News

Cinema Guild has bought North American distribution rights to “Dry Leaf,” Georgian filmmaker Alexandre Koberidze’s follow up to “What Do We See When We Look at the Sky?” which competed at the Berlinale in 2021.

“Dry Leaf,” meanwhile, had its world premiere at the 78th Locarno Film Festival in August, where it

competed for the Golden Leopard.

The film will have its North American Premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival and will go on to play at the New York Film Festival. Cinema Guild will open the film theatrically in 2026,

followed by a national theatrical rollout.

Set against the quiet landscapes of rural Georgia, “Dry Leaf” follows Irakli (David Koberidze), a

father searching for his missing daughter, Lisa, a young sports photographer who vanished while documenting football fields in remote villages. Joined by Lisa’s enigmatic friend Levani

Otar Nijaradze), he embarks on a journey across the countryside, encountering strangers,...

Cinema Guild has acquired North American distribution rights to “Bogancloch,” the latest feature from acclaimed British filmmaker Ben Rivers.

The meditative documentary, which premiered in competition at last year’s Locarno Film Festival, follows Jake Williams, a modern-day hermit living in Scotland’s remote Highlands. Shot on 16mm over multiple seasons, the film serves as a follow-up to Rivers’ 2011 documentary “Two Years at Sea,” revisiting Williams a decade later to observe the evolution of his solitary lifestyle.

The film has made the festival rounds since its Locarno competition debut, with screenings at Edinburgh International Film Festival, Viennale, Cph:dox, Cinéma du Réel, Tokyo International Film Festival, Festival dei Popoli, and MoMA’s Doc Fortnight.

“Bogancloch” is produced by Rivers himself alongside Sarah Neely and John Archer, with co-producers Zsuzsanna Király and Hanna Björk Valsdóttir. The project received funding from Screen Scotland, the Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg, and the Icelandic Film Centre.

The deal...

Exclusive: Cinema Guild has acquired North American distribution rights on the restored films of French filmmaker Luc Moullet.

Cinema Guild will mount a touring theatrical retrospective of Moullet’s work starting at Film at Lincoln Center in New York in August. Moullet, one of the last remaining members of the French New Wave, will attend the opening.

The films included in the acquisition are Brigitte and Brigitte, The Smugglers, A Girl is a Gun, Anatomy of a Relationship, Origins of a Meal, The Comedy of Work, and Parpaillon.

Often dubbed the “prince of shoestring cinema,” Moullet was one of the later filmmakers associated with the pioneering generation of French New Wave artists.

At the age of 18, Moullet joined the ranks of Cahiers du Cinéma, where he was the first to champion Hollywood B-directors like Samuel Fuller and Edgar G. Ulmer. Following the footsteps of other Cahiers alums like Jean-Luc Godard and François Truffaut,...

Finecut has sold Hong Sangsoo’s Berlinale premiere What Does That Nature Say To You to the South Korean filmmaker’s regular US distributor Cinema Guild.

‘What Does That Nature Say To You’ review

Hong’s 33rd feature stars his longtime collaborator Kwon Haehyo in the story of a young poet who unravels after a boozy day at his girlfriend’s family house. Ha Seongguk, Kang Soyi, Cho Yunhee and Park Miso round out the key cast.The drama scored 2.7 on Screen’s Berlinjury grid.

Cinema Guild will release the film in theaters this year. Company president Peter Kelly negotiated...

On the heels of its premiere in competition at the Berlin Film Festival, Hong Sang-soo’s “What Does That Nature Say to You” has found U.S. distribution with Cinema Guild.

The movie marks the prolific South Korean director’s 33rd movie and follows an impressive streak of six consecutive years at the Berlinale.

Cinema Guild, which recently collaborated with Hong on his previous film “A Traveler’s Needs,” will release “What Does That Nature Say to You” in theaters in the U.S. later this year. Produced by Jeonwonsa Film, the fim is represented internationally by Finecut.

“What Does That Nature Say to You” follows Donghwa (Ha Seongguk), a fledgling poet in his thirties who rejects material aspirations and seeks to lead a life dedicated to truth and beauty. On a lazy afternoon, he drives his girlfriend, Junhee (Kang Soyi), back to her parents’ home outside Seoul. In the driveway,...

The 1980s was a unique decade for British comedies and films in general, with a golden tinge on the ten-year run that produced some incredible cinematic works. In contrast to many American comedies at the time, the differences between the two are often noted, with British work dripping in irony, satire, and self-deprecation, which create a unique brand of comedy. It was also a time when many of Britain's rising stars and comedians were really coming into their own and blossoming into internationally known talents.

There are many films from the time that stand out as rewatchable British classics, such as A Fish Called Wanda and Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life. These films represent some of the very best of comedy, from the surreal and absurd sketch comedy of Monty Python to films that lean on social commentary and hilarious premises to provide the breeding ground for comical moments.

