FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: September 24, 2019

Cinema Guild acquires Albert Serra’s Cannes prizewinner Liberté

NEW YORK, NY- Cinema Guild announced today the acquisition of all U.S. distribution rights for Albert Serra's Liberté. The film won a Special Jury Prize when it premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in May. It’s an official election of both the Toronto International Film Festival and the New York Film Festival. Cinema Guild will open the film in theaters in 2020.

Just before the French Revolution, in a forest outside Berlin, a band of libertines expelled from the court of Louis XVI rendezvous with the legendary German seducer and freethinker, the Duc de Walchen (Helmut Berger), to convince him to join in their mission: the rejection of authority and all moral boundaries. What begins as an evening of strategizing on the proliferation of libertinage, descends into a Sadean night of pansexual one-upmanship.

Liberté is a singular cinematic experience only Albert Serra could deliver, a film in which increasingly dramatic acts of pain and pleasure unfold in counterpoint to cinematographer Artur Tort’s luminous images of moonlit sylvan spaces. As Serra and his committed team of regular performers and newcomers "open the gates of Hell" and explore the limits of the erotic imagination, you won’t be able to look away.

"What I hope audiences are left with after watching Liberté is the transfixing beauty of its images," said Cinema Guild President Peter Kelly. "Albert Serra is a true original and we are very excited to once again offer cinephiles the chance to engage with his extraordinary work."

"Over the years, Cinema Guild has established itself as one of the best brands for visionary filmmakers," said Films Boutique CEO Jean-Christophe Simon. "We could not dream of a better home for the film in the United States."

The deal was negotiated by Kelly of Cinema Guild with Simon of Films Boutique.

Cinema Guild is a premier distributor of world cinema, independent films and documentaries, whose upcoming releases include Angela Schanelec's I Was at Home, But... and Wang Xiaoshuai's Chinese Portrait. Recent theatrical releases include Lucio Castro’s End of the Century, Nuri Bilge Ceylan's The Wild Pear Tree and RaMell Ross's Academy Award-nominated Hale County This Morning, This Evening.



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(212) 685-6242 or press at cinemaguild dot com

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