I have spent a lot of time in Cuba, so it didn’t feel foreign. With the actors we spent over a year rehearsing. They were not actors before Una Noche, so I wanted them to spend a lot of time with me and with each other so that they would feel really comfortable. We built up a lot of trust, which was important. We spent a lot of time doing improvisations, working through the script and work-shopping constantly until we started to feel like we were ready to shoot.

At the beginning of every month, Ioncinema.com's "Tracking Shot" features a handful of projects that are moments away from lensing and that we feel are worth signaling out. This October 2011, we are keeping tabs on a five projects including an Arnold Schwarzenegger, 30 million dollar action project which we would normally never include on such a list. Last Stand has I Saw the Devil's Kim Jee-woon directing which means this could be bad-ass in terms of tone and style.

At the beginning of every month, IONCINEMA.com's "Tracking Shot" features a handful of projects that are moments away from lensing and that we feel are worth signaling out. This June, we are keeping tabs on nine projects including the untitled, aka The Master from master filmmaker Paul Thomas Anderson.

The U.K's Protagonist Pictures like to spread themselves out, having shown Tyrannosaur at Sundance and Berlin and this year they've got Australia's Snowtown in the Critic's Week. The Deep Blue Sea appears to be billed as a Venice/TIFF selection and next year they'll be backing one of their own in Kevin MacDonald's How I Live Now.

Pathe have Main Comp titles in Paolo Sorrentino's This Must Be the Place and Alain Cavalier's Pater on their product list, but the sale agent might find both titles a difficult sell until they are unveiled to the film critic mass. I'd bet that Phyllida Lloyd's The Iron Lady with Meryl Steep is the most desired item on their inventory list.

The folks who brought us Certified Copy, Dogtooth and To the Sea have a huge film in their possessions that might topple the Venice Film Fest. MK2, the Sales Agent, Theatrical Distribution and Production Company must be close to selling out all the territories for Walter Salles' On the Road, but in the mean time they've got Beauty playing in the UCR, The Fairy opening the Directors' Fortnight, a doc on Charlotte Rmpling and are bringing back Melies' A Trip to the Moon to life.

With a flurry of titles (from herlmers Kawase, Lanners, Rebecca Daly in the multiple Cannes sections, the future (Venice, and TIFF prospects) look equally as fruitful for Memento Films Int. The French Sales Agent and Prod Co. have a stellar bunch in post production items such from So Yong Kim's and Pen-Ek Ratanaruang's next films (see Headshot pic above), but pre-production items with an eye towards next year's Cannes with Laurent Cantet's and Cate Shortland's next features.

Nothing can top last year's Cannes for the German Sales Agent -- Apichatpong Weerasethakul can thank the Tim Burton led jury for Uncle Boonmee being crowned with the Palme. This year The Match Factory have one in the main comp, a dark horse contender with Aki Kaurismaki's Le Havre and they have a trio in the Un Certain Regard section in Oslo, August 31st, Tatsumi and Stopped on Track.

Le Pacte are spread across the Croisette this year with three films in competition including Kamen Kalev's The Island.

In addition to the pair of films that were accepted into the Cannes film festival (The Prodigies and Days of Grace), they have Sylvie Testud, Juan Solanas, Quentin Dupieux items in the works. French sales outfit Kinology have got a solid 2012 ahead of them.

You can brand them as peddlers of Brad Pitt, as U.S based Inferno Entertainment have got some highly anticipated titles in their sales line-up and one matches Pitt with Andrew Dominik in Cogan's Trade (they worked together on Jesse James) and James Gray should be rolling out the cameras one of these days for The Lost City of Z with Pitt attached in the lead. Joe Carnahan's The Grey is on the map as well.

The U.K team only have one film in the Cannes competition in Takashi's Miike's Hara-Kiri: Death of a Samurai, but its the more than one item in Hanway Films upcoming slate that has me salivating. They've got Steve McQueen's Shame, Andrea Arnold's Wuthering Heights and David Cronenberg's A Dangerous Method all in the oven. If there is a break-in at the Hanway offices this week, I don't want anyone thinking it was me.

GK Films have some definite items tipped for Venice and TIFF in The Rum Diary and Red Lights - which I wonder if Cannes Jury president Robert De Niro might be promoting during his time here. Here's GK Films small, but alluring slate of more mainstream/genre items.

