Anthony Chen’s Berlin competition title ‘We Are All Strangers’ has proven to be a hot title with Paris-based Paradise City Sales securing distribution partners around the world.
The film made history as the first Singaporean film to enter Berlin’s main competition section. Among the completed deals are ARP Selection (France), Curzon (UK and Ireland), Elastica Films (Spain), Trigon Film (Switzerland), A-One Films (Baltics), Ama Films (Greece), Golden Scene (Hong Kong), Movicloud (Taiwan), Challan (South Korea), PT Falcon (Indonesia), Moving Turtle (Middle East and North Africa), and additional negotiations are still ongoing.
The new film is the final installment of what Chen calls his “Growing Up” trilogy, a series of films that began with “Iro Iro,” which won the Camera d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival, and continues through “Wet Season.” The new film, set in modern-day Singapore, will see the return of Yeo Yan Yan and Ko Jia La, who appeared throughout the trilogy. Paradise City Sales represents Chen’s work internationally across all three films, not just Drift, which have toured together to Cannes, Toronto, Sundance and Berlin.
The film was written and directed by Chen, produced by Teo Yi-peng, Huang Wenhong and Chen of Giraffe Pictures, and executive produced by Joe Tsai, Arthur Wang and KH Kuok. Funding was provided by 127 Wall Productions, Jasper Productions and the Singapore Film Board, with support from Red Sea Fund and MPA APSA Academy Film Fund.
“In Anthony Cheng’s tender and insightful domestic tale, dreams quickly turn into survival strategies, and love alone isn’t always enough to survive,” Guy Lodge wrote in Variety, reviewing the film. “The film is consistently engaging and ultimately moving, especially by the great performance by Cheng regular Yoh Yang Yang, who plays the immigrant as an outsider to this family and society.”
Louisa Dent, Managing Director of Curzon, said: “We have admired Anthony’s work for many years and are delighted to finally be working with him on We Are All Strangers. This is a film with a rare ability to reveal the heart of a nation while building deep intimacy with its characters.” “We believe it will be a welcome discovery for audiences in the UK and Ireland.”
Elastica director Enrique Costa said: “We are extremely proud to work with Anthony Chen and bring his deeply moving and universal films to Spanish audiences.” “With We Are All Strangers, he has created a powerful and emotionally resonant portrait of the families we are born into and the families we choose, cementing his place as one of the most distinctive voices in modern cinema.”
Other titles in Paradise City Sales include Moshe Rosenthal’s “Tell Me Everything,” which was submitted to Sundance’s World Cinema Competition. Warwick Thornton’s “Wolfram” competed at the Berlinale. And Mies Peinenburg’s “A Family” won a special award in the Berlinale Generation category.
