Vienna-based production company Square Eyes purchased Sara Summa’s road comedy Arthur and Diana for distribution. To help build up excitement for its Toronto International Film Festival premiere, the film has released its first trailer on Variety.
The film follows Diana, her brother Arthur, and her two-year-old son as they travel from Berlin to Paris for an annual inspection of their old Renault car. However, their road trip is thoroughly interrupted by different issues, rising tensions, and unveiled emotions.
In an interview, director-writer Sara Summa reflects on how her film is an autofictional experiment where she, her brother, and her son play fictional versions of themselves. Since the film is so personal to her, Summa wanted to create a “ joie de vivre [joy in living life] and share [her] love for cinema” while using it as an opportunity to be as “artistically free as possible.”
The documentary-style film has already received incredible buzz from various sources, from the Locarno Film Festival to Square Eyes. According to the founder, Wouter Jansen, the film felt like a “breath of fresh air” and the perfect showcase for Summa’s talent. “‘Arthur & Diana’ is a film that is nostalgic, comedic, playful, chaotic but at the same time very deliberate,“ Jansen gushes. This sentiment was shared last year at the Locarno Film Festival, which awarded Summa the Le Film Français Award alongside $5,700 for advertising services.
The cast includes unknown actors like Livia Antonelli, Claire Loiseau, and Ugo Fiore. Additionally, the film was shot by Faraz Fesharaki, who is following up on his work in the Georgian drama What Do We See When We Look At The Sky.
There is no solid news about its distribution after the TIFF, though the hype built up in its circle will attract many cinephiles.