Lucien Laviscount knows what it’s like to play a leading man. The Emily in Paris star has spent the past four years playing suave British CFO Alfie in the hit Netflix series, a character that’s seen him matchup against seemingly every eligible bachelor in this fictional Paris — and continually win. But playing love interests isn’t as easy as simply having a nice face. It takes a combination of charm and the dedicated force of an actor who knows how to thread the needle between enticing fantasy, and...

Exclusive: The subversive and experimental works of Portuguese filmmaker João César Monteiro have long been unavailable or difficult to view in the U.S. thanks to tight copyright laws and poor preservation. But that’s all about to change.

The NYC-based Cinema Guild has acquired North American distribution rights to Monteiro’s films and is planning a broad theatrical retrospective of the films—all newly restored in 4K—in the U.S. and Canada in early 2025.

The deal was negotiated by Edward McCarry and Peter Kelly of Cinema Guild with Branco of Leopardo Filmes. Digital and home video releases will follow the theatrical retrospective in 2025.

Born into a wealthy Catholic family and raised in Lisbon, Monteiro was one of the most controversial and unusual filmmakers of his generation. His often unclassifiable features spanned satirical, experimental, and fabulistic themes. Some of his most notable works include the militant and mythical What...

“By the Stream” (aka “Suyoocheon”), the latest work by prolific South Korean minimalist director Hong Sang-soo, is set to release in North American theaters next year.

Rights were acquired by Brooklyn-based distributor Cinema Guild from sales agent, Seoul, Korea-based Finecut. Both companies have handled many of the director’s previous works.

The picture will have its world premiere in competition this month at the Locarno Film Festival. It will subsequently play at the New York Film Festival and other festival berths are expected to be announced in the coming weeks.

Hong is known for his micro-budget, minimalist drama films that are long on conversation, chance encounters and female protagonists. He also likes to work with a tight-knit circle of actors.

The new film is Hong’s 32nd as director. It takes him back to the campus setting of films like “Oki’s Movie” from 2010 and “Our Sunhi” from 2013. A press...

Cinema Guild has secured U.S. distribution rights for “Matt and Mara,” directed by Kazik Radwanski and starring Deragh Campbell and Matt Johnson.

The film debuted in the Encounters section at the Berlin International Film Festival earlier this year and closed the Jeonju International Film Festival in May.

The narrative follows Mara (Campbell), a creative writing professor, whose life takes an unexpected turn when she reconnects with Matt (Johnson), an author from her past. As their relationship develops, Mara navigates the complexities of her strained marriage to an experimental musician. When her husband unexpectedly cancels plans to drive Mara to a conference out of town, Matt accompanies her instead and the pressure in their undefined relationship slowly builds.

Campbell and Johnson reunite for the film after their roles in Radwanski’s “Anne at 13,000 ft.”

The deal was brokered by Cinema Guild president Peter Kelly and the film’s producers, Medium Density Fibreboard Films.

Exclusive: Cinema Guild has picked up U.S. distribution rights to Richland, the latest feature from British-American nonfiction filmmaker and artist Irene Lusztig.

The film debuted at last year’s Tribeca Film Festival and has gone on to play across the international circuit, including IDFA, Sheffield, Doctober in Chicago, and the San Francisco International Film Festival’s Doc Stories. Cinema Guild will release the film on DVD and digital platforms on June 11.

The pic is set in Richland, a town in Washington State next to the Hanford Nuclear Site which, from the early 1940s, housed nuclear government workers at the height of the Manhattan Project. It’s also a town that produced weapons-grade plutonium for decades, and its citizens have pridefully embraced their identity. The official synopsis reads: Richland offers a prismatic, placemaking portrait of a community staking its identity and future on its nuclear origin story, presenting a timely...

A pair of films we’ve been hoping find a home have now been acquired. We’re pleased to exclusively announce that Cinema Guild has secured North American distribution rights for Jessica Dunn Rovinelli’s So Pretty and Empathy. So Pretty premiered at the Berlin International Film Festival in 2019 and won numerous awards internationally. Empathy won the Prix du Cnap when it premiered in FIDMarseille in 2016. Cinema Guild will kick off the partnership with Rovinelli with a special screening of So Pretty with a Q&a at Metrograph in New York on June 8. A digital release will follow for both films.

In So Pretty, four young queers in New York City struggle to maintain their proto-utopian community against the outside world as their lives curiously merge with the 1980s German novel so schön by Ronald M. Schernikau. An investigation of leftist politics and femme identity in the context of an increasingly right-wing world,...

Cinema Guild has acquired North American rights to Hong Sangsoo’s Berlin Silver Bear winner A Traveler’s Needs starring Isabelle Huppert.

