Italy’s Coccinelle Film has scored multiple sales on German director Veit Helmer‘s gay love story “Gondola,” which world premiered at the Tokyo International Film Festival.
“Gondola” is the dialogue-free tale of two female cable car attendants who fall in love as they face each other going up and down the remote mountains of Georgia. It has been sold by the Rome-based distributor to France (Destiny Distribution); Australia and New Zealand (Bonsai Films); Japan (Moviola); Spain (Reverso Films); and South Korea (Entermode Corp.)
“Gondola” – which will have its domestic theatrical release in Germany through Jip Film & Verleih in March – is having its market premiere at the upcoming European Film Market.
Helmer is well known on the international festival circuit for funny, fable-like films with little or no dialogue such as “Tuvalu”; the Azerbaijan-set “Absurdistan,” which went to Sundance in 2008; and “The Bra,” which launched from Tokyo in 2018.
“There are a few places on earth where you don’t hop on the bus in the morning, but on the cable car [instead],” Helmer noted in his director’s statement. He added that “such a place in Georgia inspired me to write a story about two cable car conductors who always meet when their gondolas pass each other halfway.”
The poetic romance stars Nini Soselia, Niara Chichinadze (“Wet Sand”), Mathilde Irrmann (“Bad Banks”) and Zviad Papuashvili.
“Gondola” is lensed by ace Georgian cinematographer Goga Devdariani (“Taming the Garden”) and scored by Icelandic singer-songwriter Sóley and British musician Malcom Arison.
The film is a co-production between Germany and Georgia produced by Helmer, Tsiako Abesadze and Noshre Chkhaidze with support from Eurimages, Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg, German public broadcasters SR, WDR, BR and Sky Deutschland.
Other deals recently closed by Coccinelle comprise gay-themed drama “All the Colours of the World Are Between Black and White,” directed by Nigeria’s Babatunde Apalowo, which has sold to HBO Europe after previously landing deals in France (Optimale) and Denmark (Reel Pictures). Coccinelle also sold TV mini-series “The Queer” (aka “Love Club”) – produced by Carlo Cresto-Dina’s Tempesta for Amazon Italy – which has been picked up for Germany Austria and Switzerland by Salzgeber Gmbh.
Coccinelle’s upcoming EFM slate also includes Israeli filmmaker Matan Yair’s coming-of-age drama “A Room of His Own.”