International Breakers: Paradise City’s Emilie Georges and Naima Abed Talk About Company Listing, Switch to Brand Management and Content, and Why They’ll Keep Their Boutique Approach

Welcome to Deadline’s International Disruptors, a feature that highlights top executives and companies outside the United States that are revolutionizing the offshore market. This week we chat with Memento Films International founder Emilie Georges and producer Naima Abed about their company Paradise City, her name and why now is the time to move on to brand management and content.

Eight years ago, Emilie Georges’ Memento Films International and her production company La Cinéfacture quietly launched Paradise City, a specialist brand for the team, with respected producer Naima Abedi helping curate the list. Although the banner co-financed and co-produced a number of genre titles, including Jim Mickle’s 2013 Sundance hit. We are what we areOnly when the duo worked on Luca Guadagnino’s 2017 Oscar-nominated success. call me by your name that Georges and Abed began to think about how they would change the Paradise division (Memento’s headquarters in Paris) for the new world.

“The project came to us in development, organically like other projects we have worked on, and it was at a time when the sales business was really starting to get ambitious, focused on the English speaking market in the United States. . projects ”, says Abedi call me by your name. “It was clear this was an area that needed support and growth, so we started thinking about how to shape the business to meet that demand.”

At Cannes this year, Georges and Abed unveiled a new version of Paradise City: a film, TV drama and branded content production management company based in London and Paris. The duo has presented projects with artists including Anthony Chen, Edward Berger, Lily Horvath, South African author Lauren Beukes and Ivorian director Philippe Lacotte.

“When we started thinking about how we would operate, the initial business plan always included a management part,” Georges told Deadline. We wanted to introduce young talents not only through production, but we could also give them a managerial push to adapt to this new world and explore their talent in all formats.

Georges has long been known for his boutique approach to talent and ever since he founded Memento Films International in 2007 (after Memento Films Production, Memento Films Distribution and La Cinéfacture, which he co-founded with Alexandre Mallet-Guy in 2003), the company has. has established a reputation for its eclectic and distinctive blackboards. He and London-based Abed have extensive knowledge of the international market and want to position Paradise City as a hub for specialized talent. The company also has a partnership with New York-based trading company Epoch Films.

“We are very focused on the director,” says Georges. “But we want to expand the universe of these directors to explore scripted TV series and branded content, because all of that can be a way to communicate. It’s like a supervisory wedding. “

In the past, the duo worked with Marvel directors on their first films, including Cate Shortland (Open the window), John Watts (Spider-Man: There is no way to go home) and Destin Daniel Creton (Shang-Chi and the legend of the ten rings) and reflecting on it, Georges points out that “for years they have not been exploited as they should have been”.

He says: “The industry was not offering them opportunities or was not aware of them. Now, the American system is advanced enough to encourage these types of filmmakers and give them various opportunities. So now it’s time for the rest of the directors’ wealth and we think we know how to make it and close the gap with US agencies.

The company plans to bring in talent from around the world, but according to Georges, it won’t replace the quality of a local manufacturer.

They promote the growth of talent and we will not be perfectly prepared for a project with a Spanish director, for example, in Uruguay, but we will help them find the right partner and manage the vision to make sure they are right. ” Work with one person.

However, the representative space is saturated, particularly in the UK, where the management of Paradise City will be based. Recently, the American giant UTA entered the British market by acquiring the well-known literary talent agency Curtis Brown. But Georges and Abed insist there is still room for the boutique.

“There will always be room for a small player or a multilevel approach, as long as you have the right talent and the opportunities you offer are completely different,” says Abedi, who notes that the company is in the process of being hired. . His first clients on the management side. “We are not like a service agency; We hope to be much more inclusive and I think there will always be some interesting talent to work with. “

As for its production ambitions, its mission is also to keep them “limited” with a very focused and diverse roster that brings together a mix of emerging and established talents working on social impact and gender equality projects.

The company currently has Chen’s English debut. It derives The production, which sees Cynthia Erivo play the role of a young Liberian refugee named Jacqueline, who escapes to a Greek island and befriends an undocumented tour guide (Alia Shawkat).

Elsewhere is Berger’s Kindertransport project, about a mission orchestrated by the UK government during World War II to save more than 10,000 Jewish children from Nazi-controlled territory before the outbreak of the war, as well as the Hungarian director’s English Horvath. – Linguistic debut My notes on Mars. The company is also developing slideBased on a story by South African writer Lauren Beukes and a new film by Lakote 7 The Golden Thief (The Voleurs D’Or), is based on a man’s quest to free his family from an ancient curse.

“We have a lot of African content in development,” says Georges. “It’s a market that has been so underrepresented and is likely to explode soon, which is surprising because we’re going to have incredible breakthroughs.”

When it comes to the Paradise Cities content feeding other parts of Memento’s operations, Georges wants to point out that he and Abed will handle every production project by project and won’t wait for projects elsewhere in the business. .

“We have been successful with Memento International because we have only presented a handful of projects each year with directors whose voices we really believe have international potential,” says Georges. “Sometimes they went to our national distribution company, but most of the time they didn’t. It was just a matter of making sure that all of us absolutely believed that we would fully engage with this individual, with the problems or projects that were here. Paradise City is exactly the same, which means we need to be fully accessible. We don’t want the company to grow and become too big. We always like to have limited capacity ”.

Adds Abed: “I think it will take some time to understand that Paradise City is implementing its goals and mission for talent, but our broader mandate is the specific service we represent. We don’t have to focus only on production. Our cinema is the main thing people come to us for, but it’s something we want to do in limited numbers.

“Films take a long time to develop and we want to find the right kind of assets, whether it’s TV content, short partnerships or strategic partnerships, so there’s a wider variety of content to offer to talent. It’s really about trying and focusing on a select amount of talent that we think can benefit from all of this under one roof and are probably people who want to grow equally with us. “

This week’s edition of International Disruptors features Guillotine Vodka.