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Ambi Pictures acquires English-language remake rights to Princess.

Ambi Pictures Group has acquired the English-language remake rights to Arto Halonen’s Finnish feature Princess, based on the true story of cabaret dancer Anna Lappalainen.

Ambi’s Andrea Iervolino and Lady Monika Bacardi are financing and producing the remake with an eye toward aligning with A-list female talent for the picture.

Sales arm Ambi Distribution is handling worldwide sales.

Ambi’s president of worldwide sales and acquisitions, Julie Sultan, brought the project to Ambi and will develop and produce with Iervolino and Bacardi.

Produced by Art Films, Princess starred many of Finland’s leading actors including Katja Kuttner, Samuli Edelmann, Krista Kosonen and Peter Franzen, and was the fiction debut of documentary filmmaker Halonen, director of Shadow of the Holy Book, Pavlov’s Dogs and The Magnetic Man.

Princess tells the true story of former cabaret dancer Anna Lappalainen’s redemptive struggle with insanity, who checked...

Name and focus changes for every section, which are now all competitive, resulting in the festival’s structure being “slimmer’.

The ninth Rome Film Festival (Oct 16-25) has revealed a diverse line-up including the Italian premieres for potential awards contenders including David Fincher’s Gone Girl. the world premiere of Takashi Miike’s As the Gods Will and Burhan Qurbani’s We are Young, We are Strong and European premiere of Oren Moverman’s Time Out of Mind, Toronto hit Still Alice and Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet.

This year for the first time the award-winners in each section of the programme will be decided by the audience on the basis of votes cast after the screenings.

Each section has changed name and focus for 2014 and are all competitive, resulting in the festival’s structure being “slimmer’.

Italian comedies Soap Opera and Andiamo a Quel Paese bookend the line-up.

Full line-up

Cinema D’Oggi

World premiere

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