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French pandemic drama “The Plague,” based on Albert Camus’ novel “La Peste,” has sold to multiple European territories, Variety has learned.

The show has sold to AMC Networks International Southern Europe where it will launch on SundanceTV in Spain and AMC in Portugal while Proximus has acquired the show for Belgium. It premiered in France on France 2 in March, immediately toping the ratings. It has also been selected at the French Drama Festival in Korea, where it will premiere on Sept. 9.

Helmed by “Call My Agent” director Antoine Garceau, the four-part series stars Frédéric Pierrot (“In Treatment”), Hugo Becker (“Gossip Girl”), Sofia Essaïdi (“Women at War”), Judith Chemla (“Of Money and Blood”) and Johan Heldenbergh (“Alabama Monroe”).

It follows a disparate group of people who find themselves grappling personally and professionally with a new virus threatening the planet. Among them is Dr Rieux (Pierrot), a rebel hero who risks his...

Zdf Boots Factual Entertainment

Zdf Studios is boosting factual entertainment with the establishment of new company Content Laden.

Founded with managing director Tom Gamlich and creative director Jan Fritzowsky, the Munich-based subsidiary will focus on the development and production of innovative and high-quality formats. Gamlich and Fritzowsky most recently served as the long-standing management team at South&Browse, where they oversaw development and production of successful factual entertainment formats for broadcasters and streamers.

Zdf Studios President and CEO Markus Schäfer said the foundation of Content Laden was “an investment in creativity and innovation. We want to create outstanding formats and in doing so, achieve long-term, sustainable growth.”

Oble Selling Albert Camus Adaptation ‘The Plague‘

France’s Oble has acquired international broadcasting rights for the series “The Plague,” a modern adaptation of Albert Camus’ novel of the same name. While the book’s story takes place in the 1940s, the miniseries is...

National protests in France threatened to disrupt the 2023 Series Mania television festival and international industry summit, but, in the end, the 2023 event went off without a hitch. Members of the global TV industry gathered in the northern French city of Lille to celebrate the best in new small-screen drama and ponder the future of the business.

Here are the four big industry takeaways.

Everyone’s Going Local Netflix original series Transatlantic, is produced out of Germany

A few years back, all the major streamers were touting their global appeal, but with subscription growth slowing, the battle for business has moved to the local level. At Series Mania, execs for Netflix, Amazon Prime, Disney+ and Paramount+ all touted their local credentials.

Netflix’s heads of European TV programming, including Germany’s Katja Hofem, France’s Damien Couvreur, and the Nordic region’s Jenny Stjernströmer Björk teased the streamer’s Euro slate,...

After the launch of its first original content in 2022, Disney+ France is expanding, revealing a slate of new productions Wednesday at the Series Mania festival in Lille.

The announcement was made by Pauline Dauvin, Disney’s VP Programming, Original Productions and Acquisitions.

The projects include a mix of film and TV productions. The first is a new original series titled Les enfants sont roism (The Children Are Kings), adapted from Delphine Le Vigan’s novel of the same name. The series is currently in pre-production and is expected to shoot later this year.

Two original French films are also set to debut on the streamer this year. The first, Une Zone à Défendre, is billed as a “moving and intense melodrama” and stars Lyna Khoudri (The French Dispatch) and François Civil (The Stronghold). The pic is currently scheduled for a summer release. The second feature is Antigang: La Relève, an action film starring Alban Lenoir,...

This weekend, Netflix is adding a TV series set in the 1990s, a French historical drama TV series, and a French comedy TV series to add some balance. Last weekend, the streaming giant didn’t see much licensed content added to its catalog, with the limited series Scattered Barriers, the Indian movie Thai Massage, and the Nollywood movie The Wait, but it brought the true-crime documentary The Hatcher Wielding Hitchhiker, season 2 of Vikings: Valhalla, and the drama movie Dog Gone, starring Rob Lowe.

This weekend, Netflix will add a variety of licensed content, with the first seasons of the Japanese TV series Miu404 and Quartet, the thriller movie The Devil To Play, the documentary The Pez Outlaw, season 1 of the Korean TV series Awaken, the Turkish documentary Sweetie, season 28 of The Real World, and season 2 of the anime series Demon Slayer. As for original content, Netflix will bring one of its most anticipated TV shows,...

Women at War (Les Combattantes) is a French series created by Camille Treiner and Cécile Lorne starring Audrey Fleurot, Julie De Bona, Camille Lou and, Sofia Essaïdi.

TF1 offers this luxury series in French style which is epic and heroic and tells us the story of four women during World War I.

It is a lavish production as far as scenes and atmosphere created in which we delve into chapter by chapter in a first class recreation led by four women who offer us a choral and polyedric point of view of an epoch.

Women at War (2022)

This is a series that artfully combines genres and, which, in the tradition of the genre, gives its all in the editing and composition that rests on a spectacular soundtrack.

A delight that is a French super production now on Netflix and which will ver surely be enjoued by those who like epic...

Exclusive: In October, Breaking Glass Pictures acquired Mario Martone’s Nostalgia, Italy’s entry for the Best International Feature Oscar for North America, and today we have a first look at the official trailer (check it out above).

