“Mama Weed,” Jean-Paul Salomé’s comedy starring Oscar-nominated actor Isabelle Huppert as a French-Arabic translator working for the anti-drug squad in Paris, has been thriving at the box office in France, Germany and Austria.
“Mama Weed,” based on Hannelore Cayre’s popular novel, follows the story of Patience Portefeux (Huppert), who gets embroiled in a failed drug deal, inheriting a pile of marijuana. While keeping her job with the anti-drug squad, Portefeux crosses to the other side and becomes a well-known drug dealer.
Represented in international markets by Paris-based outfit Le Pacte, “Mama Weed” has sold more than 400,000 tickets so far in France, where it was released on Sept. 9. It marks the sixth-best box office score for a French film since theaters reopened on June 22. Now in its sixth week, “Mama Weed” is still playing in more than 300 theaters in France.
“Mama Weed” also had a strong opening in Germany and Austria, where it’s being handled by Neue Visionen and Thim Films, respectively. In Germany, the crime comedy had been playing on 274 screens and Neue Visionen will be adding 30 screens for the second week. The film delivered the second-best opening of the week in Germany.
Le Pacte’s sales team, headed by Camille Neel, has now sold “Mama Weed” to more than 20 key independent distributors around the world, including in Spain (Wanda Vision), Italy (I Wonder), Portugal (Outsider Films), Greece (Videorama/WeirdWawe), CIS (Capella Films), Baltics (A-One), Bulgaria (Cinelibri), Canada (Axia Films), Israël (Shoval), Brazil (Imovision), Switzerland (Praesens), Benelux (Scope Pictures) and Taïwan (Creative Century). Neel said Le Pacte is in advanced talks with buyers in the U.S. and Japan.
