Greenwich Entertainment Acquires Sundance Documentary ‘Us Kids’

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.

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.

Video: Grammys 2019: Dolly Parton and Miley Cyrus sing 'Jolene' duet (The Independent)Val Demings suggests rioters had 'inside assistance' during Capitol attackBiden says Trump shouldn’t get intelligence briefings due to ‘erratic behavior’England lift 2020 Six Nations trophyTom Brady plays in his 10th Super Bowl at 43 and wants to keep goingJoe Biden delivers speech on US economyTrump is unfit to lead a divided America, says Republican senator Ben SasseFormer chief prosecutor says he will seek

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.

Polin Cohanne, an entertainment attorney who represented Martin and Charlie Sheen, the TV talent show Star Search and Aaron Spelling Productions, has died. She was 70.

Gravitas Ventures has picked up the North American rights for a day-and-date release of Insight, an action film produced and directed by Livi Zheng. Ken Zheng wrote the screenplay and stars alongside Madeline Zima, Sean Patrick Flanery, John Savage, Adam Huss, Tony Todd, and Keith David.

What does dismantling the American carceral state look like? How can meaningful and radical police reform actually be enacted? After years of tireless work by activists, acting upon decades of injustice against the poor and People of Color, these issues of now part of mainstream political platforms.

Curious is the current emphasis on women’s trauma in American genre film—the way it’s discussed online, marketed, singled out in the headlines—as if trauma were not already deeply embedded in the historical fabric of horror movies. Of course, in a time when more women filmmakers than ever are being given the opportunity to tell their stories, the rise of feminist horror should come as no surprise, especially given the #MeToo phenomenon and efforts to destigmatize mental illness.

13-year-old Sammy Ko (Miya Cech) is a problem child. Prone to skipping class, smoking cigarettes, and mouthing off to her teachers, she’s the opposite of the meek model student Hollywood typically imagines when writing young Asian-American characters.

Neon has picked up Jamila Wignot’s documentary Ailey, about dance and choreography legend Alvin Ailey, after its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival. The deal is Neon's second at Sundance after it nabbed the North American rights to Flee, an animated doc from Jonas Poher Rasmussen that counts Riz Ahmed and Nikolaj Coster-Waldau as executive producers.

Outside episodic television, adult animation is seldom procured at studios in the U.S. Still, the medium has found stateside keepers of mature content among independent creators.