Italy’s True Colours Scores Slew of Berlin Sales on Toni Servillo’s ‘Strangeness,’ Gay Love Drama ‘Norwegian Dream’ (EXCLUSIVE)

Italian sales company True Colours has closed a raft of sales following Berlin’s European Film Market. Italy’s box office hit “La Stranezza” (“Strangeness”) got picked up for a dozen territories, while queer romantic drama “Norwegian Dream” also sold widely, including to North America.

Directed by Roberto Andò, “Strangeness” (pictured) toplines Toni Servillo (“The Great Beauty”) as Nobel Prize-winning playwright Luigi Pirandello. This tragicomic period piece about how Pirandello found inspiration to write his masterpiece “Six Characters in Search of an Author” has been a sleeper hit at the Italian box office, pulling in more than €5.5 million ($5.8 million) and becoming the local 2022 box office champ.

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“Strangeness,” which is produced by Bibi Film and Tramp Limited with RAI Cinema and Medusa, has been picked up for Spain (Alfa Pictures); Poland (Aurora Film); Portugal (Il Sorpasso); Argentina, Chile, Uruguay and Paraguay (Zeta Film); former Yugoslavia (Stars Media); Taiwan (AV-Jet); Bulgaria (Beta Pictures) and Australia/New Zealand (Palace Films).

True Colours head of sales Giulia Casavecchia has also closed multiple deals on “Norwegian Dream,” which is Norwegian-Polish director Leiv Igor Devold’s feature debut. The LGBTQ drama has been sold for U.S. and Canada to Uncork’d Entertainment and Dark Star Pictures, who will jointly handle its distribution, and to Peccadillo Pictures for the U.K. and TLA for France, while Edition Salzgeber is already on board for German-speaking territories.

“Norwegian Dream” follows a 19-year-old Polish immigrant working in a fish factory in Norway who begins to develop feelings for a co-worker, who is confident in his own sexuality in a way that he is not. It recently opened Norway’s Kosmorama fest and will soon be in Norwegian theaters via Storytelling Media.

Additionally, among other EFM deals, True Colours has secured a new distributor on Mario Martone’s Cannes 2022 competition title “Nostalgia,” which will be going out via Another World for Denmark and Norway. “Nostalgia,” which recently saw healthy box office in France, has now been sold to 40 territories, including to Breaking Glass Pictures for North America.

Prominent Middle East distributor Front Row Filmed Entertainment has acquired MENA rights to another True Colours title, ISIS-themed drama “Prophets” by Alessio Cremonini (“On My Skin”). Drama toplines Italian A-lister Jasmine Trinca (“Fortunata”) as Sara, an Italian journalist kidnapped in Syria by ISIS while working on a wartime news report in 2015.

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