Check Out Those Cannes: Oscilloscope Claim “The Wonders” & “Catch Me Daddy”

Oscilloscope Laboratories have made a pre-Cannes double deal. Slightly misleading, they’ve actually picked up a pair that had not yet to be picked up since they had their premieres at the 2014 edition of the festival. O-scope have landed Alice Rohrwacher’s Grand Prix winning (2nd place award after the Palme d’Or) The Wonders which was high up on several Best undistributed films of ’14, while Daniel Wolfe’s directorial debut Catch Me Daddy was a Directors’ Fortnight entry that had it’s supporters. O-Scope will release both films later this year. Additionally, they’ve landed one of the better undiscoverd gems from the Toronto Int. Film Fest last fall in Javier Fuentes-León‘s The Vanished Elephant.

Gist: Rohrwacher’s sophomore film is set at the end of summer and follows Gelsomina and her three younger sisters. She is the designated heir of the strange, secluded kingdom that her father constructed around them to protect his family from “the end of the world”. Alba Rohrwacher shares the screen with Maria Alexandra Lungu, Sam Louwyck, Sabine Timoteo, Agnese Graziani and a mystical appearance from Monica Bellucci.

Wolfe’s directorial debut sees Sameena Jabeen Ahmed (see pic above) play a girl running away from her family with her drifter boyfriend. Holed up together in a Yorkshire town on the edge of the moors, they live a hand-to-mouth existence. Aaron’s AWOL from the army, while Laila knows her family won’t let her run without a fight.

Fuentes-León’s sophomore film is being described by O-Scope as a “tantalizing mystery in the vein of The Secret in Their Eyes and Tell No One.” This follows popular crime novelist Edo Celeste after he receives a cryptic envelope on the eve of the publication of the final installment in his beloved “Felipe Aranda” detective series. The envelope, which contains a series of enigmatic photographs, may be a long-awaited clue to the mysterious disappearance of his fiancée seven years prior.

Worth Noting: Frequent Andrea Arnold collaborator, cinematographer Robbie Ryan worked on Catch Me Daddy.

Do We Care?: Among the three options, we’d point to Vanished Elephant as the first must see of the trio. Our TIFF reviewer Robert Bell compliments the Peruvian filmmaker — “does something remarkable here in risking audience investment and loyalty by challenging our consciousness and expectations.”