The film festival’s hottest sales titles span anime, horror, documentary and prestige drama as international cinema enjoys its strongest moment in years.
Published on February 10, 2026
(Clockwise from top left): ‘A Prayer for the dying’, Charli xcx, ‘Josephine’, Sydney Sweeney
Lukasz Bak, Joe Maher/Getty Images, Greta Zozula, Amy Sussman/Getty Images
As the first major movie market of the year, Berlin’s EFM is a barometer of indie industry sentiment and international purchasing power. Much is made of one-off deals out of Sundance, but the volume of global pre-sales signed at Berlin’s Grand Hyatt, Ritz-Carlton, and Adlon hotel suites every February dwarfs even the biggest domestic deals.
The package business — movie ideas with a script, director, and talent attachments seeking financing — will again be the source of the real heat in the chilly German capital. New projects with Sydney Sweeney, Charlie xcx, Chris Hemsworth, Brie Larson, Ethan Hawke, and Zoe Saldana are among the biggest and buzziest ahead of EFM 2026.
But this year’s Oscar race underscored the growing strength of international films. Titles such as Sentimental Value, It Was Just an Accident, and Sirat (with 13 Oscar nominations between them) have broken out of the arthouse niche, combining awards traction with eight-figure box office returns. That momentum plays directly to Berlin’s strengths in the finished film business.
As THR‘s annual hot list of Berlin’s buzziest market titles attests, a surprising number of movies in the official competition, across all genres — from Japanese anime to political documentaries — arrive without U.S. deals in place, suggesting this year’s Berlin could also be a source of bidding wars and domestic pick-ups.
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‘1949’
Image Credit: Gerald Matzka
DIRECTOR Paweł Pawlikowski
STARS Sandra Hüller, August Diehl, Devid Striesow, Hanns Zischler
BUZZ An awards-season favorite in the making, the new period drama from Oscar-winner Pawlikowski (Ida, Cold War) features an all-star German cast, including Anatomy of a Fall‘s Sandra Hüller, in the timely true tale of Nobel Prize-winning writer Thomas Mann (Hanns Zischler) and his daughter Erika (Hüller), who, in 1949, embark on a road trip across war-ravaged black Germany, from Frankfurt in the American zone, to Soviet-controlled Weimar.
SALES The Match Factory
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‘A New Dawn’
Image Credit: A New Dawn Film Partners
DIRECTOR Yoshitoshi Shinomiya
BUZZ The global animé boom — see Demon Slayer ($779 million in global box office) and KPop Demon Hunters (Oscar contender and cultural juggernaut) — should have buyers flocking to Shinomiya’s feature-length debut, after working as an assistant director on 2016’s $400 million global smash Your Name. The plot follows a boy living in an abandoned fireworks factory racing to launch a mythical firework invented by his vanished father before the factory shuts down.
SALES Charades
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‘A Prayer for the Dying’
Image Credit: Lukasz Bak
DIRECTOR Dara Van Dusen
STARS Johnny Flynn, John C. Reilly
BUZZ An impressive cast gives this auteur Western, from debut director Van Dusen, crossover appeal. Flynn plays a Civil War vet whose dream of a new frontier life in Wisconsin becomes a nightmare when an epidemic threatens to destroy everything.
SALES Anton, New Europe Film Sales
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‘Blasphemous’
Image Credit: Dia Dipasupil/Getty Images; Brian Bowen Smith; Michael Buckner/Penske Media/Getty Images
DIRECTOR Luke Piotrowski
STARS Karen Gillan, Josh Hutcherson, Clive Owen
BUZZ One of the very few big genre projects heading to Berlin this year, this supernatural thriller, the directorial debut of Hellraiser and She Rides Shotgun screenwriter Piotrowski, should scare up plenty of pre-sales business among the market’s top-tier commercial buyers. The film is pitched as a mix of The Exorcist and Training Day, focused on a rookie priest (Hutcherson) and his devout mentor (Owen) transporting a possessed young woman (Gillan) for an exorcism, when she excapes and all hell breaks loose.
