MUMBAI: : Bollywood studio Shemaroo Entertainment is headed to the French Riviera Fest with a dual purpose: to explore the market for five of its titles and to acquire a slate of English and Hollywood movies for domestic distribution.

The Rs 1 billion turnover studio has taken up space in the Indian pavilion managed by the CII along the croisette and is also promoting itself in publications such as The Hollywood Reporter, Screen and Variety.

The titles it is pushing aggressively at the Cannes fest include: full length animation film Ghatothkach, home grown production Manorama Six Feet Under (starring Abhay Deol, Raima Sen and Gul Panag), the colourised fifties B.R. Chopra Dilip Kumar starring blockbuster Naya Daur, Anant Mahadevan's Staying Alive, Rahul Bose's Bengali film Anu Ranan, and the Feroze Nadiadwala, Ahmed Khan directed Fool & Final (starring Sunny Deol, Shahid Kapur, Mike Tyson, Paresh Rawal, among many others).

"We have the worldwide theatrical distribution rights to these movies and we are looking at exploring newer markets for these titles apart from meeting our existing network of clients and distributors overseas," says Shemaroo's business head (international) Kalapi Nagada.

According to Nagada, Shemaroo's library has met with phenomenal success in the international markets like US, UK, USSR, Singapore, Fiji, UAE, Europe, Malaysia, Australia, also in non-ethnic markets like Spain, France, Germany and many others.

The Bollywood studio has signed some leading and emerging names onto its roster including Aneez Bazmi who is directing the mega budget 'Isssak', Niraj Vora, Shivam Nair, E. Niwas, and Rohit Shetty. Some of these directors have gone on the floor with their projects; others will do so in the not too distant future. It already has close to 650 films in its catalogue.

On the foreign film front, Nagada says Shemaroo wants to increase its catalogue from 218 films currently to 850. Amongst the gems on its slate include: The Graduate, African Queen and Akira Kurasawa's Ran; classics like Snows of Kilimanjaro, The Early Bird, The Paper Tiger, Stone Council, Driving Miss Daisy, River Runs Through, Pedro Almodovar's "All About my Mother", Mohsen Makhmalbaf's "The Silence (Sokout)", Carlos Reygada's "Japon."

Nagada adds that Shemaroo has in the past done deals with organisations such as Pathe, Mk2, UGC, Katapult Sales, Lakeshore Entertainment, Fremantle Media - over varied genres like action, drama, romance, documentary, animation and foreign language movies.

"We intend to extend our foreign language films acquisition to a level of 300 movies and other major independent studio's products to another 400 movies, including major theatricals. Generally we buy for entire South Asian (SAARC) countries which includes - India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan, Sri Lanka and Maldives. We are also looking for expanding our horizons of operation towards entire Middle East. We always buy on all rights basis - Theatrical, Home Video, New Age Media (VOD, IPTV, (Mobile), Shipping, Airlines, Hotels, Publishing, Merchandising, and other Non Commercial rights.For the Foreign language category we would like to concentrate, as of now on major award winners, notable directors and a few good movies that havepossible business viability in the Indian markets if dubbed," says Nagada.