In the first big movie sale at the Toronto International Film Festival, Fox Searchlight has picked up U.S. rights to Darren Aronofsky’s Venice winner The Wrestler for around $4 million.

The deal followed an all-night bidding war at the Four Seasons Hotel — led by CAA and said to include Lionsgate, Sony Pictures Classics and Overture Films — that concluded with a deal on Monday mid-morning.

Up until the sale of the Mickey Rourke-starrer about a comeback wrestler, Toronto had seen a quiet market, as studios and specialty distributors, sensing too much product in the market, had taken a pause.

Elsewhere, Image Entertainment picked up the U.S. rights to The Edge of Love, John Maybury’s portrait of the poet Dylan Thomas that stars Keira Knightley, Sienna Miller, Cillian Murphy and Matthew Rhys. The film’s screenplay is by Sharman Macdonald, Knightley’s mother.

Smaller deals in Toronto include Celluloid Dreams acquiring the international rights to Jeffrey Levy-Hinte’s documentary Soul Power, which features a 1974 concert in Kinshasa, Zaire by James Brown, B.B. King and others.

‘We are delighted to represent this crowd pleasing document of an extraordinary moment in musical history,’ Celluloid principal Hengameh Panahi said after picking up the concert documentary.

Maximum Films snapped up the Canadian rights to Steve Jacobs’ Disgrace, which stars John Malkovich and is based on a J.M. Coetzee novel, as part of a deal with Fortissimo Films.

‘We are thrilled that our friends at Maximum Films immediately recognized the passion and the power of this incredible adaptation of this award winning work of literature,’ Fortissimo’s Michael Werner said in a statement.

Anthony Fabian’s Skin, a drama about a black girl born to white parents in South Africa and starring Sophie Okonedo, Sam Neill and Alice Krige, has been sold into a number of territories by The Little Film Company, including France with UGCPH, Greece with Spentzos Film, Nordisk in Scandinavia, Front Row in the Middle East and in the Benelux region with European Film Partners.