Film Rights Afm 2016

FILM RIGHTS
AFM 2016

LOS ANGELES

DESIGNED BY

Line Célo Mathieu Roger-Lacan

PRINTED IN USA BY

Printex

PUBLISHED BY

Ofﬁce for Cultural Affairs and the Creative Industries Consulate General of France in Los Angeles 10390, Santa Monica Blvd Los Angeles CA 90025 [email protected] frenchculture.org

THIS PUBLICATION IS SUPPORTED BY

Institut français

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Shoot the Book! L.A.

SECOND EDITION

Organized by the French Embassy’s Mission for Culture and Higher Education in

the United States and the Institut français, Shoot the Book! LA is the US edition of

Shoot the Book!, a collective endeavor of French publishers under the banner of the

Société Civile des Editeurs de Langue Française (SCELF) and the Bureau Interna-

tional de l’Edition Française (BIEF) launched at the Cannes Film Festival in 2014. Shoot the Book! L.A. was made possible thanks to the support of the SCELF, the

CFC (Centre Français du droit de Copie) and the SOFIA (SOciété Française des Intérêts des Auteurs de l’écrit).

Shoot the Book! comes to Los Angeles this year again. This second edition is designed as a platform to display a selection of titles from France’s front-line publishing houses, which have been selected by leading American ﬁlm professionals for their potential as screen adaptations for ﬁlm, television and other digital formats.

Each book is presented in its main storylines, with a synthesis of key information and the person to contact if you would like to know more. The titles presented by representatives for the Mediatoon Group (Dargaud and Dupuis), the Place des Édi-

teurs Group (Belfond and Presses de la Cité), Denoël, Albin Michel and C.A.L.

Agency (Plon) offer a varied selection of France’s literary production today, giving an overview of the vitality of the French publishing world, from graphic novels to science-ﬁction, crime, memoir, drama and comedy. The event will be moderated by Steven Gaydos, Vice-President, Executive Editor, Variety.

In connecting French and American professionals in the framework of the American Film Market (AFM), Shoot the Book! L.A. seeks to nourish creative and business links between France and the United States.

Members of the Jury

Bob Bookman, Senior Motion Picture and Television Agent, Paradigm. Franklin Leonard, Film Executive and Founder of The Black List.

Andrea McCall, Senior Vice President, DreamWorks. Howard A. Rodman, President, WGAW.

Moderator

Steven Gaydos, Vice President, Executive Editor, Variety.

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Shoot the Book! is based on a call for submissions to all French publishers. Out of the 21 titles presented to the selection committee, 5 titles have been chosen. Each title was represented by one audio-visual rights manager who then chose another title for the pitching session. This booklet introduces the 10 pitched books, organized by representative, and the 16 other titles, organized by publishing house.

Pitched Books

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Albin Michel | The Paris Lawyer – Sylvie Granotier Albin Michel | The Black Line – Jean-Christophe Grangé

10 11

Denoël | The Deep Sea Diver’s Syndrome – S. Brussolo

Denoël | Still Dust Remains – Sandrine Collette

12 13

Dargaud | Jazz Maynard – Raul & Roger Dupuis | Monika – Barboni & March

14 15

Belfond | Mary’s Diary – Alexandra Echkenazi Presses de la Cité | Don’t Let Go – Michel Bussi

16 17

Plon | The Great Silence – Loup Durand

Plon | Where the Light Collapses – Guillaume Sire

Other Titles

19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29

Actes Sud | Collector – Olivier Bonnard Au Diable Vauvert | The Rest of Their Life – Jean-Paul Didierlaurent Auteurs d’aujourd’hui | I died Yesterday – Patrick Jaulent Fayard | The Honey Club – Célhia de Lavarène Flammarion | Paris by Night – Pauline Flepp French Pulp Editions | Clash Generation – G. Morris Dumoulin Futuropolis | Genetiks – Marazano & Ponzio Gallimard jeunesse | Aâma – F. Peeters

