Celluloid Dreams has acquired worldwide rights excluding North America to award-winning film-maker Ellen Kuras' The Betrayal. The film, which ran in the documentary competition at Sundance, recently took the top prize at the Ann Arbor Film Festival.

The epic odyssey follows a family from war-torn Laos to New York over the course of 23 years.

Directed, shot and written by Kuras, the film was co-directed and edited by Thavisouk Phrasavath.

Phrasavath narrates his own story as a child surviving war through to his struggles as a young man trying to overcome the hardships of immigrant life. His mother also tells her own tale of perseverance as a wife and mother in war.

Celluloid's Alessandro Raja says, 'We are all extremely pleased with this new acquisition: it's such a gripping and moving story, visually stunning. A unique lesson of history and humanity.'

Kuras added: 'The beauty of having filmed The Betrayal over so many years is that the themes of philosophy, life and death are intimately played out in this family drama in a way that only time can reveal.'

Kuras has had an unprecedented run as a three-time recipient of the Sundance Film Festival's Best Dramatic Cinematography Award. She was first widely recognized for her black and white cinematography on Tom Kalin's Swoon and has since gone on to shoot Michel Gondry's Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind and his recent Be Kind Rewind along with Ted Demme's Blow, Martin Scorsese's No Direction Home: Bob Dylan and Spike Lee's Summer Of Sam among others. The Betrayal marks her directorial debut.

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