‘A Traveler’s Needs’: Berlin Review

Cinema Guild will release the comedy theatrically following its North American festival premiere later this year.

A Traveler’s Needs marks the third collaboration between Hong and Huppert following 2012’s In Another Country and 2017’s Claire’s Camera.

Huppert plays Iris, a woman who finds herself adrift in Seoul and, without any means to make ends meet, turns to teaching French through a peculiar method. Through a series of encounters the mysteries of her circumstances deepen.

Hong Sansoo’s A Traveler’s Needs, starring Isabelle Huppert, has sold North American distribution rights to New York’s Cinema Guild.

The film premiered at the Berlin International Film Festival earlier this year, winning the Silver Bear Grand Jury Prize.

A Traveler’s Needs will premiere in North America later in 2024, after which Cinema Guild will release in theaters. The pic is a comedy with a strong Korean connection, with Huppert playing Iris, a woman struggling in Seoul who turns to teaching French to make ends meet. Regular collaborators Lee Hyeyoung and Kwon Haehyo also feature as Huppert’s student and flirty husband respectively.

Sangsoo and Huppert have collaborated twice before, on 2012 comedy-drama In Another Country and 2017’s Claire’s Camera.

“A Traveler’s Needs hits like a meteorite from another galaxy,” said Cinema Guild President Peter Kelly. “Huppert delivers a beguiling and hilarious performance. Her Iris is a character that only Hong and Huppert,...

Cinema Guild has acquired North American distribution rights for “You Burn Me” (aka “Tú me abrasas”), directed by Argentina’s Matías Piñeiro.

The film had its world premiere at the Berlinale in February in the festival’s Encounters section. It won a special mention from the jury at Paris’s Cinéma du réel in March.

Cinema Guild will release the film in theaters following its currently unspecified North American festival premiere later this year. The company has also acquired rights to three earlies films by Piñeiro – “The Stolen Man” from 2007; “They All Lie” from 2009; and “Rosalinda” which will be released on home video and digital alongside “You Burn Me.”

An adaptation of “Sea Foam,” a chapter in Cesare Pavese’s Dialogues with Leucò, Piñeiro’s latest is an intimate and expansive meditation on death and desire. It is also a challenging exploration of the possibilities of adapting text to film.

Exclusive: Cinema Guild has acquired U.S. distribution rights to Deborah Stratman’s well-received latest Last Things, which premiered in the New Frontiers section at this year’s Sundance Film Festival.

The film will open theatrically in New York at Anthology Film Archives on January 12 on a 35mm print before expanding across the country. The film’s broad synopsis reads: Last Things looks at evolution and extinction from the perspective of the rocks and minerals that came before humanity and will outlast us. With scientists and thinkers like Lynn Margulis and Marcia Bjørnerud as guides and quoting from the proto-Sci-fi texts of J.H. Rosny, Deborah Stratman offers a stunning array of images, from microscopic forms to vast landscapes, and seeks a picture of evolution without humans at the center.

After Sundance, Last Things went on to play Berlin and NYFF and picked up prizes at Dokufest Kosovo and Berwick Film and Media Arts Festival.

U.S.-based distributor Cinema Guild has acquired North American rights to the newly-restored 4K version of Somai Shinji’s 1993 classic “Moving” from French sales agent MK2 Films.

The Japanese coming-of-age drama won the best restored film award, the top prize in Venice Classics, when it premiered at the Biennale in September.

Cinema Guild, which also released restorations of Somai’s “Typhoon Club” (1985) and “P.P. Rider” (1983) earlier this year, will open the film in theaters in the U.S. and Canada in 2024.

When her parents split and her father Kenichi moves out of their family home, Renko (Tabata Tomoko), a bright and energetic 6th grade girl, is left alone with her mother, Nazuna, in Kyoto. As Nazuna sets out new rules for their life together, Renko makes plans of her own, and sees to it that any changes happening in her family happen on her terms.

Since its premiere...

Ask any short-film director and they’ll tell you the same thing: finding distribution for short films absolutely sucks. Ask any distributor and they’ll tell you the same thing: we want to release more short films but properly distributing them absolutely sucks.

Due credit to Cinema Guild for engineering a neat workaround: they’ve acquired Pedro Costa’s nine-minute short The Daughters of Fire off its Cannes premiere and will pair it with Hong Sangsoo’s 61-minute In Water––naturally branding the experience Fire+Water, at last giving Barbenheimer its reckoning. As Cinema Guild’s Peter Kelly noted, “There are too few opportunities for short films to play theatrically, but no recent short is more demanding of a theatrical experience than Pedro Costa’s monumental new work.” Apologies to everyone hoping they might watch the latest from one of our great imagemakers on their 13-inch MacBook Air. [Deadline]

The Daughters of Fire,...

