National Geographic Docu Films Acquires Sundance Film ‘The Territory’

Elsa Keslassy International CorrespondentMK2 Films, the banner behind Joachim Trier’s Oscar-nominated “The Worst Person in the World,” has boarded “Nezouh,” from Syrian director Soudade Kaadan.The drama, set against the backdrop of the conflict in Damascus, marks Kaadan’s follow up to her 2018 feature debut, “The Day I Lost My Shadow,” which won the Lion of the Future prize at Venice. Her 2019 short “Aziza,” meanwhile, won the Sundance Grand Jury Prize.Co-financed by BFI, which awarded National Lottery funding, and Film4, “Nezouh” is an allegorical tale of female emancipation.The movie follows 14-year-old Zeina and her family, whose lives are shaken after a bomb rips a giant hole in the roof of their building, exposing them to the outside world.

EXCLUSIVE: Uri Singer and Aimee Peyronnet are teaming to acquire two works from the estate of French author Pierre Boulle, who wrote the novels The Planet of the Apes and The Bridge Over the River Kwai, which both were turned into iconic Hollywood movies.

J. Kim Murphy National Geographic is sending Will Smith to both ends of the Earth.

EXCLUSIVE: Samuel Goldwyn Films has acquired U.S. rights to Iervolino & Lady Bacardi Entertainment’s family film Dakota, starring Abbie Cornish (Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri), Lola Sultan (Netflix’s Yes Day), William Baldwin (Backdraft), Patrick Muldoon (The Comeback Trail) and Tim Rozon (Surreal Estate), for release in limited theaters beginning April 1, with a platformed theatrical rollout to follow.

In his review of the film, TheWrap’s Steve Pond wrote “‘Nothing Compares’ is a movie that is both timely and curiously out of time. It’s a potent film that explores the roots of the brilliant but troubled Irish singer, who’s been back in the news recently with the suicide of her teenage son and her own hospitalization, but it also turns her recent years into an afterthought, bypassing many of the highs and lows that led her here over the last two decades.”“Nothing Compares” is produced by Eleanor Emptage and Michael Mallie for Tara Films (UK) and Ard Mhacha Productions (Ireland), and presented by Field of Vision.

AMC+ and RLJE Films have acquired worldwide rights to the holiday comedy Christmas with the Campbells, starring Brittany Snow (Pitch Perfect franchise), Justin Long (He’s Just Not That Into You), Alex Moffat (Saturday Night Live), Julia Duffy (Newhart), George Wendt (Cheers) and JoAnna Garcia Swisher (Sweet Magnolias). The film produced by Vince Vaughn’s Wild West Picture Show will simultaneously hit theaters and AMC+ in the U.S. in late fall.

Dispatches from the Sundance Film Festival are usually accompanied by descriptions of the looming mountains, snowy premieres and frantic bus shuttles. This year's Sundance, which played out entirely virtually due to the COVID-19 surge driven by the omicron variant, meant less evocative screening circumstances: Laptops, digital links and Zooms.But even in reduced form, the films were often hypnotic, thrilling and urgent.

Sigh. We were oh-so close to spotting Kanye West stomping around in snow boots on Main Street. But just a few weeks before the Sundance Film Festival was scheduled to kick off in Park City, Utah, plans got scrapped because of you-know-what. Long gone are the days of celebrities popping into random screenings — fun fact: I once caught James Franco dozing off during a documentary about Scientology — and rationalizing a meal of popcorn and diet Coke for breakfast and chatting to strangers on the local bus about the cool new movie you saw.

Production company MUBI has acquired Julie Ha and Eugene Yi’s documentary “Free Chol Soo Lee” that premiered last week at Sundance, the company said in a release.The film has been acquired for North America, UK, Ireland, Latin America, German, Austria, Italy and Turkey and will release theatrically in 2022 in the U.S., with plans for other regions coming later.The documentary is about a movement in the 1970s in San Francisco, where a 20-year-old Korean immigrant Chol Soo Lee gets racially profiled and convicted of a Chinatown gang murder. Lee is sentenced to life and fights to survive until a journalist takes up his case and ignites a social justice movement in the Asian American community.

