Alief Takes On Sales for Edinburgh Premiere "Borges and Me"
Alief, a sales company based in France and the U.K., has signed on as sales agent for Borges and Me, Variety reported on 11 November.
A sales agent takes a finished film to buyers around the world and negotiates who will show it, and where. The film had its world premiere at the Edinburgh Festival.
The film is directed by Marc Turtletaub, from a screenplay by Oren Moverman. It adapts the novelised memoir by U.S. writer Jay Parini about his encounter with Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges. Fionn Whitehead, Luis Gnecco and Alan Cumming star, alongside Peter Mullan, Freya Mavor and Morven Christie.
Several distributors have already bought the right to show the film in cinemas in their home markets. Those deals are called theatrical rights. Icon Distribution took them for the U.K. and Ireland, Rialto Distribution for Australia and New Zealand, MFA Film for German-speaking Europe, and Alfa Pictures for Spain. All four closed before the American Film Market, the industry trade event where distributors buy and sell films.
Alief told Variety on the first day of trading at that market that it was in conversations with buyers in Central Europe, the Middle East and North Africa, Mexico, Argentina, Chile, Uruguay and Asia. Those talks had not been announced as deals.
The production is a Big Beach presentation of a film made by Ossian International, Big Beach, Lemming Film and A Private View. Alex Polunin, Marc Turtletaub, Michael B. Clark and Tim Foley are producers. Stephen Burt, Oren Moverman and Jay Parini are executive producers.
For a film that has just premiered, a sales agent is usually the next step on the road to audiences. The agent's work is to line up buyers before the film reaches cinemas, and each buyer then decides on its own release plans.
