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Our entertainment lawyers swap grey Melbourne for sunny southern France
It’s that time of year again!
The annual Cannes Film Festival 2024 has rolled around, and like clockwork, our wonderful lawyers have left the dreary Melbourne weather for the balmy south of France.
Bryce Menzies, Principal of MDW’s Entertainment Team, attended the Festival for more than 20 years. He recently found some time to ruminate and ultimately conclude that perhaps someone else should get a plane ticket to Europe. So, he passed the proverbial baton over to Partner Marco Angele, accompanied by rising star Miet Engelhardt.
Marco and Miet will be rubbing shoulders with the film world’s elite, so they’d better pack their most glamorous soirée attire (red cowboy boots not included), brush up their French on Duolingo and get accustomed to food seasoned solely with your basic aromatics. Miet has decided to stick to her vegan diet, so what she’ll eat in the country renowned for its dairy and meat dishes and out-of-this-world pastries, is anyone’s guess.
Miet attended last year’s Cannes Film Festival and watched the premiere of The Zone of Interest directed by Jonathan Glazer. She noted it as a must see for anyone tossing up viewing it in the cinema. She also graced the opening night, when Uma Thurman presented Michael Douglas with his lifetime achievement award.
This was also where Bryce and Miet found out more about the riveting subject of tax credits in other countries, markedly Mongolia.
You may think that Marco and Miet have been enjoying an all-expenses-paid holiday, but that’s not the case. They’ll be filling their days with back-to-back networking events and meetings with notable producers, production companies, investors, financiers, distributors and sales agents; working hard to continue developing strong relationships that will benefit our clients. They’ll also be donning their thinking caps and learning a thing or two about the tax incentives their clients can benefit from via co-productions with foreign countries.
Films that the duo are looking forward to viewing this year include:
- Kinds of Kindness directed by Yorgos Lanthimos
- Megalopolis directed by Francis Ford Coppola
- The Apprentice directed by Ali Abbasi
Our very own The Surfer starring Nicholas Cage (legals by Marco and Miet) is an Irish/Australian co-production. It will premier as part of the Midnight Screenings.
