By Ray Pride Pride@moviecitynews.com

RT FEATURES AND MARTIN SCORSESE’S SIKELIA PRODUCTIONS BOARD DANIELLE LESSOVITZ’S“PORT AUTHORITY” AND ANTONETA ALAMAT KUSIJANOVIC’S “MURINA”

Posted Wednesday, May 9th, 2018 - Comments Off on RT FEATURES AND MARTIN SCORSESE’S SIKELIA PRODUCTIONS BOARD DANIELLE LESSOVITZ’S“PORT AUTHORITY” AND ANTONETA ALAMAT KUSIJANOVIC’S “MURINA”
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Films Follow Jonas Carpignano’s “A Ciambra” which was the First Film out of the Joint Venture

 

CANNES (May 9, 2018) – RT Features and Martin Scorsese’s Sikelia Productions announced today that they have signed on to produce and finance Danielle Lessovitz’s Port Authority and Croatian writer-director Antoneta Alamat Kusijanovic’s Murina, a tense coming-of-age drama.  Both films come out of RT Features joint venture with Sikelia Productions, which they formed in 2014 in an effort to discover the works of emerging filmmakers from around the world.  The first film out of the venture was Jonas Carpignano’s A Ciambra, which premiered in Cannes last year and went on to be a foreign language contender at the Academy Awards.

 

Port Authority is a love story set in New York’s kiki ballroom scene. Paul, a midwestern teenager, arrives at the

central bus station and quickly catches eyes with Wye, a 22-year- old girl voguing on the sidewalk. After Paul seeks

her out in secret, an intense love between them blossoms. But when Paul discovers Wye is trans, he is forced to

confront his own identity and what it means to belong. Port Authority was developed with creative and financial support from the Torino Film Lab, New York State Council of the Arts and France’s CNC cinémas du monde fund.  Production will commence in New York City this August.  Rodrigo Teixeira of RT Features, Madeleine Films’ Virginie Lacombe and Zachary Luke Kislevitz will produce, with Martin Scorsese and Emma Tillinger Koskoff of Sikelia Productions. Lourenço Sant’Anna and Sophie Mas of RT Features and Frederic de Goldschmidt will executive produce. Endeavor Content is representing the domestic rights and mk2 films is handling international sales which will continue in Cannes.

Murina follows Alamat Kusijanovic’s award-winning short Into the Blue. Set on the rocky cliffs over the Adriatic, Murina tells the story of Julija, a teenage girl who decides to replace her controlling father with his wealthy foreign friend during a weekend of sailing, sensuality and violence.  Alamat Kusijanovic developed the film with support from the Résidence du Festival Cannes, Cinéfondation, the Jerusalem Film Lab, and First Films First, with financial support from the Croatian Audiovisual Center and the City of Dubrovnik. Rodrigo Teixeira of RT Features, with Martin Scorsese and Emma Tillinger Koskoff of Sikelia Productions and Zdenka Gold from Spiritus Movens Productions will produce. Lourenço Sant’Anna and Sophie Mas of RT Features will executive produce.  It will be co-produced by Danijel Pek from Antitalent and written by Christina Lazaridi and Alamat Kusijanovic.  Production will commence in May 2019 on the Croatian Coast. Endeavor Content is representing the worldwide rights.

Martin Scorsese and Emma Tillinger Koskoff of Sikelia Productions said: “We created this venture with RT Features to amplify authentic and exciting new voices in cinema.  Danielle and Antoneta fiercely embody that spirit through their singular visions.  We are thrilled to bring their impassioned stories to cinema lovers around the world.”

“We are always looking to work with first-time filmmakers – which we have done with now lauded directors such as Robert Eggers on The Witch and Geremy Jasper on Patti Cake$. This continues to be a priority,” said RT Features’ Rodrigo Teixeira.  “Danielle and Antoneta are two of the most exciting emerging creatives we have come across and we look forward to the world discovering them as well.”

Scorsese is currently in Cannes to receive the honorary Carrosse d’Or (Golden Coach) award which celebrates its 50th anniversary at the opening night of Directors’ Fortnight. As part of the tribute, Mean Street, which Scorsese presented at Directors’ Fortnight in 1974, will be screened, followed by a conversation with the filmmaker.

RT Features produced Luca Guadagnino’s Academy Award® Nominated Call Me By Your Name. They are in production on Robert Eggers on The Lighthouse, the renowned filmmaker’s eagerly anticipated follow-up to The Witch, starring Robert Pattinson and Willem Dafoe with A24 and New Regency, in post-production on James Gray’s Ad Astra starring Brad Pitt for Fox and pre-production on Olivier Assayas’ next film, Wasp Network.

Lessovitz is a New York City based writer and director. Her short form directorial work has screened at over forty international film festivals. Most recently, she co-wrote Mobile Homes with Vladimir de Fontenay, which premiered in the Directors’ Fortnight section at Cannes in 2017. Trained in documentary film at Northwestern’s Annenberg School of Communications, Lessovitz discovered a passion for screenwriting and directing through her documentary work. She completed her M.F.A in directing at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. She is represented by André Des Rochers, Esq. of Gray Krauss Sandler Des Rochers LLP.

Alamat Kusijanovic is a Dubrovnik-born, New York-based writer director. Her short Into the Blue was awarded at Berlin film festival, Le Festival des Premier Plans, Sarajevo Film Festival and nominated for a student Academy Award. She holds an MFA in Writing/Directing from Columbia University.  Kusijanovic is repped by Hayden Goldblatt of Frankfurt Kurnit Klein & Selz

 

 

ABOUT RT FEATURES

Founded by Rodrigo Teixeira in 2005, RT Features is an innovative production company based in Sao Paulo, Brazil, that focuses on developing, producing and financing high quality content ranging from original projects to acquisitions, for both film and television.

The company has had a banner year with 10 films on its slate, including lauded films such as: Luca Guadagnino’s Call Me by Your Name starring Armie Hammer with Sony Pictures Classics; Geremy Jasper’s Patti Cake$ with Fox Searchlight; and Jonas Carpignano’s A Ciambra.  RT is currently in production on Robert Eggers The Lighthouse starring Robert Pattinson with A24 and New Regency and are in post on the sci-fi film Ad Astra, which they developed with director James Gray, starring Brad Pitt.  In 2017, the company won an Independent Spirit Award for Best First Feature for Robert Egger’s The Witch.

Since its launch, RT Features has produced, co-produced or financed a remarkable slate of feature films including: Ira Sachs’ critically acclaimed Love is Strange for Sony Pictures Classics and Little Men; James Schamus’ Indignation; Noah Baumbach’s Frances Ha and Mistress America for Fox Searchlight; Kelly Reichardt’s Night Moves; and Gaspar Noé’s Love.

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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?

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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