Philippine and Italian sales firms join forces to sell indies worldwide
Fire & Ice Media from the Philippines and Coccinelle Film Sales from Italy have joined forces to sell independent films around the world. The partnership was unveiled at Busan's Asian Contents & Film Market on 14 October, as reported by Variety.
A sales agent acts as a go-between, shopping a film to distributors who can put it into cinemas or onto platforms in different countries. The two companies will work together on a handpicked group of titles and chase deals outside the films' home markets. A first batch has already been chosen, though the titles have not been made public.
Fire & Ice Media is led by Abell Diño-Cabrera, who will steer the alliance on the Philippine side. Coccinelle was set up by Francesca Breccia to handle international sales for independent titles. Coccinelle already has similar sales alliances with partners in South Korea and Thailand.
Fire & Ice arrived in Busan with a full shelf. That included Phil Giordano's sports drama Bilyarista and Nigel Santos' queer ensemble piece Open Endings. The slate also featured David R. Corpuz's Only Known to Us and Law Fajardo's The Hearing, plus Crosspoint, a Philippines-Japan thriller from Donie Ordiales.
The company also carries a selection of films by Brillante Mendoza. Looking ahead, its development projects include Mendoza's Aid, Ham Tran's supernatural thriller Red Thread and John Paul Su's crime thriller Karaoke News, according to Variety.
Fire & Ice Media sits inside Fire & Ice Entertainment, co-founded by chief executive Liza Diño and Ice Seguerra. The sales arm has festival form. It was a partner on Nicole Midori Woodford's Last Shadow at First Light, which premiered at San Sebastián in 2023, and on Urara Matsubayashi's Blue Imagine, which premiered at Rotterdam in 2024.
What makes this stand out is the geography. A Manila to Rome link gives small films two doorways into the market, one in Asia and one in Europe, with North America also in the plan. For viewers, it simply means more independent stories have a route to a screen far from where they were made.