Exclusive: Cinema Guild has acquired North American distribution rights for Portuguese director Pedro Costa’s short film The Daughters of Fire, following its buzzy world premiere in Cannes this year.

Set against the backdrop of Costa’s stomping ground of the Atlantic Ocean island of Cape Verde, the film follows three sisters who are separated by the eruption of the local Fogo Volcano.

They remain bound in spirit, singing the same words: one day, we will know why we live and why we suffer.

The Daughters of Fire received an enthusiastic reception in Cannes when it played as Special Screening Jean-Luc Godard’s Trailer of the Film that Will Never Exist: “Phony Wars” and Wang Bing’s 2023 Palme d’Or contender Man in Black.

For its North American theatrical release in late 2023 or early 2024, Cinema Guild is planning to play the short alongside Korean director Hong Sangsoo’s Berlinale 2023 Encounters title In water,...

“In Our Day,” the new Hong Sang-soo film premiering later this week as the Cannes Film Festival’s closing night film, has been acquired by Cinema Guild. A theatrical release is planned following its North American festival premiere later this year.

The picture stars Kim Min-hee, Song Seon-mi, Gi Ju-bong and Ha Seong-guk. This character dramedy marks Hong’s 30th feature film, this time using long, elaborate takes to articulate simple pleasures like an interspecies encounter, the discovery of a new drink and a game of rock, paper, scissors.

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“Adding to the rich tableau of his work, Hong Sang-soo’s ‘In Our Day’ not only makes us laugh, it makes us think about what it means to be alive,” Cinema Guild president Peter Kelly said in a statement. “It’s a gift that we hope continues and continues.

Hong Sang-soo’s latest film “In Our Day,” which will premiere on closing night of Cannes’ Directors Fortnight, has been acquired by Cinema Guild for North America.

Cinema Guild will release the film in theaters following its North American festival premiere later this year.

“In Our Day” stars Kim Minhee as Sangwon, an actress who has recently returned to South Korea and is temporarily staying with her friend, Jungsoo (Song Sunmi), and her cat, Us. Elsewhere in the city, the aging poet Uiju (Ki Joobong) lives alone, his cat having recently passed away. On this ordinary day, each of them has a visitor: Sangwon is visited by her cousin, Jisoo (Park Miso) and Uiju, by a young actor,

Jaewon (Ha Seongguk). Each of them wants to learn about a career in the arts, but they also

have bigger questions.

Hong’s 30th feature outing, “In Our Day” demonstrates a new...

Hong Sangsoo’s In Our Day, the closing night film at Cannes’ Directors’ Fortnight sidebar, has sold to Cinema Guild for North America.

Sangsoo’s 30th feature will release in North American theaters later this year following a North American festival premiere.

In Our Day follows a woman in her 40s, temporarily living at the home of a friend, and a man in his 70s living alone, who both have visitors with serious questions to ask.

The deal was negotiated by Peter Kelly of Cinema Guild with Youngjoo Suh of Seoul-based sales agent Finecut. “Adding to the rich tableau of his work, Hong Sangsoo’s In Our Day not only makes us laugh, it makes us think about what it means to be alive,” said Cinema Guild President Peter Kelly. “It’s a gift that we hope continues and continues.”

Finecut earlier this week sold In Our Day to France’s Capricci,...

Hong’s 30th feature premieres at Cannes on May 25.

Cinema Guild has acquired North American distribution rights Hong Sangsoo’s In Our Day, the closing night film of Cannes Directors’ Fortnight, in a deal with South Korea’s Finecut.

Cinema Guild said it will release Hong’s 30th feature film in theatres following its North American festival premiere later this year.

The South Korean film follows an actress and old poet who each host a visitor and dodge questions posed by their guests using food, drink and games.

The feature has already sold to key territories, including France (Capricci), Spain...

Exclusive: Cinema Guild has acquired North American rights for Belgian director Bas Devos’s film Here which won best film in the Berlin Film Festival’s Encounters section last month as well as the Fipresci prize.

The film revolves around a Romanian construction worker living in Brussels who is making preparations ahead of his return home to visit his mother for the holidays, not knowing if he will come back to the city.

While waiting for his car to be fixed, he meets a Belgian-Chinese woman bryologist, or expert in the study of moss and lichen, who is preparing her doctorate while working in her aunt’s restaurant. Her attention to the near-invisible stops him in his tracks.

Like Devos’s previous 2019 film Ghost Tropic, Brussels is inherent to the storyline as the director explores ideas of longing in contemporary urban life and the potential for enchantment that still exists...

Exclusive: Cinema Guild has nabbed North American rights to the feature doc Our Body directed by Venice prize winner Claire Simon (The Competition), which premiered to critical acclaim at last month’s Berlin Film Festival before touching down stateside at MoMA’s Doc Fortnight as well as True/False. Pic is slated for release in theaters later this year.

