Soda finds Vivian Maier

Soda Pictures has inked a deal with HanWay Select for UK rights to Toronto documentary Finding Vivian Maier about the famous US street photographer.

The deal was negotiated between Eve Gabereau, MD of Soda, and Fabien Westerhoff, director of sales and distribution of HanWay Select.

Soda is planning a spring 2014 theatrical release with a photographic exhibition tie-in.

In other territories, HanWay Select has closed deals for the film in France with Happiness, NFP in Germany, New Select in Japan, Vendetta in Australia & New Zealand, A-Film in Benelux, Gutek Film in Poland, with several additional territories still in negotiation.

IFC Films have the American rights (secured via Submarine).

Gabereau said: “I think this film is up there with such recent hits as The Imposter and Looking for Sugar Man in terms of a big human story with cinematic intrigue and audience potential, but it is also a work of photographic art which wonderfully differentiates it.”

Westerhoff described the film as “a powerful blend of creative excellence with an engrossing human story. The fascination Vivian Maier’s mysterious life and soul piercing pictures have generated is just incredible”.

Maier was an American amateur street photographer whose posthumously lauded work was largely unknown during her lifetime. She took more than 100,000 photographs, primarily of people and cityscapes in Chicago and New York in the 1950s and 1960s.