In Los Angeles, you never meet anyone by chance. The city is too vast, 13 times the size of Paris. Still, you never know. In early 2023, some worry could be felt in the offices of Hollywood producers. Two men traveling from Europe, one from France and the other from Italy, risked coming face to face. They usually don't come at the same time. Consequently, the movie moguls's assistants made sure that a chance encounter in an elevator or hotel lobby didn't happen.

That's because these two business travelers covet the same thing: films. Thierry Frémaux, the Cannes Film Festival's general deligate, and Alberto Barbera, the Venice Film Festival's artistic director, were there to lure the industry's crème de la crème. In the air-conditioned offices of Paramount, Universal, Columbia, Disney and the rest, both talked up their respective events.

Did they discuss Killers of the Flower Moon, Martin Scorsese's three-and-a-half-hour epic featuring two of his favorite actors, Robert De Niro and Leonardo DiCaprio? Undoubtedly, considering how this long-awaited film was whetting appetites. What's for sure is that Frémaux won the bid. He presented it a few months later, in May 2023 at Cannes, where it received rave reviews, not least by Alberto Barbera, who, as a good sport, was present in the auditorium.

In LA, as elsewhere, the Frenchman has signed many other major deals. In 2024, he secured the first screening of Francis Ford Coppola's Megalopolis and Jacques Audiard's Emilia Perez, a musical about a transgender cartel boss. Barbera can also boast of having procured several gems. The 81^st edition of the Mostra, which opens on August 28, is sure to make some noise.

The Room Next Door, Pedro Almodóvar's first English-language feature and starring Tilda Swinton and Julianne Moore, will be presented. So will Todd Phillips's Joker: Folie à Deux, starring Lady Gaga and Joaquin Phoenix, the second installment in the adventures of Batman's nemesis. As for Daniel "James Bond" Craig, he is starring in Luca Guadagnino's adaptation of William S. Burroughs's sultry novel Queer. Rumor has it the film features some very risqué sex scenes.

Film promotion and contract negotiation

There are hundreds of film festivals around the world, but only a handful really matter in the industry calendar. In January, Sundance in Utah. In February, the Berlinale in Berlin. In May, Cannes. In late August, Venice. In early September, Toronto. This is where actors and directors promote their films while behind the scenes, producers and distributors discuss and negotiate contracts. It's a virtuous model: Big-budget films and those with star-studded casts draw the attention of the press and buyers to movies with more limited appeal.

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