Kino Lorber has acquired all North American rights to Lav Diaz’s The Woman Who Left and Stéphane Brizé’s A Woman’s Life, two recent New York premieres at the Film Comment Selects series, organized by the Film Society of Lincoln Center.
The series, now in its 17th year, was organized by Dan Sullivan and the Film Comment Magazine staff, and it is comprised of titles that have been written about by the magazine.
Diaz’s The Woman Who Left won the Golden Lion award at the 2016 Venice Film Fest.
A Woman’s Life won the festival’s Fipresci Prize. Judith Chemla, the lead in A Woman’s Life, was also nominated for a 2016 César Award in the Best Actress category.
Both films are set for theatrical runs in NYC before expanding to other markets nationwide.
A Woman’s Life opens May 5, at the new Quad Cinemas and the Film Society of Lincoln Center, while The Woman Who Left gets a New York run on May 19 at Film Society of Lincoln Center.
Kino Lorber CEO wrote about both films: “A Woman’s Life is the third Stéphane Brizé film in our collection, and we couldn’t be prouder to be working with such an ambitious and accomplished filmmaker. Lav Diaz, just like Brizé, is an internationally renowned filmmaker who doesn’t rest on his laurels and instead, is always breaking new ground and pushing his art. We are looking forward taking these two films to major theatrical markets across the U.S.”
“French filmmaker Stéphane Brizé takes an unexpected turn to costume drama with this bold adaptation of a novel by Guy de Maupassant. Following the life and disillusionment of an aristocrat named Jeanne (Judith Chemla) from adolescence through unhappy marriage, Brizé’s film explores the inherently exploitative social dictates and moral codes of nineteenth-century marriage and family.
Shot in the constricting 4:3 aspect ratio, A Woman’s Life is a tightly composed, intricate work that avoids melodrama in its portrayal of life’s indifferences, pressures, and disappointments.”
A woman discovers that, after 30 years in prison, her friend and fellow inmate committed the murder she was accused of, leading to her release and discovery of the man who framed her.
Filipino filmmaker Lav Diaz’s Tolstoy-inspired epic is a story of revenge deferred, a meditation on the nature of goodness in a world of deceit and corruption that functions as a tale of urban theater and class warfare, but also one of family and forgiveness.
