India’s Impact Films has pulled off a uncommon double at Cannes, with each the Palme d’Or winner and the Grand Prix winner – Cristian Mungiu’s “Fjord” and Andrei Zvyagintsev’s “Minotaur” – having been acquired for South Asian distribution earlier than the competition opened.
“Fjord,” acquired from Goodfellas, is Mungiu’s first movie shot outdoors Romania and follows a devoutly non secular Romanian-Norwegian couple who settle in a distant village, the place their conventional method to child-rearing places them at odds with the encompassing group.
“If we’re well accustomed to seeing Mungiu unpicking the corrupt workings of various Romanian institutions — from church to state, healthcare to education – ‘Fjord,’ presents his keen anti-authoritarian eye with a new challenge: finding the moral wrinkles and manifold ambiguities in the ostensibly more orderly, progressive systems governing Norway, made all the more difficult to determine by the troubling, sometimes unreadable actions of outsider characters who fall afoul of social norms, and perhaps the law too,” write Man Lodge, reviewing the film for Variety.
“Minotaur,” acquired from MK2 Movies, is ready in Russia in 2022 and facilities on a affluent firm director whose rigorously ordered life begins to fracture as skilled pressures mount and the warfare in Ukraine upends the world round him. The movie marks exiled Russian director Zvyagintsev’s return after almost a decade away from options.
“Exiled Russian director Andrey Zvyagintsev‘s majestic new film may be shot by necessity in Latvia, but that country fills in most persuasively for his homeland, conveying both its aggressive vastness in the midst of a war that seeks only to further expand its borders, and its eerie depopulation, by people either fleeing or being called to battle,” wrote Lodge in his Variety review.
“Both the titles were acquired well before the festival began and we were very confident of the subject matter and treatment given by the directors of these films. It’s a great feeling that they have won and we are proud to be representing them in India and we will plan a decent theatrical release in the coming months,” mentioned Ashwani Sharma, founder and CEO of Impression Movies.
The wins give Impression Movies its third Palme d’Or acquisition from Cannes; the corporate beforehand dealt with Indian distribution for “Parasite” and “Triangle of Sadness.”
