Kino Lorber Buys North American Rights to Nobel Prizewinner Annie Ernaux’s Directorial Debut ‘The Super 8 Years’(EXCLUSIVE)

Elsa Keslassy
·2 min read
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Kino Lorber has acquired North American rights to “The Super 8 Years,” Annie Ernaux’s documentary feature which world premiered at Cannes’ Directors Fortnight. Represented in international markets by Totem Films, the intimate archival documentary is directed Ernaux and her son David Ernaux-Briot.

Ernaux, who will receive the Nobel Prize for Literature on Dec. 10., is one of France’s best known authors. Her body of work has often been inspired by her own life, capturing the inner turmoils of women and shedding light on societal and cultural changes in France from the 1960’s onwards.

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One of her autobiographical novels, “L’evenement” told the story of a young woman risking her life to get an illegal abortion in 1960’s France. The book was turned into into the award-winning film “Happening” by Audrey Diwan.

Kino Lorber will release “The Super 8 Years” theatrically and at the Film at Lincoln Center in New York on Dec. 16., a week after the Nobel Prize ceremony. The documentary will then roll out on digital platforms on Dec. 20 with an home entertainment release slated for 2023. Besides Cannes, the film played at Busan, Rome and Zurich, among other festivals.

Ernaux’s directorial debut, “The Super 8 Years” has been described as a natural extension of her literary work. Through the lens of the Ernaux family’s archive, the film portrays the pastimes, lifestyle and aspirations of a social class in post-1960s France.

The documentary is composed of Super 8 home video footage shot by Ernaux’s then husband Philippe Ernaux between 1972 and 1981, during holidays and family rituals in suburban bourgeois France, as well as trips abroad in Albania and Egypt, Spain and the USSR. Ernaux penned and narrates the introspective voice over.

The deal for “The Super 8 Years” was negotiated by Kino Lorber senior VP Wendy Lidell and Totem Films.

“One of our finest contemporary memoirists, Annie Ernaux writes about life directly as she experiences it, capturing the texture of memory with introspective candor and unflagging wit alongside larger societal observations,” said Lidell. “‘The Super 8 Years’ continues this tradition, with Annie’s own indelible voice bringing her most intimate family memories to life,” Lidell continued. “The Super 8 Years” was produced by Paris-based company Les Films Pelléas.

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