M ontreal’s Filmoption International has picked up world rights to The Legacy of Cloudy Falls, the feature directorial debut of writer-director Nick Butler.

Sales for the film will be launched at the European Film Market in Berlin, which runs from Feb. 15 to 21 during the Berlin International Film Festival, according to a news release.

The film is set in Niagara Falls, Ont. and follows the lives of the eccentric residents of a run-down apartment complex. Butler is a producer on the film alongside Kyle Mac and Lucas Meeuse. The cast includes Grace Glowicki, Susan Berger and Andrew Moodie.

The Legacy of Cloudy Falls was made with the support of Telefilm Canada, and is slated for a 2024 Canadian theatrical release.

Avanti Distribution

Ici Télé youth series Premier trio (First Line) has been acquired in Finland and Sweden.

Broadcasters YLE (Finland) and SVT (Sweden) have picked up the 26 x 30-minute first season of the series, produced by Montreal’s Avanti-Toast. The deal was negotiated by Avanti Distribution in collaboration with international sales agent, the Barcelona-based GoldBee.

The series follows a young female hockey player who earns a spot in an all-male AAA team, with some of the players set to undermine her position.

Premier trio had a strong international market debut at the Kidscreen Summit in San Diego last week, according to Avanti-Toast president Ian Quenneville in a statement, noting that “other territories could acquire it in the coming months.”

Unobstructed View

Toronto-based distributor Unobstructed View has acquired world rights to veteran filmmaker Deepa Mehta’s first feature, the 1991 film Sam & Me.

The deal is part of the company’s efforts to promote and restore Canadian films, according to a news release. It was negotiated by Lon Hall of the entertainment law firm Hall Weber.

Sam & Me starred the late Ranjit Chowdry, who also penned the script, as a new arrival to Canada who strikes up an unlikely friendship with an elderly Jewish man. The film was produced by Mehta and Robert Wertheimer, and executive produced by Paul Saltzman and Steven Levitan. It earned an honourable mention when it debuted at the Cannes Film Festival in 1991.

Cineflix Rights

U.K.-based distributor Cineflix Rights is launching a new FAST channel, the Real Disaster Channel, in the U.S. and Canada via Pluto TV.

The channel is anchored by the global hit series Mayday: Air Disaster, as well as such titles as Deadly Disasters, Rogue Earth and Dangerous Flights. Real Disaster is the latest of five FAST channels launched by Cineflix Rights on various platforms over the past nine months, following the genre channels Crime & Justice and Property & Reno and single-IP channels for American Pickers and the Property Brothers.

In a release announcing the new channel, Cineflix Rights indicated that further international FAST rollouts will be coming over the course of 2024.

With files from Realscreen

Image courtesy of Filmoption International