India’s Impact Films has broadened its 2026 Cannes acquisition slate to include titles by Hamaguchi Ryusuke, Kore-eda Hirokazu, and Asghar Farhadi, while also stepping into the Indonesian market for the first time.
Hamaguchi Ryusuke’s “All of a Sudden,” acquired from Cinefrance International and Japan’s Bitters End, is the auteur’s first French-language feature, about a care home director whose life is transformed by her friendship with a Japanese theater director fighting terminal cancer; it earned the best actress prize at Cannes for Virginie Efira and Okamoto Tao. Also on the slate is “La Bola Negra” (The Black Ball), acquired from Goodfellas, directed by Javier Ambrossi and Javier Calvo, whose queer epic traces the lives of three men across 1932, 1937, and 2017 through an unfinished Federico García Lorca manuscript; the film won the best director award at the festival and drew an extended standing ovation.
Kore-eda Hirokazu’s “Sheep in the Box,” acquired from Japan’s Gaga Corporation, is a near-future drama in which a grieving couple welcome a humanoid modeled after their dead son. Farhadi’s “Parallel Tales,” acquired from France’s Charades, follows a novelist in Paris who begins spying on neighbors across the street for material, until the fiction she constructs starts to overtake their actual lives. Léa Mysius’s “The Birthday Party,” acquired from MK2 Films, is a home-invasion thriller set in rural France in which a woman’s birthday celebration is turned violent by the arrival of dangerous figures from her past.
On the Indonesian front, Impact Films has acquired Joko Anwar‘s “The Ghost in the Cell” from Korea’s Barunson E&A, a horror-comedy in which rival prison gangs and corrupt guards are forced to unite against an invisible supernatural entity killing inmates one by one. The film has surpassed three million admissions in Indonesia, making it the country’s highest-grossing title of 2026. The company is also taking “Ikatan Darah” from France’s WTFilms, directed by Sidharta Tata, in which a retired pencak silat athlete squares off against criminal loan sharks after her brother’s gambling debt puts the family at risk.
“This year we have films in French, Japanese, English,Norwegian, Russian and Spanish languages it feels a great responsibility to ensure that each film gets a fair opportunity of being seen by film enthusiasts and general public in India. There are certification challenges but we are sure we will overcome them,” said Ashwani Sharma, founder and CEO of Impact Films.
“Indonesian films are known for its unique kind of horror which is very gory and violent and we have taken these two genre titles and hope to increase their picks based on the audience response in the Indian market,” Sharma added.
The acquisitions complement Impact Films’ previously announced pickup of Palme d’Or winner “Fjord” and Grand Prix winner “Minotaur.”
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