India’s Impact Films has pulled off a rare double at Cannes, with both the Palme d’Or winner and the Grand Prix winner – Cristian Mungiu’s “Fjord” and Andrei Zvyagintsev’s “Minotaur” – having been acquired for South Asian distribution before the festival opened.
“Fjord,” acquired from Goodfellas, is Mungiu’s first film shot outside Romania and follows a devoutly religious Romanian-Norwegian couple who settle in a remote village, where their traditional approach to child-rearing puts them at odds with the surrounding community.
“If we’re well accustomed to seeing Mungiu unpicking the corrupt workings of various Romanian institutions — from church to state, healthcare to education – ‘Fjord,’ presents his keen anti-authoritarian eye with a new challenge: finding the moral wrinkles and manifold ambiguities in the ostensibly more orderly, progressive systems governing Norway, made all the more difficult to determine by the troubling, sometimes unreadable actions of outsider characters who fall afoul of social norms, and perhaps the law too,” wrote Guy Lodge, reviewing the film for Variety.
“Minotaur,” acquired from MK2 Films, is set in Russia in 2022 and centers on a prosperous company director whose carefully ordered life begins to fracture as professional pressures mount and the war in Ukraine upends the world around him. The film marks exiled Russian director Zvyagintsev’s return after nearly a decade away from features.
“Exiled Russian director Andrey Zvyagintsev‘s majestic new film may be shot by necessity in Latvia, but that country fills in most persuasively for his homeland, conveying both its aggressive vastness in the midst of a war that seeks only to further expand its borders, and its eerie depopulation, by people either fleeing or being called to battle,” wrote Lodge in his Variety review.
“Both the titles were acquired well before the festival began and we were very confident of the subject matter and treatment given by the directors of these films. It’s a great feeling that they have won and we are proud to be representing them in India and we will plan a decent theatrical release in the coming months,” said Ashwani Sharma, founder and CEO of Impact Films.
The wins give Impact Films its third Palme d’Or acquisition from Cannes; the company previously handled Indian distribution for “Parasite” and “Triangle of Sadness.”
