The New York arthouse specialist is launching a stand-alone SVOD with hundreds of titles from its back catalog.
The New York arthouse specialist is launching a stand-alone SVOD with hundreds of titles from its back catalog.
New York arthouse distributor Kino Lorber is expanding its streaming service, Kino Film Collection, currently available on Amazon Prime, to include a stand-alone SVOD which will feature hundreds of titles from its extensive back catalog, including features from the likes of Yorgos Lanthimos, Jia Zhangke, and Ken Loach.
Kino Lorber announced the new service timed to start of this year’s Cannes film festival. The stand-alone SVOD, available to subscribers for $5.99 a month, includes several Cannes highlights from years past, including Kaouther Ben Hania’s Oscar-nominated documentary Four Daughters and Thien An Pham-directed drama Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell, both winners of the Camera d’Or prize on the Croisette last year; Loach’s Sorry We Missed You, a 2019 competition title; and Palme d’Or winners Winter Sleep (2014) from Nuri Bilge Ceylan and Underground (1995) from Emir Kusturica.
“Cannes and the Kino Film Collection are so intertwined because we share a love and appreciation of great films, and we’re very proud to feature so many works that first screened at Cannes among our Collection of the classics of tomorrow and the best of cinema past,” said Kino Lorber Chairman and CEO Richard Lorber.
Highlights range from Robert Wiene’s 1920 German expressionist classic The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari to Jia Zhangke’s 2015 feature Mountains May Depart, to Yorgos Lanthimos’ sophomore feature Kinetta from 2005.
“It’s been gratifying to see how audiences have enthusiastically embraced our channel on Amazon Prime Video. We’ve been encouraged by the passion, loyalty and curiosity of our subscribers,” said Lisa Schwartz, Chief Revenue Officer, Kino Lorber, on launching the new SVOD service. “The expansion to direct to consumer is the next natural, and important, step for us as we continue to ensure the Kino Film Collection is a bastion of film curation for new release and catalog films as well as film preservation.”
Last November, Kino Lorber launched Kino Film Collection on Amazon’s prime video channels. That service will continue to run alongside the new SVOD service as well as the Kino Lorber-owned series streamer MHz Choice. Lorber has been one of the leading independent art house distributors in the U.S. for more than 45 years and releases around 35 theatrical titles annually. It boasts an impressive rights library of more than 4,000 titles.