Reel Suspects boards Rotterdam selection ‘Tenement’ (exclusive)
Paris-based Reel Suspects has boarded international sales for Cambodian-Japanese psychological horror thriller Tenement ahead of the film’s world premiere at International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR) in the Big Screen competition.
‘New Religion’ Japanese Body Horror Film Set as Screambox Original (EXCLUSIVE)
‘New Religion’ Japanese Body Horror Film Set as Screambox Original (EXCLUSIVE)
Cinedigm has acquired all North American rights to the Japanese sci-fi horror film “New Religion.”
“New Religion” is a surrealist body horror film written, directed and produced by first-time feature filmmaker Kondo Keishi. It stars Seto Kaho, Nunami Daiki, Oka Satoshi and Ryuseigun Saionji.
After her daughter’s death, divorced Miyabi begins working as a call girl. One day, she meets an unsettling customer who wants to take pictures of her body parts. Soon, she realizes that every time she allows her body to be photographed her daughter’s spirit gets closer. She must decide how far she is willing to go to connect with her daughter once again.
“New Religion” had its North American premiere last month at the Slamdance Film Festival and was nominated for best narrative feature. It previously screened at festivals around the world including its world premiere at Arrow Video Frightfest, the Osaka Asian Film Festival, the Warsaw International Film Festival and the Lisbon International Horror Film Festival.
Cinedigm plans to release “New Religion” later this year on its horror streaming platform, Screambox, which is backed by its Bloody Disgusting unit, and to brand the film as a Screambox Original.
“Kondo has shown tremendous ambition for his first feature in creating this haunting body horror film,” said Brad Miska, MD of Cinedigm-Bloody Disgusting. “His unrelenting storytelling and one-of a kind cinematography makes him one to watch for Screambox fans.”
The deal was negotiated by Brandon Hill, director of acquisitions at Cinedigm, and Matteo Lovadina, CEO of Reel Suspects, on behalf of the filmmakers.
Indie film, “Terrifier 2” recently gave Screambox a huge boost. Produced by Bloody Disgusting on a $250,000 budget, the surprise box office hit made over $10 million dollars in theaters. The announcement that Screambox would become the official streaming home of “Terrifier 2,” boosted the platform’s subscriber base by 144% in the two weeks following its debut.
More broadly, Screambox features a mix of content for casual and die-hard horror fans. The service is refreshed monthly with content from the company’s extensive genre library across a range of horror sub-genres: supernatural, slashers and zombies. The platform currently features classic horror films like “Slumber Party Massacre,” “House on Haunted Hill,” blockbuster indies “The Outwaters” and “Terrifier 2” as well as series “The Island” and “Master of Horror.”
The platform recently acquired rights to the docuseries “RoboDoc: The Creation of RoboCop” and the documentary film “Hollywood Dreams and Nightmares: The Robert Englund Story.”
Reel Suspects Boards Sales On Takeshi Kushida’s ‘My Mother’s Eyes’ – MIA
EXCLUSIVE: Paris-based genre specialist Reel Suspects has boarded sales on Japanese horror director Takeshi Kushida’s My Mother’s Eyes and will launch the title at the upcoming MIA Market in Rome.
The psychological, fantasy horror-thriller revolves around a cello instructor and her gifted daughter who are left with life-changing injuries by a car accident.
The mother loses her sight while the daughter is paralyzed but thanks to technological, medical advances, they are able to combine their faculties to share one vision and physical experiences.
The film was also produced by Kushida under the banner of Pyramid Film in Tokyo.
My Mother’s Eyes is Kushida’s second feature after international breakout Woman of the Photographs, which played in 40 festivals and was released in seven territories, including the U.S. where it was acquired by Epic Pictures for its speciality horror label Dread.
“We have been following Takeshi work since Woman of the Photographs in 2020 and we felt in love with his unique filmmaking. His second feature My Mother’s Eyes confirms his talent as a director, mastering the art of combining strong visual and innovative storytelling,” said Reel Suspects President Matteo Lovadina.
My Mother’s Eyes has played a raft of genre festivals including London FrightFest and Screamfest and Freak Show in the U.S. and has a raft of future festival dates booked, including the Trieste Science-Fiction in Italy, Razor Reel Flanders Film Festival in Belgium and FilmQuest Film Festival.
Reel Suspects Boards Turkish Horror ‘The Funeral’ Ahead Of MotelX World Premiere, XYZ Repping North America
EXCLUSIVE: Paris-based genre specialist Reel Suspects has boarded world sales on Turkish director Orçun Behram’s horror The Funeral ahead of its premiere at the Lisbon International Horror Film Festival, better known as MotelX.
