ARP Picks Up French Rights To Trengove's 'Smell Of Apples' — SkimNews
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- ARP Sélection acquired French rights to John Trengove's 'The Smell of Apples' ahead of its world premiere at TIFF, with co-founding chief Michéle Halberstadt citing the film's 'emotional power and sheer beauty'
- The film is based on Mark Behr's 1993 Booker Prize-nominated novel and follows a young boy in a white Cape Town family whose idyllic 1970s life masks brutality beneath the surface
- Cercamon brokered the deal and is handling international sales, with sales chief Sebastien Chesneau calling France 'a special place in international cinema' for the film's release
- Trengove's previous credits include 'The Wound' (2017), South Africa's submission to the Academy Awards' Best Foreign Language Film category in 2018, and 'Manodrome' starring Jesse Eisenberg and Adrien Brody
- The producers — Eric Abraham, Jack Sidey (Portobello Productions), Cait Pansegrouw (Cadence), and Frank Hoeve (BALDR Films) — previously collaborated on Academy Award winners 'Kolya' and 'Ida'
- ARP's upcoming slate also includes TIFF titles 'Le Faux Soir' by Michaël R. Roskam and 'We Are All Strangers' by Anthony Chen
Why it matters: The deal gives Trengove's third feature — a politically charged Apartheid drama adapted from a Booker-nominated novel — a French theatrical runway before its TIFF bow, strengthening Cercamon's festival-to-territory sales pipeline while expanding ARP's prestige lineup alongside TIFF-bound titles from Roskam and Chen.
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