Awaydays breaks UK, Spain sees Good

Germany:

Hamburg-based independent distributor Aries Images has released the Schleswig-Holstein-set road movie Die Schimmelreiter on 12 screens with a focus on the northern half of the country. Starring Peter Jordan and Axel Prahl, Lars Jessen’s film was shown at four cinemas in Berlin, three in Hamburg and screens in Kiel, Rendsburg, Lübeck and Dresden.

German Kral’s German-Argentinian-Japanese co-production Der Letzte Applaus about the ‘El Chino’ tango bar in Buenos Aires was launched by Arsenal Filmverleih on 30 prints. Ahead of its release, the music documentary had opened the CineLatino festival in Tübingen and shown at Munich’s DOK.FEST at the beginning of the month where it won the FFF Documentary Support Award. Atrix Films is handling international sales.

UK:

Artificial Eye gives Claude Chabrol’s black comedy The Girl Cut In Two a limited release in the territory from May 22. The French-German coproduction stars Ludivine Sagnier as a TV weather girl who is pursued by two very different men.

Local production Awaydays reaches UK screens, through Optimum Releasing. Based on Kevin Sampson’s book, the film revolves around the music and football scenes of Liverpool in the late Seventies.

Also debuting in the territory is Jan Troell’s Everlasting Moments, which is released through Icon Film Distribution, while the BFI re-release Jean-Luc Godard’s 1965 film Pierrot Le Fou in the West End.

Spain:

Nazi drama Good starring Viggo Mortensen hits Spanish cinemas this weekend through local distributor DeaPlaneta. Directed by Vincente Amorim, the film charts how a modern and enlightened society caved into the genocidal destructiveness of Germany’s national socialists.

Manga Films will release Renny Harlin’s crime thriller Cleaner, starring Samuel L Jackson, nationwide this weekend. The film, also starring Ed Harris and Eva Mendes, sees a former cop caught in a cover up in his new job as a crime scene cleaner. Manga will be hoping to match or better the $3m that Cleaner took in France last year.

Catalin Mitulescu’s Romanian-French drama How I Celebrated The End Of The World will be released by Piramide Films in Spain. The film stars Dorotheea Petre as a 17-year-old girl who in the last days of the dictatorship of Ceausescu is put in a reform school after breaking a bust of the Romanian leader and then tries to escape. Petre won best actress at Cannes in 2006 for her performance.

Alta will release Gianni Di Gregorio’s Vacaciones De Ferragosto, a moving drama about a man in his forties who has no job, house or girlfriend and is instead forced to look after his elderly mother. The film picked up awards at both the London and Venice film festivals last year, and opens on 29 screens across Spain.