Canadian sales outfit Sphere Films International will cease operations later this month.

Parent company Sphere announced Thursday (June 8) that the film division will “cease its international sales activities” on June 16, stating that the company has “decided to refocus its film distribution activities in Canada.”

A total of four positions are impacted as a result of the operations change, a spokesperson for Sphere told Playback Daily. The spokesperson also confirmed that all film rights in Sphere Film International’s catalogue have been returned to the film producers.

The titles listed in the catalogue include Pascal Plante’s Red Rooms (Nemesis Films; pictured), Reem Morsi’s Queen Tut (Fae Pictures), Francis Leclerc’s Le plongeur (Sphere Media), Stéphane Lafleur’s Viking (micro_scope) and Anthony Shim’s Riceboy Sleeps (Lonesome Heroes Productions, Kind Stranger Productions, A Lasting Dose Productions), among others.

The film sales division was launched under DATSIT Sphere (now Sphere) by SVPs Anick Poirier and Lorne Price in 2019 under the name WaZabi Films. It was rebranded under the Sphere Films umbrella in 2022 after the parentco acquired Montreal- and Toronto-based film distributor MK2 | Mile End, now operating under the name Sphere Films.

Poirier and Price formerly led sales outfit Séville International before it was shuttered by Entertainment One in 2019.

The announcement follows the recent news that Bell Media made a minority investment in Sphere as part of its commitment to produce “Quebec and Canadian content.”