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French Film Executive Eric Lagesse on His Connection With Arab Cinema, State of the Arthouse Sector

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Eric Lagesse, the CEO/president of Pyramide Films, received the Cairo Film Festival’s Industry Tribute on Friday.
Eric Lagesse, the CEO/president of Paris-based arthouse distributor and world sales outfit Pyramide Films, received the Industry Tribute Award at Cairo Film Festival on Friday. Variety spoke with him about his relationship with Arab cinema, and the state of the independent film business in France. How do you feel about receiving this tribute? It’s great, but I have had a year to get used to it. Because of the pandemic, I didn’t receive it last year, as planned. Nothing major has changed in the meantime. I am still very fond of Arab and Egyptian films. We are now working with a new generation of films and filmmakers like “Amira” (pictured), which played in the Horizons Competition at the Venice Film Festival this year. What is your connection to the Arab film world? We have been collaborating with the Arab world since the beginning of Pyramide. The first film I sold as an agent was “The Emigrant” by Youssef Chahine. We had a huge success with Chahine’s masterpiece “Destiny,” which sold everywhere in the world after playing in the Cannes competition in 1997. Chahine opened a lot of doors. He signed our pyramid logo. So each time we play a film in France, you see his name. The company was not named after the pyramids in Egypt. [Its launch] coincided with the opening of the Louvre pyramid [and was named after that]. But now everyone thinks [it’s a reference to] Egypt. What is your relationship to Egypt and filmmakers from the region now? I don’t go to Egypt that often, but I feel very connected to the country.

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