Music Box Acquires Pawel Pawlikowski's Ida

U.S. distributors Music Box Films have acquired the U.S. and Canadian rights to director Pawel Pawlikowski's latest film Ida (2013), starring Agata Kulesza, Agata Trzebuchowska, and Joanna Kulig. Earlier this month, the film won the International Critics' Award (FIPRESCI) at the Toronto International Film Festival.

Ida is a co-production with Opus Film (Poland), Phoenix Film Investments (Denmark) and Fandango Portobello (UK).

Music Box plans a winter/spring North American festival campaign followed by a late second quarter 2014 theatrical release.

The film tells the story of two women who can either be trapped by their past or break free from it. It is about identity, loss and survival.

Poland 1962. Anna is a young novice on the cusp of taking her vows to become a nun in a Catholic order. She learns from her Mother Superior that she has a living relative who she must visit before she does. Aunt Wanda is a former hard-line Communist state prosecutor and a Jew and so is Anna whose real name is Ida. The two women embark on a voyage of discovery of each other and their past. Ida has to choose between her birth identity and the religion that saved her from being massacred during the Nazi occupation of Poland. Wanda has to confront a decision she made during the War when she chose loyalty to the cause before family. Wanda wants to guide Ida not to repeat her own mistake of putting faith before life and family.