SALES North.Five.Six./CAA Media Finance
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‘Bodyman’
Image Credit: Billy Kidd
DIRECTOR Gary Fleder
STARS Nick Jonas
BUZZ A contained, high-concept action-thriller designed for maximum commercial lift, this latest package pairs pop-crossover star Jonas with genre veteran Fleder (Homefront, Reacher). Set over a single explosive Christmas at a remote estate, the film centers on a longtime bodyguard (Jonas) who becomes the unexpected heir to a billionaire’s private military company, triggering a lethal scramble for power among the tycoon’s spurned heirs.
SALES A Higher Standard (worldwide)
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‘Cupid’
Image Credit: Rene & Radka
DIRECTOR Tate Taylor
STARS Catherine Zeta-Jones
BUZZ A sleek, contained psychological thriller built around a star turn, this latest package casts Zeta-Jones as an unorthodox marriage counselor whose therapeutic weekend retreat slides rapidly into manipulation and menace. Directed by Taylor (The Girl on the Train), from a script by the Van Dyke brothers (Don’t Worry Darling), Cupid offers commercially-minded buyers a global star and a darkly commercial hook.
SALES Upgrade (international), CAA Media Finance (U.S.)
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‘Doctor Caligari’s Cabinet of Wonders’
Image Credit: Theo Wargo
DIRECTOR John Erick Dowdle
STARS Michael Shannon
BUZZ A modern reimagining of one of cinema’s foundational horror texts, this psychological chiller taps directly into the current appetite for elevated, IP-driven genre, from commercial leaning buyers. Dowdle (As Above So Below, No Escape) puts a contemporary spin on The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, casting Nuremberg and Man of Steel actor Shannon as a traveling mesmerist whose mind-controlled sleepwalker leaves a trail of brutal murders across small-town America.
SALES Anton (international), Anton / CAA Media Finance (North America)
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‘Fonda’
Image Credit: Taylor Hill/FilmMagic, Dominik Bindl, Samir Hussein/WireImage
DIRECTOR Justine TrietSTARS Mia Goth, Andrew Scott, Frank Dillane, Nathan Stewart-Jarrett.
BUZZ The English-language debut of boundary-pushing Palme d’Or winner Triet (Titane), described as a psychological thriller set in a seemingly idyllic but tightly enclosed setting, promises The Substance-style cross-over appeal for arthouse buyers.
SALES mk2 Films
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‘Full Phil’
Image Credit: Chi-Fou-Mi-Productions
DIRECTOR Quentin Dupieux
STARS Woody Harrelson, Kristen Stewart
BUZZ Dupieux (Yanick, The Second Act, Daaaaaali!), the absurdist clown king of French cinema, has locked in an A-list cast for this English-language excursion, with Harrelson playing a wealthy American industrialist who organizes a luxury trip to Paris for his estranged daughter (Stewart) in a bid to reconnect. Described as “Emily in Paris in hell,” it promises some high-end laughs for arthouse and specialty buyers worldwide.
SALES Studiocanal
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‘Gerron’s Last Film’
Image Credit: Tim P. Whitby/Getty Images, Taylor Hill/FilmMagic
DIRECTOR Simon CurtisSTARS Josh Gad
BUZZ Adulthood and Frozen star Gad takes on a rare tragicomic role in this Holocaust biopic from Woman in Gold director Curtis, playing Kurt Gerron, one of the most famous Jewish actors and directors in pre-Nazi Germany who, unlike his friends Marlene Dietrich and Fritz Lang, refused to leave the country when Hitler came to power. A prestige play with solid awards-season potential.
SALES Rocket Science (international), CAA Media Finance/WME independent (domestic)
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‘Hello & Paris’
Image Credit: Taylor Hill, Jamie McCarthy
DIRECTOR Elizabeth Chomko
STARS Javier Bardem, Kate Hudson
BUZZ A prestige rom-com play with clear theatrical and streaming upside, this package pairs Oscar winner Javier Bardem with two-time nominee Kate Hudson, marking Hudson’s first project since her recent Oscar nod for Song Sung Blue. Written and directed by What They Had filmmaker Elizabeth Chomko the project leans into proven commercial comps (Sleepless in Seattle, When Harry Met Sally) while offering international appeal through a Paris-set, transatlantic love story.
