Summer arrives early for New Wave

Alexei Popogrebsky’s film How I Ended This Summer, one of the critics’ favourites when it screened in competition at the Berlinale last month, has been snapped up for the UK by distribution outfit, New Wave Films.

Sold internationally by Bavaria Film International, How I Ended This Summer is about the growing tensions between two men working together in a Russian polar station in the remote Arctic. The film won the the Actor Silver Bear in Berlin for both actors, Grigori Dobrygin and Sergei Puskepalis, and the outstanding artistic achievement Silver Bear for cameraman Pavel Kostomarov.

“I believe that the strength of a film grows immensely when good and passionate people become associated with it, both during the production and after the film is finished,” director Popogrebsky commented of having New Wave as the UK distributor.

“I am very happy that my new film is now in the caring hands of people with whom we had fantastic experience with our debut effort, Roads to Koktebel. I am particularly excited to see that in their growing line-up I am among directors whom I respect or even can call friends (like Sergey Dvortsevoy and Andrzej Jakimowski)”

On a mini buying spree, New Wave has also acquired from Memento Films International Puzzle by Natalia Smirnoff, likewise from the Berlin Competition. Puzzle has also been acquired for the US by IFC Films, and sold widely around the world.

New Wave’s other recent acquisition is Alamar,  by Pedro González-Ribio, which won a Tiger Award at this year’s Rotterdam Film Festival, and showed in Berlin in the Generation section.