Cannes Market Dailies

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Participant, the leading media company dedicated to entertainment that inspires audiences to engage in positive social action, and leading French sales agent mk2 Films, have teamed up to jointly represent worldwide distribution rights to Rahul Jain’s powerful documentary feature film Invisible Demons, premiering in Official Selection at the 2021 Cannes Film Festival’s Cinema for the Climate special section. Rising filmmaker, Jain (Machines), who is making his Cannes debut returns to Delhi with Invisible Demons and explores the dramatic consequences of India’s growing economy through stunning visuals, capturing not only a city in crisis but magnifying the current climate moment for the broader world stage.

Rob Williams, Participant’s Vice President of Content Sales, and Fionnuala Jamison, Managing Director of mk2 Films, negotiated the distribution deal and will launch global sales for Invisible Demons at Cannes.

Jain’s impressive debut feature Machines premiered at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival where it received the Best Cinematography award. The acclaimed documentary received 17 international prizes during the course of its run at more than 160 global festivals. Bringing this same experiential style to his next film, Jain urgently explores how a thriving metropolis of thirty million people experiences the results of climate change as a daily reality in hopes that the film can be a harbinger for the rest of the world.

Diane Weyermann, Chief Content Officer for Participant, commented: “Invisible Demons is a stunning work by Rahul Jain about the consequences of climate change and who it will affect, illuminating what the future may hold not only for the people of Delhi, but for all.”

Jamison added: “We have always admired Participant’s ethos and values, and we relish the opportunity to partner with them on this vital and timely film. With powerful imagery and a focus on first-hand accounts, Jain delivers a visceral experience of an environmental crisis.”

Invisible Demons, which Participant executive produced and co-financed and was produced by Toinen Katse and Ma.Ja.De. FilmProduktion, with support from FFF-MDM-YLE-AVEK, is produced by Iikka Vehkalahti, who collaborated with Jain on Machines, and Heino Deckert, who co-produced the Academy Award®-nominated Rabbit á la Berlin by Bartek Konoka, as well as Participant’s Aquarela and Human Flow. Invisible Demons’ world premiere screening will take place in Cannes on Monday, July 12 as part of the Cannes Film Festival’s Cinema for the Climate special section.

Invisible Demons is written by Jain, the film’s editor Yael Bitton (who also edited Jain’s Machines) and Vehkalahti. The film is Executive Produced by Jeff Skoll (Academy Award®-winners Spotlight and Judas and the Black Messiah) and Diane Weyermann (Academy Award®-winner American Factory), alongside Frank Lehmann (The Last Witness).

Also screening at this year’s Cannes Film Festival for Participant is Stillwater, from Academy Award®-winning director Tom McCarthy and starring Oscar®-winner Matt Damon, which will have its World Premiere as part of the festival’s official Out of Competition selection.

mk2 Films have six films in selection at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, including The Worst Person in the World by Joachil Trier in Competition and Andrea Arnold’s Cow in Cannes Premiere.

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About Participant

Founded by Jeff Skoll and under the leadership of CEO David Linde, Participant (www.participant.com) combines the power of a good story well told with real world impact and awareness around today’s most vital issues. Through its worldwide network of traditional and digital distribution, aligned with partnerships with key non-profit and NGO organizations, Participant speaks directly to the rise of today’s “conscious consumer,” representing the well over two billion consumers compelled to make meaningful content a priority focus.

As an industry content leader, Participant annually produces up to six narrative feature films, six documentary films, three episodic television series and more than 20 hours of digital short form programming. Participant’s more than 100 films have collectively earned 82 Academy Award® nominations and 21 wins, including Best Picture for Spotlight and Green Book; Best Documentary Feature for American Factory, The Cove, CITIZENFOUR and An Inconvenient Truth and Best Foreign Language Film for Roma and A Fantastic Woman. Follow Participant on Twitter (@Participant) and on Facebook and Instagram.

ABOUT MK2 FILMS

Every year, mk2 films coproduces, sells and distributes a dozen new films by established or promising directors such as Portrait of a Lady on Fire, Atlantics, Cold War and Ash is Purest White.

mk2 films distributes a unique library of 800 films in France and around the world, including both fictions and documentaries. A rich collection which includes films from Charles Chaplin, François Truffaut, Abbas Kiarostami, Agnès Varda, Jacques Demy, Claude Chabrol, Alain Resnais, Krzysztof Kieślowski, David Lynch, Michael Haneke, Gus Van Sant, Kiyoshi Kurosawa, Olivier Assayas – to name but a few…

The whole film collection also counts some of the major films in the history of cinema and a large number of classic films restored in 2K and 4K: from the very pioneers of the industry, such as D. W. Griffith and Alice Guy-Blaché, to Stan Laurel & Oliver Hardy, Buster Keaton, and up to today’s most acclaimed directors such as Jia Zhang-Ke, Joachim Trier, Céline Sciamma, Xavier Dolan and Mati Diop.