SALES 193
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‘Josephine’
Image Credit: Greta Zozula/Courtesy of Sundance
DIRECTOR Beth de Araújo
STARS Channing Tatum, Gemma Chan, Mason Reeves
BUZZ Indie European buyers come to Berlin searching for serious movies about serious subjects. Much like this feature, fresh from Sundance [where it won the U.S. Dramatic Competition, the Grand Jury Prize and the Audience Award], about the aftermath for a young girl (Reeves) and her parents (Tatum and Chan) after the child witnesses a violent sexual assault.
SALES Goodfellas (international), WME Independent/CAA Media Finance (North America)
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‘Keep Her Quiet’
Image Credit: Stephane Cardinale – Corbis/Corbis, Kate Green ,Mike Marsland/WireImage
DIRECTORS Franz Böhm, Suli Kurban
STARS Zar Amir, Jonathan Pryce, Amir El-Masry
BUZZ Holy Spider actress Amir plays an investigative journalist in this inspired-by-a-true-story tale of the reporters who exposed the Chinese government’s brutal treatment of their Uyghur minority. Just the sort of high-brow thriller boutique international buyers are hungry for.
SALES Beta Cinema
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‘Kockroach’
Image Credit: Pablo Cuadra, Frazer Harrison,Taylor Hill
DIRECTOR Matt RossSTARS Chris Hemsworth, Taron Egerton, Zazie Beetz
BUZZ Black Bear is targeting deep-pocketed global buyers, as well as studios and streamers, with this glossy New York crime saga pitched in the lineage of Goodfellas and Scarface. Thor star Hemsworth stepping into the lead, replacing Channing Tatum, if anything increases the appeal of this slick package that blends marquee star power with strong indie credentials thanks to director Ross (Captain Fantastic).
SALES Black Bear (international), CAA Media Finance/Range Select (U.S.)
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‘Last Flight’
Image Credit: Gareth Cattermole/Getty Images
DIRECTOR Babak Anvari
STARS Benedict Cumberbatch
BUZZ This real-life thriller, from Under The Shadow director Anavari, is targeting commercial buyers and the arthouse crossover crowd with its story set in the final days of the Afghan War. Ali, a young Afghan man, is fighting to find safe passage out of the country for himself and his family and puts his fate in the hands of an American stranger (Cumberbatch) 7,000 miles away, who is desperately trying to put the war behind him.
SALES Protagonist Pictures (international), WME Independent/UTA (U.S.)
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‘Legacy’
Image Credit: ©Steve Granitz, Arturo Holmes
DIRECTOR David SladeSTARS Lucy Hale, Jack Whitehall, Anjelica Huston
BUZZ Horror, as the only reliable indie genre left standing, will be everywhere at the EFM this year, but this character-driven creepy looks likely to stand out from the horde. Hale and Whitehall star as American siblings who return to their family’s estate in England to sell it, only for a mysterious woman (Huston), to arrive, triggering a twenty-four-hour siege by an ominous cult.
SALES HanWay (international), UTA (U.S.)
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‘Let Love In’
Image Credit: Vittorio Zunino Celotto, Stephane Cardinale
DIRECTOR Felix Van GroeningenSTARS Luca Marinelli, Charlotte Vandermeersch
BUZZ The team behind the 2022 cross-over hit The Eight Mountains — director Van Groeningen and co-stars Marinelli and Vandermeersch, reunite for this relationship drama, about a couple whose relationship is shaken when a long-kept affair is confessed. A grown-up European drama that should have grown-up buyers lining up.
SALES The Match Factory
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‘Play Dead’
Image Credit: John Sheare, Hannes Magerstaedt
DIRECTOR Jaume Collett-Serra
STARS Noah Jupe, Matthias Schweighöfer
BUZZ Cliffhanger and The Shallows director Collett-Serra is bringing this historic thriller to chilly Berlin, promising theatrical distributors a combo of period style and genre thrills with the story of an Allied soldier (Hamnet actor Jupe) who, following an ambush, must play dead to survive.
