Sundance Sale: IFC Films, Shudder Buys Chloe Okuno’s Thriller ‘Watcher’

EXCLUSIVE: IFC Films has acquired North American rights to Julian Higgins’ feature directorial debut God’s Country, starring BAFTA and Emmy winner Thandiwe Newton (Westworld, Crash), on the heels of its debut at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival. It will release the film won in a bidding war in theaters this fall.

Anna Marie de la Fuente It’s a new dawn for Chile’s audiovisual industry. When Gabriel Boric, Chile’s youngest (at 35) and most left-leaning president since Salvador Allende, was elected in December, his pledge to more than double the state’s contribution to the arts was greeted with great fanfare.  After all, Chile’s prodigious film output this past decade has been remarkable despite the scant public support it has received. “If everything we have achieved in the last 10 years was done with so little money, imagine what we can achieve with an increase in audiovisual funding!” says Constanza Arena, executive director of Chile’s film promotion org, CinemaChile.In recent years, Chile has triumphed at the Oscars, starting when Pablo Larraín’s “No” was nominated for international feature in 2012, and culminating in an Oscar win for Sebastian Lelio’s “A Fantastic Woman” in 2017.

Anna Marie de la Fuente It’s a new dawn for Chile’s audiovisual industry. When Gabriel Boric, Chile’s youngest (at 35) and most left-leaning president since Salvador Allende, was elected in December, his pledge to more than double the state’s contribution to the arts was greeted with great fanfare.After all, Chile’s prodigious film output this past decade has been remarkable despite the scant public support it has received.“If everything we have achieved in the last 10 years was done with so little money, imagine what we can achieve with an increase in audiovisual funding!” says Constanza Arena, executive director of Chile’s film promotion org, CinemaChile.In recent years, Chile has triumphed at the Oscars, starting when Pablo Larraín’s “No” was nominated for international feature in 2012, and culminating in an Oscar win for Sebastian Lelio’s “A Fantastic Woman” in 2017.

Brent Lang Executive Editor of Film and MediaScreen Media has acquired North American rights to “9 Bullets,” a new crime thriller with “Game of Thrones” star Lena Headey and “Avatar’s” Sam Worthington. The studio is planning a day-and-date release in April. “9 Bullets” centers on a showgirl (Headey), who risks everything when she rescues a young boy after his family is murdered by her ex-boyfriend, who also happens to be the local crime-boss (Worthington).

EXCLUSIVE: Bounce has ordered a sixth and final season of the hit original drama series Saints & Sinners. The eight-episode final season will premiere with the first episode Sunday, April 3 at 8 PM ET on Bounce, with the remaining seven episodes airing weekly thereafter, the network said Wednesday.

EXCLUSIVE: IFC is closing a deal on the Sundance buzz title Watcher, Deadline hears. The Chloe Okuno-directed thriller stars Maika Monroe, Burn Gorman and Karl Glusman.

Directed by Paula Eislet and Tonya Lewis Lee (Spike Lee’s producer and partner), the documentary “Aftershock” chronicles the dismal maternal mortality rate that women of color face in the United States medical system. The statistics are shameful, pointing to a systemic racist indifference, and the documentary chronicles the staggering number of times that expectant mothers entering into hospitals simply do not come out alive due to a lack of care and sensitivity.

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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.

Brent Lang Executive Editor of Film and MediaIFC Films and Shudder has acquired North American rights to psychological thriller “Resurrection” following its world premiere at this year’s Sundance Film Festival. The film stars Rebecca Hall as Margaret, a woman who balances the demands of a busy career and single parenthood. Her carefully constructed life is upended when an unwelcome shadow from her past, David (Tim Roth) returns, forcing her to confront the monster she’s evaded for two decades.“Resurrection” was written and directed by Andrew Semans (“Nancy, Please”) and co-stars Grace Kaufman and Michael Esper.

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.

poisoned Russian dissident Alexei Navalny premiered at the Sundance Film Festival on Tuesday. Called “Navalny,” it’s a no-holds-barred indictment of Russian President Vladimir Putin and the Kremlin, and insists that Navalny’s close brush with death was the result of a secret state-run operation to assassinate him.“As I became more and more famous guy, I was totally sure that my life became safer and safer because I am kind of famous guy — and it will be problematic for them just to kill me,” Navalny, 45, says in the film. “I was very wrong.” The doc, heading to HBO Max, was added at the last minute to the Sundance slate just as Putin had stationed more than 100,000 troops along the Ukrainian border.

At first glance, actor-writer-director Cooper Raiff’s “Cha Cha Real Smooth” might look like your typical cutesy and whimsical Sundance dramedy, about a twenty-something college graduate learning a valuable life lesson and experiencing a bit of a delayed coming of age. While that’s not an inaccurate description of Raiff’s disarmingly lovely film (programmed in this year’s US Dramatic Competition), what feels miraculous about “Cha Cha” is: it doesn’t come with even an ounce of that cringe-inducing Sundance fancifulness, a brand that many love to hate.

EXCLUSIVE: Living, one of the Sundance buzz titles since its January 21 premiere, has been acquired by Sony Pictures Classics for around $5 million for North American and some international territories, Deadline hears. This after a brisk auction involving the likes of Neon, Bleecker Street, and Focus Features.

EXCLUSIVE: Living, one of the Sundance buzz titles since its January 21 premiere, is near a deal to be acquired by Sony Pictures Classics for around $5 million for North American and some international territories, Deadline hears. This after a brisk auction involving the likes of Neon, Bleecker Street, and Focus Features.

The 2022 Sundance Film Festival obviously has so much to offer. Big premieres from indie auteurs, world cinema, documentaries, films for kids, and movies that are receiving so much acclaim right now, you’ll be hearing more from them later in the year upon regular theatrical release.

Addie Morfoot ContributorThis year at the Sundance Film Festival, three feature documentaries — Paula Eiselt and Tonya Lewis Lee’s “Aftershock,” Reid Davenport’s “I Didn’t See You There” and Isabel Castro’s “Mija” — share in common a $10,000 grant provided by the Points North Institute and CNN Films’ American Stories Documentary Fund.Launched in 2020, the fund underwritten by CNN has dispensed a total of $100,000 in grants to emerging U.S. filmmakers working on 10 documentary projects that highlight pivotal moments in America. Eiselt and Lewis Lee’s “Aftershock,” and Davenport’s “I Didn’t See You There” are two of nine films in the Sundance U.S.

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.