India’s Impact Films achieved an unusual double win at Cannes by acquiring both Palme d’Or and Grand Prix winners, Cristian Mungiu’s Fjord and Andrei Zvyagintsev’s Minotaur, for distribution in South Asia before the festival opened.
“Fjord,” acquired by Goodfellas, is Mungiu’s first film to be shot outside of Romania and follows a devout Romanian-Norwegian couple who settle in a remote village, where their traditional parenting methods come into conflict with the surrounding community.
“If we’re used to Mungiu exposing the corrupt workings of Romania’s various institutions, from church to state, health care to education, ‘Fjord’ presents a new challenge with his sharp anti-authoritarian eye. “It’s about finding the moral wrinkles and various ambiguities in the film, made even more difficult to judge by the thorny and sometimes illegible behavior of its outsider characters, who defy societal norms, and perhaps even the law,” Guy Lodge wrote in Variety, reviewing the film.
Acquired from MK2 Films, “Minotaur” is set in Russia in 2022 and follows the director of a prosperous company whose carefully ordered life begins to unravel as professional pressures mount and the world around him turns upside down due to the war in Ukraine. This film marks the return of exiled Russian director Zvyagintsev after nearly a decade away from feature films.
“Russian exile director Andrei Zvyagintsev’s epic new work may have been necessarily shot in Latvia, but Latvia is the most convincing representation of the homeland, conveying both its aggressive vastness in the midst of a war that seeks only to expand its borders further and its eerie depopulation as people flee and are called into battle,” Lodge wrote in a review for Variety.
Ashwani Sharma, Founder and CEO of Impact Films, said, “Both titles were won well before the festival began and we were very confident in the treatment of the subject matter and directors of these films. It feels great to have them win and we are proud to represent them in India. We plan for a decent theatrical release in the coming months.”
With this win, Impact Films has won its third Palme d’Or at Cannes. The company was previously responsible for distributing “Parasite” and “Triangle of Sorrow” in India.