SALES WME International
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‘Queen at Sea’
Image Credit: Seafaring LLC
DIRECTOR Lance Hammer
STARS Juliette Binoche, Tom Courtenay, Anna Calder-Marshall, Florence Hunt
BUZZ Oscar winner Binoche plays a daughter struggling to navigate her mother’s (Calder-Marshall) advanced dementia in this drama from Ballast director Hammer that has awards play written all over it.
SALES The Bureau Sales
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‘Riverrun’
Image Credit: ©Marc Piasecki,John Parra,Jamie McCarthy
DIRECTOR Philippe Parreno
STARS Charlotte Gainsbourg, Zoe Saldaña, Vicky Krieps
BUZZ Gainsbourg stars in this drama as Lucy, a musician who is slowly losing control over her body and voice. Sent by her psychiatrist (Saldaña) to a clinic in Spain, she meets Tony (Krieps) and her treatment becomes an unexpected journey of self-discovery. The combined thespian might of Gainsbourg, Saldaña, and Krieps in a single movie should have arthouse distributors the world over willing to submit.
SALES Goodfellas
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‘Rosebush Pruning’
Image Credit: @Felix-Dickinson
DIRECTOR Karim Aïnouz
STARS Callum Turner, Riley Keough, Jamie Bell, Elle Fanning, Pamela Anderson
BUZZ A wealthy family begins to unravel when the truth of their mother’s death is revealed in this star-packed melodrama from Firebrand and Motel Destino director Aïnouz that seems tailor-made for the Letterboxd crowd of young cinephiles.
SALES The Match Factory
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‘Skeletons’
Image Credit: Tayfun Coskun/Anadolu
DIRECTOR JT MollnerSTARS Brie Larson
BUZZ A slice of creature horror from Strange Darling director JT Mollner (who just signed on to helm A24’s Texas Chainsaw Massacre TV series, starring Glen Powell), this genre play comes with the quality imprimatur of an Oscar-winning star (Larson) and the safe hands of JJ Abrams (Super 8, Star Trek) as a producer.
SALES Filmnation -
‘Soon You Will Be Gone and Possibly Eaten’
Image Credit: Marilla Sicilia via Getty Images
DIRECTOR Egor Abramenko
STARS Sophie Wilde
BUZZ This market’s alien invasion thriller comes courtesy of the director of Russian sci-fi horror Sputnik (2020) and A24’s upcoming Altar. Talk to Me and Babygirl actress Wilde plays Sabile, a young woman planning her wedding with her fiancé at a secluded mountain resort when some unexpected guests crash the ceremony.
SALES Anton (international), Anton/Anonymous Content/WME Independent (domestic)
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‘Speed The Plow’
Image Credit: Andreas Rentz, Karwai Tang, JC Olivera, Lia Toby
DIRECTOR David Mamet
STARS Anthony Mackie, Ben Mendelsohn, Emily Alyn Lind, Sharon Stone
BUZZ A prestige, dialogue-driven package with instant market recognition, this feature adaptation of Mamet’s Tony-winning play brings one of Hollywood’s sharpest satires back into circulation. Set inside the fictional American Prestige Studios, the film skewers power, ambition and moral vacancy as a newly promoted exec (Mackie) flounders amid studio politics, manipulative colleagues and a volatile movie star (Stone). With Mamet directing his own script, a heavyweight cast and a February 2026 shoot locked, the project should appeal strongly to upscale buyers chasing adult-skewing fare with awards potential and marquee names.
SALES The Solution Entertainment Group (international)
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‘Sunny’
Image Credit: Marilla Sicilia, Jason Mendez, Dominik Bindl
DIRECTOR Eva SørhaugSTARS Angelina Jolie, Mary Stuart Masterson, Charlie Plummer, Jason Schmidt
BUZZ This mafia thriller follows a female gangster who has only a matter of hours to plan the perfect escape and protect her sons and herself from an abusive drug kingpin. With Eva Sørhaug, a Norwegian director best known for her U.S. TV work (on Yellowjackets, Your Honor, and Tokyo Vice, among others), behind the camera, buyers can be confident this commercial title will deliver.
