PulsarContent has closed major deals on “Niki,” a biopic of French-American artist Niki de Saint-Phalle.
“Niki” marks the feature debut of popular French actor Céline Sallette and starsCharlotte Le Bon(“The Walk” “Saint-Laurent”) as de Saint-Phalle. Pulsar closed deals with Neue Visionen (Germany), Movies Inspired(Italy), Paradiso (Benelux),Praessens(Switzerland), Vercine (Spain), Magic Films (CIS), Best Films (Baltics), Shaw (Singapour), Sky Digi (Taiwan) and Immovision (Brazil).
The movie portrays Saint-Phalle from the age of 23, when she’s still a model and an aspiring actor who is married and has a two-year-old daughter, Laura. Together, they flee the U.S. during the oppressive McCarthy era and come to France, where they experience a short-lived euphoria. Soon, distant and frightening memories begin to emerge in Niki’s mind. Her vocation as an artist will be her salvation.
Le Bon is an actor-turned-director whose feature debut “Falcon Lake” bowed at Cannes. She previously starred in Robert Zemeckis’s “The Walk,” as well as Terry George’s “The Promise” and Jalil Lespert’s “Saint-Laurent.” Damien Bonnard (“Les Misérables“) stars opposite Le Bon in “Niki.”
Sallette is one of France’s best-known actors. She broke through in Bertrand Bonello’s “House of Tolerance,” which competed at Cannes in 2011, and also starred in Audrey Diwan’s “Losing It.” Salette made her directorial debut with short film “L’Arche des canopées,” which premiered in Cannes.
Pulsar’s EFM slate also includes Michele Placido‘s “Eternal Visionary,” a film about the life of Luigi Pirandello, the Italian playwright, novelist and poet who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1934; and “Mikado,” a heartwarming family film written and directed byBaya Kasmi, who previously directed “Iʼm All Yours” and “The (in)famous Youssef Salem.”
