With Venice, Telluride, and TIFF having screened over 300 different films these past few weeks, only one big acquisition deal has been sealed—Focus landing Curry Barker’s horror gem “Obsession” for $15M.
Many titles still remain without a home, including Jonathan Etzler’s “Bad Apples,” Steven Soderbergh’s “The Christophers,” Claire Denis’ “The Fence,” Olivier Assayas’ “Wizard of the Kremlin,” and Romain Gavras’ “Sacrifice.”
Now, truth be told, I’ve seen the five films listed above, and when—or if—they do get distributed stateside, I don’t think they’re very good to begin with and will struggle commercially. However, the two big titles that have yet to be sold are what most people are talking about: Mona Fastvold’s “The Testament of Ann Lee” and Kaouther Ben Hania’s “The Voice of Hind Rajab.”
Both of these films bowed at Venice, then made the trek to TIFF; coincidentally, they got snubbed by Telluride and NYFF. ‘Ann Lee’ is the polarizing one—a song-and-dance musical, if you even want to call it that—starring Amanda Seyfried and tackling the woman who founded the Shakers and was proclaimed by her followers as the “female Christ.”
I called ‘Ann Lee’ “Venice’s Most WTF Movie,” a puzzling statement with thin plotting that mostly revolves around its musical numbers. The “songs” are more like one-phrase chants, and the dancing is more like twitching and convulsing. It was easily the festival’s biggest what-the-hell movie—the one everyone stumbled out of either dazed, laughing, or furious. There were numerous people walking out as if fleeing a bad sermon. You could feel the collective bewilderment in the air: was this high art, or just high-minded nonsense?
Critics seem split on a love-it-or-hate-it train when it comes to this one. The film is certainly a curiosity, but does it actually have an audience? Not really. The good news is that Fastvold’s film was made for under $10M; the bad news is that I don’t even think it’ll recoup its money back.
As for “The Voice of Hind Rajab,” which won the Grand Jury Prize at Venice, I had heard a rumor in Toronto that Netflix was interested in acquiring it. The streamer currently has no International Film contender, but there have been hesitations, as with other studios, to take on this film given the delicate political climate at the moment.
‘Hind Rajab’ is Tunisia’s official Oscar submission and will very likely be in contention, but if we learned anything from last year’s “No Other Land,” another film tackling Gaza (that one a documentary), it’s that U.S. studios are reluctant to hop onboard such politically charged films. “No Other Land” would go on to win the Documentary Oscar without a distributor, which was quite unprecedented.
All told, the festival circuit this year has highlighted a familiar pattern, ‘Ann Lee’ and ‘Hind Rajab’ are examples of an industry dilemma—critically fascinating yet financially precarious. Whether these films will ultimately find stable homes remains uncertain.
Of course, we all know the rule: take these reactions with a grain of salt rather than treating them as gospel. Still, I will say that the film tested like gangbusters earlier this year, and Lionsgate clearly has confidence.