. “HanWay’s promotion of

Fabien’s ambitious team refl ects its performance as a highly specialised boutique sales division,” said CEO Tim Haslam. “The division’s modus

operandi is to exploit new media, regenerate our cata- logue of more than 300 fi lms and classic collections, and specifi cally target new fi lms

autumn DVD launch. Pony Canyon will release the fi lm theatrically in Japan follow- ing the Fuji Rock Festival this summer. The multimedia division

Fabien Westerhoff

for technologically diverse means of distribution.” HanWay has a slate of

3D fi lms in Cannes includ- ing motorbike sports fea- ture-doc TT3D, which will be offered for 3D theatrical and 3D broadcast. HanWay’s recent spe-

cialty programming deals include Julien Temple’s roc-

kumentary Oil City Confi-

dential, which premiered theatrically in the UK and France alongside live rock events, to be followed by the

Atrix sees the Light

Munich-based Atrix Films has closed several theatrical deals for documentary In The

Beginning There Was Light. Among the

buyers are Germany (Movienet), Switzerland (Xenix), Romania (Cloro) and Hungary (Anjou

■ 4 Screen International at the Cannes Film Festival May 12, 2010

recently worked on multi- platform launches in the US, UK and France of award-winning doc Mugabe

And The White African.

HanWay is offering its

key films from Recorded Picture Company and works by Wim Wenders, Merchant Ivory and the BFI in high definition for Blu- ray release and HD broad- cast; Tohokushinsha has struck a Japanese deal for the remastered collection. Of outgoing division

chief Charlotte Thorp, Haslam said she “has done a fantastic job consolidating this expansive department”.

Lafayette). Austrian distributor Thim Film will release on September 7. Screening in Cannes, the doc asks whether

humans can survive without food and live on light alone. It is made by the team behind

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