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Cannes Pick-up in August: Biutiful Going to Roadside Attractions?

With strong critical support from Sundance, Roadside successfully launched Winter’s Bone this summer and will appropriately handle the Gothams and Indie Spirits Awards, but Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Biutiful is a different creature.

With IFC not in contention when it comes to putting up huge sums of P&A, with SPC already working with a full slate, and both Fox Searchlight and Focus Features with no leg room this fall, it appears that Roadside Attractions, the 6-8 title per year indie distributor, might have put up the most lucrative offer. With strong critical support from Sundance, Roadside successfully launched Winter’s Bone this summer and will appropriately handle the Gothams and Indie Spirits Awards, but Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Biutiful is a different creature.

The subtitled film has a top five Oscar nomination performance in Javier Bardem – but the key reason why the top tier distributors didn’t make room on their slates, might have to do with not the foreign language aspect but the mixed reviews it got while in Cannes (here’s my press conference vid). As it wasn’t going to head to its North American Toronto Int. Film Festival premiere without a backer, we should expect this deal to include a P&A commitment that will be put in place for an Oscar bid in the Best Actor category. With nothing on their future slate, and only the Granik film worth pushing, Roadside might be a good fit if Summit isn’t interested. 

Alejandro González Iñárritu's Biutiful

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Eric Lavallée is the founder, CEO, editor-in-chief, film journalist and critic at IONCINEMA.com (founded in 2000). Eric is a regular at Sundance, Cannes and TIFF. He has a BFA in Film Studies at the Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema. In 2013 he served as a Narrative Competition Jury Member at the SXSW Film Festival. He was an associate producer on Mark Jackson's This Teacher (2018 LA Film Festival, 2018 BFI London). In 2022 he served as a New Flesh Comp for Best First Feature at the 2022 Fantasia Intl. Film Festival. Current top films for 2022 include Tár (Todd Field), All That Breathes (Shaunak Sen), Aftersun (Charlotte Wells).

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