Gravitas Ventures Acquires ‘Insight’ & ‘One And The Same’; Cleopatra Entertainment Lands ‘Baphomet’ – Film Briefs

Leo Barraclough International Features EditorMagnolia Pictures has acquired North American rights to “Censor,” which had its world premiere at Sundance Film Festival opening the Midnight Section, and will also be part of the Berlinale Panorama section in March.

Elsa Keslassy International CorrespondentWide has acquired international sales rights to Joe Duca’s road movie “Her Name Was Jo” in the run up to the European Film Market. North American rights are being handled by Gravitas Ventures for cable, VOD, SVOD and all digital platforms.Duca’s sophomore feature stars newcomer Mary Cate Williams as Jo, a 10-year-old girl who spends her days along the Shenandoah River in Virginia with her best friend Selma.

Gravitas Ventures has snapped up the North American rights to Say Your Prayers, directed by Harry Michell and starring Harry Melling, Tom Brooke, Derek Jacobi, Roger Allam, Anna Maxwell Martin and Vinette Robinson. A theatrical and on-demand release on April 2, 2021 is planned.

EXCLUSIVE:  IFC Films has picked up North American rights to Robert Connolly’s atmospheric mystery thriller The Dry, starring Eric Bana. A May 21 theatrical and on-demand release date is planned for the Made Up Stories feature. The pic is the actor’s first Australian film in over a decade.

Teamed with Barack and Michelle Obama’s Higher Ground, Netflix has acquired North American and other territorial rights to Worth, the Sara Colangelo-directed adaptation of the Kenneth Feinberg memoir What Is Life Worth. Feinberg, who is played by Michael Keaton in the film, was appointed Special Master of the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund.

Theo Anthony’s documentary All Light, Everywhere, which took home the Special Jury Prize for Non-Fiction Experimentation at the Sundance Film Festival, has been picked by NEON’s boutique division SUPER LTD. The distributor has taken the pic’s North American rights.

EXCLUSIVE: Samuel Goldwyn Film announced today that it has acquired North American rights to Casimir Nozkowski’s first feature film, The Outside Story. The film, starring Brian Tyree Henry, Sonequa Martin-Green, Sunita Mani and Olivia Edward, will premiere on-demand and digital on Apr. 30, 2021.

IFC Films has picked up the North American rights to Gia Coppola’s romantic drama Mainstream, starring Andrew Garfield and Maya Hawke as outsiders who become unlikely social media celebrities. Coppola's sophomore feature after her directorial debut Pala Alto had its world premiere at Venice in 2020 and is set for a May 7, 2021 release in theaters and on demand.

Frank Moreno, who was known for screening films at Cannes for Roger Corman’s New World Pictures to purchase and distribute in the United States in the 1970s and 1980s, died Wednesday in Florida. He was 82 and died after a brief battle with cancer, according to his daughter.

Gravitas Ventures has acquired North American rights to Alex Noyer’s slasher pic Sound of Violence, which is set to make its world premiere at this year’s SXSW Film Festival in March. Gravitas will release the film in theaters and on demand on May 21.

PBS’s Frontline has acquired a 9/11 documentary from Leaving Neverland director Dan Reed after the film was originally commissioned by UK broadcaster Channel 4.

EXCLUSIVE: Gravitas Ventures, a Red Arrow Studios company, has acquired North American rights to distribute writer/director Juan Martinez Vera’s Spiked. The pic will be produced by Per Melita. Aidan Quinn, Deirdre Lovejoy, Carlos Gomez, Danay Garcia, Wendy Makkena, Lovensky Jean-Baptiste, Walter Belenky. Sal Lopez, and Christopher Rich star in this indie feature drama. Joe Soldwedel and Brett Soldwedel serve as executive producers.

EXCLUSIVE: Kino Lorber has acquired North American rights to the Chris McKim-directed documentary Wojnarowicz which is also known for its full, and for some, controversial title, Wojnarowicz: F**k You F*ggot F*cker. The documentary which spotlights the artist and activist David Wojnarowicz is produced by Randy Barbato, Fenton Bailey for WOW Docs and by McKim for Hobo Camp Films and will have a theatrical release on March 19 followed by VOD release on Kino Now and home video.

Vertical Entertainment has acquired North American rights to Feral State, written and directed by Jon Carlo (First We Take Brooklyn) and starring AnnaLynne McCord and Ronnie Gene Blevins. The indie thriller, which wrapped shooting late last year, will now get a theatrical release in May along with its digital bow.

EXCLUSIVE: IFC Films has acquired North American rights to Argyris Papadimitropoulos’ latest feature Monday, a sizzling romance that stars Sebastian Stan (Avengers Endgame and I, Tonya) and Denise Gough (Colette).

Samuel Goldwyn Films has acquired North American rights to Tarzan and Arab Nasser’s Gaza Mon Amour, Palestine’s official submission for Best International Feature at the 93rd Academy Awards. The film will be released later this year.

EXCLUSIVE: Greenwich Entertainment has secured the North American distribution rights to Us Kids, the Kim A. Snyder-directed documentary, which chronicles the March For Our Lives student-led movement that was sparked by the plague of gun violence ravaging their schools. It premiered at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival and will be released in theaters and on digital platforms on April 9, shortly after the three-year anniversary of March For Our Lives.

IFC Films has acquired the North American rights to “Holler,” a coming-of-age drama starring Jessica Barden (“End of the F***ing World”) that premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2020.Nicole Riegel made her directorial debut on “Holler,” which also stars Gus Halper, Pamela Adlon, Becky Ann Baker and Austin Amelio and is executive produced by Paul Feig.IFC Films plans to release “Holler” in June 2021.

Electronic Arts (EA) has announced its intentions to publish at least one racing game a year after its acquisition of Codemasters goes through.In a presentation that accompanied the release of the company’s Q3 financial results today (February 2), EA noted that the pending US$1.2billion acquisition of Codemasters would make it “a global leader in racing entertainment” and would “enable EA to release new racing experiences annually”.EA CEO Andrew Wilson shared later reiterated their commitment to