Sundance Prize Winner ‘Unbelievable Machine’ Sells Huge for Heretic, Picturehouse Takes U.Okay. Rights (EXCLUSIVE)

Heretic has closed a raft of offers on Sundance prize-winning documentary “And the King Mentioned, What a Unbelievable Machine,” with Picturehouse Leisure buying U.Okay. rights forward of the movie’s European premiere within the Technology 14plus strand on the Berlin Movie Competition.

The Athens-based outfit additionally closed offers for Italy (Teodora Movie), Benelux, (September Movie), Poland (Towards Gravity) and Czech Republic, the place the rights have been offered to arthouse distributor Aerofilms and the newly launched streaming platform KVIFF.TV, each a part of the KVIFF Group, a media conglomerate constructed across the Karlovy Differ Movie Competition. It’s the primary title acquired below the brand new partnership.

“Unbelievable Machine” may even be distributed on HBO channels and HBO Max in Czech Republic, Slovak Republic, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Moldova, Bulgaria and the previous Yugoslavia. The movie, which had its world premiere at Sundance within the World Cinema Documentary part, gained the pageant’s Particular Jury Award for Inventive Imaginative and prescient.

The debut characteristic from administrators Axel Danielson and Maximilien Van Aertryck, whose 2016 quick “Ten Meter Tower” was in competitors at Sundance and Berlin, “Unbelievable Machine” is a thought-provoking examination of humanity’s infatuation with itself, and with framing the world via the digital camera’s lens.

The filmmakers discover how humankind’s obsession with picture has grown to vary our conduct, have a look at the societal penalties stemming from the picture output of 45 billion cameras on the planet, and ask how humanity went from the picture of a yard to a multi-billion-euro content material trade in 200 years.

“We’re so excited to be engaged on this movie. It’s such an exciting experience, which in addition to being extremely thrilling throws up plenty of vital questions on the place we’ve got come from with our consumption of photographs and the place we at the moment are,” mentioned Picturehouse Leisure’s Clare Binns. “We’re completely enthusiastic about documentaries at Picturehouse Leisure, and having this glorious movie on our slate continues our nice work with documentary filmmakers with distinctive visions and interesting concepts.”

“A charming and provocative work on the paradox of photographs, with an enormous quantity of well-chosen archive footage,” added Teodora Movie’s Stefano Finesi. “In an excellent world, it could be screened in all faculties. We’re so thrilled to work with these proficient filmmakers and the fervour and dedication of the Heretic staff.”

“Unbelievable Machine” is produced by Plattform Produktion (Sweden) and co-produced with SVT, (Sweden), Movie i Väst and Bullitt Movie (Denmark), together with the help of Svenska Filminstitutet, Danish Movie Institute, Nordisk Movie & TV Fond, Arte G.E.I.E., Swedish Arts Council, Göteborg Municipality and See-By means of Movies.

“We’re thrilled that the movie is resonating with so many alternative territories,” mentioned Danielson and Van Aertryck. “We hope its message supporting ‘picture literacy’ will ring a bell with all audiences. We’re grateful to Ioanna Stais and the Heretic staff for championing our movie gross sales with such dedication.”

Heretic’s EFM slate consists of Palestinian filmmaker Muayad Alayan’s “A Home in Jerusalem,” which not too long ago had its world premiere on the Rotterdam Intl. Movie Competition; Yorgos Goussis’ “Magnetic Fields,” which was Greece’s official choice for this yr’s worldwide characteristic movie Oscar race; Valentina Maurel’s debut “I Have Electrical Desires,” which gained three awards at Locarno and the highest prize of the Horizontes Latinos part of San Sebastian; and Toronto-premiered “Runner” by Marian Mathias, which gained the Jury Prize Award at San Sebastian.