BERLIN — Maximum Films International has picked up the international sales rights to the Sundance Film Festival grand jury prize-winning documentary Trouble the Water, a film journey through New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Directed by Tia Lessin and Carl Deal, the film is produced by Danny Glover’s Louverture Films and his partner Joslyn Barnes.

Toronto-based Maximum, fronted by managing director Charlotte Mickie, had done brisk business at the midway point of the Berlin International Film Festival. Mickie has also has picked up international rights to Shirley Barrett’s South Solitary, a period romance set to shoot later this year with Maggie Gyllenhaal and Paul Bettany in the leads, as well as Amy Redford’s The Guitar, starring Saffron Burrows, which also premiered at Park City.

The Guitar features Burrows as a woman whose cancer diagnosis triggers a decision to make the most of the rest of her life. Set in the 1920s, South Solitary tells the story of a young woman’s relationship with a traumatized WWI veteran. Maximum has world rights except for Australia and New Zealand, where Icon holds rights.

On the sales side, Maximum and Echo Lake Entertainment sold the U.K. rights to Santosh Sivan’s Before the Rain to Metrodome Distribution. The London distributor has handled such Canadian titles as Sarah Polley’s Away from Her and Deepa Mehta’s Water.