Bleecker Street Buys Dan Stevens & Maren Eggert-Starring Berlinale Award Winner ‘I’m Your Man’

Leo Barraclough International Features EditorShout! Studios has acquired North American rights to the platonic love story “Language Lessons” from Duplass Brothers Productions, following a competitive bidding situation. The news comes on the heels of the movie’s world premiere at the Berlin Film Festival and its Audience Award win at the SXSW Film Festival.“Language Lessons” marks the feature directorial debut of Natalie Morales (“Dead to Me,” “Plan B”).

Shout! Studios has acquired North American rights to Language Lessons, the drama that marks the feature directing debut of Natalie Morales. She co-stars with Mark Duplass, who also penned the script. The pic, which had its world premiere at this year’s Berlin Film Festival and won an audience award at SXSW, will now hit theaters and additional platforms later this year as part of the deal that includes digital, VOD, broadcast, and home entertainment rights.

EXCLUSIVE: Fresh off its world premiere in the Berlin International Film Festival’s competition program, where it won the Silver Bear Jury Prize, Maria Speth’s feature documentary Mr Bachmann And His Class has sold into multiple territories.

Brent Lang Executive Editor of Film and MediaIFC Films has acquired U.S. rights to “The Beta Test,” a new digital-age thriller that was written, directed by and starring Jim Cummings and PJ McCabe.The film was an official selection for this year’s Berlin International Film Festival.

Bleecker Street has picked up the U.S. rights to Maria Schrader's I'm Your Man, which stars Dan Stevens and Maren Eggert and premiered in competition at the Berlin International Film Festival.

Leo Barraclough International Features EditorBleecker Street has acquired U.S. rights to Maria Schrader’s “I’m Your Man,” which won the Berlinale’s Silver Bear for leading performance for Maren Eggert.

Leo Barraclough International Features EditorAltered Innocence has picked up U.S. rights to Kateryna Gornostai’s debut feature film “Stop-Zemlia,” which just had its world premiere in the Generation 14plus section of the Berlin Film Festival.The film follows Masha, her two best friends, and the rest of their class through parties, field trips and romance in their last year of high school.

Mark Schilling Japan CorrespondentFollowing his win of the Silver Bear Grand Jury Prize at the recently concluded Berlin Film Festival for “Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy,” 42-year-old Hamaguchi Ryusuke suddenly finds himself catapulted to the directorial front ranks in his native Japan.It’s not that he’s exactly obscure there: Hamaguchi’s 2018 romantic drama “Asako I & II” was selected for the Cannes competition while his 2015 breakthrough, the five-hour-plus drama “Happy Hour,” won a group best

International buyers have jumped on Maria Schrader's I'm Your Man, and the Daniel Brühl-directed Next Door, both of which premiered in competition at the Berlin International Film Festival last week.

John Hopewell Chief International CorrespondentBerlin Grand Jury Prize winner “Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy,” Japanese writer-director Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s deft three-story reflection on chance, the legacy of love and the contrariness of erotic desire, has clinched further key territory sales for its sales agent M-Appeal World Sales.Fast on the footsteps of clinching the top Berlinale 2021 Silver Bear in March 5’s Berlin prize announcement, “Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy” this week closed Spain

Leo Barraclough International Features EditorBerlinale Competition entries from two actors turned directors, Maria Schrader and Daniel Brühl, were among titles on the Beta Cinema slate at the European Film Market to prove popular among international distributors.Schrader, an Emmy Award winner as the director of “Unorthodox,” premiered comic-tragic tale “I’m Your Man,” starring Dan Stevens (“Downton Abbey”), Maren Eggert (“I Was At Home, But…”) and Sandra Hueller (“Toni Erdmann”), at the virtual

Magnolia Pictures has acquired the North American rights to Berlin Golden Bear winner Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn by Romanian filmmaker Radu Jude. The satire follows a high school teacher struggling with the fallout of her sex tape leaking online.

Guy Lodge Film CriticNow in its 35th year, the Teddy Awards are among the Berlinale’s most affectionately regarded institutions.

Leo Barraclough International Features EditorSales agent M-Appeal has closed further territory deals for Japanese filmmaker Ryūsuke Hamaguchi’s “Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy,” which just won the Silver Bear Grand Jury Prize at the Berlin Film Festival.Benelux rights have gone to September Film, and StraDa Films has picked the film up in Greece. September Film plans to release the title theatrically post pandemic.

Naman Ramachandran The Berlin Film Festival’s Golden Bear for best film has been won by “Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn” (Babardeală cu bucluc sau porno balamuc), directed by Radu Jude and produced by Ada Solomon.The international jury, made up of former Golden Bear winners, includes Mohammad Rasoulof from Iran, Nadav Lapid from Israel, Adina Pintilie from Romania, Ildikó Enyedi from Hungary, Gianfranco Rosi from Italy and Jasmila Žbanić from Jasmila Zbanic from Bosnia and Herzegovina.More to

Not long into I'm Your Man, Dan Stevens' character, a genial android named Tom, arranges a perfectly contrived combination of romantic clichés for his would-be partner, Alma. The rose petals are "artfully" strewn, the candles flicker, and flutes of bubbly are ready for sipping beside the bubble-filled tub.

You have to wonder when she sleeps. The tireless Maria Schrader — fresh off an Emmy win as outstanding director of a limited series for Netflix's Unorthodox and another critically acclaimed turn in front of the camera as East German spy Lenora Rauch in Amazon's Deutschland 89 — somehow managed, during a pandemic, to shoot her fourth feature film.

Ed Meza @edmezavarPalestinian filmmaker Annemarie Jacir’s Gaza-set drama “The Oblivion Theory” has won the top prize at the Berlinale Co-Production Market.Presented by Paris-based Incognito Films and Berlin’s One Two Films, the film is based on José Eduardo Agualusa’s novel “A General Theory of Oblivion,” although the book’s story has been moved from Angola to Palestine during the First Intifada, the sustained protests by Palestinians against Israel occupation that lasted from 1987 to 1993.The

Emiliano Granada One thing’s clear from the 2021 Berlin Film Festival’s get-go:  Its Berlinale Series strand grows stronger every year, and features for the first time two Latin America series which underscore the creative excitement of the limited miniseries format.“The Last Days Of Gilda,” Gustavo Pizzi and star Karine Teles’ adaptation of the same-titled stage play by Rodrigo de Roure is in its style, a playful portrayal of a woman trapped in a political and social tsunami now storming