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Simon looks, with Our Body, at the everyday operations of the gynecological ward in a public hospital in Paris. In the process, she questions what it means to live in a woman’s body, filming the diversity, singularity and beauty of patients in all stages of life. We see cancer screenings and fertility appointments,...

“Music,” Angela Schanelec’s German drama, has been bought by Cinema Guild for North

American distribution following its world premiere at the Berlin Film Festival.

Cinema Guild will release the film in theaters following its North American festival premiere later this year. The film tells the story of a a pair of wayward young people who abandon their

newborn child on a stormy night in the mountains of Greece. Taken in by a family of farmers, Jon grows up without knowing his father or mother. Years later, after a tragic accident, he is sent to prison, where he meets Iro. The two form a connection, expressed through music, that will, by turns, haunt them and uphold them the rest of their days. Freely inspired by the story of Oedipus, Schanelec’s latest is as terrifying as myth and as gentle as a folk song.

“With Music, Angela Schanelec continues to...

Hamburg-based Fünferfilm co-produced, lining up third film with writer-director Helena Wittmann.

Cinema Guild has picked up North American rights to Helena Wittmann’s Locarno selection Human Flowers Of Flesh, which screens at Filmfest Hamburg this week.

Wittmann’s follow up to her 2017 debut feature Drift will receive its US premiere at New York Film Festival next week.

Cinema Guild plans a theatrical release in 2023 on the story starring Dogtooth’s Angeliki Papoulia as a woman who enlists the help of five men who don’t speak each other’s languages and embark on a trip around the Mediterranean.

“A film...

Cinema Guild has acquired North American distribution rights for Human Flowers of Flesh directed by Helena Wittmann (Drift).

The film premiered at the Locarno Film Festival and will make its U.S. bow at the New York Film Festival next week. A theatrical release is planned for 2023.

It follows Ida (Dogtooth’s Angeliki Papoulia), a woman sailing the Mediterranean Sea with a crew of men, none of whom speak the same language. In Marseille, where the French Foreign Legion is based, she become enamored with this fabled troop and sets off on a voyage to trace its route, leading to Corsica and finally to Sidi Bel Abbès, Algeria, the historical headquarters of the Legion. Along the way, boundaries blur as life at sea produces a special kind of mutual understanding.

“Helena Wittmann has a unique gift for crafting singular, richly sensorial cinematic experiences,” said Cinema Guild President Peter Kelly. “We...

Cinema Guild has acquired U.S. distribution rights to Juan Pablo González’s fiction feature debut Dos Estaciones, which won a special jury award for lead actor Teresa Sánchez’s performance when it premiered at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival.

The drama follows 50-year-old businesswoman María García (Sánchez), who owns Dos Estaciones—a once-majestic tequila factory now struggling to stay afloat. The factory is the final hold-over from generations of Mexican-owned tequila plants in the highlands of Jalisco, the rest having folded into foreign corporations. Once one of the wealthiest people in town, María knows her current financial situation is untenable. When a persistent plague and an unexpected flood cause irreversible damage, she is forced to do everything she can to save her community’s primary economy and source of pride.

Dos Estaciones was also an official selection of the True/False Film Festival, where González was honored with the True Vision Award,...

Juan Pablo González’s feature debut earned lead actor Teresa Sánchez special jury prize in January.

Cinema Guild has picked up all US rights to Juan Pablo González’s Sundance selection Dos Estaciones, which earned a special jury award for lead actor Teresa Sánchez’s performance earlier this year.

The feature directorial debut will screen in New Directors/New Films later this month and was also an official selection of True/False Film Festival, where González earned the True Vision Award.

Dos Estaciones follows 50-year-old businesswoman María García, the owner of the eponymous, Mexican-owned tequila factory with an illustrious past...

Cinema Guild has acquired U.S. rights to Cane Fire, an award-winning documentary from director Anthony Banua-Simon, with plans to release it in theaters across the U.S., beginning with a New York theatrical premiere at the Brooklyn Academy of Music on May 20.

The filmmaker’s deal with Cinema Guild also encompassed his short films Third Shift and Pure Flix and Chill: The David A.R. White Story, which will be released on the educational market.

Cane Fire examines the past and present of the Hawaiian island of Kaua’i, interweaving four generations of family history with accounts of numerous Hollywood productions shot there, along with troves of found footage to create a kaleidoscopic portrait of the economic and cultural forces that have cast indigenous and working-class residents as “extras” in their own story.

The film premiered at Hot Docs in 2020, subsequently going on to screen at the Indie Memphis Film Festival,...

Korean auteur Hong Sang-soo’s “In Front of Your Face” is assured of a release in the U.S. following a rights deal between sales agent Finecut and distributor the Cinema Guild.