Grasset | The Seventh Function of Language – Laurent Binet

Hachette livre | Chasing Sleeping Beauty – C. Féret-Fleury

Heloïse d’Ormesson | In Praise of Cellulite and Other Misfortunes – Dominique

Dyens

30 31 32 33 34

Le Lombard | Baghdad Inc. – Desberg & Legrain Rouergue | In the Starlit Meadows – Marie-Sabine Roger L’Olivier/Le Seuil | The Great Mariner – Catherine Poulain Univers Poche | A Breath, a Shade – Christian Carayon Le Verger des Hespérides | The Hidden Monastery – Pierre Stolze

Ofﬁce for Cultural Affairs and the Creative Industries
Consulate General of France in Los Angeles
10390 Santa Monica Blvd., Suite 410, Los Angeles, CA 90025

[email protected] frenchculture.org

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ALBIN MICHEL

Founded in 1900, Editions Albin Michel boasts a catalogue of over 6,000 working titles and publishes 500 new ones each year. Combining authors of prestige and newly discovered talents, Albin Michel’s catalogue includes many successful French and foreign authors who, for the most part, also enjoy international recognition. Albin Michel is today one of the most important independent publishing groups in France.

DENOËL

Since its creation in 1930, Denoël has been publishing diverse literary genres and prestigious authors from the entire world: Louis Aragon, Isaac Asimov, Blaise Cendrars, Robert Crumb, Hans Fallada, Norman Mailer, Curzio Malaparte, Arto Paasilinna, Georges Perec, Sylvia Plath, Jean Rhys, Sempé, Patti Smith and many more.

Across different series, Denoël publishes around 50 titles per year: literary and commercial fiction, crime stories and thrillers, science fiction and fantasy, essays and non-fiction, graphic novels and illustrated books. Denoël is part of the Gallimard Group.

DARGAUD & DUPUIS

For more than half a century, Dargaud and Dupuis have been writing essential chapters in the history of graphic novels. With Dupuis’ countless iconic ﬁgures – such as Lucky Luke, Spirou, Boule & Bill, The Smurfs, Cédric, Le Petit Spirou, Kid Paddle, and Largo Winch – and

the many cult series of Dargaud – such as Valerian, Blueberry, XIII or

Achille T a lon – both publishing houses have cultivated a passionate public following. Each year, 5 million Dupuis and 8 million Dargaud comics and graphic novels are sold across the globe and approximately thirty audiovisual adaptation projects are signed.

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PLACE DES EDITEURS (BELFOND & PRESSES DE LA CITE)

Place des Editeurs is an internationally leading group composed of twelve different publishing companies (including Belfond and Presses de la Cité), and covers a wide range of books: international and French ﬁction, non-ﬁction, practical guides, illustrated books, travel guides and children’s books. Place des Editeurs is synonymous with international successes. Many of their books have been adapted for screen and TV,

such as Harlan Coben’s T e ll No One and No Second Chance, Douglas

Kennedy’s The Woman in the Fifth starring Ethan Hawke or the Swe-

dish bestseller The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared.

PLON

Plon publications, a major player in French publishing since 1852. To enlighten readers on the changes in our society, to provide the keys to better analyse the news, to give a voice to French and foreign literature, to share their enthusiasm and discover “human territories” - these are just a few of the goals of the Plon publications.

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PITCHED BOOKS

SETTING

Paris – Creuse (French countryside)

Catherine, a young Parisian lawyer assigned to defend a woman accused of poisoning her husband, sees an old unsolved case resurface: a crime involving her own mother.

CHARACTERS

Female – 30 Male – 55 Male – 45

FILM AND FOREIGN RIGHTS GUIDE

Film rights available.

PROMOTIONAL MATERIAL AVAILABLE

English translation available (American edition)

The Paris Lawyer

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The novel received the Prix du Polar

Sang d’Encre 2011 awarded to a

French-language detective novel.

