Berlin-based M-Appeal has taken on world sales rights to Brazilian director Marcelo Caetano’s Cannes Critics’ Week title Baby.

The film, scripted by Caetano and Gabriel Domingues, follows an 18-year-old boy who is released from a juvenile detention centre and finds himself adrift on the streets of São Paulo.

The Brazil-France-Netherlands co-production is made through Cup Filmes, Caetano’s Desbun Filmes, Plateau Produções, Still Moving, Circe Films and Kaap Holland Film. The cast is led by João Pedro Mariano, Ricardo Teodoro and Ana Flavia Cavalcanti.

M-Appeal also handled the director’s 2017 debut feature Body Electric. Vitrine Filmes will distribute Caetano’s second film in Brazil.

Cannes Critics’ Week, spotlighting first and second features, has unveiled the competition and special screenings selection for its 63rd edition running May 15-23.

Scroll down for full list of titles

Artistic director Ava Cahen, now in her third year in the position, announced the selection of 11 features chosen from 1,050 films screened. Seven films will vie for four top prizes in competition, chosen by a jury led by Spanish filmmaker Rodrigo Sorogoyen. Nine are first films that will vie for the Camera d’Or and three are directed or co-directed by women.

The sidebar will open with French director Jonathan Millet...

Cannes Critics’ Week championing work by emerging filmmakers has unveiled the line-up for its 63rd edition running from May 15 to 23.

The traditionally compact parallel selection will showcase 11 features, seven in competition, as well as 13 short films, selected from 1,050 features and 2,150 short films. (scroll down for full list)

The 2024 edition marks Artistic Director Ava Cahen’s third at the helm, with buzzy discoveries under her directorship to date including Tiger Stripes, The Rapture, Aftersun and Love According To Dalva.

Opening and closing films

French director Jonathan Millet’s psychological manhunt thriller Ghost Trail (Les Fantômes) will open the section. It marks his first feature after half a dozen shorts including Tell Me About The Stars.

Adam Bessa, who won the Un Certain Regard prize for his performance in Harka in 2022, stars as a man in pursuit of his former torturer. He never saw his oppressor’s face, but knows his smell,...

Sudden death, scandal, disenfranchised divas, a moved-up airdate… It’s safe to say that Grammys producer Ken Ehrlich faced a few more difficulties than usual in mounting what his final edition of the telecast he’s been at the helm of for 40 years. Some of these he had a year to try to solve. But then his production team only had about six hours before airtime Sunday to figure out how to handle the death of basketball legend Kobe Bryant with the weight it merited.

Ehrlich spoke with Variety Monday about dealing with the Bryant tragedy; how the ongoing Recording Academy imbroglio influenced the tone of the show; getting Ariana Grande on the telecast a year after things went publicly sour between them; how Taylor Swift was only ever penciled in to the lineup; why he chose “I Sing the Body Electric” from “Fame” as the all-star climax; and what...

M-Appeal has acquired world sales rights to “Greta,” the feature debut of Brazil’s Armando Praça which will world premiere in this year’s Berlinale Panorama section.

The Berlin-based film industry has also dropped an international trailer, to which Variety has had exclusive access.

Produced by Carnaval Filmes, whose credit include major titles by Marcelo Gomes, one of Brazil’s most prominent directors, “Greta” turns on Pedro, a 70-year-old gay hospital nurse. The film begins with his attempting to care for his best friend, Daniela, a transgender cabaret singer who refuses further treatment for terminal kidney failure.

Pedro vacates a hospital bed for Daniela by helping Jean, wounded and under arrest for manslaughter, to escape from hospital arrest. Hiding Jean in his apartment, Pedro begins an unlikely affair with the much younger man.

“Greta” begins with Pedro wiping off his mascara as he climbs into an ambulance to accompany Daniela to hospital.