Transmission will be handling the local release of Michael Haneke’s Love, the Palme d'Or winner at Cannes, after acquiring it as a pre-buy long before the festival.
Two Cannes winners will also be ushered into local cinemas by Madman: Thomas Vinterberg’s The Hunt, which earned Danish actor Mads Mikkelsen the award for best actor, and Beyond the Hills, which won best screenplay for Romanian director Christian Mungiu and lead to co-stars Cosmina Strata and Cristina Flutur sharing the best actress award.
Love, the top prize winner at the world's most prestigious film festival, is a drama that examines how life changes for a couple — both retired classical music teachers aged in their eighties — after one of them has a stroke. Jean-Louis Trintignant and Emmanelle Riva play the husband and wife and Isabelle Hupper plays their on-screen daughter.
Michael Haneke previously won the Palme d’Or for The White Ribbon in 2009 and has been in the running on four other occasions: for Funny Games (1997), Code Unknown: Incomplete Tales of Several Journeys (2000), The Piano Teacher (2001) and Hidden (2005).
In the psychological thriller The Hunt, Mikkelsen plays Lucas, a kindergarten teacher whose life crumbles around him after he is falsely accused of molesting a child. His role in this film is worlds away from the character that mainstream audiences know him for, namely the villain in the James Bond film Casino Royale.
Beyond the Hills is about the true-life friendship between two young women who grew up in the same notorious orphanage set up by former Romanian head of state Nicolae Ceausescu, and the exorcism that lead to the death of one of these women. Mungiu won the Palme d’Or in 2007 with 4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days, a chilling film about abortion.
The Grand Prix at Cannes went to Matteo Garrone's Reality, the Jury Prize to Ken Loach’s The Angels’ Share and the award for best director to Carlos Reygadas for Post Tenebras Lux. The Camera d’Or for first feature went to Benh Zeitlin’s Beasts of the Southern Wild, which is in competition at the Sydney Film Festival.
Hopscotch is releasing Australian film The Sapphires, which had an out-of-competition spot in official selection at Cannes.