News

Feature tells true story of student arrested by Communist Romania’s secret services after challenging regime of dictator Nicolae Ceausescu.

Brussels-based sales company Best Friend Forever (Bff) has boarded world sales on Romanian director Radu Jude’s new political drama Uppercase Print ahead of its world premiere in the Berlinale’s Forum section.

An adaptation of 2013 play Typographic Capital Letters by Romanian playwright Gianina Carbunariu, it tells the true story of high school student Mugur Călinescu who was arrested in the early 1980s by Romania’s secret police agency, or Securitate, for graffiti criticising the regime of communist dictator Nicolae Ceausescu.

Brussels-based company Best Friend Forever has acquired two debut features, Camilo Restrepo’s Berlinale-bound “Los Conductos” and Pascal Tagnati’s “Corsican Summer.” Both films are produced by up-and-coming outfit 5à7 films.

Set to premiere at the Berlinale’s new competitive section Encounters, “Los Conductos” is a Spanish-language film set in Medellin, Colombia, and loosely based on the true story of Pinky, who freed himself from the grip of a religious sect and gets a job in a t-shirt factory. Misled by his own faith, he tries to to get his life back on track, but is haunted by the violent memories of his past.

Restrepo has shot several shorts such as “La Bouche,” which played at Cannes in Directors’ Fortnight. The French banner 5à7 films produced the film with Mutokino in Colombia, in co-production with the outfits If You Hold a Stone and Montanero Cine. Mutokino will release “Los Conductos...

★★★☆☆ The ironic naming of the cargo ship that director Lucie Borleteau uses in Fidelio: Alice's Journey (2014) comes into view as the 'Fidelio' departs the port of Marseille for the first time. Employed as the literal and figurative vessel for the emotional and spiritual odyssey undertaken by the film's eponymous voyager (Ariane Labed) it is mechanically unreliable, seeming to have more faulty parts than functional ones from the outset. Indeed, a member of the crew has died in suspicious circumstances before the anchor was cast.