LA RIGOLE DU DIABLE

SYLVIE GRANOTIER

Catherine, a young Parisian lawyer, has a murder case to defend. It’s a big step in her budding career, overseen by her kind yet stern and intimidating boss, Maître Renaud. She heads to the scene of the crime in the Creuse region, where she spent her earliest years before her mother’s murder, which obviously continues to haunt her. Her father has never come to terms with his wife’s death and never talks about it. When she was 16 and supposed to be celebrating her high school graduation, her dad brought up her mother’s death. He said she could ask him anything she wanted but, after that, they would never discuss it again. It was then she realized she needed to go away to live her life. She went to Paris to study law. Catherine’s client, Myriam, is an undocumented African immigrant accused of poisoning her husband, Gaston, a farmer she married 6 years earlier. She was his sole heir. His cousins, who’d counted on his inheritance, remembered a jar of cyanide from an abandoned gold mine that had disappeared from Gaston’s barn. They requested an autopsy and learned that Gaston had in fact been poisoned. As Catherine builds her case, she discovers her lover Cedric was once her mother’s lover. For a while, she suspects him of the crime. But Cedric actually knows who the killer is and lets her find out for herself.

WHY THIS BOOK?

Catherine’s dynamic, endearing energy fuels the interplay between a gripping ﬁrst career move and coming to terms with her own terrible and mysterious past. When the suspense is over, Catherine has ﬁnally come into her own.

In the meantime, Catherine gets Myriam acquitted... despite proof of the woman’s guilt. Catherine asks her father to take her to the spot where he scattered her mother’s ashes. She gets ahead of him on the path and encounters Cedric. Convinced he has come to murder her as he did her mother, she tries to run but he catches her. Her father comes to her rescue. Cedric fights with her father but Catherine bashes him with a rock. As her father tells her he knows Cedric is her lover too, all of a sudden Catherine realizes it was her father, jealous and overprotective of the child he raised alone, careful to keep the painful past buried, who killed her mother when she was a girl. She teeters on the edge of the cliff but her father pulls her back. Then he falls. After that night where the two men battled hand-to-hand, Cedric is in the hospital and Catherine’s father is dead. Catherine and Cedric go their separate ways. She advises Myriam to come clean about her false identity. She meets a man in the train and asks him about the book he’s reading. A new story?

Éditions Albin Michel Marie Dormann Subrights Director + 33 1 42 79 10 29

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[email protected]

SETTING

Today – Paris – Asia – Sicily

In a Malay prison, Jacques Reverdi, an ex-world champion free diver and a particularly ruthless serial killer, awaits trial and execution. In Paris, Mark Dupeyrat, a journalist captivated by Reverdi’s crimes, sets up a trap to gain the killer’s trust: he invents a character, Elisabeth, a student fascinated by crime and starts a correspondence with him. A man with a powerful imagination…

CHARACTERS

Marc – 40 – Male Jacques – 55 – Male Khadidja – 30 – Female

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Film rights available Available editions: French, Chinese, German, Spanish, Russian, Portuguese, Italian, Korean, Turkish, Danish, Swedish

1 million copies sold

The Black Line

LA LIGNE NOIRE

JEAN-CHRISTOPHE GRANGÉ

Malaysia. Jacques Reverdi is imprisoned in a hermetically-sealed bamboo cage. He cannot breathe, but what frightens him even more is the blood that’s oozing slowly but surely along the ground… At his side, the horribly lacerated body of a young woman has just been discovered. This is not the first time he’s been accused of murder: he is the worst kind of serial killer. He was once an internationally known sportsman, world record holder in ‘no limit’ free diving. He gave up competition in the middle of the eighties and has been living in SouthEast Asia for ten years, teaching underwater diving. In Paris, Marc Dupeyrat, former paparazzi now specialized in crime articles, is obsessed by Reverdi’s murders. He decides to go all the way to South-East Asia to try and understand his urge to kill. He works out a clever plan to rouse Reverdi’s interest. Dupeyrat addresses him under the pen name of Elisabeth, who pretends to be a ‘fan’. The photo he sends of ‘Elisabeth’ is in reality a young model he met in his photographer friend’s studio, a magnificent young woman from North African called Khadidja. Reverdi takes the bait, and accepts to correspond with Elisabeth. He eventually finds himself falling in love with her. Begins a macabre chase through Malaysia, Cambodia and Thailand, as the killer sets enigmas to be solved and reveals clues.

