समाचार

The Match Factory has acquired international sales rights for “Julian,” the debut feature from Belgian director Cato Kusters. The film is set to premiere in the Discovery section at Toronto Film Festival.

“Julian” marks the first majority production from The Reunion, the new production company of Belgian filmmaker brothers Lukas and Michiel Dhont, the writer-director and producer, respectively, of 2022 Cannes Grand Prix winner and 2023 Oscar nominee “Close.”

Both “Close” and Lukas Dhont’s debut “Girl,” which won Cannes’ Camera d’Or in 2018, were represented by The Match Factory.

Kusters works as an editor and director on short films and music videos. Her graduation short “Finn’s Heel” (2022) won the jury prize at the Ghent Film Festival and the audience award for best international short film at the Festival de Films de Femmes. The film caught the attention of the Dhont brothers, and she began developing “Julian” with them in 2022.

“Julian...

Comedy actor and writer John Early has added director to his resume as he brings his first feature, Maddie’s Secret, to open the Toronto Film Festival Discovery sidebar for first-time and emerging filmmakers.

The film about Maddie, a Food Network content creator trying not to allow her dark past to pierce her perfect veneer, stars many of Early’s colleagues in the L.A. stand-up comedy scene, including Kate Berlant, Vanessa Bayer and Connor O’Malley.

In all, Discovery programmers have assembled 23 world premieres for their 25th edition. Also booked into the Toronto section is director Nadia Latif’s The Man in My Basement, which plays with the horror genre and stars Corey Hawkins as an African American man about to lose his family’s home, until a white businessman (Willem Dafoe) offers to rent his basement to clear his debts in a deal he chose not to refuse, but should have.