Cannes: Mubi Acquires Directors’ Fortnight Title ‘The Five Devils’ (Exclusive)
The Cannes Film Festival may be just over a week away, but arthouse streaming platform and distributor Mubi — by far the most active acquirer of titles at last year’s festival — has already fired up the engines for what could be another spending spree in the south of France.
Having picked up Park Chan-wook’s official competition entry Decision to Leave last month and last year coming onboard Mia Hansen-Løve’s One Fine Morning — screening in the Directors’ Fortnight sidebar — as co-producer, the fast growing company has now added a third Cannes 2022 title to its library with Léa Mysius’ The Five Devils.
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Mubi has taken the film — also in Directors’ Fortnight — for North America, U.K., Ireland, Latin America, India and Turkey, with plans to release it theatrically in the U.S., U.K. and Ireland followed by an exclusive launch on its streaming platform.
Starring Palme d’Or winner Adèle Exarchopoulos (Blue the Warmest Colour), The Five Devils follows Vicky (newcomer Sally Dramé), a strange and solitary little girl who has a magical gift: she can reproduce any scent she finds, which she bottles in an assortment of carefully labeled jars. One of those scents belongs to her mother, Joanne (Exarchopoulos), to whom Vicky feels an almost obsessive attachment.When the sudden reappearance of her father’s sister, Julia (Swala Emati), upends their conservative Alpine village and threatens the family’s sense of domestic bliss, Vicky finds that by reproducing her aunt’s smell, she can traverse a series of increasingly dark and archaic memories that reveal the secrets of her village, her family, and her own existence.
Mysius’ first feature Ava premiered at Cannes in the Critics’ Week section in 2017. She is also a co-screenwriter of Claire Denis’ The Stars at Noon, which is getting it world premiere in the main competition in Cannes this year. Other screening credits include collaborations with Arnaud Desplechin (Oh Mercy! and Ismael’s Ghosts), Jacques Audiard (Paris, 13th District), and André Téchiné (Farewell to the Night).
Wild Bunch International is handling international sales and negotiated the deal with Mubi.
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