EXCLUSIVE: Paradise City Sales, the Paris-based sales outfit previously known as Memento International, has acquired international rights to Damien Hauser’s Kenya-set drama Memory Of Princess Mumbi, which will world premiere in Venice’s Giornate degli Autori before screening as a Centrepiece title at Toronto.
Swiss-Kenyan filmmaker Hauser’s fourth feature is a dystopian fable set in an imaginary Africa in 2093, in which a young filmmaker played by Abraham Joseph attempts to make a documentary about a global conflict from 20 years earlier and finds himself in a love triangle with an aspiring actress (Shandra Apondi) and a prince (Samson Waithaka).
Shot entirely in Kenya with a local cast, crew and production team, the film is the first Kenyan feature to be selected for Giornate degli Autori.
The producers are Kenya’s Out of My Mind Films and Switzerland’s Hauserfilm, with support from Swiss Films and the Red Sea Film Fund.
Hauser served as writer, director, producer, editor and cinematographer for the project. “I wanted to create a film no AI could ever generate, one that plays with classical cinematic tropes, but is ultimately rooted in memory and the fragile intimacy of human connection,” Hauser told Screen.
Memory Of Princess Mumbi follows After The Long Rains which premiered at BFI London Film Festival last year. His first features Blind Love and Theo: A Conversation With Honesty screened at Tallinn Black Nights in 2021 and 2022 respectively.
Paradise City Sales’ Jeanne Loriotti and Vincent Comoy described Memory Of Princess Mumbi as “a truly unique and visually captivating achievement that signals a new chapter in African cinema and a deeply human and poetic invitation to seek beauty in the world around us”.
The film is part of Paradise City’s Artscope label that has worked with filmmakers such as Gabriel Mascaro (Neon Bull), Lemohang Mosese (This Is Not A Burial, It’s A Resurrection), Baloji (Omen), Pedro Pinho (The Nothing Factory) and Warwick Thornton (The Darkside).
The company’s autumn festival slate includes Cyril Aris’ romance A Sad And Beautiful World, also at Giornate degli Autori, plus TIFF titles including Haifaa Al-Mansour’s crime thriller Unidentified, Damiano Michieletto’s Primavera, and Neeraj Ghaywan’s Homebound, which screened at Cannes in Un Certain Regard earlier this year.