Paris-based MPM Premium has picked up Iuli Gerbase’s “The Pink Cloud,” a banner title that’s part of a slate of first features from a new generation of young female Brazilian directors. The films are set to become one of the talking points of next week’s Ventana Sur.

A sci-fi thriller from writer-director Iuii Gerbase shot in 2019 but still anticipating the COVID-19 lockdown, “The Pink Cloud” will be shopped at the Ventana Sur market by Quentin Worthington, head of sales at MPM Premium. The executive will promote “The Pink Cloud” out of a virtual booth at Ventana Sur, and show the film to select buyers.

The film will hit the festival circuit in 2021.

Produced by Patricia Barbieri, who also backed Gerbase’s latest short, coming-of-age adventure thriller “The Stone,” Gerbase’s first feature begins with a mysterious pink cloud appearing across the globe. It proves deadly, killing anybody who remains outside in 10 seconds, forcing everybody to stay home.

Having met the night before, Giovana (Renata de Lelis, “Avental Rosa”) and Yago (Eduardo Mendonça, “Necropolis”) try to invent themselves as a couple as the days of lockdown become years.

Yago stays positive, adapts, and wants to have children, but Giovana feels trapped by Yago’s traditionalist agenda and by the cloud.

In a director’s statement, Gerbase said she wasn’t interested in a typical post-apocalypse story where the battle for survival is more physical and practical. Rather, she wanted “to explore the different emotional paths of the two characters with very different visions of what freedom and happiness are.” Giovana, in particular, has “a strong internal feminist battle with the cloud.”

“From the first minutes of the film, ‘The Pink Cloud’ struck me with its colorful cinematography and thrilling tension,” said Worthington.

He added: “Just like Pedro Almodóvar declared that cinema is the antidote to lockdown, ‘The Pink Cloud’ could be that antidote that will help us process our emotions and anxieties after a year of a global lockdown.”

“The Pink Cloud” forms part of MPM Premium’s push into emerging talent via its New Visions auteur label. At Ventana Sur, MPM Premium will also be representing “Ghosts,” a Turkish drama by on-the-rise helmer Azra Deniz Okyay (“Hayaletler”) that won the Grand Prize at this year’s Venice Critics Week. MPM Premium sold Matias Marini’s first feature, “Shine Your Eyes,” a Berlinale Panorama standout co-produced by MPM Film, acquired by Netflix.

Also part of Brazil’s regional movie build, now often challenged by the decimation of federal film funds by Jair Bolsonaro’s government, “The Pink Cloud” is produced by Gerbase’s Porto Alegre-based label Prana Filmes, and supported by the Fundo Sectorial Audiovisual (FSA) film fund, managed by state agency Ancine, drivers of a once vibrant Brazilian film scene.

Source: https://variety.com/2020/film/global/mpm-premium-luli-gerbase-the-pink-cloud-1234841206/