Italian Media Company Be Water Announces Prestigious Partners, Takes Paul Schrader’s Cannes-Bound ‘Oh, Canada’ (EXCLUSIVE)

Nick Vivarelli
·2 min read

Italian media company Be Water, which is in Cannes for the first time, has announced its full roster of partners and scope of business activities comprising film, documentary and scripted TV production as well as theatrical film distribution, podcasts and live events.

While details of the company’s scripted productions are being kept under wraps, Be Water has announced the lineup of films they are releasing locally theatrically in collaboration with Italy’s Medusa, which is handling booking and billing. Besides “Oh, Canada,” the Be Water lineup includes Nicolas Cage horror-thriller “Longlegs,” directed by Osgood Perkin; Russian-American director Michael Lockshin’s “The Master and Margarita” with Claes Bang and August Diehl; and action family adventure “Jim Button and the Wild 13.”

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The Rome-based shingle is operating with what is being described as a holistic approach to content production that is congenial to the digital age, which is certainly a novelty for Italy.

Be Water was founded in 2021 by financier and writer Guido Brera (pictured, left), who teamed with Warner Bros. Italy country manager Barbara Salabè (pictured, right), music entrepreneur Filippo Sugar, whose Sugar Music label launched the career of global superstar Andrea Bocelli, and Mario Calabresi, who is a former managing editor of prominent Italian daily La Repubblica. Also on board, with a prominent management role, is Mattia Guerra, former head of production of Italian indie Lucky Red. Another previously announced Be Water partner is auteur Saverio Costanzo, who had a global hit as director and showrunner of RAI and HBO’s multi-season show “My Brilliant Friend.”

“I am convinced that the paradigmatic change in the perception of true or false, of good and evil, of origin and history, of poverty and wealth, requires new forms of storytelling,” Brera said in a statement.

“With Be Water, we want to build a modern media company, capable of catalyzing different yet similar ideas, themes, origins and experiences,” Brera added.

Additional partners that have more recently joined the Be Water fold are Italian screenwriter Stefano Bises (“Gomorrah,” “The New Pope,” “ZeroZeroZero”); Italian actor Alessandro Borghi (“The Eight Mountains”); Claudio Erba, founder of e-learning platform Docebo; Riccardo Haupt, former CEO of Instagram-born content company Will Media; and journalist and podcast author Cecilia Sala.

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