EXCLUSIVE: Charades have acquired international sales rights for Canadian director Leah Nelson’s Alzheimer’s-themed animated feature debut Tangles, with Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Bryan Cranston and Seth Rogen in the voice cast,  ahead of its world premiere in Cannes.

They will launch world sales in Cannes alongside UTA Independent Film Group and CAA Media Finance, which arranged financing for the project, and are co-repping  North American and Global sales.

The film, based on Sarah Leavitt’s graphic memoir Tangles: A Story About Alzheimer’s, My Mother and Me, will premiere as a Special Screening in Cannes and then heads to the Annecy International Film Festival in June, where it will play in the main competition.

The official synopsis reads: “When Alzheimer’s begins to erase her mother’s vibrant personality, Sarah leaves her exciting life as an activist and artist in 90’s San Francisco to return to her eccentric family in the conservative small town she recently fled. Initially confident she can manage the situation, she soon realizes she must accept the harsh, disorienting reality of the disease to become the daughter her family needs.

The film is produced by Vicky Patel, Steve Barnett and Alan Powell of Monarch Media; Rogen, Evan Goldberg, James Weaver, Alex McAtee and Madeline Blair of Point Grey Pictures; Ross Murray, Teresa Toews through director Nelson and Jay Grandin’s Giant Ant Films; Lauren Miller Rogen, Jen Ray and Sophie Hoegh through LYLAS Pictures; and Louis-Dreyfus.

Producers Patel, Rogen and Miller Rogen are longtime Alzheimer’s activists, having been affected by the disease in very personal ways. 

Patel’s late father was diagnosed with the disease in 2003, inspiring her to become one of the nation’s leading fundraisers for brain science research. Miller Rogen lost her grandmother, grandfather and mother to the disease, prompting she and husband Rogen to found Hilarity for Charity, a national nonprofit that cares for families impacted by Alzheimer’s disease.

Emmy-Award winners Louis-Dreyfus and Rogen and Academy Award Nominee Cranston are joined in the voice cast by Abbi Jacobson, Beanie Feldstein, Samira Wiley, Sarah Silverman, Wanda Sykes, Bowen Yang, Pamela Adlon and newcomer Fern Grandin. 

Nelson adapted the graphic novel alongside Sarah Leavitt and Trev Renney. 

Nelson is repped by Brillstein Entertainment Partners. Louis-Dreyfus is repped by CAA and Latham & Watkins. Rogen is repped by UTA, Principal Entertainment, and Toczek Suddleson Law Group.

Charades heads to Cannes with 10 films with in Official Selection and the parallel sections, with its lineup also featuring Palme d’Or contenders Parallel Tales and A Man of his Time as well as Cannes Critics’ Opener In Waves and Directors’ Fortnight selections I See Buildings Fall Like Lightening by Clio Bernard.