SALES A Higher Standard (international), A Higher Standard/WME Independent (domestic)
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‘Sunny Dancer’
Image Credit: Colin J Smith/Sunny Dancer Distribution Limited
DIRECTOR George Jaques
STARS Bella Ramsey, Neil Patrick Harris, Daniel Quinn-Toye
BUZZ The Last of Us star Ramsey plays a teen cancer survivor forced to attend a “chemo camp” with other kids in remission in this Brit comedy with clear crossover appeal.
SALES Embankment Films
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‘The Blood Countess’
Image Credit: Amour Fou Vienna/Amour Four Luxembourg/Heimatfilm/P.Domenigg
DIRECTOR Ulrike Ottinger
STARS Isabelle Huppert, Birgit Minichmayr, Lars Eidinger
BUZZ German cult director Ottinger (Joan of Arc of Mongolia) reinvents the oft-told legend of the blood-sucking countess Elizabeth Báthory (Huppert) as a slice of Austrian horror camp. Huppert’s OTT turn as an aging vamp should alone be enough to draw buyers in for the kill.
SALES Magnify
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‘The Custom of the Country’
Image Credit: Amy Sussman/Getty Images
DIRECTOR Josie RourkeSTARS Sydney Sweeney
BUZZ Sweeney’s boxing biopic Christy didn’t connect with audiences, but The Housemaid star continues to lend her A-list name to indie projects, and this period drama, from Mary Queen of Scots director Rourke, should have no trouble landing prestige international buyers. In the adaptation of the classic Edith Wharton novel, Sweeney is set to play Undine Spragg, an ambitious Midwest woman who attempts to ascend the social ladder in the turn of the century New York, armed only with “beauty, daring/hustle and sheer force of will.”
SALES Studiocanal
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‘The Exiles’
Image Credit: Beau Grealy; No Credit; No Credit
DIRECTOR Midi Z
STARS Sam Worthington, David Duchovny, Ke-Xi Wu
BUZZ The English-language debut of festival favorite Midi Z. (The Road to Mandalay, Nina Wu) is an expat crime thriller set in Tapei and inspired by true events that promises to bring Midi Z’s distinctive visual style and solid genre chops to a broader international audience.
SALES Mister Smith Entertainment (international), CAA (U.S.)
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‘The Idiots’
Image Credit: Mike Marsland, Stuart C. Wilson
DIRECTOR Małgorzata Szumowska and Michał Englert
STARS Aimee Lou Wood, Johnny Flynn, Vicky Krieps, Christian Friedel
BUZZ Wood and Flynn play Anna and Fydor Dostoyevsky in this cinematic take on the wife of the famed Russian novelist who saved him from a decline into gambling addiction. The film traces the couple’s honeymoon trip to the German spa town of Baden, where Fydor’s gambling spirals out of control, and the couple struggles to bring him back and to finish what will become his masterpiece, “The Idiot.” The impressive cast and arthouse cred of Szumowska and Englert (In the Name of, Never Gonna Snow Again) should guarantee this project a top slot on every boutique buyer’s watch list.
SALES The Match Factory
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‘The Julia Set’
Image Credit: ©Mike Coppola, Marc Piasecki/, Monica Schipper
DIRECTOR Niki ByrneSTARS Chase Infiniti, Christopher Briney, Gillian Anderson, Jason Isaacs
BUZZ Chase Infiniti’s first project post her One Battle After Another breakout sees her playing a gifted mathematician who is recruited by Pascal (Briney) into an elite preparatory programme for the world’s most demanding mathematics competition: The Putnam Exam. A brainy thriller for upmarket theatrical buyers.
SALES HanWay
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‘The House of the Dead’
Image Credit: Monica Schipper/WireImage
DIRECTOR Paul W.S. AndersonSTARS Isabela Merced
BUZZ Resident Evil helmer Anderson adapting the SEGA horror shooter looks like an bullseye for commercial buyers, especially given it’s obvious ancillary value and franchise potential. After surviving one zombie apocalypse in The Last of Us, Merced supposedly won’t be bothered by using a railgun to mow down a new army of undead.
