Cinema Guild Acquires Lisandro Alonso's Jauja Starring Viggo Mortensen
HomeCinema Guild Acquires Lisandro Alonso's Jauja Starring Viggo Mortensen
Posted August 25, 2014 04:19 PM by Webmaster
Cinema Guild announced today the acquisition of all U.S. distribution rights to Lisandro Alonso's magnificent new film Jauja produced by and starring Viggo Mortensen ((The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King). Jauja premiered in Un Certain Regard at the Cannes Film Festival, where it won the Fipresci Prize, and screens next month as an official selection of both the Toronto and New York Film Festivals. The deal was negotiated by Ryan Krivoshey of Cinema Guild with Viggo Mortensen of Perceval Pictures. Jauja will open theatrically in early 2015.
A remote military outpost in Patagonia, 1882, during the so-called "Conquest of the Desert," a genocidal campaign against the aboriginal population of the region. Acts of savagery abound on all sides. Captain Gunnar Dinesen has come from Denmark with his fifteen year-old daughter to take an engineering job with the Argentine army. Being the only female in the area, Ingeborg creates quite a stir among the men. She falls in love with a young soldier, and one night they run away together. When he wakes up the Captain realizes what has happened and decides to venture into enemy territory to find the young couple. "Jauja" is the story of a man's desperate search for his daughter, a solitary quest that takes us to a place beyond time, where the past vanishes and the future has no meaning.
"'Jauja' is quite simply the best film I saw in Cannes this year. In recounting the strange odyssey of a 19th century Danish captain, brilliantly played by Viggo Mortensen, who becomes lost in the Argentinian desert, Lisandro Alonso has created a work of immense beauty and power that will be studied, and talked about, and adored for years to come," commented Ryan Krivoshey. "It's a film that needs to be seen by as wide an audience as possible and that's exactly what we intend to do. We look forward to working closely with Lisandro and Viggo on the release."
Viggo Mortensen added, "I'm very happy that Perceval Pictures will be teaming with a distributor as experienced in releasing ground-breaking U.S. and international movies as Cinema Guild is for the presentation of Lisandro Alonso's 'Jauja'. His unique Argentine-Danish 'Western,' reminiscent of the work of Tarkovsky and Sokurov, is exactly the kind of movie that Cinema Guild has consistently shown the ability to market successfully."
Born in Buenos Aires, Lisandro Alonso has directed four previous features, "Liverpool" (2008), "Fantasma" (2006), "Los Muertos" (2004) and "La Libertad" (2001), all of which have premiered at the Cannes Film Festival and have established him as one of the most daring and exciting voices in contemporary cinema. Alonso has been named this year's Filmmaker in Residence of the New York Film Festival.
The Cinema Guild is a premier distributor of independent, foreign and documentary films, whose upcoming releases include Matias Pineiro's "The Princess of France" (also a 2014 NYFF selection), Tsai Ming-liang's "Stray Dogs," Robert Greene's "Actress," Sergei Loznitsa's "Maidan" and Corneliu Porumboiu's "When Evening Falls on Bucharest or Metabolism."
Recent releases include Lav Diaz' "Norte, The End of History," Stephanie Spray and Pacho Velez's "Manakamana," Matias Pineiro's "Viola," Jem Cohen's "Museum Hours" and Lucien Castaing-Taylor and Verena Paravel's "Leviathan."
A remote military outpost in Patagonia, 1882, during the so-called "Conquest of the Desert," a genocidal campaign against the aboriginal population of the region. Acts of savagery abound on all sides. Captain Gunnar Dinesen has come from Denmark with his fifteen year-old daughter to take an engineering job with the Argentine army. Being the only female in the area, Ingeborg creates quite a stir among the men. She falls in love with a young soldier, and one night they run away together. When he wakes up the Captain realizes what has happened and decides to venture into enemy territory to find the young couple. "Jauja" is the story of a man's desperate search for his daughter, a solitary quest that takes us to a place beyond time, where the past vanishes and the future has no meaning.
"'Jauja' is quite simply the best film I saw in Cannes this year. In recounting the strange odyssey of a 19th century Danish captain, brilliantly played by Viggo Mortensen, who becomes lost in the Argentinian desert, Lisandro Alonso has created a work of immense beauty and power that will be studied, and talked about, and adored for years to come," commented Ryan Krivoshey. "It's a film that needs to be seen by as wide an audience as possible and that's exactly what we intend to do. We look forward to working closely with Lisandro and Viggo on the release."
Viggo Mortensen added, "I'm very happy that Perceval Pictures will be teaming with a distributor as experienced in releasing ground-breaking U.S. and international movies as Cinema Guild is for the presentation of Lisandro Alonso's 'Jauja'. His unique Argentine-Danish 'Western,' reminiscent of the work of Tarkovsky and Sokurov, is exactly the kind of movie that Cinema Guild has consistently shown the ability to market successfully."
Born in Buenos Aires, Lisandro Alonso has directed four previous features, "Liverpool" (2008), "Fantasma" (2006), "Los Muertos" (2004) and "La Libertad" (2001), all of which have premiered at the Cannes Film Festival and have established him as one of the most daring and exciting voices in contemporary cinema. Alonso has been named this year's Filmmaker in Residence of the New York Film Festival.
The Cinema Guild is a premier distributor of independent, foreign and documentary films, whose upcoming releases include Matias Pineiro's "The Princess of France" (also a 2014 NYFF selection), Tsai Ming-liang's "Stray Dogs," Robert Greene's "Actress," Sergei Loznitsa's "Maidan" and Corneliu Porumboiu's "When Evening Falls on Bucharest or Metabolism."
Recent releases include Lav Diaz' "Norte, The End of History," Stephanie Spray and Pacho Velez's "Manakamana," Matias Pineiro's "Viola," Jem Cohen's "Museum Hours" and Lucien Castaing-Taylor and Verena Paravel's "Leviathan."