Céline Sciamma’s follow-up to “Portrait of a Lady on Fire” has found a home. Neon scored North American rights to “Petite Maman” following its world premiere at the Berlin International Film Festival, Variety reports.
Currently boasting a 100 percent “Fresh” rating on Rotten Tomatoes, the drama follows eight-year-old Nelly (Joséphine Sanz), “who loses her beloved grandmother and goes to help her parents clean out her mother’s childhood home. She explores the house and the surrounding woods where her mom, Marion [Nina Meurisse], used to play and build the treehouse she’s heard so much about. One day, her mother abruptly leaves. That’s when Nelly meets a girl her own age [Gabrielle Sanz] in the woods building a treehouse. Her name is Marion,” the source summarizes.
Sciamma penned the script. She re-teamed with “Portrait of a Lady on Fire” cinematographer Claire Mathon on the project.
“Portrait of a Lady on Fire” premiered in competition at the 2019 Cannes Film Festival, where it made history as the first woman-directed film to win the Queer Palm. Sciamma also took home the festival’s Best Screenplay award. The period romance went on to become one of the year’s most acclaimed films.
“My work has always been about not being conventional and male gaze is convention,” Sciamma has said. “It’s not just because I’m a woman behind a camera, because women can actually reproduce male gaze, because that’s our education. I think my movies are very much about the female gaze. … But it’s not going to happen magically if you’re a woman. It’s still something you have to deconstruct, but it’s not something you have to be vigilant about. I don’t have to think, ‘How am I not going to objectify this woman?’”
Sciamma’s other credits include “Girlhood” and “Tomboy.”
No word on when to expect “Petite Maman” stateside.