SALES Rocket Science (international), CAA (Domestic)
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‘The Last of the Tribe’
Image Credit: Steve Granitz,Jamie McCarthy
DIRECTOR Claudio Borrelli
STARS Ethan Hawke, Orlando Bloom, Zaya Guarani
BUZZ Anaconda proved there’s money in the jungle movie, though this Amazon-set thriller is a true tale. Adapted from Monte Reel’s non-fiction book, it sees the freshly Oscar-nominated Hawke playing a washed-out Chicago cop, now a corporate gun-for-hire, who is sent to investigate a death deep in the rainforest. During his mission, he encounters the last surviving member of an Indigenous tribe. From Brazilian director Borrelli (Vultures), promises decerning distributors a propulsive thriller with a strong moral core.
SALES Protagonist Pictures
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‘The Only Living Pickpocket in New York’
Image Credit: MRC II Distribution Company L.P./Courtesy of Sundance
DIRECTOR Noah Segan
STARS John Turturro, Giancarlo Esposito, Will Price
BUZZ Indie buyers should be a light touch for this crime thriller, flying into Berlin off rave Sundance reviews. Featuring a stand-out John Turturro as a low-end, but dignified city hustler who unwittingly targets the wrong mark.
SALES MRC MEDIA RIGHTS CAPITAL
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‘The Weight’
Image Credit: Matteo Cocco/Courtesy of Sundance
DIRECTOR Padraic McKinley
STARS Ethan Hawke, Russell Crowe
BUZZ One of Berlin’s few star-driven genre titles, the action-adventure stars Hawke as a battle-scarred veteran hired during the Great Depression to smuggle a fortune in gold across 100 miles of wilderness to save what remains of his family.
SALES WME Independent
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‘This is Pleasure’
Image Credit: Andreas Rentz,Neilson Barnard
DIRECTORS Shari Springer Berman, Robert PulciniSTARS Jessica Chastain, Chris Pine
BUZZ This new feature from American Splendor directors Bergman and Pulcini is set in the U.S. publishing world and follows influential book editor Margot (Chastain), whose decades-long friendship with charming publisher Quin (Pine) is threatened when he is accused of misconduct. If Luca Guadagnino’s After the Hunt hasn’t soured buyers on star-driven #MeToo tales, they’ll be hungry for this meaty moral drama.
SALES The Veterans/CAA Media Finance
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‘Untitled Kyoto’
Image Credit: Jerritt Clark, Tiffany Rose, Patricia J. Garcinuño, Karwai Tang
DIRECTOR Takashi Miike
STARS Charli xcx, Milly Alcock, Norman Reedus, Kiko Mizuhara, Sho Kasamatsu
BUZZ Few genre packages at this year’s EFM feel as instantly market-ready as this latest provocation from cult maestro Miike (Audition, Ichi the Killer). Set in Kyoto, the slasher-horror follows three lifelong friends on a reunion trip that curdles into terror when Katie (Charli xcx) becomes possessed by a violent, tortured spirit (Mizuhara), unleashing a nightmare steeped in classic Japanese horror traditions. With a buzzy cast led by the Brat pop star, hot off the launch of her A24 feature The Moment (and who will also produce) this high-concept horror looks primed to draw bids from prestige genre buyers and hardcore horror labels.
SALES The Veterans/CAA Media Finance
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‘Who Killed Alex Odeh?’
Image Credit: Courtesy of the Odeh Family
DIRECTORS Jason Osder, William Lafi Youmans
BUZZ Combining elements of true crime and political documentaries — two of the hottest genres in nonfiction filmmaking right now — this doc examines the killing of a Palestinian American activist in Southern California and a 40-year quest for justice.
SALES Dogwoof
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‘Wildwood’
Image Credit: Roy Rochlin/Getty Images
DIRECTOR Travis Knight
STARS Peyton Elizabeth Lee, Jacob Tremblay, Angela Bassett, Carey Mulligan, Mahershala Ali, Awkwafina
BUZZ From Laika, makers of Coraline, ParaNorman, The Boxtrolls, and Kubo and the Two Strings, comes this new stop-motion feature, adapted from Colin Meloy and Carson Ellis’s 2011 novel, in which two classmates enter a hidden magical forest near Portland on a mission to save an infant kidnapped by crows. Laika is a brand unto itself and the 2024 re-release of Coraline, which grossed $50 million+ worldwide, shows there is a global appetite for their dark emotional animated tales.
SALES Filmnation
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