BLUE RUIN, one of the select few American films world premiering in Director’s Fortnight at this year’s Cannes Film Festival is expected to get a Fall 2013 US release date after being snagged by The Weinstein Co.’s label RADiUS – TWC.

Written and directed by Jeremy Saulnier’s whose first feature MURDER PARTY was a cult hit, BLUE RUIN tells the story of a man who finds his quiet life upended by unwelcome news and subsequently sets off for his childhood home to carry out an act of revenge. Proving an improbable assassin, he winds up in a brutal fight to protect his estranged family.”

http://youtu.be/uIwzTUzmXto

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Kino Lorber is expected to release the award winning film “THE ROCKET” in US theaters this Fall 2013 after it snagged the top awards early this year at this year’s Tribeca Film Festival and Berlin Film Festival. 

“THE ROCKET,“ the first feature film from director and writer Kim Mordaunt, won the Best Narrative Feature award, the Audience Award for Best Narrative Film and the Best Actor in a Narrative Feature award for 10-year-old Sitthiphon Disamoe at the 2013 Tribeca Film Festival; and the Crystal Bear – Generation Kplus prize for Best Film, Best First Feature award and The Amnesty International Award at the 2013 Berlin International Film Festival.

The film is set in contemporary Laos and tells the story of a boy named Ahlo, played by Sitthiphon Disamoe, who is believed to be a bearer of bad luck and is therefore blamed for a string of disasters – including his mother’s death. When his family loses their home and is forced to move, Ahlo meets the spirited orphan Kia and her eccentric uncle Purple: an ex-soldier with a purple suit, a rice-wine habit and an unbridled love for James Brown.

 
Struggling to hang onto his father’s trust, Ahlo leads his family, Purple and Kia through a land scarred by war in search of a new home. But bad luck seems to follow Ahlo, and in a last plea to prove he’s not cursed, Ahlo builds a giant explosive rocket to enter the most lucrative but dangerous competition of the year: The Rocket Festival.”

http://youtu.be/dDxt4gKyGfo

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Sean Ellis’ acclaimed thriller, METRO MANILA, which had its world premiere at this year’s Sundance Film Festival where it won the Audience Award for “Best Film” in the World Cinema dramatic competition will be released in the US by distribution partners 108 Media and Paladin.

METRO MANILA centers around Oscar Ramirez, a poor rice farmer from the Northern Philippine mountains, who moves his family to the capital mega-city of Metro Manila in search of a better life. The sweltering capital’s bustling intensity soon overwhelms the Ramirezes, and they fall prey to the manipulations of hardened locals. Left penniless, Oscar gets a lucky break when he is offered steady work at an armored truck company and is taken under the wing of its friendly senior officer, Ong.  Grateful for the job, Oscar doesn’t realize how dangerous it is; after all, Manila is a city where machine gun-wielding security guards are seen in every shop, from banks and jewelry stores to Starbucks, and where armed robbery has become a daily occurrence. Driving a cash-laden armored truck makes Oscar a moving target, but robbery isn’t the only danger he faces: when it becomes apparent that Ong was lying in wait for someone just like Oscar for some time, and that his motives for hiring him were far from altruistic, Oscar finds himself ensnared in a web of intrigue far more perilous than anything he faces on the mean streets of Manila.

http://youtu.be/UjQK6rOWXTY

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See the first “Official” clip of the Cannes Film Festival’s Directors’ Fortnight film, WE ARE WHAT WE ARE, directed by Jim Mickle, and starring Julia Garner.

In WE ARE WHAT WE ARE, a re-imagining of the 2010 Mexican film of the same name, Jim Mickle paints a gripping and gruesome portrait of an introverted family struggling to keep their macabre traditions alive.

A seemingly wholesome and benevolent family, the Parkers have always kept to themselves, and for good reason. Behind closed doors, patriarch Frank (Bill Sage, BOARDWALK EMPIRE) rules his family with a rigorous ferver, determined to keep his ancestral customs intact at any cost.  As a torrential rainstorm moves into the area, tragedy strikes and his daughters Iris (Ambyr Childers) and Rose (Julia Garner) are forced to assume responsibilities that extend beyond those of a typical family.  As the unrelenting downpour continues to flood their small town, the local authorities begin to uncover clues that bring them closer to the secret that the Parkers have held closely for so many years.

WE ARE WHAT WE ARE also stars Michael Parks (DJANGO UNCHAINED), Kelly McGillis (STAKELAND), Nick Damici (STAKELAND), Wyatt Russell (THIS IS 40) and newcomer Jack Gore. WE ARE WHAT WE ARE was written by Mickle and Damici.  The two previously collaborated on the screenplays for Mickle’s first two features, MULBERRY STREET and STAKELAND (winner of the “Midnight Madness” Audience Award at the 2010 Toronto International Film Festival).

http://youtu.be/ZwZj7pRnsP0

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