Skin Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Sometimes race isn't as simple as what-you-see-is-what-you-get. Sometimes those little DNA buggers, or whatever determines it, throw a fast one, and before you know it the unfathomable happens. You can get super-cute twin sisters who have drastically different skin color, or a black child born to white parents. The latter is the focus of Skin, which I first blogged about back in May. Now Variety reports that the Little Film Company has sold the feature to a number of international territories that include Brazil, France, and Scandinavia, and the BBC has picked up the the television rights for the UK -- there is, however, no word on North American distribution.

Directed by Anthony Fabian, the music coordinator for Hilary and Jackie, and written along with Helen Crawley, Skin focuses on the true story of a black girl born to white parents in South Africa, and the troubles she experienced with discrimination under apartheid laws. While the film has been floating under the radar, it has a pretty decent cast with stars Sophie Okonedo and Tony Kgoroge from Hotel Rwanda, plus Sam Neill (The Tudors), Alice Krige (Silent Hill), and newcomer Ella Ramangwane. Topping that with the fact that Little Film was also behind the worldwide sales for Tsotsi, and I'm sure we'll see Skin hit shelves at some point.

For the weekend:

• There's a really interesting animated film premiering in France next month, that will hopefully make its way across the ocean and give us some animation that's not about bugs, penguins or any of the other hot, animated creatures of the moment. The film is Persepolis, and you can find a trailer and clips over at Cartoon Brew (It's cute, but unfortunately not in English. However, it's fairly easy to get the gist). The film is adapted from Marjane Satrapi's comic memoir of her experiences growing up in Tehran, and the clips have recognizable pop references from Julio Iglesias to Michael Jackson. To sweeten the deal further, both Catherine Deneuve and Gena Rowlands have lent their voices to the movie. If only we could get more cool rocker chick movies, and less kooky animal ones...
• Sophie Marceau has a bunch on the up and up, so I thought I'd fill you in. While her projects aren't as mainstream as some of her previous work, like Braveheart and The World is Not Enough, she's been clocking time both behind and in front of the camera. She's currently in Cannes for her second directorial feature, Trivial -- a thriller that takes place in and around Deauville's Hotel Normandie, which will hit French screens next week. In front of the camera, she's playing a resistance fighter in the WWII thriller, Female Agents. And once all that is done, she's going to work on her third feature directorial stint. Variety quotes her as saying, or rather purring as they put it: "I don't want only to satisfy other people's desires. I have desires of my own, and making my own films satisfies them." Here, here!
• This September, the U.K.-South Africa co-production treaty will finally be taken advantage of with Anthony Fabian's Skin. It sounds like a pretty interesting story -- it's based on a black girl who was born to white parents in South Africa, who obviously had a heck of a hard time dealing with discrimination under previous apartheid laws. The movie will star Sophie Okonedo, who starred with Don Cheadle in Hotel Rwanda. I wonder if we'll ever get the story of the black and white twins and some point, too?