‘The Summer With Carmen,’ Venice-Premiering Queer Comedy, Sells to the U.S., U.K. (EXCLUSIVE)
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“The Summer With Carmen,” Zacharias Mavroeidis’ queer comedy, has been acquired in major territories since world premiering at the Venice Film Festival.
The movie, which is represented by Be For Films and had its North American premiere at AFI, recently won three prizes at the Thessaloniki Film Festival. It will be released next year by Cinobo in Greece, Epicentre in France and Xenix Filmdistribution in Switzerland.
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Be For Films has now sold it to the U.S. (Dekkoo), Germany/Austria (Salzgeber), U.K./Ireland (Peccadillo Pictures) and Brazil (Imovision). The company’s boss, Pamela Leu, said negotiations are ongoing in some other territories.
“The Summer With Carmen” takes place at a queer beach in Athens, where 30-something Demosthenes offers to help his friend and aspiring filmmaker Nikitas in drafting an idea for his feature debut, inspired by the events surrounding a dog named Carmen.
Mavroeidis wrote the script for “The Summer With Carmer” with first-time writer and best friend Xenofondas Chalatsis. “It’s an unapologetically out-and-proud film that spotlights the friendships between gay men, a complex and multifaceted type of relationship that rarely holds the leading part in movie narratives,” Mavroeidis said about the film. Leu, meanwhile, said the movie was a “beautiful queer summer bromance with friends and family relationships, a break up surrounded with deep goodwill.”
The film was produced by Argonauts Production and Ioanna Bolomyti at Atalante Productions SA, whose credits include Thanasis Neofotistos’ “Airhostess-737,” which played at Locarno, Toronto and Sundance. Bolomyti was named a Producer on the Move at Cannes Film Festival last year.
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