For the Sales Agent stationed in the Netherlands, 2011 could be considered an off year with only two titles (Leila Kilani's Sur La Planche and Corman's World gets some replay value) in Cannes. Put they have a solid selection of Asian titles in the pipeline and two Brit titles in Kevin MacDonald's Marley and Michel Winterbottom's The Promised Land which we look forward to with much anticipation.

Meetings at the Focus Features Int. office this year must be short and sweet -- as they don't have plenty of volume in the pipeline -- but do manage to have some titles worth considering and this includes Mike Mills' brilliant Beginners and the pre-fall release of Lone Scherfig's One Day, but also currently in production films from the Wachowskis and one from Paul Weitz that should fetch big dollars.

With a half dozen titles in the sidebars, the Parisian Sales Agent Film Distribution folks are certainly going to be hosting several parties. At the top of the list they've got Bertrand Bonello's House of Tolerance. In the waiting, we find the co. pushing Brillante Mendoza's latest entitled Captured - a film that features a Croisette fixture in the popular Isabelle Huppert.

The sales agent and production company had one heck of a year in 2010 with Le Quattro Volte and Aurora, this year they got two features (Blue Bird and Play) and a Boro in the Box (40-minute film) all playing in the Directors' Fortnight. Of interest we have Ilya Khrzhanovsky still working on Dau (see pic above) --- a Cannes 2012 selection folks?

In a very short amount of time, NYC/LA based Filmnation Ent. have padded themselves a hell of a slate including Terrence Malick's forthcoming film (not The Tree of Life...the other one - see pic above) John Hillcoat's Wettest County and in this year's Cannes they have the excellent Take Shelter (in my top 2 from Sundance) and Pedro Almodovar's huge Main Comp buzz title.

Films Boutique is a sales agent from Germany with a penchant for international film items. This year they rep a pair of Cannes selected titles in the Directors' Fortnight selected director's cut version of Guilty of Romance from Sion Sono and Valérie Mrejen's En Ville. Among the big titles for art-house lovers they are repping Alexander Sokurov's Faust -- which I guess finally wasn't ready for a Cannes inclusion.

The French Sales Agent with the coolest name on the Croisette might not have anything playing in the different sections but they got a good chunk of items I easily see playing at Locarno, TIFF and Venice. At the top of their charts, I'm actually keen on seeing the tale of the first vibrator with Maggie Gyllenhaal. Hysteria is labeled as in production. From Israel we have Eran Riklis' next in Playoff also on our radar.

Celluloid Dreams, the Sales Agent and Production Co. based out of Paris have got a pair of films playing in the festival's line-up in the closing night film Honore's Beloved and the UCR selected Loverboy from Romania. The top title in our books is Marjane Satrapi's Chicken with Plums which is currently in post and would currently be a contender for a Venice slot and Frederick Wiseman's next docu (see pic above) and an Italian number from Marco Bellocchio called Sorelle Mai.

This year the French production company/distributor and sale co. lead by Paulo Branco has a modest, but promising line-up which includes David Cronenberg's Cosmopolis with a stacked cast of Robert Pattinson, Paul Giamatti, Juliette Binoche, Samantha Morton, Mathieu Amalric and Canucks Sarah Gadon and Jay Baruchel. The company who reps Mysteries of Lisbon will also produce Paul Ruiz's next film, Lines of Wellington which is currently in pre-production.

Long story short I got in touch with him through this really circuitous route. We started talking. I started calling him every day. Then I kinda just showed up at his house. I was like “We’re going to make a movie, I’m going to write for Rolling Stone.” – I had never written for Rolling Stone before.

The fantasy world is both an escape from and a commentary on the surrounding narrative. Similar to Michel Gondry’s The Science of Sleep, there is a porous boundary between the real world and an alternate reality. These two worlds collide so that the edges are blurred. I didn’t want the film to be dark, dark, dark punch-you-in-the-stomach all the way through – so the fantasies serve as a sort of release.

At the beginning of every month, IONCINEMA.com's "Tracking Shot" features a handful of projects that are moments away from lensing and we feel are worth signaling out. This february we only have a fivesome of films worth mentioning that are definitely going to be major studio titles to watch out for in 2012ish.