EXCLUSIVE: Paris-based sales company MPM reports a flurry of post-Toronto deals for picture which is due to screen in the BFI London Film Festival.

 

British distributor Soda Pictures has picked up Jem Cohen’s Museum Hours ahead of its UK premiere at the BFI London Film Festival later this month.
 
“Museum Hours is such a wonderful film about art, love, life and living… I am really looking forward to bringing the story, and the star cast, to audiences in the UK and Ireland,” said Eve Gabereau, managing director of Soda Pictures.

New York filmmaker Jem Cohen’s Museum Hours revolves around a museum guard at the Kunsthistorisches Art Museum in Vienna who befriends a visitor, capturing their lives, the city and the ways in which art reflects and shapes the world.

Pierre Menahem, head of sales at Paris-based production and sales company MPM Film, commented: “I am very pleased to be working with Soda Pictures in the UK. They are really passionate about the film and understand the crossover potential with the community of art lovers beyond the cinephile niche.”

Museum Hours is experimental artist and director Cohen’s most mainstream picture to date after the more experimental feature-length Chain, documentaries Benjamin Smoke and Instrument and numerous multi-format shorts and installations. 
 
The film premiered in competition at the Locarno Film Festival in August before heading to Toronto.

 

Menahem said that the Soda deal, which was signed on Thursday, was the latest in a “flurry” of post-Toronto sales. 

He has also recently sold the film to the US (The Cinema Guild), Canada (Films We Like), Poland (Against Gravity) and Austria (Stadtkino). Negotiations are ongoing for France, Benelux, Germany, Greece, Japan, Taiwan and Australia. 

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