Picture Tree Intl. has come on board to handle the international sales of black comedy “Shooting Blanks,” written and directed by Žiga Virc (“Houston, We Have a Problem!”). The Slovenian film looks at what happens when a family goes to war with itself.
The film is in post-production. PTI will present a first private market screening at the Marché du Film in Cannes.
Vida’s father France worships his father, a hero of the partisan resistance. When a German supermarket chain decides to build a new store in his hometown, demolishing a statue of his father in the process, France declares war on this new “enemy.”
Vida could not care less about the past – she is trying to get pregnant, and it is not going well. While she and her husband Toni wait for news from the fertility clinic, France leads local volunteers dressed up as partisans and Nazis into maneuvers against the supermarket.
But not everyone supports his guerrilla war. Especially not Vida. As France’s quixotic quest spirals out of control, will Vida finally explode?
The cast includes Eva Jesenovec (“My Last Years as a Loser”), Angeliki Papoulia (“The Lobster,” “A Blast”), Primož Pirnat (“Slovenian Girl,” “Case: Osterberg”) and Jernej Kogovšek (“The Tree,” “Erased”).
“Shooting Blanks” is a Studio Virc production, in co-production with Asphalt, Nukleus Film, Levante Produzioni and Asterisk. The film was produced by Minos Nikolakakis and Siniša Juričić, with Boštjan Virc as delegate producer.
The title is the third announcement of PTI’s expanding Marché du Film slate after “Manta Manta: Legacy,” directed by Til Schweiger, with more than 1 million theatrical admissions in Germany, and “15 Years,” the sequel of international success “Four Minutes,” directed by Chris Kraus and starring Hannah Herzsprung.
Virc’s feature debut, “Houston We Have a Problem!,” tells the story of America’s secret multi-billion-dollar purchase of Yugoslavia’s clandestine space program in the early 1960s. The feature played at the Tribeca and Karlovy Vary film festivals, and was acquired by Netflix and HBO Europe.
Also among PTI’s lineup are “Weekend Rebels” by Marc Rothemund (“This Crazy Heart,” “Sophie Scholl – The Last Days”), “A Whole Life” by Hans Steinbichler (“The Diary of Anne Frank,” Sky TV series “Das Boot”), “Measures of Men” by Lars Kraume (“The Silent Revolution” and “The People vs. Fritz Bauer”) and “The Chapel” by Dominique Deruddere (“Everybody Famous”).