The drama kicked off its festival run in the Cannes competition last May, and will next play at the Palm Springs International Film Festival. Breaking Glass will release in U.S. cinemas on January 20, 2023.

Based on the novel by Ermanno Rea, Nostalgia stars Pierfrancesco Favino (The Traitor), who received a Best European Actor nomination at the recent European Film Awards for his performance as Felice Lasco, a middle-aged Neapolitan who returns to his bustling hometown after having lived in Egypt for 40 years. Once back in the city, Felice is caught up in a lifetime of loose ends as his criminal youth slowly catches up with him.

Martone directed and co-wrote the film...

European Film Promotion Unveils 2023 European Shooting Stars

Belgian actress Joely Mbundu, co-star of Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne’s Cannes 2022 feature Tori And Lokita, is among the eight rising talents selected for the 2023 edition of European Film Promotion’s European Shooting Stars initiative. The selection also includes Italy’s Benedetta Porcaroli, seen recently in Venice Horizons 2022 title Amanda, and Norway’s Kristine Kujath Thorp, who previously made her mark in Fanny, The Burning Sea and Ninjababy, and also won praise for her performance in Cannes Certain Regard 2022 selection Sick of Myself. The other spotlighted titles comprise Alina Tomnikov (Finland), Leonie Benesch (Germany), Yannick Jozefzoon (The Netherlands), Judith State(Romania), Gizem Erdogan (Sweden) and Kayije Kagame (Switzerland) Thorvaldur Kristjansson (Iceland). This year’s talents were selected by an eight-person jury featuring Polish director Jan Komasa, Dutch casting director Rebecca van Unen and Norwegian producer Maria Ekerhovd. The eight talents will participate in...

Italian director Mario Martone said that his latest film Nostalgia is very similar to his 1995 film L’amore molesto (Troubling Love).

During a panel discussion at Deadline’s Contenders Film: New York event, Martone explained the connection between adapting Elena Ferrante’s first novel L’amore molesto and Ermanno Rea’s book Nostalgia for the big screen.

Related: Contenders New York 2022: Deadline’s Complete Coverage

“In L’amore molesto we followed this woman,” Martone said. “We walk alongside her, and we enter into her past. In Nostalgia, something similar happens. You have a man, and we walk with him and we enter into his past.”

Nostalgia, which premiered this year at the Cannes Film Festival, follows Felice Lasco, played by Pierfrancesco Favino, who, after living 40 years abroad, returns to Naples and rediscovers places and codes of the city, facing a past that eats him away. Last month Breaking, Glass Pictures...

Exclusive: In a deal with True Colours, Breaking Glass Pictures has acquired North American rights to Mario Martone’s Nostalgia, Italy’s entry for the Best International Feature Oscar. The drama debuted in the Cannes competition last May, and Breaking Glass will continue its festival run in the U.S. through the end of the year with theatrical rollout set for early 2023.

Based on the novel by Ermanno Rea, Nostalgia stars Pierfrancesco Favino (The Traitor) as the middle-aged Felice Lasco, who returns to a bustling Naples after having lived in Egypt for 40 years. Once back, he is caught up in memories of a distant life spent in his hometown, as his criminal youth slowly catches up with him. Alongside Favino, the film stars Francesco Di Leva, Tommaso Ragno, Aurora Quattrocchi and Sofia Essaidi.

In his review, Deadline’s Todd McCarthy wrote the film “has the fantastic advantage of a densely...

‘All My Friends Hate Me’ and ‘The Almond And The Seahorse’ also won prizes.

Frances O’Connor’s Emily proved the big hit of the 33rd edition of Dinard Film Festival, the French seaside festival that spotlights UK and Irish cinema, for French audiences that closed on October 2.

Emily won the Golden Hitchcock for best film, with Emma Mackey receiving the award for best performance. The period drama also scooped the audience prize for best feature film. The film premiered at Toronto, and marks the directorial debut of actor O’Connor.

Sex Education star Mackey plays a rebellious version of Wuthering...

Following the Sundance premiering “Odessa, Odessa” and Venice title “Land of Oblivion,” French-Israeli filmmaker Michale Boganim is back on the Lido with “The Forgotten Ones”.

The film, represented in international markers by Reservoir Docs, is a heartfelt documentary exploring the systemic discrimination against Oriental Jews in Israel through the story of Boganim’s late father, who emigrated from Morocco and was part of Israel’s lesser-known Black Panthers movement in the 1970s. “The Forgotten Ones,” which world premieres in the Venice Days section Sept. 6, was just acquired by Sophie Dulac Distribution and will be released in France in early 2022.

Boganim, who started developing the film years ago, embarked on a road trip across Israel’s impoverished suburbs along with her young daughter and met Sephardi Jews from different generations whose lives have been shaped in some ways by this discrimination. Many of them are children or grandchildren of people who...

Director Michale Boganim explores her father’s role in Israel’s own Black Panther movement in her new Venice documentary: “The Forgotten Ones”.

