By Ray Pride Pride@moviecitynews.com

SONY PICTURES CLASSICS ACQUIRES THE PATIENCE STONE

Posted Sunday, September 16th, 2012 - Comments Off on SONY PICTURES CLASSICS ACQUIRES THE PATIENCE STONE
Be Sociable, Share!

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE                                          

NEW YORK (September 16, 2012) – Sony Pictures Classics announced today that they have acquired U.S. rights to THE PATIENCE STONE.  The film, adapted from the award-winning novel of the same name (winner of the 2008 Prix Goncourt), is directed by Atiq Rahimi (EARTH AND ASHES).  The film recently showed at the Toronto International Film Festival and will be released in 2013.

THE PATIENCE STONE is Rahimi’s second fiction feature.  The film features a tour de force performance by Golshifteh Farahani who starred in Asghar Farhadi’s ABOUT ELLY, Marjane Satrapi’s CHICKEN WITH PLUMS and BODY OF LIES.

 

The film was produced by Michael Gentile and co-produced by Studio 37, Corniche Pictures and Razor Films. THE PATIENCE STONE marks Sony Pictures Classics’ second acquisition with Razor Films this year.

 

THE PATIENCE STONE was acquired from Paris based Le Pacte and the deal was negotiated by their Head of Sales Camille Neel.

 

THE PATIENCE STONE is a moving and poetic film featuring a powerful and mesmerizing performance by Golshifteh Farahani, who plays a soft-spoken woman in an unnamed, war-torn Middle Eastern country. As war rages around her, her husband lies in a coma and she is forced to send her two children to live with her aunt, she struggles to keep her husband alive. After falling into a relationship with a young soldier, she begins a secret dialogue with her ailing husband as a means of freeing herself.

 

“Like A Separation last year this movie knocks you out on a very human level. Atiq Rahimi tells a fresh story that we’ve never seen before and it is satisfying on all levels.  Golshifteh Farahani’s performance is staggering. American audiences will love her and the movie as well. We are so happy to be back with our old friend Jean LaBadie and our new friends, Michael, Roman and Gerhard,” said Sony Pictures Classics.

 

“I am proud and happy that the prestigious company Sony Pictures Classics will distribute my film in the US and that Michael Barker, Tom Bernard and their team share the artistic ambition of THE PATIENCE STONE in order to fight all forms of intolerance against human values, as we have unfortunately witnessed in certain Muslim Countries recently,” said Atiq Rahimi.

 

ABOUT SONY PICTURES CLASSICS

 

Michael Barker and Tom Bernard serve as co-presidents of Sony Pictures Classics—an autonomous division of Sony Pictures Entertainment they founded with Marcie Bloom in January 1992, which distributes, produces, and acquires independent films from around the world.

 

Barker and Bernard have released prestigious films that have won 29 Academy Awards® (25 of those at Sony Pictures Classics) and have garnered 127 Academy Award® nominations (101 at Sony Pictures Classics) including Best Picture nominations for MIDNIGHT IN PARIS, AN EDUCATION, CAPOTE, HOWARDS END, and CROUCHING TIGER, HIDDEN DRAGON.

 

 

ABOUT SONY PICTURES ENTERTAINMENT

 

Sony Pictures Entertainment (SPE) is a subsidiary of Sony Corporation of America, a subsidiary of Tokyo-based Sony Corporation. SPE’s global operations encompass motion picture production and distribution; television production and distribution; home entertainment acquisition and distribution; a global channel network; digital content creation and distribution; operation of studio facilities; development of new entertainment products, services and technologies; and distribution of entertainment in more than 142 countries. For additional information, go to http://www.sonypictures.com/.

 # # #

Be Sociable, Share!

Posted in Movie City News, Press Releases | Comments Off on SONY PICTURES CLASSICS ACQUIRES THE PATIENCE STONE

Comments are closed.

Quote Unquotesee all »

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