New Italian distribution company PiperFilm is launching its international sales unit at Rome’s upcoming MIA Market with veteran sales agent Catia Rossi spearheading the potentially high-powered player’s sales side having secured a small but promising multi-genre film slate.
Rossi is a former head of international sales at Vision Distribution, True Colours, and RAI Com. She launched True Colours and the sales unit at Vision. She’s now joining PiperFilm as director of international sales and will be unveiling the brand new PiperFilm lineup of Italian movies to buyers in Rome.
Domestically, PiperFilm is adopting an innovative distribution model having struck an agreement with Netflix under which the streaming giant will have the first exclusive post-theatrical window for Italy on their titles, while Warner Bros. Entertainment Italia will handle the operational distribution of their lineup in Italian movie theatres.
In Italy, the first PiperFilm to be released is Paolo Sorrentino’s “Parthenope,” which goes out in Italian theaters on Oct. 24 and will subsequently drop on Netflix in Italy. But PiperFilm did not handle world sales on “Parhenope.”
Rossi and her team are instead handling international sales on Giulia Steigerwalt’s Venice title “Diva Futura,” the true tale of a Rome porn outfit founded in the 1980s by impresario Riccardo Schicchi and porn-star-turned politician Ilona Staller (aka Cicciolina). Rossi reports first sales on “Diva,” including to Germany and German-speaking territories to Busch Media; Poland to Best Film; Portugal to Il Sorpasso; and Bulgaria to Cinelibri. She also expects to soon close a North America deal on this title.
The launch of this new Italian sales company is taking place amid ongoing consolidation in the Italian market and is bound to create some disruption in the dynamics of Italy’s film exports that have been dominated for years by foreign sales companies including The Match Factory and Charades, to name a few. Lately however that has been changing with the arrival of other new players besides PiperFilm such as RAI Cinema International Distribution, the new standalone film sales unit of Italian state broadcaster RAI that launched from the European Film Market in February.
“There is always space for more Italian sales companies, and I can say it because I’ve launched several of them,” Rossi told Variety. She went on to note that she is proud of her new lineup which comprises a mix of genres including Italian comedies “for which there a great appetite, including remake rights,” she said.
Besides “Diva Futura,” the PiperFilm slate includes a hotly-anticipated untitled kung fu movie set in Rome’s multi-ethnic Piazza Vittorio quarter produced by Wildside and directed by Gabriele Mainetti who is known internationally for genre-bending titles “They Call Me Jeeg” and “Freaks vs. the Reich”; and “L’Infinito” (“Endless”) a first feature by ace screenwriter Umberto Contarello a frequent Paolo Sorrentino collaborator whose credits include “The Great Beauty” and “The Young Pope.” “Endless,” which is an autobiographical bittersweet drama centered on Contarello’s rapport wit his daughter, is co-written by Contarello and Sorrentino who is also coproducing the film with his production company Numero 10.
Comedies in the PiperFilm slate include “Dove osano le cicogne” (“Who Wants to Be a Parent?”), a humorous take on assisted reproduction directed by Fausto Brizzi and toplining popular stand-up comedian Angelo Pintus; and “30 notti con la mia ex” (“30 Nights With My Ex Wife”) directed by Guido Chiesa and starring Edoardo Leo (“Perfect Strangers”) and Micaela Ramazzotti (La Pazza Gioia).
The film is a remake of hit Argentinian comedy “30 noches con mi ex” which centers on a man whose ex-wife is prescribed a post-psychiatric treatment that calls for a return to a normal family life. This means he is forced to live with her and their teenage daughter for 30 days.
Source link
