Mubi has made its first major buy of this year at the Cannes Film Festival, swooping in to acquire Lukas Dhont‘s Coward ahead of the awards ceremony Saturday night.
The arthouse streaming picked up all rights to the film, a WWI drama about queer love in the midst of the horrors of war, for North America. Mubi already secured rights for Coward across most of its international footprint ahead of Cannes. It snatched up rights across the U.K./Ireland, Italy, Spain, Germany, Austria, Turkey, Latin America and Australia/New Zealand.
The company released Dhont’s previous film, Close, which premiered in Cannes in 2022 and went on to secure an Oscar nomination for best international feature in multiple international territories.
The acquisition marks Mubi’s first domestic buy of this year’s Cannes festival. Two years ago, Mubi scored a hit when it snatched Demi Moore’s breakout film, The Substance, at Cannes. The Coralie Fargeat horror/satire went on to top $17 million at the U.S. box office. Mubi’s big buy in Cannes last year, Lynne Ramsay’s Die My Love, starring Jennifer Lawrence and Robert Pattinson, was less successful, earning just $5.5 million stateside.
Coward follows Pierre (newcomer Emmanuel Macchia), a soldier newly arrived at the front and eager to prove himself, who meets Francis (Valentin Campagne), a flamboyant character who tries to lift the spirits of his comrades by putting on a theatre show. While the violence erupts around them, a romance grows between the two men as they try to find ways to escape the brutality of war.
The film reunites Dhont with his GirlandClose co-writer Angelo Tijssens, and his brother/producer Michiel Dhont. The movie was produced by Reunion, Lumen, Topkapi Films & Versus (Opus) in co-production with France 2 Cinéma, VTM, RTBF, Proximus, BeTV & Orange.
The film is distributed in Benelux by Lumière and in France by Diaphana Distribution. The Match Factory is handling international sales.