By Ray Pride Pride@moviecitynews.com

Music Box Films Takes U.S. and Canadian Rights For Pawel Pawlikowski’s IDA

Posted Wednesday, September 25th, 2013 - Comments Off on Music Box Films Takes U.S. and Canadian Rights For Pawel Pawlikowski’s IDA
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For Immediate Release

Second Quarter 2014 Release Planned

Chicago, IL (September 25, 2013) – Music Box Films announced today that it has acquired all U.S. and Canadian rights to Pawel Pawlikowski’s Polish Communist-era drama IDA, which riveted festival audiences at its premiere screenings in Telluride and Toronto.

IDA tells the story of a young orphaned novice nun exposed to a past and a family she never knew existed. Best known for his breakthrough The Last Resort and BAFTA-award winning My Summer of Love, IDA marks the first film for the Polish-born, British filmmaker, set in his homeland and was a co-production with Opus Film (Poland), Phoenix FilmInvestments (Denmark) and Fandango Portobello (UK).  IDA won the International Critics’ Prize (FIPRESCI Prize) in Toronto as well as the won the top prize at Poland’s recent Gdynia Film Festival along with Best Actress (Agata Kulesza) and Cinematography (Lukasz Zal and Ryszard Lenczewski). Music Box plans a winter/spring North American festival campaign followed by a late second quarter 2014 theatrical release.

In 1962 Poland, Anna (newcomer Agata Trzebuchowska), an eighteen-year-old orphan raised in the convent, is preparing to become a nun when the Mother Superior insists she first visit her one remaining living relative. The sheltered and innocent Anna soon finds herself in the presence of her aunt Wanda (Kulesza), a worldly and world-wearyCommunist Party insider, who informs Anna that her real name is Ida, she isJewish and her parents were murdered during the Nazi occupation. This revelation triggers a heart wrenching journey for the two women into the countryside, to the family house and into the secrets of the repressed past as it evokes the legacy of the Holocaust and the realities of postwar Communism.

The deal was negotiated by Academy Award-winning producer Eric Abraham (Kolya) for the production and William Schopf, President of Music Box Films.

“IDA is a beautifully directed, powerfully acted drama that seamlessly weaves two wonderfully realized characters with deeply resonant narrative and thematic motifs,” states Edward Arentz, Managing Director of Music Box Films. “In short, IDA is a masterwork from Pawel Pawlikowski, and we look forward to sharing it with North American audiences.”

 

ABOUT MUSIC BOX FILMS

Music Box Films is a leading theatrical and home entertainment distributor of foreign language, American independent and documentary films in North America.

 

Past releases include Guillaume Canet’s hit thriller TELL NO ONE; the film adaptations of Stieg Larsson’s trilogy of international mega-selling novels – the first in the series- THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO, with over $10 million in US box office, was one of the most popular international releases of thedecade; Terence Davies’ THE DEEP BLUE SEA starring Rachel Weisz, New York Film Critics Circle Best Actress winner; and Philippe Falardeau’s Academy Award-nominated MONSIEUR LAZHAR.

 

Upcoming titles include Roger Michell’s LE WEEK-END, written by Hanef Kureishi and starring Jim Broadbent; the hit French mini-series THE RETURNED premiering on Sundance Channel; five-time Academy Award® nominee Jan Troell’s THE LAST SENTENCE; and Jan Ole Gerster’s German smash hit OH BOY, which swept the German Oscars earlier this year.

 

Music Box Films is independently owned and operated by the Southport Music Box Corporation, which also owns and operates The Music Box Theatre, Chicago’s premiere venue for independent and foreign films.

 

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