‘Poor Things’ Producer Element Pictures Soars To A New Level With A Triple Bill Of Films For Cannes

Element Pictures is coming off the back of yet another buzzy awards season with its absurdist comedy Poor Things, directed by Yorgos Lanthimos, notching 11 Oscar nominations and coming home with four wins, including Best Actress for Emma Stone. But just when it feels like the company’s trajectory can’t get higher, the Irish-Anglo production, distribution and exhibition banner is hitting the Croisette this year with no less than three films in the Cannes official selection. Lanthimos’s Kinds of Kindness, which reunites him with his long-term writing partner Efthimis Fillipou and Poor Things stars Stone and Willem Dafoe, will compete for the Palme d’Or, while French actor Ariane Labed’s directorial debut September Says and I Am Not a Witch director Rungano Nyoni’s sophomore feature On Becoming A Guinea Fowl are both screening in the Un Certain Regard section. 

It’s especially significant to Element co-founders and co-CEOs Ed Guiney and Andrew Lowe as this marks the most Cannes selections the Irish-Anglo outfit has had at the festival in one year and, markedly, with three projects that the company has nurtured from development to final cut. (The company is featured as one of Deadline’s Cannes Disruptors 2024).

“It’s a great result,” Lowe tells Deadline. “We couldn’t be happier with the mix of titles we have heading to Cannes this year. It feels like a big achievement and reflective of the range of projects we like to work across.” 

Lanthimos’s latest Competition contender (both The Lobster and The Killing of a Sacred Deer competed for the Palme d’Or in 2015 and 2017, respectively) stars Stone and Dafoe along with Jesse Plemons, Margaret Qualley, Hong Chau, Joe Alwyn, Mamoudou Athie and Hunter Schafer. It’s an anthology broken into three parts: “It’s seven cast members appearing in effectively three separate films,” says Guiney.

The film was shot while Poor Things was in post-production, which explains the quick turnaround. “There were a lot of visual effects for Poor Things, so there was an opportunity to do this,” Guiney explains. “That’s why it’s present so early.” 

Lebed’s debut September Says, which is produced by Element’s Chelsea Morgan Hoffman along with Irish producer Lara Hickey, is based on Daisy Johnson’s novel Sisters. It follows the story of September who gets suspended from school resulting in her sister July asserting her own independence. Meanwhile, On Becoming a Guinea Fowl, the second feature from Zambian-Welsh writer-director Nyoni is described as a “family drama” set in Africa. 

“Our thing is working with people who are auteurs in a way, and who have a very particular point of view,” says Guiney. “Then it’s just about us trying to help them do what they do. One of the things we are good at is working with filmmakers who have very different kind of approaches and styles and ambitions in terms of what they’re trying to do and it’s our job to help that rather than suggest that there is only one kind of Element style. Our house style is actually not having a house style.” 

Indeed, the Room and The Favourite producers have built a solid reputation on both sides of the Atlantic as being one of the most talent-friendly European businesses in the market, with Lanthimos, Lenny Abrahamson, Joanna Hogg, Sally Rooney and Sebastián Lelio being some of the directors and writers they do repeat business with. Element also has strong ties with companies such as Fox Searchlight, BBC Film and Film4. 

“Because we have worked with so many different artists who have such particularly distinct ways of working, you have to wrap your arms around that,” says Guiney. “It’s very exciting and the Cannes titles are all fantastic and all saying very different things. For us this comes from fascination and fandom – just a desire to see movies and be a part of those conversations.” 

In 2022, Fremantle acquired a majority stake in Element, which Lowe says has been “really impactful” in allowing the company to be more strategic with its choices on both the film and television side. 

“It’s enabled us to double down on the things that we love doing, which is working with really talented filmmakers and helping them make the best version of their films,” he says, adding that the company has a “big development slate” on the TV side and is looking to build on the success it’s already had with productions like Normal People and Conversations with Friends. 

Crucially, Element Pictures is giving back to the Irish film community in an unparalleled way and this can be clearly seen with its recent successful launch of Storyhouse, a new screenwriting festival that celebrated storytellers and storytelling. 

The two-day event, which was held in March at its Light House Cinema in Dublin, kicked off its inaugural year with a host of writing talent such as Poor Things scribe Tony McNamara, Element collaborator Abrahamson, Holy Spider’s Ali Abbasi, How to Have Sex writer-director Molly Manning-Walker and One Day writer David Nicholls, who all participated in insightful conversations about their process of writing. 

“We want to do it again next year for sure,” says Guiney of the festival. “What I was happiest about was that it was this original idea of writers talking to writers that really defined us and I was really struck by the generosity of the people we invited and how they spoke about their experience, which made it all really inspiring.” 

Lowe adds: “Now we’re going to take stock and make sure we build off of it so that next year is even better, but still has the same intimacy.”