A24 Acquires Lukas Dhont’s ‘Close’ Ahead of Cannes Premiere

A24 has made another acquisition out of Cannes, acquiring the North American rights to “Close,” the next film from Lukas Dhont, which is set to debut tonight in the main competition at Cannes.

Dhont is the director of 2018’s “Girl,” which won the Camera d’Or at Cannes, and the film stars Eden Dambrine, Gustav De Waele, Émilie Dequenne, Léa Drucker, Kevin Janssens, Marc Weiss, Igor Van Dessel and Léon Bataille.

“Close” is described as a film about friendship and responsibility and follows two 13-year-old boys, Léo and Rémi, whose friendship suddenly gets disrupted. Struggling to understand what has happened, Léo approaches Sophie, Rémi’s mother. Dhont also wrote the screenplay with Angelo Tijssens.

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“Close” is produced by Michiel Dhont and Dirk Impens for Menuet and co-produced by Diaphana, Topkapi Films and Versus Productions.

“Girl” from 2018 was Dhont’s debut film and also won the festival’s Queer Palm, Fipresci Prize and Un Certain Regard best performance award for Victor Polster. “Girl” also received a Golden Globe nomination for best foreign-language film and won prizes at San Sebastian, Zurich and best first feature film at the BFI London Film Festival.

A24 also picked up the Paul Mescal drama “Aftersun” from director Charlotte Wells earlier this week.

The Match Factory negotiated the deal on behalf of the filmmakers.

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