EXCLUSIVE: Jerome Levy and David Atlan-Jackson – co-founders of growing pan-European theatrical feature film-focused Vuelta – hit the Cannes Film Festival’s red carpet this evening with opening film The Electric Kiss.

It is among 15 films debuting in Official Selection and the parallel sections with Vuelta connections. The Cannes 2026 haul is the fruit of a plan which began to take shape on the fringes of the festival four years ago over a dinner at festivalier favourite Fred l’Ecailler.

“That Cannes we made our first offer to Scanbox and we had a dinner with some of the parties we were talking to at the time,” recalls Levy, citing Indiana, Playtime and Square One which then joined the group. “Pan was there too. They had the opening film by Michel Hazanavicius” (Final Cut).

The group’s Paris-based subsidiary Playtime is handling international sales on Pierre Salvadori’s period romantic-comedy starring Pio Marmaï, Anaïs Demoustier, Gilles Lellouche, and Vimala Pons, while Vuelta Germany has taken rights for its territory.

Further Vuelta connected titles include Competition title A Woman’s Life is being sold by its Brussels-based company Be For Films. Rights for James Gray’s Paper Tiger, which is also in the running for a Palme d’Or, have been acquired by the group’s WW Entertainment for Benelux and Scanbox for Scandinavia, which has also picked up Nicolas Winding Refn’s Out of Competition screener Her Private Hell for the region.

Playtime is also handling sales on Louis Clichy’s Iron Man in Un Certain Regard, Géraldine Nakache’s Think Good in Cannes Premiere, Sompot Chidgasornpongse’s 9 Temples to Heaven in Directors’ Fortnight and Pierre Le Gall’s Flesh And Fuel in Critics’ Week.

The group’s Berlin-based sales company Films Boutique is selling Thiago Guedes’ Aqui in Cannes Premiere, The Golden Age in Cannes Classics and The Castle in Critics’ Week, while Global Constellation is selling Midnight Screenings title Jim Queen and Viva Carmen, which plays in Directors’ Fortnight.

Production and distribution company Pan, in which Vuelta has a stake, has acquired theatrical rights for Think Good, which it also produced, as well as Too Many Beasts in Directors’ Fortnight and Adieu Cruel World in Critics’ Week.

Other companies in the fold but not cited above include Rome-based Indiana, which is coming off the success of Gennaro Nunziate’s record-breaking hit Buen Camino with Checco Zalone, which has just grossed close to $90 million at the Italian box office to become the most successful local film ever.

Italian production and distribution company Piperfilm and international sales spinoff Piperplay are also part of the Vuelta Group, with the latter structuring a Netflix deal for Buen Camino.

Cannes Connections

Levy and Atlas-Jackson’s Vuelta journey began in early 2022.

Atlan-Jackson was mulling his next steps after an attempt to build a European distribution group under his Backup Media banner, with France’s The Jokers Films and Benelux’s Cinéart as its first cornerstones, hit the buffers due to the Covid-19 pandemic and the rise of streamers.

“We had deals in place with Italy, Scandinavia and Switzerland and we were trying to fund raise… investors told us that films were done, that people would never go to cinemas again and that the job of being an independent distributor was dead… we released Parasite, decided that was as good as it would get, and sold our shares to the senior The Jokers partners,” recounts Atlan-Jackson.

Film and media finance expert Levy was also considering what do next after a five-year stint as Vice Chairman at Archie Comic Publications, the universes of which have served as inspiration for the  Riverdale and Chilling Adventures of Sabrina series.

Prior to that, the Wharton alumni, who cut his finance teeth at Goldman Sachs, co-founded media-focused Mesa Securities, which provided mergers and acquisitions, corporate finance and other strategic advise to a range of clients including Colony Capital, Google, Disney Discovery, Time Inc, and Viacom, and was acquired by investment bank Houlihan Lokey in 2015.

Atlan-Jackson’s brother, a long-time friend of Levy, suggested the pair sat down talked and they discovered that their thoughts around a European studio with a strong focus on theatrical distribution chimed.

“Our instinct, David and I, was that at the time, everybody thought everything was going to go to the platform. We thought this is not the case and that to give longevity to a film and the life it deserves, after all the creative energy that went into making it, it needed to go through a full-cycle, including a theatrical release,” says Levy.

“It was post-Covid. A lot of people were saying it’s possible that theaters will not exist. So, it was a bit of a contrarian approach, but something that David and I strongly believed in.”