Michelle Williams and Heath Ledger have inspired one of the new films at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival.

Wyatte Grantham-Philips editor“Free Chol Soo Lee” has been acquired by global distributor, streamer and production company MUBI.The documentary, which premiered last week at the Sundance Film Festival, will come to U.S. theaters in 2022, with release plans in other territories (Latin America, Ireland, Germany, Austria, Italy, Turkey, the U.K.

Angelique Jackson Netflix has acquired worldwide rights to the Sundance award-winning documentary “Descendant,” by filmmaker Margaret Brown (“The Order of Myths,” “Be Here to Love Me: Townes Van Zandt,” “The Great Invisible”). Higher Ground, President Barack Obama and Michelle Obama’s production company, will present the Participant feature alongside Netflix later this year.The film follows members of Africatown, a small community in Alabama, as they share their personal stories and community history as descendants of the Clotilda, the last known ship carrying enslaved Africans to the United States.

Angelique Jackson Showtime Documentary Films has acquired “2nd Chance,” about the life and legacy of Richard Davis, from director and Oscar-nominated screenwriter Ramin Bahrani (“The White Tiger,” “99 Homes,” “Chop Shop”).The feature length-documentary centers on Davis, the charming and brash inventor of the modern-day bulletproof vest, who shot himself 192 times to prove his product worked.Written, directed, and produced by Bahrani, “2nd Chance” is produced by Daniel Turcan & Johnny Galvin of Vespucci, Charles Dorfman and Jacob Grodnik. The film is executive produced by Oscar-nominated filmmaker Joshua Oppenheimer (“The Act of Killing,” “The Look of Silence”), Myles Estey, Bahareh Azimi and Marlon Vogelgesang.

The Sundance Film Festival is revealing award winners for its 2022 edition on Friday afternoon beginning at 2 p.m. PT. Like the rest of this year’s festival, which was forced to go all-virtual because of the recent Omicron surge, the awards ceremony is playing out on Twitter.

IFC Films and Shudder have taken North American rights to Andrew Semans’ psychological thriller Resurrection starring Rebecca Hall, Tim Roth, Grace Kaufman and Michael Esper.

RLJE Films last night acquired U.S. rights to Riley Stearns’ thriller Dual in a competitive bidding situation, striking a low-mid seven figure deal for the film, which recently premiered in U.S. Dramatic Competition at the Sundance Film Festival.

As you’ve hopefully heard by now, and read our review, the Sundance film, “Something In The Dirt” is a big hit. From filmmakers Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead, who I like to describe as DIY versions of Christopher Nolan—that is to say ambitious, cerebral, complex sci-fi, horror, and genre films, but done on a lo-fi scale—“Something In The Dirt” is a swirl of all their previous heady, high-concept ideas, but with a big dose of humor and a deep look at the world of phenomenon, conspiracy theories and even pareidolia or apophenia (essentially the phenomenon of seeing patterns, consistencies and correlations of things that just aren’t there).

The film follows — and is partially filmed by — the indigenous Uru-eu-wau-wau of the Amazon rainforest, who fight desperately against escalating deforestation by illegal loggers and non-native farmers emboldened by the far-right policies of Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro. Shot over three years, the film includes footage taken by the native activists themselves as they seek to expose the truth.

Owen Gleiberman Chief Film CriticHe’s a cha cha real smooth talker. He’s 22, tall and handsome with a beard, but not a scruffy hipster beard — more like a post-millennial, post-ironic traditional beard, which sets off features that are finely chiseled in a Middle American corporate way. (When he grins, he looks like Donny Osmond.) He’s just out of college but has no idea what he wants to do.

Brent Lang Executive Editor of Film and MediaNational Geographic Documentary Films has won out in a fierce bidding war for the rights to “Fire of Love,” a documentary and love story about two French scientists who died tracking the volcanoes that were their greatest passion. It’s the first big pact of this year’s virtual Sundance, a festival that has been rather slow-going in terms of dealmaking.Netflix, Amazon, Sony Pictures Classics, Paramount and several other players were in the hunt for the film at various points.