By MCN Editor editor@moviecitynews.com

KINO LORBER ACQUIRES “ELLES” STARRING JULIETTE BINOCHE FROM MEMENTO FILMS AFTER TORONTO PREMIERE

Posted Thursday, September 22nd, 2011 - Comments Off on KINO LORBER ACQUIRES “ELLES” STARRING JULIETTE BINOCHE FROM MEMENTO FILMS AFTER TORONTO PREMIERE
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Provocative exploration of female sexuality, with an astonishing performance by Binoche, set to open nationally in early 2012

New York, NY – September 23, 2011 – Kino Lorber is proud to announce the acquisition of all US rights to Elles (2011), a film starring Academy Award Winner Juliette Binoche (The English Patient, Blue) and newcomers Joanna Kulig and Anaïs Demoustier.

The deal was negotiated between Kino Lorber’s President & CEO Richard Lorber, and Tanja Meissner, the Head of International Sales & Acquistions of Paris-based Memento Films International (memento-films.com), days after the film premiered at the 2011 edition of the Toronto Film Festival.

Juliette Binoche in Elles (2011)

One of the most eagerly anticipated and talked about films at this year’s Toronto Festival, Kino Lorber expects to release the film in early 2012, with a New York theatrical premiere yet to be scheduled. The company is confident that Elles is going to be a strong performer not only in theaters, but also on VOD, DVD/Blu-ray, and Cable.

Directed by Polish filmmaker and Toronto veteran Malgoska Szumowska (Happy Man, 33 Scenes From Life), and written by Tine Byrckel, a psychoanalyst and screenwriter, Elles tells the story of Anne (Juliette Binoche), a well-off, Paris-based mother of two who works as an investigative journalist for ELLE Magazine.

As Anne discovers the world of student prostitution and begins to get close to Alicja (Joanna Kulig) and Charlotte (Anaïs Demoustier), two young women who finance their studies by moonlighting as sex workers, she begins to question her most intimate convictions about money, family, sex and her own identity.

Memento’s Tanja Meissner commented:”We are elated to represent Elles, a film that makes no concessions by a very talented young Polish director who is a progeny of the post-Kieslowski generation. We are equally as proud that Juliette took this role, one that is one of her best and most daring performances to date. We were impressed with the Kino Lorber Team’s enthusiastic response to the movie and believe they will offer the film the platform it warrants.”

Kino Lorber’s Richard Lorber added: “It’s a great pleasure to be working again with Memento and especially on a film such as Elles, that so thoughtfully challenges the taboos of narrative cinema and brings to screen what may be Juliette Binoche’s greatest performance ever.”

Strengthening its relationship with Memento, Kino Lorber also acquired US and Canadian rights to the French drama The Giants (2011), directed by Bouli Lanners (Eldorado), and to the Thai existential actioner Headshot (2011) by the acclaimed Pen-ek Ratanaruang (Last Life in the Universe, 6ixtynin9).

The Giants premiered at this year’s Cannes film festival in Director’s Fortnight and Headshot premiered at the Vanguard Section of this year’s Toronto Film Festival. Kino Lorber will offer both films to audiences across the U.S. and Canada with theatrical releases in 2012, followed by wide distribution via digital media and home video.

CLICK HERE FOR A RECENT INTERVIEW WITH MS. BINOCHE ABOUT ELLES

About Kino Lorber:

With a library of 700 titles, Kino Lorber Inc. has been a leader in independent distribution for over 30 years and releases over 20 films per year theatrically under its Kino Lorber, Kino Classics and Alive Mind Cinema banners. In addition, the Company brings over 60 titles each year to the home entertainment market with DVD and Blu-ray releases and digital distribution on over 15 internet platforms and VOD services.

Currently in theaters, is Lech Majewski’s ambitious filmic realization of a Pieter Bruegel painting, The Mill and The Cross, starring Rutger Hauer, Charlotte Rampling and Michael York. Upcoming releases are the acclaimed fiction-film debut of documentary filmmaker Sergei Loznitsa, My Joy; Cyril Tuschi’s documentary Khodorkovsky, about the controversial and imprisoned Russian oligarch; and Charlotte Rampling: The Look an intimate portrait of the life, loves and film career of this iconic actress.

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It shows how out of it I was in trying to be in it, acknowledging that I was out of it to myself, and then thinking, “Okay, how do I stop being out of it? Well, I get some legitimate illogical narrative ideas” — some novel, you know?

So I decided on three writers that I might be able to option their material and get some producer, or myself as producer, and then get some writer to do a screenplay on it, and maybe make a movie.

And so the three projects were “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep,” “Naked Lunch” and a collection of Bukowski. Which, in 1975, forget it — I mean, that was nuts. Hollywood would not touch any of that, but I was looking for something commercial, and I thought that all of these things were coming.

There would be no Blade Runner if there was no Ray Bradbury. I couldn’t find Philip K. Dick. His agent didn’t even know where he was. And so I gave up.

I was walking down the street and I ran into Bradbury — he directed a play that I was going to do as an actor, so we know each other, but he yelled “hi” — and I’d forgot who he was.

So at my girlfriend Barbara Hershey’s urging — I was with her at that moment — she said, “Talk to him! That guy really wants to talk to you,” and I said “No, fuck him,” and keep walking.

But then I did, and then I realized who it was, and I thought, “Wait, he’s in that realm, maybe he knows Philip K. Dick.” I said, “You know a guy named—” “Yeah, sure — you want his phone number?”

My friend paid my rent for a year while I wrote, because it turned out we couldn’t get a writer. My friends kept on me about, well, if you can’t get a writer, then you write.”
~ Hampton Fancher

“That was the most disappointing thing to me in how this thing was played. Is that I’m on the phone with you now, after all that’s been said, and the fundamental distinction between what James is dealing with in these other cases is not actually brought to the fore. The fundamental difference is that James Franco didn’t seek to use his position to have sex with anyone. There’s not a case of that. He wasn’t using his position or status to try to solicit a sexual favor from anyone. If he had — if that were what the accusation involved — the show would not have gone on. We would have folded up shop and we would have not completed the show. Because then it would have been the same as Harvey Weinstein, or Les Moonves, or any of these cases that are fundamental to this new paradigm. Did you not notice that? Why did you not notice that? Is that not something notable to say, journalistically? Because nobody could find the voice to say it. I’m not just being rhetorical. Why is it that you and the other critics, none of you could find the voice to say, “You know, it’s not this, it’s that”? Because — let me go on and speak further to this. If you go back to the L.A. Times piece, that’s what it lacked. That’s what they were not able to deliver. The one example in the five that involved an issue of a sexual act was between James and a woman he was dating, who he was not working with. There was no professional dynamic in any capacity.

~ David Simon