Who are we?

Ghosts City Films

Production of feature films and documentaries

Ghosts City Films was created in 2019 by Franck Priot after a thirty-year career in French and international cinema including being for 10 years the COO of the French Film Commission. Ghosts City Films produces mainly feature films, but also documentaries. Our daughter company Ghosts City, created with Chinese producer SHU Ye, provides production services to Asian films and series willing to shoot in France, coming from China, Taiwan or Indonesia. Or Europê sometimes.

At Ghosts City Films, we are cinephiles, but also citizens. So projects with an inclusive dimension are important to us. Most of our upcoming productions feature main characters from all genders, sexual orientations, and ethnicities that we think are not represented enough in the entertainment industry.

We mostly produce feature films by Asian filmmakers, daring movies whose artistic intensity can only be fully enjoyed on the big cinema screens, and sometimes are pushing the limits of cinéma as a medium. As does for our recently completed British allegorical adult fairy tale King Baby, by Kit & Arran, which had its world-premiere in Rotterdam this year, in Bright Future section. The movie will be soon in Edimburgh festival, where it is part of the Midnight Madness section.

Last summer we shot in Kuala Lumpur You Are Here, a strange meta-comedy by Joon Han Yeo, shot on film stock (16mm and 35mm) currently in post, and soon in a major festival. And we still have our amazing animated queer superhero movie in production Zsazsa Zaturnnah vs the Amazonistas of Planet X currently going on in Manila, in it’s director Avid Liongoren’s studio, Rocketsheep.

Ghosts City Films is also developing documentaries about cinema. We aim at resurrecting forgotten characters of its history, often erased by the never-stopping brainwashing of the promotion system. Our motto: “There is no worst impertinence than a deep memory” (Michel Polac). And sadly, these forgotten personalities are often women…

The first one, Yoko de Montmartre, revives the incredible and forgotten story of Yoko Tani, who was the first Asian female icon in European cinema in the 1950s and 1960s. Written by Franck Priot, the doc will be directed by Joël Farges.

Franck Priot is also the Vice-chairman of Bridging the Dragon.

Ghosts City Films is based in Paris, Toulouse et Beijing

Ghosts City

Line producing, consulting,

International Co-Production Structuring,

Between Europe and Asia..

Ghosts City is specialized in consulting and line production between France and China. Created at Christmas 2016 in Paris and Beijing by Franck Priot and Shu Ye, Ghosts City supports French companies in the film, TV, and digital sectors in their development in China. In parallel, we accompany Chinese companies to France, for their filming or promotion.
We provide commercial support services, supporting investor research, sales of audiovisual rights, co-production arrangements. We also work in IP management, helping intellectual property owners adapt and promote them from one country to another.

The asset of Ghosts City is to be established simultaneously in France and China, with solid knowledge of the two countries, since Franck and Ye together have 15 years of professional experience of Franco-Chinese relations in the film and TV sectors, in government institutions or the private sector.
Our approach is to anticipate and mitigate the differences in functioning and behaviour between the two countries. These differences are especially important in the creative industries, more imbued than others by the times, but also charged with political issues, so very regulated by the national authorities.

Since 2020, Ghosts City has also worked with India, where the company is represented by Deborah Bennatar (La Fabrique de Films in Mumbai). Ghosts City has already been involved in several Indian feature films, to help give them an international dimension.

Our team

Franck Priot

CEO of Ghosts City Films & Ghosts City

Founder of Ghosts City Films and Ghosts City, Franck Priot has worked in the film and audiovisual industry for more than 30 years, both in France and internationally. His most recent credits as a producer include Salli by LIEN Chien-hung (Taiwan), unveiled at Busan in 2023; King Baby by Kit & Arran (UK), selected at Rotterdam in January 2024; and You Are Here by Yeo Joon-han, currently in post-production. His latest production is Avid Liongoren’s Zsazsa Zaturnnah, selected for the Midnight Screenings at the Annecy Festival in June this year, before continuing its festival run at Fantasia, BIFAN and, soon, Sitges.

Franck Priot is also co-producing, alongside SHU Ye, the Chinese film There Will Be Snow by Story CHEN, which will have its world premiere at the Busan International Film Festival in October. He is currently producing Aid by acclaimed Filipino director Brillante Mendoza.

From 1988 to 2000, Franck worked as a film critic and reporter for television and print media in Toulouse and Paris, including TLT, Première, Libération and Cahiers du Cinéma. In 2000, he joined the film industry trade publication Écran Total, where he covered the international film sales market and published analyses of financing plans for French and European feature films.

Throughout his years as a journalist and critic, he specialised in international film reporting, travelling around the world and covering everything from the set of a B-movie in the Philippines to Star Wars: Episode I in the Sahara, from the emergence of multiplexes in China to the introduction of digital projection in the United States. As a programmer at the Cinémathèque de Toulouse, he created Extrême Cinéma in 1999, a festival that is still running today.

Over the years, he has interviewed hundreds of filmmakers, artists and leading industry figures, including James Cameron, Raymond Depardon, Terry Gilliam, David Cronenberg, Claude Sautet, Jean-Marie Straub, Jean Marais, François Périer, Claude Berri, Yash Johar, Jackie Chan, George Lucas, Luc Besson, David Lynch, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Johnny Hallyday.

