Writer-director Denis Côté’s Mademoiselle Kenopsia has been selected to world premiere at this year’s Locarno Film Festival, which runs from Aug. 2 to 12.

The French-language feature, which stars Larissa Corriveau as a solitary woman obsessed with watching over various interior spaces, will premiere out of competition in the Swiss festival’s Fuori concorso section.

The film is produced by Montreal-based Voyelles Films, with Côté serving as producer alongside Guillaume Vasseur and Vincent Biron.

Montreal’s H264 is handling worldwide sales for the feature as part of its newly established international sales agency, which launched in June.

The company’s initial sales slate includes Ariane Louis-Seize’s Vampire humaniste cherche suicidaire consentant and Pascal Plante’s Red Rooms. The latter film was previously part of the sales catalogue of the now-shuttered sales agency Sphere Films International. All rights for the film reverted back to the producers following Sphere’s closure of operations last month.

Other Canadian titles bowing at this year’s Locarno festival include the shorts Faire un enfant (Making Babies), written and directed by Eric K. Boulianne, which has been selected to compete in the international short section Pardi di domani: Concorso internazionale; and Winnipeg filmmaker Ryan McKenna’s I Used to Live There, which will compete as part of Pardi di domani: Concorso Corti d’autore.

Rounding out Locarno’s Canadian selections is the Canada/Switzerland copro Until Branches Bend (Experimental Forest Films, Ceroma Films, Reign Films, Cinédokké Films) from writer-director Sophie Jarvis, which had its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2022. The psychological drama will screen in Locarno’s Panorama Suisse section, which features Swiss productions that have screened internationally.

Image courtesy of Vincent Biron