Animated Family Adventure Cloud Girl Sells to Buyers Across Europe, Africa and Latin America
London sales company SC Films International has sold the animated family adventure Cloud Girl to buyers across a long list of territories, from the Baltics to South Africa. The deals were reported by Deadline on 28 October 2026.
The film was known as Girl in the Clouds until recently. It was written and directed by French writer-director Philippe Riche, and it draws on Romain Puértolas' 2015 novel The Little Girl Who Swallowed a Cloud as Big as the Eiffel Tower. It screened as an Official Selection of the 2026 Annecy International Animation Film Festival, the animation event in France where sales companies show films to buyers.
Three of the early deals are the biggest in Western Europe by territory. Pan Distribution acquired the rights for France, Pathé Films took French-speaking Switzerland, and O'Brother took the Benelux countries of Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg. Viva Pictures will release the film in U.S. cinemas on January 8, 2027.
The list continues well beyond those three. Acme has the Baltics, Pro Films has Bulgaria, and Volga has the Commonwealth of Independent States. Other buyers cover the Czech Republic and Slovakia, Greece, Israel, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Hungary, Scandinavia, Turkey, Ukraine and the Middle East. Sun Distribution Group has Latin America and South Africa, and Pathé Touch Afrique has North Africa and sub-Saharan Africa.
SC Films International holds world sales rights to the film, excluding France and Belgium, according to its film page. That means the company sells the film territory by territory, and it will keep selling at the American Film Market, the trade event where sales companies meet buyers. The company's page describes the film as a CGI animation with a budget of $15 million.
The story follows a 12-year-old bookworm who is given a magical quill that can grant any wish it writes. The English-speaking voice cast is led by Faith Delaney, Hugh Laurie, Joseph Balderrama, Ken Nwosu and Bhavnisha Parmar. Production came from Brio Films, Panama Productions, Scope Pictures and Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes Cinéma, with support from Canal+, Eurimages and the French National Centre for Cinema and the Moving Image (CNC).
SC Films was founded in 2008 by Simon Crowe and Matthew Joynes, and it is a full member of IFTA, the trade body for independent film sales. Crowe chaired Film Export UK from 2017 to 2025.
Why does a list of buyers matter to someone who only wants to see the film? Each deal is a local company agreeing to show the film in its own country, often with a set release plan. A single festival market can therefore decide which cinemas, and which streaming services, will carry an animated film a year or more after it was made. For Cloud Girl, the next checkpoint is the American release in January 2027.
