Athina Rachel Tsangari’s ‘Harvest’ Heads the Match Factory’s Venice Slate

Venice Film Festival competition title “Harvest,” directed by Athina Rachel Tsangari, is one of three films at the festival to be represented for sales by the Match Factory as well as being produced or co-produced by the company.

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The other two are “Edge of Night,” the debut feature by German-Turkish director Türker Süer, screening in Horizons Extra, and “Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass,” an animated film by the Quay Brothers, playing in Venice Days.

Tsangari, the director of “Attenberg” (winner of Venice’s best actress award in 2010) and “Chevalier” (2015), returns to Venice competition with “Harvest.” Over seven hallucinatory days, a village with no name, in an undefined time and place, disappears.

In Tsangari’s tragicomic take on a Western, townsman-turned-farmer Walter Thirsk and befuddled lord of the manor Charles Kent are childhood friends about to face an invasion from the outside world: the trauma of modernity.

The film stars Caleb Landry Jones as Walter Thirsk, who won the best actor Palme d’Or in Cannes 2022 for “Nitram,” and featured in “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri.”

Also starring is Harry Melling as Charles Kent, who has appeared in “The Pale Blue Eye,” “The Tragedy of Macbeth” and “The Queen’s Gambit.”

The film’s ensemble also includes Rosy McEwen (“Blue Jean”), Arinze Kene (Bob Marley in “Get Up, Stand Up!”), Thalissa Teixeira (“Trigonometry”) and Frank Dillane (“The Essex Serpent,” “How to Build a Girl”).

Based on the Booker Prize shortlisted novel by Jim Crace, “Harvest” was adapted for the screen by Joslyn Barnes and Tsangari. The film is produced by Rebecca O’Brien for Sixteen Films, who is the producer of Ken Loach’s films, Louverture Films and the Match Factory, in co-production with Haos Film and Faliro House Productions, Why Not Productions in association with Meraki Films and Roag Films.

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It is backed by Ashland Hill Media Finance, BBC Film, Screen Scotland and Electric Shadow in the U.K.; Bayerischer Rundfunk ARTE and Film under Medienstiftung NRW in Germany; the National Centre of Audiovisual Media and Communication EKOME and the Greek Film Centre in Greece; Arte France and Arte France Cinéma, the Artemis Rising Foundation and In Bloom.

This is the fourth collaboration between the Match Factory and the director.

“Edge of Night” (Gecenin Kıyısı) is the first feature from Süer, who emerged as a standout at the Berlinale Talents. Starring Ahmet Rıfat Şungar (“Three Monkeys”) and Berk Hakman (“Beyond the Hill”), the film explores the journey of two brothers torn between their duties to the state and family.

The feature was produced in-house by the Match Factory in co-production with Liman Film and WDR in collaboration with Arte. With support from Film- und Medienstiftung NRW, Eurimages and DFFF.

“Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass” draws on themes from the writings of Bruno Schulz. Mixing animation with live-action elements, the film follows a son’s visit to his dying father in a moribund sanatorium, only to find himself consumed within a dubious time realm where objects and events can no longer be measured in any tangible form.

The feature is presented by the BFI in association with Telewizja Polska S.A., supported by Medienboard Berlin Brandenburg, produced by Koninck Studios SpK Galicia and IKH Pictures Production, in co-production with the Match Factory and Adam Mickiewicz Institute/Culture.pl, and in association with Polish Cultural Institute in London.

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