“In Front of Your Face” will have its world premiere in competition in Cannes and plays late on the second week of the festival. But, with this counting as Hong’s 11th appearance in Cannes, buyers consider him to be a known quantity and several from key territories have been quick to jump in.

The film also sold to Providence Filmes for Brazil, Mimosa Films for Japan, Av-jet International for Taiwan and to New Wave Films for the U.K. and Ireland.

Hong, who is known for a minimalist style, a focus on female characters and oblique references to the media industry, unwraps a tale of a middle-aged woman who visits her sister in a high-rise apartment in Seoul.

South Korean auteur Hong Sangsoo’s latest feature In Front of Your Face, screening in the Cannes Premiere section, has started the festival’s market with a collection of key sales deals, including U.S. rights going to The Cinema Guild.

“Once again Hong has worked his magic and given us a film of extraordinary power through the simplest of means,” said Peter Kelly, president of The Cinema Guild.

Leading South Korean sales outfit Finecut is handling sales on the title in Cannes. Other territories sold include U.K. and Ireland (New Wave Films), Japan (Mimosa Films Inc.), Taiwan (Av-jet ...

First trip to Cannes for South Korean auteur since Claire’s Camera,The Day He Arrives in 2017.

Cinema Guild has picked up all US rights from Finecut to South Korean auteur Hong Sang-soo’s In Front Of Your Face ahead of its world premiere in the inaugural Cannes Premiere section.

The distributor has a set a 2022 launch for the drama, which marks Hong’s eleventh visit to the Croisette and stars Lee Hyeyoung, Cho Yunhee, and Kwon Haehyo.

In Front Of Your Face follows a former actress with a secret who returns to Seoul to live with her sister in...

Exclusive: Cinema Guild has acquired North American distribution rights to Rock Bottom Riser, a documentary that received a Special Mention from the Encounters jury at the 2021 Berlin Film Festival where it premiered earlier this month. It’s the first film by Fern Silva, who wrote, directed, and produced the documentary. Cinema Guild has slated it for a 35mm theatrical tour planned for 2022.

In the docu, Silva examines myriad encounters with an island world at sea. From the earliest voyagers who navigated by starlight to present-day astronomers scanning the cosmos for habitable planets, explorers have long made Hawaii the hub for their searching. Today, as lava continues to flow on the island, another crisis mounts as scientists plan to build the world’s largest telescope on Mauna Kea, Hawaii’s most sacred and revered mountain. The pic draws from subjects as seemingly disparate as the arrival of Christian missionaries and the...

Exclusive: Cinema Guild has secured the North American distribution rights to Expedition Content, a documentary that premiered in the Forum section at the 2020 Berlin International Film Festival and had its U.S. debut as part of Film at Lincoln Center’s Art of the Real. Directed by Ernst Karel and Veronika Kusumaryati, the doc will be released in theaters later this year.

Karel produced the film, which draws on audio recordings made by recent college graduate and Standard Oil heir Michael Rockefeller as part of the so-called Harvard-Peabody Expedition to Netherlands New Guinea in 1961 to study the indigenous Hubula (also known as Dani) people. It documents the strange encounter between the expedition and the Hubula people.

“With this film, Ernst and Veronika have created a movie-going experience unlike any other,” said Cinema Guild President Peter Kelly, who negotiated the acquisition deal with the film’s producers. “We’re excited for...

Distributor negotiated deal with Cercamon.

Cinema Guild has picked up North American rights to Berlin Encounters double prize-winner The Girl And The Spider.

Ramon Zürcher was named best director for the German-language film about friends and flatmates whose lives are thrown into disarray when one of them decides to move out.

Emerging talents Henriette Confurius and Liliane Amuat lead the ensemble cast and the film also won the Fipresci prize.

Silvan Zürcher wrote and produced The Girl And The Spider, the second film in the Swiss brothers’ trilogy about human bonding.

They previously worked on 2013 Berlinale premiere The Strange Little Cat.

Cinema Guild has acquired North American rights to Ramon Zürcher and Silvan Zürcher’s “The Girl and the Spider,” which world premiered at the Berlinale in the Encounters section, and won best director.

“The Girl and the Spider” was co-written and directed by Ramon Zürcher, and written and produced by Silvan Zürcher. It marks the Swiss brothers’ follow-up to their critically acclaimed feature debut “The Strange Little Cat,” which won the Fipresci prize at Berlin in 2013.

Like “The Strange Little Cat,” “The Girl and the Spider” explores human togetherness, the need for closeness and the pain of separation through the story of two roommates. The film revolves around Lisa (Liliane Amuat), who is moving out of the apartment she shared with Mara (Henriette Confurius), and is set within the two apartments, the one Lisa and Mara shared and the new one Lisa is moving into.

“We had high hopes for...

