As the Toronto International Film Festival came to a close yesterday with the announcements of its awards, there continued to be business announcements of new distribution deals that will bring many Toronto highlights into North American cinemas later this year.


PALM PICTURES PICKS UP MEXICAN FILM

Indie distributor Palm Pictures announced the pick up of North American rights to Cronicas,a Mexico-Ecuador co-production which debuted earlier this year in the Cannes Film Festival's
Un Certain Regard section and also screened in Toronto. The film, directed by Ecuadoran filmmaker Sebastian Cordero, is a suspense thriller starring Latino actor John Leguizamo as a star reporter from Miami who travels to Ecuador to unravel the mystery of a serial murderer of children. The film will be released by Palm Pictures in early 2005 and is being sold internationally by Focus Features.


FINE LINE ACQUIRES YAO MING DOC

Fine Line Features, the arthouse division of New Line Cinema, already has an ambitious slate of new films, with Venice winners Vera Drake (directed by Mike Leigh) and The Sea Inside (directed by Alejandro Almenabar) joining the new John Waters flick A Dirty Shame on its Fall schedule.

In Toronto, Fine Line picked up worldwide rights to The Year of the Yao, a documentary portrait of US basketball star Yao Ming, which screened in the Festival’s Real to Reel section. The film, which was produced by Los Angeles-based Endgame Entertainment, follows the story of the 7 foot, 6 inch athlete from his humble origins in China to his current status as one of basketball’s most highly paid and recognizable stars.


BELGIUM OSCAR CONTENDER MAKES ITS MARK IN TORONTO

The Alzheimer Case, a Flemish-language thriller directed by Erik Van Looy, has been chosen to represent Belgium for the Best Foreign Language Oscar. The film, which screened in the Contemporary World Cinema section in Toronto, has been a major box office hit in its native Belgium, having also won local awards for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor and Best Screenplay.

The film is a visually innovative noir thriller about an aging hit man who takes justice into his own hands when he is pushed to the edge by the corruption that surrounds him. An interesting twist is that the hit man is beginning to lose his memory due to the onset of Alzheimer’s disease, and that creates an added race-against-the-clock tension that makes this a unique and highly involved thriller. The film, which does not currently have a North American distributor attached, is being sold by UK sales company The Works.