XYZ is repping North America.
FAMU and Columbia College Chicago-educated Behram previously made waves with with 2019 dystopian drama The Antenna, about the residents of a tower block terrorized by a new communications system. The film played at a number of festivals including Toronto and London.
New film The Funeral stars popular Turkish actor Ahmet Rifat Sungar (The Wild Pear Tree, Actress) as a solitary hearse driver who is driving the body of a young murder victim back to her family in the East of the country.
One night, he opens the back doors of the hearse to find the dead girl making strange grunting noises. He is immediately captivated by her beauty and falls in love.
Together, they set off on a mission to avenge her death, leaving a trail of corpses in their wake. Rising young actress Cansu Türedi plays the dead girl.
Behram also produced with Müge Özen, whose recent credits include Nisan Dag’s 2020 awards winner When I’m Done Dying.
The Funeral will debut in MotelX’s Silver Melies competition, recent winners of which include Welsh-language horror The Feast and Danish Tuscany holiday-set psychological thriller Speak No Evil.
MotelX runs from September 12 to 18.
EXCLUSIVE: Reel Suspects bets on The Belgian Wave
The French sales agent will present in Cannes the market premiere of the new film from Belgian filmmaker Jérôme Vandewattyne, a psychedelic road trip with waves of UFOs
The test flight for an American stealth plane? A hoax? A meteorological phenomenon? Or collective hallucination? No hypothesis could be confirmed. Thirty years on, the wave of Belgian UFOs still remains unexplained. Is the truth elsewhere? With The Belgian Wave [+] by Jérôme Vandewattyne (who made a mark in 2017 with the self-produced Spit’n’Split [+]), French international sales agency Reel Suspects — headed by Matteo Lovadina — will be presenting at the Marché du Film (16 to 24 May) of the 76th Cannes Film Festival the market premiere of a feature film very much in line with its “elevated genre” editorial line.
Standing out in the cast of The Belgian Wave are Karen de Paduwa, Karim Barras and Dominique Rongvaux. Written by the director together with Jérôme di Egidio and Kamal Messaoudi, the script centres on Karen who, with the help of Elzo, investigates a wave of UFO sightings which took place in Belgium between 1989 and 1992. The two protagonists embark on a psychedelic road trip, meeting with exuberant witnesses from that time. When they discover the video diary of Marc, a journalist who disappeared at the time of the ufological phenomena, Karen and Elzo come across a sect that is full of crucial information about the journalist’s disappearance…
Produced by Grégory Zalcman and Alon Knoll for Take Five, the feature film (with cinematography handled by Jean-François Awad) was supported by Centre du Cinéma de la Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles, RTL Belux, Screen.brussels, Voo and Be-tv.
Reel Suspects Boards Gary Huggins’ Kansas City, Kansas-Set Comedy ‘Kick Me’
EXCLUSIVE: Paris-based genre specialist Reel Suspects has boarded sales on Gary Huggins’ debut comedy feature Kick Me about a school counsellor whose night takes a comedic-nightmarish turn when he visits Kansas City, Kansas (KCK).
Santiago Vasquez plays the counsellor, who downplays his fears about visiting KCK, to please a prize student who hails from the city, the same night he has promised to surprise his daughter with a pet rabbit after a school concert.
As he crosses the state line from Kansas City, Missouri, his well-intentioned trip unravels when he falls into the crosshairs of a local warlord, setting him on a bizarre trip across the city.
Kick Me is Huggins’s debut feature.
It has taken the filmmaker, who hails from and lives in KCK, a decade to complete the work after it was originally shot in 2012 and selected for the Gotham (then IFP) Narrative Lab in 2013.
Huggins said his original intent had been to make a “quick, fun production” with Vasquez after their successful collaboration on the 2006 short film First Date, which played at Sundance, SXSW and France’s Clermond-Ferrand short film festival.
“Instead, a month of night shoots made everyone insane, the movie imploded and Kick Me began a ten-year crawl to completion interrupted by poverty, lethargy, tinkering, tampering, reshoots, pickups, putdowns, the untimely passing of five cast members and an unquenchable fire to finish the damn thing,” he explained.
The film finally world premiered at San Francisco’s Another Hole in the Head film festival in December and has recently been selected for Brazil’s Fantaspoa film festival, which kicks off this week.
Producers on the film are Betsy Gran and Leone Reeves.
Reel Suspects scores key deals on erotic drama ‘White River’ (exclusive)
The film world premiered in Rotterdam’s Bright Future Competition.