Sideshow and Janus Films have acquired North American rights to Maura Delpero’s intimate epic “Vermiglio,” which recently won the Venice Film Festival’s Silver Lion Grand Jury Prize.
The drama, which is set at the end of World War II in an Alpine village where the arrival of a soldier causes disruption in the dynamics between three sisters, subsequently had its North American premiere in the special presentations section at Toronto.
Sideshow and Janus Films plan to release “Vermiglio” theatrically in the coming months, they said in a statement.
In her Variety review, critic Jessica Kiang called “Vermiglio” “quietly breathtaking,” going on to note that the film “unfolds from tiny tactile details of furnishings and fabrics and the hide of a dairy cow, into a momentous vision of everyday rural existence in the high Italian Alps.”
Venice jury president Isabelle Huppert praised the Silver Lion winner for being a war story in which you never see war. “It’s like you have a great offscreen subject matter, but you get to see what’s going on only through a small eye, through the latch of a door,” she noted at a press conference after Venice’s awards ceremony.
In an interview with Variety prior to the awards ceremony, Delpero revealed that “Vermiglio” is her most personal film and “stems from grief for my father’s death,” she said.
“Vermiglio” marks Delpero’s follow-up to her first feature “Maternal,” which takes place in an Argentinian refuge for teenage mothers run by nuns and made a splash on the festival circuit.
The North American rights deal was negotiated by Sideshow and Janus Films with Anonymous Content’s Nick Shumaker and Charades’ Carole Baraton, on behalf of the filmmakers.
The “Vermiglio” producers are Francesca Andreoli, Leonardo Guerra Seràgnoli, Delpero and Santiago Fondevila Sancet. The film is co-produced by Carole Baraton, Pauline Boucheny Pinon, Jacques-Henry Bronckart and Tatiana Kozar. “Vermiglio” is a co-production between Cinedora and RAI Cinema and is also co-produced by Charades Production and Versus Production, with the participation of Anonymous Content.
Sideshow and Janus Films said in a statement that they were “deeply moved and impressed” by “Vermiglio,” which they called “a new Italian classic that is intimate in scale but epic in scope.”
“Maura Delpero has made an unforgettable portrait of a family and especially the women as they navigate their way in a world that is about to change forever,” they said. “We could not be more excited to introduce this film to American audiences in theaters.”
At Toronto, the company is presenting Gints Zilbalodis’ animated adventure film “Flow,” which bowed in Cannes, went on to win four trophies at Annecy and has been selected to represent Latvia in the best international feature category at the Oscars; Payal Kapadia’s Cannes Grand Prix winner “All We Imagine as Light”; Alain Guiraudie’s “Misericordia”; and Jia Zhangke’s “Caught by the Tides.” They will also be launching Leos Carax’s “It’s Not Me” at the New York Film Festival next month.
