Mubi has picked up Coward, the new film from Belgian director Lukas Dhont (Close, Girl) for multiple territories, including the U.K, Germany, Australia/New Zealand and Latin America, the company announced Wednesday.
The company also secured rights for Ireland, Austria, Italy, Spain, and Turkey. Mubi said it will outline its release plans in the near future.
Coward will have its world premiere in Competition at the Cannes Film Festival later this month. Mubi’s film sales group The Match Factory is handling world sales on the feature.
Dhont’s follow-up to his Oscar-nominated Close (2022) is a period drama set in the trenches of World War I. Emmanuel Macchia and Valentin Campagne star as Pierre and Francis, two fresh-faced solders who meet on the front and, in a bid to try and escape the horrors of war, decide to put on a theatre show.
Coward reunites Dhont with his Girl and Close co-writer Angelo Tijssens, and brother, producer Michiel Dhont. The film is produced by the Reunion, Lumen, Topkapi Films & Versus (Opus) in co-production with France 2 Cinéma, VTM, RTBF, Proximus, BeTV & Orange.
Mubi handled multiple international territories on Close, which was released by A24 in the U.S..
Ahead of Cannes, Mubi also snatched up rights across multiple international territories for Competition title Hope, the new sci-fi action thriller from South Korean director Na Hong-Ji (The Wailing, The Yellow Sea). Neon is distributing Hope in North America and also holds U.K. and Australian rights.
Mubi is a producer on Paweł Pawlikowski’s Fatherland, also premiering in Cannes Competition this year, and on Jane Schoenbrun’s hotly anticipated Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma, which will be the opening film of the Un Certain Regard sidebar.
