Mehdi Avaz and Milad Avaz’s debut feature While We Live will be distributed locally by SF Studios and internationally by LevelK.

The Danish film is based on Iranian-born Avaz brothers’ own experience of growing up in a Danish suburb. Award-winning stills photographer Mehdi Avaz spent two years developing the vision for the film, together with his brother Milad, a former corporate strategist. The film follows four people in Northern Denmark and how their fates intertwine in a tragic accident. When Kristian travels to his hometown Gribskov to visit his terminally ill stepdad, he learns that everyone still blames him for a tragic accident that tore the family apart five years earlier. Emotions and conflicts resurface as Kristian faces his ex-girlfriend and their child in a final attempt to reunite the family.

Stine Bomholt, LevelK’s Acquisition Executive said: “We met the Avaz brothers at AFM last year and got a chance to watch the film. We had great chemistry and loved the film from the start - an unprecedented high level from a first-time director. The story is moving, well told and perfectly pitched, and has some very strong performances. We believe in their talent and want to help making the world aware of what they’re doing.”

LevelK will screen While We Live at the Cannes market on May 20.

Two other Danish titles are on the sales company’s Cannes line up: the tragi-comedy A Horrible Woman by Christian Tafdrup that attract a lot of interest at Göteborg’s Nordic Film Market where it was pitched as a work in progress, and the 3D animated The Incredible Story of a Giant Pear written by Bo Hr. Hansen, based on a book by Jakob Martin Strid. Co-director and animator Philip Einstein Lipski will be on hand at the Scandinavian Terrace in Cannes on May 19 to introduce it to world buyers. The family film supported by Nordisk Film & TV Fond will be distributed in Denmark by Nordisk Film on October 12, 2017.

LevelK’s other Cannes title is the Australian thriller Rabbit by Luke Shanahan.