As the market begins to pick up speed and the competition begins to unravel its delights, the work of a Dutch first-time director has offered more than ample proof that not only is the Berlinale good for art, it can also be good for commerce too.
Attending Berlin for the first time itself, US independent sales company Trident Releasing has picked up world rights, excluding North America, to Jeroen Krabbé's directorial debut, Left Luggage (which screened earlier this week in competition). "It's our biggest acquisition to date," company president Jean Ovrum told Moving Pictures. "We paid mid-six figures." Ovrum saw the film (a drama about a young woman coming to terms with what her parents suffered in the Holocaust) two weeks ago in Los Angeles. "We were completely touched by the humanity, and we felt it had a very strong cast for the European market, which is where we see the strength of this picture." There has already been strong interest from German distributors: "Pretty good considering we haven't even announced that we have the film yet," said Ovrum.
As the pick-up confirms, Trident Releasing is moving to upgrade its product and to consolidate its new-found reputation for handling "slightly crossover arthouse type of pictures".
Left Luggage's producers Ate De Jong and Brad Wilson welcomed Trident's involvement because, as Ovrum put it, "They felt that as we were a small company, we would really get behind this and treat it with tender loving care."
The Left Luggage sale comes as early business in Berlin has been dominated by two types of players: the US majors, who have been announcing a flurry of forays into local film production, and European free-to-air broadcasters, who are simply not playing in the sense of acquiring foreign, non-US product. Early buzz at the market appears to come from two sources: German pay-TV and, curiously, the US. Beyond Trimark's closing down Perdita Durango, at least one US distributor has announced that it could well pick up two films at the market before its end. Geoffrey Macnab
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