Neon Bull: Gbariel Mascaro’s Award Winning Brazilian Film

September 18, 2015 by

Kino Lorber has acquired all North American rights to Gabriel Mascaro’s Neon Bull, winner of the Horizons (Orizzonti) Special Jury Prize at the 2015 Venice Film Fest and an official selection in the inaugural Platform section at this year’s 40th Toronto Film Fest.

It is the second fiction film by the acclaimed Brazilian filmmaker Gabriel Mascaro (August Winds, Housemaids).  The film was written and directed by Mascaro and shot by famed Mexican cinematographer Diego Garcia (Cemetery of Splendor).

The deal was negotiated between Memento Films International’s Tanja Meissner and Kino Lorber CEO Richard Lorber. The film is part of Memento’s Artscope label. Kino Lorber is planning to open the film in theatres in the first half of 2016, following additional film festival playdates in North America. A VOD and home media release will happen towards the end of 2016.

Neon Bull is set in the Northeast of Brazil, where rodeos known as “Vaquejadas” (where two men on horseback have to bring down a bull by its tail) are routinely played and performed all over the region. Despite being fully immersed in that world (to the point of traveling right next to the livestock), the film’s main character Iremar (played by Juliano Cazarré) has his dreams set on another métier: fashion design.

As he travels the region with his road family, which includes the boorish Zé (Carlos Pessoa), the grouchy Galega (played by Maeve Jinkings, from Kleber Mendonça Filho’s Neighboring Sounds), an exotic dancer who is the group’s official truck driver and the mother of a neglected young girl, this close-knit group transits through one of Brazil’s most culturally rich and yet, economically forsaken areas. Amidst the toughness of the region and the laborious nature of the work, this makeshift family not only encounters, but also creates, beauty, kindness, joy and severity all around them.

Kino Lorber CEO Richard Lorber says: “Neon Bull is a stunning work by an up-and-coming filmmaker we’ve been tracking for a while now. We believe Gabriel Mascaro has not only made a film that will continue to impress critics worldwide, but will also become an audience favorite in the upcoming months, as we take it to cinema screens all over North America. This is just terrific filmmaking that demands to be seen on the big screen, and that’s exactly our plan for the film.”
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