Cinema Guild has taken U.S. rights to Introduction, Hong Sangsoo’s latest feature that was selected in this year’s competition program at the Berlin International Film Festival.

The movie, Hong Sangsoo’s 25th as a director, follows Youngho (Shin Seokho): he goes to see his father who is tending to a famous patient; he surprises his girlfriend, Juwon (Park Miso), in Berlin where she is studying fashion design; he goes to a seaside hotel to meet his mother and brings his friend Jeongsoo (Ha Seongguk) with him. In each instance, he anticipates an important conversation. But sometimes a shared look, or a shared smoke, can mean as much as anything we could say to those close to us.

The film will screen at further festivals this year before receiving a theatrical release. The deal was negotiated by Peter Kelly of Cinema Guild with Youngjoo Suh, CEO of Finecut.

Following its premiere at the Berlin International Film Festival earlier this year, Cinema Guild has acquired all North American distribution rights to Joshua Bonnetta’s The Two Sights. Set to make its U.S. premiere next month as part of Film at Lincoln Center’s Art of the Real, the film will then open in theaters in 2021.

The first solo feature from Bonnetta, The Two Sights (An Dà Shealladh) explores the disappearing tradition of second sight in the Outer Hebrides of Scotland. As we listen to locals’ accounts of haunting experiences—phantom horses, ghost voices and other supernatural phenomena—Bonnetta connects their testimonies with striking 16mm images and a carefully-curated sonic montage of the physical and aural environment of these enchanted islands. The Two Sights is an ethnographic marvel of non-fiction filmmaking that thrills the eyes and ears and invites us into the extra-sensory beyond.

“We’re so excited to...

Updated: Simon & Schuster can move forward with plans to publish a tell-all book by President Donald Trump’s niece Mary Trump, as an appellate judge overturned a lower court ruling that had temporarily halted publication.

Her book, Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man, is scheduled to be released on July 28.

The judge, Alan D. Scheinkman, still left in place a restraining order against Mary Trump, but wrote that the order should not include Simon & Schuster as it was not a party to her non-disclosure agreement.

In 2001, Mary Trump had signed the confidentiality agreement as part of the settlement of the estate of her grandfather, Fred Trump Sr. When it as revealed last month that she was about to publish her book, Robert Trump, the president’s brother, went to court to stop it.

On Tuesday, a New York trial court judge,...

Acquisition marks seventh time company and director will have worked together.

Cinema Guild has picked up Us rights to Hong Sangsoo’s female-led drama The Woman Who Ran fresh off its best director Berlin Silver Bear win at the weekend.

The deal means Cinema Guild will have released seven films by the director, whose latest follows a woman who has three encounters with friends while her husband is on a business trip.

One is a divorcée who likes gardening, another harbours romantic thoughts about her neighbour while a young poet pursues her, and the third works for a cinema. Kim Minhee,...

Exclusive: Cinema Guild has acquired all U.S. distribution rights for Mehrdad Oskouei’s documentary Sunless Shadows, which made its world premiere as the opening night film at Idfa where it won the festival’s Best Directing prize. The film is set to make its U.S. Premiere on February 6 in New York as part of MoMA’s Doc Fortnight.

Sunless Shadows is the follow up to Oskouei’s critically acclaimed 2016 pic Starless Dreams and gives another look at the lives of teenage girls in an Iranian juvenile detention center. But this time the focus is narrowed: each of the film’s principal subjects is serving time for the murder of a male family member. One by one, Oskouei invites them to go into a room alone, push the red button on the camera and address their accomplices or their victims. With this new confessional approach combined with the ever-deepening...

Exclusive: Cinema Guild has acquired the U.S. rights to the Éric Baudelaire-directed Un Film Dramatique. The film will be released theatrically in the U.S. in 2020.

A refreshing approach to documentary filmmaking, Un Film Dramatique made its premiere at the Locarno Film Festival and went on to the Toronto Film Festival as well as the New York Film Festival this fall. Baudelaire also won the Prix Marcel Duchamp, France’s biggest art prize.

Commissioned as a dedicated artwork for the newly constructed Dora Maar middle school on the outskirts of Paris, Un Film Dramatique is a portrait that puts a spotlight on the first class to attend the school. Filmed over the course of four years, the group of 21 middle schoolers discuss the drama of their daily lives and experiment with cameras and equipment. The students are not only the film’s subjects but also its makers. The film...

Exclusive: Another Toronto Film Festival title has found distribution. Cinema Guild acquired U.S. distribution rights for the Kazik Radwanski-directed Anne at 13,000 ft. The film received an honorable mention from the Platform Prize jury at Toronto in September.

The picture will continue to play festivals before Cinema Guild releases it next year.

