First Run wins US race for Altiplano rights

US distributor First Run Features has acquired North American rights to Brosens & Woodworth’s second feature, Altiplano. The film, which premiered in Cannes last year, has already been sold to a number of European countries and Australia. After selections at film festivals including Cannes, Sydney and Bangkok, as well as healthy box office on its home turf, Altiplano continues to charm audiences around the globe.

Altiplano also enjoyed critical acclaim in The Netherlands when it was recently released theatrically. Dutch quality paper NRC Handelsblad gave the film four stars and praised it for its ‘rare eye for detail and the poetically uplifting images. Altiplano is truly dazzling.’ De Volkskrant describes the film as ‘floating on images. On sound. On music. On feeling … whoever lets himself be carried away, sees a mystifying, but ghostly beautiful film.’

The film’s selection for Critic’s Week at Cannes was just the beginning of a strong tour of the festival circuit. The film was also selected for competition at other international festivals including Sydney (3-14 June 2009) and Bangkok (24-30 September 2009), where it also won the top prize. Even today – almost a year after its premiere in Cannes – the film continues to do well, with screenings at festivals in Hong Kong, Prague, Istanbul, Dublin and Washington DC, among others.

In the film, war photographer Grace, devastated after a violent incident in Iraq, renounces her profession. Her Belgian husband, Max, is a surgeon working at an eye clinic in the high Andes of Peru, near a village where people have been afflicted with illnesses caused by a mercury spill from a local mine. When a young woman loses her fiancé to the contamination, the villagers, ignorant of its true source, turn their rage on the foreign doctors, and in the ensuing riot Max is killed. Grace sets out on a journey of mourning to the place of Max’s death.

Altiplano’s main cast consists of Olivier Gourmet, Magaly Solier and Jasmin Tabatabai. Solier also takes the main role in The Milk of Sorrow, which won the Golden Bear for Best Film in Berlin last year. In 2010 Altiplano will be released in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Greece, the US, Canada and Peru. British Meridiana Films handles international sales.

Meanwhile, Brosens & Woodworth have already started development on their third feature film, Silent Spring.