In 2005, Franck became Deputy Managing Director of Film France, where he was one of the driving forces behind the introduction of France’s Tax Rebate for International Production (TRIP) and the development of a strategy to promote France internationally as a filming destination. For ten years, he served as one of the main points of contact for Hollywood, Indian and Chinese studios bringing productions to France. Among the hundreds of projects he worked with were Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris, the Despicable Me and The Hunger Games franchises, and Jackie Chan’s Chinese Zodiac.

Franck also serves as an External Expert for Eurimages. He holds a Master’s degree in Film Production from ENSAV, where he now teaches film production.

Last but not least, he is an avid cinephile who watches more than 200 films a year on the big screen, particularly at cinematheques.

Ye Shu

COO of Ghosts City

Working in Chinese cinema for 15 years, Shu Ye began his career as an editor and sound designer, working with leading Chinese directors such as Tsui Hark, Zhang Yimou, Teng Huatao, and Zhang Yibai. Seven Swords and The Curse of the Golden Flower, in which she participated were nominated for best sound at HK Awards and at the Golden Reel Awards.

After a Master's at the Sorbonne in Paris in Economics and Film Marketing obtained in 2012, she was involved in many French-Chinese collaborations.
In 2011, she began working with distributor Beijing United Power to acquire American or European films for China, such as The King’s Speech by Tob Hooper. Based in Beijing, she produces series for internet platforms or Chinese channels shot in France or China.

She is now producing and/or line-producing movies and series, in France, China, and Taiwan. Among her movie credits is Salli by LIEN Chien-hung, which premiered at Busan festival in 2023, and King Baby, first revealed at Rotterdam IFFR in 2024. Her series Night Cat Express was selected by Canneseries in 2022.

Natalia Arshavskaya

Documentary Producer

Natalia Arshavskaya is a Russian-born documentary producer based in France and a former commissioning editor now working in exile. A key editorial figure at Current Time TV, the largest Russian-language documentary platform, she has supported and championed bold, politically engaged works from Central and Eastern Europe.

As a commissioning editor at Current Time TV, Natalia worked with acclaimed filmmaker Sergei Loznitsa on State Funeral (Venice 2019), Mr. Landsbergis (IDFA 2021), and The Invasion (Cannes 2024), as well as with Vitaly Mansky on his multi-award-winning films Putin’s Witnesses (Karlovy Vary IFF 2018) and Gorbachev. Heaven (IDFA 2020). She has also supported films by leading emerging and established filmmakers, including Alisa Kovalenko’s We Will Not Fade Away (Berlinale 2023), Iryna Tsilyk’s The Earth Is Blue as an Orange (Sundance 2020), and Svitlana Lishchinska’s Mariupol. Reconstruction.

She has also produced landmark historical series such as Dissidents and Madness (dir. Sergei Gindilis), Dark History (dir. Kseniya Elyan), and InterNYET: The History of the Russian Internet (dir. Andrey Loshak), each offering an essential and timely perspective on the post-Soviet landscape.

A writer-director herself, Natalia has directed documentary and fiction short films in both France and Russia. Her films Assaï and The Story of a Non-Coincidence have been presented at international film festivals.

Jacqueline Ben Loulou

Production Administrator

Jacqueline has more experience than all of us combined: she was already working as a Production Administrator on Jean-Jacques Beineix’s Diva in 1981, as well as on Luis Buñuel’s final French films.

Jacqueline also has extensive experience working on international productions shot in France. A visual artist in her own right, she now chooses to work exclusively on projects that genuinely appeal to her. And when she is not involved in our productions, she joins major international projects such as Ridley Scott’s The Last Duel.

Pascal Salafa

Ghosts City Courts

A highly experienced First Assistant Director, Pascal has worked on numerous international and English-language productions, including Ron Howard’s The Da Vinci Code and the recent The Walking Dead spin-off. He also joined the adventure of our British film King Baby as First AD and co-producer.

He is one of the founding members of AFAR (Association Française des Assistants Réalisateurs), serving on its board for nearly a decade before becoming its president for three years. A remarkably versatile professional, he has worked across a wide range of formats and productions: fiction, feature films, theatrical shorts, TV movies and series, documentaries, and commercials.

Now transitioning into production, Pascal is launching a short-film department at Ghosts City Films. Its first projects include Lignes de vies by Bruno Richaud and Cathares & Cie by Olivier Riffard. Ghosts City previously co-produced Riffard’s earlier short film, Joyeux Anniversaire Margoline, another sharply satirical comedy.

Déborah Benattar

Deborah Benattar lives in Mumbai where she founded her company in 2013, La Fabrique de Films, after 10 years working in the offices of the film and television branches of the French embassies in Ukraine, Czechoslovakia and India.

She represents Ghosts City to Indian producers and also helps to produce French films for their filming in India.

Born in Da Nang and now based in Ho Chi Minh City, Sao Mai represents Ghosts City in Vietnam, where the film industry is experiencing rapid growth, driven by the expansion of multiplex cinemas and streaming platforms.

She works as an Assistant Director on Vietnamese films and television series, following studies in film directing at a university in Ho Chi Minh City and at an art school in Lyon, France. She is fluent in French, English, and, of course, Vietnamese.

She wrote and directed the short film Song Cua. In 2021, she was a member of the Young Jury for the Unifrance Short Film Prize in Cannes.