Together they hatched a plan to create a European studio with a strong focus on distribution, which also did production.

“A lot of groups with a focus on production had been rolled out, but none, apart from Studiocanal, with strong focus on distribution and international… our ambition is to become the home for European talents and become the gateway for independent producers with an angle for European content,” says Levy.

Danish pan-Scandinavia distributor Scanbox was one of the first companies they approached, with Levy flying from the Berlinale in 2022 to Copenhagen for dinner with CEO Thor Sigurjonsson.

“Initially we looked at acquiring Wild Bunch, and then that fell through… it would have been crazy… So then, I’m like, okay, let’s build it piecemeal and we can learn through the process,” recounts Levy.

“I called Thor saying, ‘I’m going to be in Berlin. Let me come and see you in Copenhagen, and we can have dinner together. He agreed and said he would take care of the restaurant.

Neither of them clocked the significance of the agreed date, February 14.

“He called saying ‘ I’m sorry, I can’t find a table before 10pm I don’t understand what’s happening, but is 10pm okay for you?’ I’m like ‘sure’. We get there and it’s literally tables of two, one after the other.”

The unintended Valentine’s matchmaking meal paid off.  Sigurjonsson, who was already attempting to scale up acquisitions and production at the time, immediately saw the advantage of belonging to a larger European group.

Vuelta sealed an eight-figure deal for Scanbox at the end of 2022 with the group announcing the acquisition in July 2023 alongside that of Germany’s Square One.

Production slate

Three years on, Scanbox Production is part way through filming Alexander Payne’s Danish comedy-drama Somewhere Out There starring Norway’s Sentimental star Renate Reinsve  alongside Danish stars Jacob Haugaard (The jut-nuts), Jacob Lohmann (Dynastiet Mærsk), Ole Sørensen (The Sunfish) and Lane Lind (Matador).

“The second part of filming, which has to be a summer shoot, will begin at the end of May, early June,” says Atlan-Jackson.

The production arm has recently grown the team with the addition of Lina Flint (Sons) and Birgitte Skov (Margrete: Queen Of The North), who join Rikke Lassen and Bylgja Aegisdottir, screenwriter Jan Trygve Royneland, and creative director Lone Korslund.

Payne’s Somewhere Out There is among a slate of high-profile projects in production across the Vuelta Group.

Bertrand Bonello is currently shooting Vatican-set thriller Santo Subito! starring Mark Ruffalo as an American priest investigating the life of late Pope John Paul II, as the church assesses whether he should be canonized or not. Polish star Andrzej Chyra plays the Pontiff and Charlotte Rampling, his long-time friend Polish-American philosopher Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka.

The Vuelta Group is backing the feature lead produced by Paris-based Mandarin & Compagnie in co-production with Indiana, Poland’s Madants and Playtime, in association with PiperFilm. Playtime is also handling international sales.

Pan has recently wrapped biopic Badinter, starring Bastien Bouillon as late lawyer and politician Robert Badinter as he battled to get the death penalty abolished in France when he was Justice Minister under François Mitterand, and is working on post-production for Lebanese director Joyce A. Nashawati’s Greece-set horror Sound of Silence.

Riding high on the success of Buen Camino, Indiana has several productions on the boil, including the next film by its director Nunziate, reuniting him with actor Angelo Duro, with whom he scored the €10m hit I Am the End of the World (Io Sono La Fine Del Mondo), as well as a new film with comedy trio Aldo, Giovanni and Giacomo.

Vuelta Germany, the company created out of the merger between SquareOne and Telepool, which it bought from Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith’s Westbrook in 2024, is also readying its first productions.

Atlan-Jackson says there has been a period of adjustment as the two companies were rolled into one, which saw former SquareOne CEO Al Muneanu quit his role as CEO of the merged division in 2025.

“We’re taking the time now to reshape the strategy of the company to where we want it to be, which is more local. Both Telepool and SquareOne were distributors focused on satisfying TV buyers and not in creating value by releasing film theatrically,” he says.

“We are trying to change that, create a distributor culture where they trust that they can give value to a film and sell it after.”

First productions on its slate include Tony Vahl’s WWII drama Crux, which is being sold by Global Constellation and is expected to premiere at a festival later this year, with other projects in the process of being signed.  

Flexibility

The group is not focused on any particular sort of genre in terms of the productions it gets behind or acquires for sales and/or distribution.

“We’ll get behind comedies like Buen Camino, but equally sell a film like Yellow Letters,” says Levy referring to this year’s Golden Bear winner which was sold by Be For Films.