WHY THIS BOOK?

Sure that he has uncovered all the killer’s secrets, Marc breaks off all contact with Reverdi and comes back to Paris to write a novel directly inspired by his morbid mentor. The book is an immediate best-seller. Meanwhile Khadidja has been highly successful in modelling and huge posters show her wild, beautiful face all over the walls of Paris… But deep down Mark is anxious, because he knows there is one thing the killer will never forgive… betrayal. Fortunately Reverdi will be tried soon, and certainly sentenced to death. However, the police organise a re-enactment and Reverdi manages to escape by provoking an accident over a river and diving. Shortly after, all the witnesses start disappearing in horrific circumstances… The killer kidnaps Marc and Khadidja. He makes them undergo his dreadful ritual, telling them the origins of his pain and trauma (his foolish and nymphomaniac mother and a certain rattan trunk in her bedroom). They are saved in extremis by the police. After a long and painful convalescence, the couple learns the certain death of Reverdi, and looks forward to having time to heal all their wounds.

The Black Line: a blood line with no more oxygen... Weaves a captivating and endearing story within the thriller format. Three deep dark characters, with heavy pasts, truly described and animated in their fear, troubles and traumas. A perfect psychological revelation.

But the murders continue… Reverdi has an imitator, following in his trail. It is finally in Catania, Sicily, that Khadidja understands, just in time: Marc is the one who killed many people before — his best friend a long time ago, his first wife, and more recently, a cop... He tried to kill her. In a final battle, he dies and she escapes in the Sicilian sun. Alive.

Éditions Albin Michel Marie Dormann Subrights Director + 33 1 42 79 10 29 [email protected]

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SETTING

A big city in the near future

David is a dream hunter. Whenever he is commissioned to dive into the heart of slumber, he has to bring back strange objects of priceless value in a world gone numb and monitored. Yet David struggles to come back from these dream-like expeditions, far more exciting than his dull real life. At the peril of his life, he attempts to smuggle one last time into the dream free zone…

CHARACTERS

David Sarella – Male – 40 Nadia – Female – 30 Jorgo – Male – 20

Film rights available – English language book rights sold to Melville House, published in the USA (January, 2016)

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Serge Brussolo is the author of nearly two hundred books in every possible genre – dark fantasy, horror, historical fiction, young adult fiction, thrillers, and literary fiction. His books, consistently bestsellers, have won every major French science-fiction prize and are considered modern classics. Several have been made into films.

The Deep Sea Diver’s Syndrome

LE SYNDROME DU SCAPHANDRIER

SERGE BRUSSOLO

David is a dream hunter. For his clients, and whenever the call from the depths is felt, he dives into the heart of slumber, and brings back strange, ectoplasmic objects whose mysterious and beneficial powers are highly sought after by avid private collectors and state alike. In a real world where arts have vanished and dream-like ectoplasms have become the most accomplished and valued art form, David is

just

a

run-of-the-mill civil servant. Marianne, an unyielding

psychonurse from the Ministry of Culture, closely monitors his diving. In dreams, with the help of his two sidekicks, the temptress Nadia and the young Jorgo, he lives a far more exciting and dangerous life, far away from his mundane real life: that of a high-flying burglar, a heroic gang leader with muscles of steel. He is also falling for Nadia. With each dive, bringing back treasures becomes a little riskier, and nightmares can kick in anytime. Not to mention the Deep Sea Diver’s syndrome, a vitrification of the brain caused by too much diving, a condition that affected many divers before him, which he wants to avoid at all costs. Whenever he is back from diving, and in spite of the ensuing physical and mental damage, David only aspires to one thing: to break free from the suffocating and anaesthetized real world and the lonely life he leads in it. He is madly in love with Nadia, and only wishes to be reunited with her. The line between dream and reality becomes increasingly blurry in his mind. The strange clairvoyant “gift” he inherited from his mother caused him to live a painful childhood, and often feels like a curse. Only Antonine, his sensual, ectoplasm-loving neighbor, gives him a measure of comfort. Simultaneously, David finds out the ever-popular ectoplasms are used as tranquilizers to forget about a dull and threatening world where everything is under surveillance. Furthermore, his obsession for dreaming spirals out of control, a fact that does not go unnoticed by the Ministry.

