French action film Red Bird sells to Russia and former Soviet states
Cappu Films has sold the French action film Red Bird to Kinologistika LLC for the CIS region, Variety reported on 29 October 2026.
CIS stands for Commonwealth of Independent States. In this deal, the region covers Russia and other former Soviet states. A regional sale like this gives a buyer the right to release a film in those territories, while the seller keeps the rest of the world open for other buyers.
Cappu, a sales company, is the business that finds buyers for a film in each market. Red Bird and a second Cappu title, Step Back, Doors Closing, were offered to international buyers at TIFFCOM, the market held alongside the Tokyo International Film Festival.
Red Bird was directed by Alexandre Laugier, Thomas Habibes and Houssam Adili. Habibes and Adili also take the lead roles. The film was shot in Marseille, produced by SOUTHfilms, and released in French cinemas in January.
Step Back, Doors Closing was written and directed by Carter Ward. Carmen Berkeley and Reilly Walters play Ryan and Julisa, two strangers who meet on a Washington, D.C. Metro train. The film had its debut at Dances With Films in Los Angeles in 2024. Freestyle Digital Media released it in the United States, Canada and the Caribbean, and Cappu has taken on its international sales.
The two titles show how a film travels after its home release. Cappu's work is to match each finished film with buyers country by country, and in this case the first named buyer is in the CIS region.
Cappu's markets sit inside a wider effort between the two big film fairs. The Marché du Film, the market that runs alongside the Cannes festival, and TIFFCOM ran their first joint edition in Cannes in May 2026, as part of Japan's Country of Honour programme at the Marché du Film, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
