04/02/2020 - The young international sales company continues to rise with four titles selected in Berlin, directed by Patric Chiha, Camilo Restrepo, Radu Jude et Matthew Rankin

Launched last May, international sales company Best Friend Forever, the Belgian branch of Parisian company Indie Sales, will be well armed at the European Film Market of the 70^th Berlinale with four of its features selected, one of them in Panorama, one in the new competitive section Encounters, and two in Forum.

French documentary If It Were Love [+see also:
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interview: Patric Chiha
film profile] by Patric Chiha will have its world premiere in the Panorama section before its French release on 4 March via Norte Distribution. This is the 4th film from the Austrian filmmaker of Hungarian and Lebanese origin, director of two fiction films (Domaine [+see also:
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film profile] revealed in Venice’s Critics’ Week in 2009, and Boys Like Us [+see also:
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film profile] in 2014) and the documentary Brothers of the Night [+see also:
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film profile] (unveiled in the Panorama section of the 2016 Berlinale). Adapted from Gisèle Vienne’s Crowd, this new work follows 15 young dancers of various origins on tour with a show exploring the rave scene of the 1990s. From theatre to theatre, their work evolves and develops into strange and intimate relations. Is the rave scene contaminating life, or the opposite? Production was handled by Charlotte Vincent for Parisian company Aurora Films.

Best Friend Forever will also be presented in the brand new competitive section Encounters with Camilo Restrepo’s Los conductos [+see also:
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film profile], a feature debut co-produced by France (5 à 7 Films), Colombia (Mutokino and Montañero Cine) and Brazil (If You Hold A Stone). Set in Medellin, the story centres on Pinky who is on the run, having just escaped from the grip of a religious sect. As he finds a place to stay and a job in a factory, he questions everything around him. But while putting the puzzle of his broken life back together, violent memories return to haunt him with a vengeance…

The Best Friend Forever team led by Martin Gondre and Charles Bin will also be negotiating on two other feature films presented in the Forum section. Award-winning Romanian filmmaker Radu Jude (winner of the Silver Bear for Best Director at the 2015 Berlinale for Aferim! [+see also:
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interview: Radu Jude
film profile], of the Special Jury Prize in Locarno in 2016 for Scarred Hearts [+see also:
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interview: Radu Jude
film profile] and winner in Karlovy Vary in 2018 for "I Do Not Care If We Go Down in History as Barbarians" [+see also:
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film profile], while The Twentieth Century from Canadian director Matthew Rankin (awarded in Toronto and Los Cabos) will be having its European Premiere at the festival.

Also worth noting is the addition to the line-up of French film I Comete - A Corsican Summer, currently in post-production, directed by and starring Pascal Tagnati who will be acting alongside Jean-Christophe Folly (Blind Spot [+see also:
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film profile]). Produced by 5 à 7 Films and co-produced by Lotta Films, the director’s feature debut is set in the heat and torpor of the month of August, at the heart of the Corsican mountains, as a family fights to prevent tensions and old grudges from bubbling to the surface…

At the European Film Market, Best Friend Forever will be showing Valley of Souls [+see also:
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interview: Valentyn Vasyanovych
film profile] from Ukrainian director Valentyn Vasyanovych (winner of the Best Film award in the Orizzonti section in Venice, shown in Toronto and awarded at both Les Arcs and Tromsø) and on Oleg [+see also:
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interview: Juris Kursietis
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(Translated from French)