EXCLUSIVE: Totem Films is joining with Studiocanal to handle international sales on Suzannah Mirghani’s Cotton Queen ahead of its world premiere
EXCLUSIVE: Totem Films is joining with Studiocanal to handle international sales on Suzannah Mirghani’s Cotton Queen ahead of its world premiere in Venice Critics’ Week next week.
Mirghani’s debut feature will launch on the Lido on Wednesday, September 3. Mad Solutions and Film Clinic previously acquired MENA distribution rights on the title.
Set in a cotton farming village in Sudan, Cotton Queen follows teenage Nafisa, raised on her grandmother’s heroic tales of battling British colonisers. When a juvenile businessman arrives from abroad with a up-to-date development plan, Nafisa becomes the centre of a power play to determine the future of the village.
The film is produced by Caroline Daube for Germany’s Strange Bird with Didar Domehri for France’s Maneki Films. Co-producers are Annemarie Jacir and Ossama Bawardi for Philistine Film, with Jutta Feit and Julia Peter for Jippie Films.
Sudanese actress Mihad Murtada leads the cast, alongside Rabha Mohamed Mahmoud and Talaat Fareed.
The film won the main ArteKino award at Cannes Cinefondation in 2022 as well as prizes at Cairo Film Connection that year, and was showcased at Sarajevo’s CineLink and the Doha Film Institute’s Qumra lab.
Cotton Queen is a Germany-France-Palestine-Qatar-Saudi Arabia-Sudan co-production, in co-production with ZDF/Das Kleine Fernsehspiel, in collaboration with ARTE, in co-production with Film Clinic, MAD Solutions.
It is co-produced by the Red Sea International Film Festival’s Red Sea Fund with the Support of FFA Filmförderungsanstalt, FilmFernsehFonds Bayern, Hessen Film & Medien, Région Île-de-France / Paris Region, CNC Centre National du Cinéma et de l’image animée, Hubert Bals Fund + Europe Programme of International Film Festival Rotterdam, Doha Film Institute, Arab Fund for Arts and Culture, Evangelisches Zentrum für entwicklungsbezogene Filmarbeit & Brot für die Welt, Prix ARTEKINO International.
Totem previously represented Hind Meddeb’s Sudanese documentary Sudan, Remember Us, which launched in Venice’s Giornate degli Autori sidebar last year.
“[Totem] has been doing outstanding work with director-driven films for years, combining passion for breaking new talent with a deep understanding of the international market,” said a statement from Daube and Domehri.
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