Representing both the Pontas Agency and Pontas Films, Anna Soler-Pont attended once again the Cannes Festival’s Marché du Film, the biggest event in the international film industry and a unique opportunity to meet the most varied professionals, from producers to investors, from filmmakers to scriptwriters, from lawyers to sales agents, from distributors to directors… Meetings took place from early in the morning until late at night at the most different spots around Cannes: from stands at the Palais or Riviera to the appartments and hotel suites at La Croisette, from terraces by the beach to yachts at the harbour, restaurants and cafés… as well as while walking the red carpet for a festival screening!
On the literary agency side, Anna Soler-Pont had the chance to pitch books with film potential to producers such as Cécile Pico (from French UGC, in the photo), who is always looking for literary properties to adapt; or during a session organized by Best Seller to Box Office, always hosting interesting book pitching sessions at the “Literary Adaptation Pavilion” at Village International Pantiero. As well as meeting again with producers who have already bought some audiovisual rights from the Pontas Agency (like Argentinian producer Agustina Macri from the Burman Office, currently developing the film adaptation of También esto pasará (This Too Shall Pass) by Milena Busquets.
Meetings with authors represented by us can occur at any time, and finally Anna got to meet Jill Scott Johnson face to face for the first time in Cannes and discuss the latest draft of her debut novel The Yellow Tree (both in the photo, left). And improvised meetings such as the one with French talent agents Elisabeth Tanner, Arnaud Betrand and Elizabeth Simpson (in the photo, right) may be the beginning of a long professional exchange (approaching novels to actresses and actors, filmmakers and directors and get them sort of “attached” to the adaptation before any producer acquires the rights is the plan!).
On the production side, Pontas Films is currently developping together with Peruvian company Señor Z the fiction feature film El Sistema Solar (The Solar System), an adaptation of the theater play by Mariana de Althaus written by Bacha Caravedo, to be directed by Bacha Caravedo and Daniel Higashionna and shot entirely in Lima. In Cannes, the film project was presented to several international sales agents and investors, as well as to film funds and festival programmers, while casting and crew are being decided.
Meanwhile, the film adaptation of Cold Skin (the bestselling novel by Catalan author Albert Sánchez Piñol) is already shooting in the island of Lanzarote, directed by French filmmaker Xavier Gens and produced by Babieka Films (with Pontas Films as associated producers) with David Oakes, Ray Stevenson and Aura Garrido as main casting, and screenplay by Jesús Olmo. Some international distribution rights were sold during the Cannes Film Market by Kinology and around 10 minutes of footage and making off images were shown in a crowded screening room at the Palais (organized by the enthusiastic sales agent Grégoire Malin and his team at Kinology), in the photo.
