By Ray Pride Pride@moviecitynews.com

NEON NABS NORTH AMERICAN RIGHTS TO ALI ABBASI’S “BORDER” FOLLOWING WORLD PREMIERE IN CANNES

Posted Friday, May 11th, 2018 - Comments Off on NEON NABS NORTH AMERICAN RIGHTS TO ALI ABBASI’S “BORDER” FOLLOWING WORLD PREMIERE IN CANNES
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CANNES (May 11, 2018) – Immediately following the world premiere, NEON acquired the North American rights to Border, a troll love story directed by Ali Abbasi (Shelley) and based on a novel by the writer of Let the Right One In. The Swedish genre film made its World Premiere yesterday at the Cannes Film Festival in Un Certain Regard.  Films Boutique is handling worldwide sales.

Border is the second feature from Iranian-born Danish director Abbasi. He co-scripted the film with Isabella Eklöf, in collaboration with novelist John Ajvide Lindqvist (Let the Right One In). The film tells the story of a border guard (Eva Melander) who has the ability to smell human emotions and catch smugglers. When she comes across a mysterious man with a smell that confounds her detection, she is forced to confront hugely disturbing insights about herself and humankind.

Border is produced by Nina Bisgaard, Piodor Gustafsson and Petra Jönsson for Meta Film Stockholm, Spark Film & TV and Kärnfilm, in co-production with Meta Film Denmark, together with Film i Väst, SVT and Copenhagen Film Fund. The Swedish Film Institute and Nordisk Film & TV Fond provided production support. The film was also supported by the Danish Film Institute, MEDIA and Eurimages.

ABOUT NEON:
Founded by Tom Quinn (CEO) and Co-Founder Tim League, NEON’S debut film was Nacho Vigalondo’s Colossal, starring Anne Hathaway and Jason Sudeikis released April 7th, 2016.  NEON was an active buyer at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival, acquiring Reinaldo Marcus Green’s Monsters & Men, winner of the Sundance Dramatic Special Jury Award for Outstanding First Feature; Sam Levinson’s Assassination Nation; and Tim Wardle’s Three Identical Strangers, winner of the Sundance Special Jury Award for Storytelling.  In its record breaking inaugural year, NEON released the runaway hit ($30M), 3 Golden Globe and Academy Award nominee and eventual winner I, Tonya by director Craig Gillespie, starring Margot Robbie and Golden Globe  / Oscar Winner for Best Supporting, Actress Allison Janney; Eliza Hittman’s Sundance Award Winner Beach Rats, Matt Spicer’s Sundance and Spirit Award Winner Ingrid Goes West; Laura Poitras’s Risk, Ana Lily Amirpour’s Venice Award Winner The Bad Batch and Errol Morris’, The B-Side.  Other upcoming NEON releases include Aaron Katz’s Gemini (Opening 3/30); Harmony Korine’s The Beach Bum and the 2017 Toronto International Film Festival Opening Night film by Janus Metz, Borg Vs McEnroe (Opening 4/13); and Coralie Fargeat’s groundbreaking feature film debut Revenge (Opening 5/11).  NEON also recently announced a partnership with 30WEST as the sole majority investor in the film studio.

Films Boutique

Films Boutique, a Berlin-based sales company, has been thriving with critically acclaimed, director-driven movies in the last years, notably Ildiko Enyedi’s ON BODY & SOUL (Golden Bear 2017 and Oscar nominated), Houda Benyamina’s “Divines”, which won the Camera d’Or in Cannes; Lav Diaz’s “The Woman Who Left”, Golden Lion in Venice, Ciro Gerra’s “Embrace of the Serpent”, Directors’ Fortnight winner and Oscar nom for Best Foreign Language Film.

The company unveiled 6 films in Cannes official selections this year, notably Cristina Gallego & Ciro Guerra’s BIRDS OF PASSAGE, opening film of Directors’ Fortnight.

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It shows how out of it I was in trying to be in it, acknowledging that I was out of it to myself, and then thinking, “Okay, how do I stop being out of it? Well, I get some legitimate illogical narrative ideas” — some novel, you know?

So I decided on three writers that I might be able to option their material and get some producer, or myself as producer, and then get some writer to do a screenplay on it, and maybe make a movie.

And so the three projects were “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep,” “Naked Lunch” and a collection of Bukowski. Which, in 1975, forget it — I mean, that was nuts. Hollywood would not touch any of that, but I was looking for something commercial, and I thought that all of these things were coming.

There would be no Blade Runner if there was no Ray Bradbury. I couldn’t find Philip K. Dick. His agent didn’t even know where he was. And so I gave up.

I was walking down the street and I ran into Bradbury — he directed a play that I was going to do as an actor, so we know each other, but he yelled “hi” — and I’d forgot who he was.

So at my girlfriend Barbara Hershey’s urging — I was with her at that moment — she said, “Talk to him! That guy really wants to talk to you,” and I said “No, fuck him,” and keep walking.

But then I did, and then I realized who it was, and I thought, “Wait, he’s in that realm, maybe he knows Philip K. Dick.” I said, “You know a guy named—” “Yeah, sure — you want his phone number?”

My friend paid my rent for a year while I wrote, because it turned out we couldn’t get a writer. My friends kept on me about, well, if you can’t get a writer, then you write.”
~ Hampton Fancher

“That was the most disappointing thing to me in how this thing was played. Is that I’m on the phone with you now, after all that’s been said, and the fundamental distinction between what James is dealing with in these other cases is not actually brought to the fore. The fundamental difference is that James Franco didn’t seek to use his position to have sex with anyone. There’s not a case of that. He wasn’t using his position or status to try to solicit a sexual favor from anyone. If he had — if that were what the accusation involved — the show would not have gone on. We would have folded up shop and we would have not completed the show. Because then it would have been the same as Harvey Weinstein, or Les Moonves, or any of these cases that are fundamental to this new paradigm. Did you not notice that? Why did you not notice that? Is that not something notable to say, journalistically? Because nobody could find the voice to say it. I’m not just being rhetorical. Why is it that you and the other critics, none of you could find the voice to say, “You know, it’s not this, it’s that”? Because — let me go on and speak further to this. If you go back to the L.A. Times piece, that’s what it lacked. That’s what they were not able to deliver. The one example in the five that involved an issue of a sexual act was between James and a woman he was dating, who he was not working with. There was no professional dynamic in any capacity.

~ David Simon