The 1950s movement sprang from the Mizrahim community – Jews who were ethnically cleansed from North Africa and the Middle East – who sought refuge in Israel. Battling discrimination, Mizrahi Jews looked to the U.S. Black Panther movement for inspiration, Boganim’s father and his friends fought back, politically and otherwise.

In the documentary, Boganim embarks on a road trip to search for some of her father’s colleagues, taking a tour of Israel’s history and meeting with three generations of Mizrahim in the process.

Boganim, who was born in Israel and later studied in France, won the Gras Savoye award for her student film “Dim Memories,” which was selected for Director’s Fortnight in Cannes. Her first fiction feature, “Land of Oblivion,” which starred “Bond” actor Olga Kurylenko,...

Michale Boganim is directing “Tel-Aviv/Beirut,” a historical drama set against the backdrop of the Israeli–Lebanese conflict in 1982 and 2006.

Set in Northern Israel, the film tells the journey of two families on each side of the border whose fate intertwined because of the war raging in Lebanon. “Tel-Aviv/Beirut” sheds light on the little-known story of Lebanese people who collaborated with the Israeli army to fight Hezbollah.

Spanning over 20 years, the film follows two women, a Lebanese and an Israeli, who bond amid the war and embark on a road trip together to rescue a loved one.

“Tel-Aviv/Beirut” is headlined by an international cast of Israelis, Palestinians, Lebanese actors including Zalfa Seurat, Sarah Adler (“Foxtrot”), Shlomi Elkabetz (“Our Boys”), Younès Bouab (“The Unknown Saint”), Sofia Essaïdi (“La promesse) and Maayane Boganim.

The movie completed shooting during the pandemic in Cyprus and was particularly eventful as it brought together...

Coverage of International Sales Agents (ISAs) has resumed for the Toronto International Film Festival. This segment covers inspirational companies that have officially selected films in the festival. SydneysBuzz features ISAs, as they play an instrumental and necessary role in helping filmmakers to share their visions and voices with the world.

This year Paris based film sales company Wide has four official selections at Tiff:

The Lesson (Official Selection - Contemporary World Cinema)

Nadezhda is a high school English teacher near Sofia. Stunned by a theft reported by one of her students she is determined to find the culprit and punish him. As this episode unravels at work, her personal life changes drastically. She is notified by a bailiff that the bank is about to seize her house and put it on auction due to overdue mortgage payments.

Determined to keep her life afloat and her house she will do everything she can to get the money before it’s too late.

Her personal and professional life will converge as she goes against all the lessons she teaches her students.

The Narrow Frame Of Midnight (Official Selection - Discovery)

A young orphan, Aïcha, is found alone in the forests of central Morocco. She has a personal history that reveals a courageous attempt at self-determination. Taken and sold from her home in the hills of the Atlas mountains, Aïcha finds herself at the mercy of a petty criminal, Abbas, and his conflicted girlfriend, Nadia. They soon cross paths with Zacaria, a Moroccan/Iraqi writer, who has left everything behind - including a passionate relationship with a teacher, Judith - to search for his missing brother. The group embarks on a journey that will lead them across Morocco, to Istanbul, the plains of Kurdistan and beyond.

Margarita, With A Straw (Official Selection - Contemporary World Cinema)

Laila Kapoor is a spunky, talented 19-year-old girl from a close knit middle-class Delhi family. She was born with cerebral palsy. Her speech is garbled and she sits in a wheelchair. Laila is very close to her mother, Shubhangini Damle. As a result of her efforts Laila goes to college in the prestigious Delhi University. And when Laila’s heart is broken, it is her mother who enables her to continue her education at New York University.

Here Laila meets the feisty Khanum - a visually impaired woman. And the chilled out Jared. Always curious about sexuality, Laila undergoes a journey that is beyond her wildest dreams.

She calls it "wonderful but scary. She confronts her mother with her new truths about herself causing a huge conflict that rips them apart. Suddenly her world falls apart when her mother collapses in pain. Laila goes from being the cared to the carer - and the mother daughter bond is tested to the full.

Foreign Body (Official Selection - Masters)

Angelo and Kasia met in Italy in the Focolare Movement where their love and faith in God brought them together. Their relationship is broken by the girl’s return to Poland and her decision on entering the convent. Angelo arrives in Warsaw in order to persuade Kasia to change her mind. He takes up a job in an international corporation while waiting for her decision. The company is managed by ruthless and cynical Kris with the support of her assistant Mira. In this corporate reality Angelo, a believer, falls victim to the ridicule and harassment. Kris, using her power, plays with Angelo and wants to force him to break moral principles and yet at the same time she is fascinated by his faith.

More About Wide: Founded in 1997 by Loïc Magneron, Wide is a leading independent sales company currently representing more than 20 new features films every year and a library of more than 400 fiction titles and 300 documentaries.Wide's catalogue contains an impressive variety of movies from internationally acclaimed directors and several restored classics.

Wide has also created a company for feature length documentaries and TV format, managed by Anaïs Clanet, Wide House, and a label dedicated to first and second feature films, Eye On Films which coordinates a network of more than 100 partners including 52 festivals, 51 distributors and 7 VoD platforms.