WHY THIS BOOK?

Reminiscent of Inception and Jacob’s Ladder. A

major piece of Sci-Fi, highly addictive, dealing with timeless fascinating topics: escaping from reality, the power of dreams, society’s oppression of individuals, the yearning for absolute freedom.

After a disastrous diving, David is suspended, which causes him to tip over the edge, and to decide to embark on one last diving, a last chance to give his life a meaning. But the meanderings of the abyss are home to dangers as perilous as the ones in real life. David has no choice: to win the game, he needs to dive right into the very heart of the depths, where no dreamer ever dared to venture before, at the risk of never returning…

Editions Denoël Judith Becqueriaux Rights Manager [email protected] + 33 1 44 39 73 76

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SETTING

Argentina, somewhere on the Patagonia plateau

In an isolated land, a mother and her four sons desperately try to make a living on their meager farm. In this deadly enclosed setting, they have all become one another’s tormentors... Drama could strike at any second. Only Rafael, the youngest son, seems to have preserved his humanity and his innocence. Will he be able to escape this nightmarish home? .

CHARACTERS

Rafael – Male – 10 to 12 The Mother – Female – 40 Mauro & Joaquin, Males –16 Steban – Male – 14

Film rights available – English language book rights sold in the USA to Europa Editions, to be published in 2017

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Still Dust Remains

Sandrine Collette (b. 1970) divides her time between writing and working on her horse farm. She is the author of three bestsellers, including Des

Nœuds d’acier (2013 - Best Crime

Novel Prize)

IL RESTE LA POUSSIÈRE

SANDRINE COLLETTE

Argentina, the Patagonia plateau, on an isolated farm at the dawn of the last century. On a breathtakingly beautiful, vast, and arid steppe swept by glacial winds, a little boy is pursued by three horsemen. Once captured, he is tossed from one to the other in a deranged race. The badly beaten boy is then thrown into a thorny bush. The boy is Rafael and his tormentors are his older brothers: the inseparable twins, Mauro and Joaquin, and Steban, known as “The Idiot” because he is mute. Their hardworking mother is also a woman of few words. Ever since the terrible night when their drunkard father hit her one too many times, she has walled herself off in hostile silence, keeping a dark secret: that fateful night, she killed their father and disposed of his body in the neighboring marshes. Ever since then, she has made it seem as though he left them and manages her sons and her meager livestock farm with an iron fist, crushing the boys with her severity and her indifference. The older brothers have always hated their youngest brother, who was born after their father’s disappearance, and made him the target of their brutal games and their bullying. He is another mouth to feed and times are hard. The whipping boy in this family eroded by hatred, Rafael is alone in the world and lives for his horse and his dog. He understood long ago how useless it was to seek affection elsewhere. In this moribund world where small farms in death throes are being replaced by immense properties, hope seems out of reach and revolt is impossible. The farm is on the verge of ruin, but selling is out of the question. The heavy atmosphere is menacing. It is only a matter of time before a new drama hits, and alcohol and gambling will only add fuel to the fire. One evening, the mother gambles and loses Joaquin, one of the twins, in a card game and must resign herself to seeing him leave for a distant farm. Mauro, his brother, is devastated by their separation and feeds dark thoughts of revenge. Violence broods and the tension level rises. Rafael, who let one of their precious horses slip out one morning, is brutally chased from the farm and told not to come back until he has relocated the animal. But on the road, on the harshest and most painful day of his life, Rafael will meet someone... and this unexpected encounter will turn his destiny on its head.