The film focuses on 27-year-old daycare worker Anne (Deragh Campbell) who has an epiphany while skydiving for her best friend Sara’s bachelorette party. Back on the ground, the pressures of her daily life threaten to overwhelm her. Her coworkers at the daycare center are constantly questioning the way she connects with the children. At Sara’s wedding, she meets a nice guy ((Matt Johnson) but she can’t help bringing him into ever-more-awkward social situations. As the stressful circumstances mount, Anne prepares for another jump.

“With Anne , Kazik Radwanski has given us an unforgettable film,” said Cinema Guild President Peter

Kelly.

In today’s film news roundup, Fathom Events has set a one-night showing to celebrate the 60th anniversary of “The Twilight Zone” and “Lazy Susan” and “Liberte” get distribution.

Anniversary Show

Fathom Events and CBS Home Entertainment have scheduled a Nov. 14 showing for “The Twilight Zone: A 60th Anniversary Celebration” at more than 600 North American cinemas.

The shows will combine digitally restored versions of six episodes with an all-new documentary short titled “Remembering Rod Serling” about the life, imagination and creativity of the show’s creator. It’s the first time that original episodes of the series, which ran from 1959 to 1964, have been presented on the big screen.

Fathom Events CEO Ray Nutt said, “‘The Twilight Zone’ has inspired many filmmakers and storytellers, so it is a great honor to be able to bring these classic stories to the big screen, and to offer such an incisive look into the...

In today’s film news roundup, Michael Moore gets a lifetime achievement award, “Hotel by the River” gets a domestic release, and “Dawn Wall” is set for a one-night re-release.

Lifetime Achievement

Michael Moore has been selected as the recipient of the Critics’ Choice Lifetime Achievement Award and will receive the honor at the third annual Critics’ Choice Documentary Awards.

The event will take place on Nov. 10 at Bric in Brooklyn with Bill Nye hosting. Moore’s “Fahrenheit 11/9” grossed $5.7 million in two weeks of release.

Broadcast Film Critics Association president Joey Berlin notes, “2018 has been hailed as ‘The Year of the Documentary’ and we are extremely proud to highlight the outstanding achievements in the Feature Documentary and TV/Streaming fields and give these creative filmmakers the proper recognition they deserve.”

The awards are determined by qualified members of the Broadcast Film Critics Association (Bfca) and the Broadcast Television Journalists Association...

Cinema Guild has closed North American rights on Chinese writer-director Qiu Sheng’s feature debut, “Suburban Birds,” a hit at August’s Locarno Film Festival.

Paris-based Luxbox, which is selling “Suburban Birds” with Flash Forward Entertainment, announced the deal.

“Director Sheng Qui is an exciting new voice in Chinese cinema that reflects on China’s rapid urbanization,” said Peter Kelly. director of distribution, Cinema Guild. The film juxtaposes stories: a structural surveyor investigating land subsidence on a ruined housing estate and a group of pre-teen friends roaming the same terrain in a blowsy summer, before disappearing one by one.

“Suburban Birds’” producer Patrick Mao Huang praised Cinema Guild for “constantly bringing to U.S. audiences unique voices from Asian auteurs like Hong Sangsoo, Tsai Ming-Liang Lav Diaz, Jia Zhang-ke and Nuri Bilge Ceylan.

Despite a filmography that includes over 20 features, it’s only been in recent years that prolific South Korean director Hong Sangsoo has gotten his due in terms of U.S. distribution. This can be greatly attributed to Cinema Guild, who have released all three of his 2017 features: On the Beach at Night Alone, Claire’s Camera, and The Day After. We’re thrilled to now exclusively announce that the company has picked up Grass following its premiere at the Berlin International Film Festival earlier this year. Set for a release in 2019, read their synopsis below.

For his 22nd feature as director, Hong delivers a delicious cinematic riddle only he could concoct. In the corner of a small café, Areum (Kim Minhee) sits typing on her laptop. At the tables around her, other customers enact the various dramas of their lives. A young couple charge each other with serious crimes, an...

Exclusive: Cinema Guild has acquired U.S. distribution rights to Hale County This Morning, This Evening, the Sundance-winning documentary from director and photographer RaMell Ross. The indie distributor is planning a 2018 theatrical release for the pic, which won a Special Jury Award for creative vision in Park City this year to start its festival run.

The film follows Daniel Collins and Quincy Bryant, two young African-American men from rural Hale County, Al, over the course of five years; Collins attends college in search of opportunity, while Bryant becomes a father to an energetic son. Ross, in his directorial debut, observes the interstices of their lives to create a collective image of a community.

Ross, Joslyn Barnes and Su Kim are producers, and Danny Glover, Susan Rockefeller, the Bertha Foundation and Field of Vision’s Laura Poitras & Charlotte Cook are exec producers.

“Hale County is a startlingly beautiful debut from RaMell Ross,...