Atlan-Jackson says this is in keeping with the wider ethos of the group.

“We’re an integrated group but we’re also very flexible. We don’t need all the companies to be involved in every movie. Sometimes we just distribute a film, like we distributed Queer, for example, in France,” he says, referring to Luca Guadagnino’s film which was released by Pan in early 2025.

“Other times it will be a production or co-production with our distribution. We want to be present, but we also want to be as flexible as possible because it’s tough making films,” he adds.

Levy says they also want to be respectful of their subsidiaries pre-existing relationships in the industry, pointing to Buen Camino as an example of this.

“We produced it and did international sales on it, but the talent had a very strong established relationship with Medusa,” he explains, referring to the Mediaset-owned Italian distributor.

“That was something we truly honoured and respected, so they did the distribution in Italy. We had a deal with them that worked for everybody, I think we need to stay flexible because it’s not an all or nothing kind of business.”

On the international front, Buen Camino was sold to Netflix which released it on April 29 in 226 countries, dubbing it into more than 14 languages.

Levy and Atlan-Jackson say that while the group remains resolutely pro-theatrical release, the Netflix deal made sense.

“We were certainly willing to distribute it theatrically, but it’s also a question of what the talent want to do and what is the safest way for that content. But it was a decision made with the talent, not something that we pushed on,” he says.  

“We believe in theatrical, but it needs to be done in partnership with the talent but it’s not easy for talent of that magnitude to go door to door in each market.”

Atlan-Jackson suggests a theatrical release in certain territories may have helped foster recognition of the film’s director Nunziate.

 “His films have been remade in Spain and in France but he himself, he’s not known,” he says of the director.

“The question is can Netflix do that introduction and then the next film is released in theaters because he is more well-known,” adds Levy.

Both acknowledge that local-language European comedies often struggle to travel outside of their home territory theatrical but say it is something they would like to change.

“In a perfect world down the road, local companies will be strong enough to travel. That’s part of our ambition, to have the taste of consumers across Europe evolve to become more European in itself, but that takes a lot of time,” adds Levy.

He points to Emmanuel Courcol’s new social comedy The Marching Band, which was sold by Playtime, as a feature which demonstrated that this is not a pipedream.

“We released it in Scandinavia where it did extremely well and we were in conversation for a remake in Germany, but the original film did so well in Germany that that kind of killed the remake.”

Local Language over English Language

For now, the group is focusing more on local language productions rather than exploring the English-language space.

Levy notes that while Bonello’s film is 50% in English, it ticked boxes with Vuelta more because it’s a European story and Indiana were on board as a producer.

“Is it easier to do film in English? I don’t know,” he says. “It loses a little bit of the authenticity and the localization of it to some degree. Can you market it more easily? Can it travel? Does it attract a bigger audience if it’s in English? In some cases, yes, but it’s case by case.”

Atlan-Jackson points to the example of the second film in the Dutch Loverboy film franchise, which Amsterdam subsidiary WW Entertainment got behind after achieving a $4.4 million gross at the box office in the Netherlands on the first film.

“The director wants to start making films in English, but organically, this one had to be in Dutch. We’re very happy making local language films because they’re important to us. Sometimes the stories and the talents will lend themselves to being partly in English, fully in English, but not all the time,” he says.

He and Levy suggest that the focus on keenly budgeted elevated local language fare also makes more economic sense over big-ticket English-language U.S. indie titles in the current climate.

“Those American projects, the market is getting very binary where everybody wants the same movie so on these American films the prices go crazy,” says Atlan-Jackson.

Vuelta got off the ground with an initial $100m in funding from Connecticut-based private investor Great Mountain Partners, which Levy says is in for the long-haul.

“They’ve done this before in the past on the music side. They own and manage the Concord Music Group (CMG)… and built it piecemeal… which is how I got to know them,” says Levy. [Since this interview took place in mid-April, it has been announced that Nashville-based CMG will merge with Bertelsmann-owned rival BMG to create the fourth biggest music company in the world.]

“They’re very patient capital and they’re into building something. They really believe in the creation of a European studio,” he says.

The group is now looking to raise more funds in Europe and has irons in the fire with a several potential European investors, with next goals on its horizon including expanding into Poland and Spain.

Atlan-Jackson says the search for investment closer to home makes sense given the group’s European DNA.

“The world has changed a lot in three years,” says Levy. “We have a lot to do ahead of us and we’re ambitious in our goals.”