Kino Lorber Acquires All North American Rights to Miguel Gomes’ Critically Acclaimed “Arabian Nights” Trilogy

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Category: Entertainment News

Published on Saturday, 01 August 2015 08:13

Written by Janet Walker

New York, NY – J Kino Lorber is proud to announce the acquisition of all North American rights to Miguel Gomes’ ARABIAN NIGHTS, a critically acclaimed and visionary six-hour trilogy about social and economic woes in Mr. Gomes’ native Portugal through the perspective of a contemporary Scheherazade figure.
 
Winner of the top prize at the Sydney Film Festival,Arabian Nightshas been described as “whimsical, swooningly romantic, inspiring, fascinating, or deeply sad,” (Oliver Lyttelton, Playlist). Its combination of social critique, humor and narrative inventiveness is “an entirely new approach for looking at the real world through an optic that distorts it, defamiliarizes it, and restores to it a rich, poetic form of truth,” writes Jonathan Romney for Film Comment. “This is cinema that’s trying to change the world,” wrote film critic Blake Williams (for Ioncinema) “and trying to evolve the ways in which cinema is made and watched.”   
 
All three films (The Restless One, The Desolate OneandThe Enchanted One) had their world premiere in the Directors’ Fortnight section of this year's Cannes Film Festival, and they are now scheduled to open at New York’s Film Society of Lincoln Center on December 4, December 11 and December 18, respectively. Screenings of Part I will be scheduled during the week of December 11, and Part I and Part II will be screened during the third week of the run, when the last chapter of the trilogy,The Enchanted One,is set to premiere.
 
Key festival dates are expected to be announced soon, and Kino Lorber will open the film in other markets early next year, following the New York run. Digital and home media releases are also scheduled for 2016.
 
Disturbed by the austerity measures imposed on his homeland, Gomes commissioned journalists to gather true stories from all over the country that were then fictionalized. The result is a heady blend of the surreal and the all-too-real, told in a series of episodes where social realism is mixed in with the outright bizarre. It is a vivid portrait of a country in crisis and a collection of riveting stories that will resonate far beyond Portugal's borders.
 
The deal was negotiated between Kino Lorber CEO Richard Lorber and on behalf of Match Factory, Sales Director Thania Dimitrakopoulou and Managing Director Michael Weber.
 
Kino Lorber CEO Richard Lorber commented: “Miguel’s amazingArabian Nightsis a shape shifting work of unprecedented originality and intelligence. It astounded us in Cannes and we as a company exist to bring this kind of visionary cinema to welcoming screens across North America. It’s also a helluva lot of fun -- I can’t wait to see it again with “civilian” audiences.”
 
The film was produced by leading Portuguese company O Som e a Furia, as well as Shellac Sud, Komplizen Film, Box Production, Arte France Cinema, Arte/ZDF, RTP, Agat Films, and RTS-SRG SSR.
 
About Kino Lorber:
With a library of more than 1,000 titles, Kino Lorber has been a leader in independent art house distribution for over 30 years, releasing 25 films per year theatrically under its Kino Lorber, Kino Classics, and Alive Mind Cinema banners, including five Academy Award®-nominated films in the last eight years. In addition, the company brings over 100 narrative and documentary titles each year to the home entertainment, educational and digital markets through in-house DVD and Blu-ray distribution and direct sales to all major digital platforms.
 
About O Som e a Furia:
O Som e a Fúriawas created in 1998. The company works exclusively with independent auteur cinema, and the quality of its works, as well as the development of the individual universes of its directors, are the backbone of the company. Since 2006, films by O Som e a Fúria (such as The Face You Deserve, Our Beloved Month of August, Uprise, RuinsandThe Portuguese Nun) have been included in dozens of Best Film lists compiled by international publications such as “Cahiers du Cinema”, “Sight & Sound”, “The Guardian”, “The New Yorker”, “The New York Times”, “Film Comment” and “Clarin,” to name a few.