Your guide to the major dis­tri­b­u­tion deals from Cannes 2021

With the awards all announced, the dust has begun to set­tle on the 2021 Cannes Film Fes­ti­val, which means the pub­lic will shift gears from await­ing reviews to await­ing release dates. Though French cin­e­mas are already show­ing off the likes of Titane and Annette, cinephiles in the UK and US will have to wait until lat­er this year – or in some cas­es, well beyond that – to get eye­balls on the buzzi­er titles out of the Croisette.

For the sake of orga­ni­za­tion and cal­en­dar main­te­nance, we’ve tak­en the lib­er­ty of col­lect­ing all the dis­tri­b­u­tion infor­ma­tion for the selec­tions of this year’s Cannes, both new and pre-fes­ti­val. Most of the films below have yet to receive release dates, but these are the ones to keep track of, now on course for a the­atri­cal run in the near future.

Amer­i­can upstart dis­trib­u­tor NEON was out in full force at Cannes, where in 2019 they snatched up the box-office smash and even­tu­al Best Pic­ture win­ner Par­a­site right before it won the Palme. This year, they came already rep­ping Apichat­pong Weerasethakul​’s Memo­ria, but still made three big gets on-site.

In a repeat of pre­vi­ous events, they laid claim to Julia Ducour­nau​’s auto-erot­i­ca crowd-pleas­er Titane just before it took the festival’s top prize, as well as Jonas Carpig­nano​’s Ital­ian neo­re­al­ist gang­ster pic­ture A Chiara and Joachim Tri­er​’s quar­ter-life cri­sis dra­ma The Worst Per­son in the World. In all cas­es, they’ve only got rights for North Amer­i­ca. (Film4 and Alti­tude will han­dle Titane for the UK and Ireland.)

MUBI will bring some big names to the UK, how­ev­er, hav­ing picked up The Worst Per­son in the World, Memo­ria, Annette, Benedet­ta, Mia Hansen-Løve’s well-reviewed Bergman Island and Andrea Arnold’s doc­u­men­tary Cow. They’ve also got the rights to Un Cer­tain Regard win­ner Unclench­ing the Fists (a young woman plans to escape her small town in Rus­sia), Great Free­dom (a Ger­man pic­ture fol­low­ing a man impris­oned in post­war Ger­many on charges of homo­sex­u­al­i­ty) and Com­pe­ti­tion cut Lin­gui (Mahamat-Saleh Haroun’s shat­ter­ing depic­tion of teen preg­nan­cy in his native Chad).

British movie­go­ers will also be pleased to learn that Pic­ture­house has snapped up Gas­par Noé​’s Vor­tex, a por­trait of old age and obliv­ion fea­tur­ing Dario Argen­to, in addi­tion to The Sou­venir Part II which was announced pre-fes­ti­val. As for Fran­cois Ozon​’s Every­thing Went Fine, both the US and UK will see the film through a part­ner­ship between Cur­zon and Cohen Media Group. (Inde­pen­dent­ly, Cur­zon will also release the Director’s Fort­night pick Between Two Worlds, star­ring Juli­ette Binoche, and Jacques Audi­ard​’s Paris, 13^th Dis­trict.)

State­side view­ers can look to IFC for a trio of titles from Cannes reg­u­lars: Bergman Island, Paul Ver­ho­even​’s con­tro­ver­sy-court­ing nuna­palooza Benedet­ta, and Paris, 13^th Dis­trict. With two apiece, there’s Ama­zon (Annette, as well as Asghar Farha­di​’s lat­est cham­ber dra­ma A Hero), and Sony Pic­tures Clas­sics (Juho Kuos­ma­n­en​’s Com­part­ment No 6, along with Eva Hus­son​’s Moth­er­ing Sun­day). Indie dar­lings A24 have three fea­tures up their sleeve: the Val Kilmer doc­u­men­tary Val, Valdimar Jóhannsson’s Ice­landic farm­ing fan­ta­sy Lamb and Sean Baker’s Simon Rex come­back-launch­er Red Rock­et.

Some oth­er odds and ends for the US mar­ket include Oscil­lo­scope with the Director’s Fort­night suc­cess Clara Sola from rook­ie direc­tor Nathalie Álvarez Mesén; MGM with the Sean Penn brick Flag Day; Apple with Todd Haynes’ long-await­ed Vel­vet Under­ground doc­u­men­tary; Focus Fea­tures with the well-liked Blue Bay­ou direct­ed by Justin Chon; and Search­light Pic­tures with Wes Ander­son​’s polar­iz­ing The French Dis­patch.