Monterey Media has picked up the U.S. rights to TIFF film The Levelling, and is planning a theatrical release for early spring. Starring Ellie Kendrick (Game Of Thrones), David Troughton, Jack Holden and Joe Blakemore, the film follows Clover Catto (Kendrick), who returns to the farm where she grew up after hearing news that her brother’s apparent suicide. Finding the family home in a state of horrendous disrepair Clover is forced to confront her father Aubrey, which sends her on emotional journey of reckoning. Hope Dickson Leach directed and wrote the film, which premiered at Toronto in September. The deal was negotiated with Mongrel International’s Charlotte Mickie and monterey media’s Scott Mansfield. The Levelling was produced with the participation of BBC Films, the British Film Institute, Great Point Media and Creative England through iFeatures.
BOND/360 has acquired the North American rights to Petra Epperlein and Michael Tucker’s East Germany surveillance documentary Karl Marx City, which premiered at the Toronto Film Festival. The film will get a nationwide release through the spring with a digital, educational and DVD release to follow throughout the year. The pic incorporates actual surveillance recordings and Stasi (Ministry for State Security)-produced propaganda to offers insight of what it was like to live in a world with lack of privacy and ubiquitous suspicio. Filmmaker Epperlein, who grew up in Karl Marx City (now Chemnitz), returns in search of clues as to whether her father was driven to suicide by guilt over having been an informer. The deal was negotiated by Elizabeth Sheldon, COO of BOND/360 and Linzee Troubh of Cinetic Media.