Umedia has picked up world sales rights to relationship drama Red Knot, starring Mad Men’s Vincent Kartheiser and Dredd actress Olivia Thirlby.

The film, which won the FIPRESCI Grand Jury Prize for Best New American Cinema at the Seattle International Film Festival earlier this month, marks the directorial debut of Scott Cohen and was shot entirely on location on a research vessel crossing the Southern Ocean and in Antarctica.

Kartheiser (Mad Men) and Thirlby (Dredd) play Peter and Chloe, a young newly married couple from New York honeymooning aboard a research vessel bound for Antarctica at the command of Captain Emerson (Billy Campbell, The Killing). An act of betrayal divides the young lovers, driving Chloe to separate herself from Peter, both physically and emotionally.

Cohen, a New York-based artist, said: “As a first feature film, I knew I had to build a stellar team and basically trap them on ship on the roughest sea in the world until we came home with a film.

“I was interested in exploring a relationship in trouble whilst confined to a place where they could not have personal space to be away from each other. The expansive backdrop of Antarctica proved a perfect contrast to the limited world of the ship.”

Cohen assembled 17 people on board a ship that he shared with another crew doing research and shooting documentary footage in Antarctica. Everyone on board was an invited guest of one crew or the other. Guests such as the whale biologist Dr. Roger Payne had cameos in Red Knot, playing himself.

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