Penelope Cruz Drama ‘L’Immensità’ Bought by Music Box for U.S. Distribution From Pathé (EXCLUSIVE)

Music Box Films has bought U.S. distribution rights to “L’Immensità,” Emanuele Crialese’s (“Respiro“) film starring Penelope Cruz.

Crialese’s movie, which competed at the Venice Film Festival, will hit U.S. theaters next year. Cruz stars as Clara, a Spanish woman who has relocated to Rome in the early 1970s to raise a family with Felice (Vincenzo Amato), her emotionally distant and frequently absent husband. From their new apartment, Clara sees a city in transition: the remnants of an old society washed away by the tastes of an emerging middle class. Even though the paint is fresh, and the appliances are new, the crushing expectations around family, desire and gender remain as traditional as ever.

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Clara’s three children are likewise poised at a precipice, on the verge of adolescence and its myriad complications. Her eldest child, Adriana (played by newcomer Luana Giuliani), yearns for another life – an outsized, vibrantly-realized vision of a world where he simply gets to live as the boy he knows himself to be. Without an accepted vocabulary for talking about gender, Andrea simply tells adults that he’s an alien from another galaxy.

“L’Immensità” was warmly received upon premiering at Venice. Variety’s review said “Crialese’s odd, affecting memory piece layers the world as it is, and could be in the same gilded frame.”

The film was produced by Wildside, a Fremantle Company, and Chapter 2, a Mediawan company, and co-produced by Pathé. The deal was negotiated by Brian Andreotti from Music Box Films with CAA Media Finance and Pathé Films’ Marie-Laure Montironi, executive vice president of international sales.

Music Box recently acquired U.S. distribution rights to another highlight from Pathé, Alice Winocour’s heartfelt drama “Paris Memories” which world premiered at Cannes’ Directors Fortnight and played at Toronto. “Paris Memories” was one of the five finalists for France’s official submission to the 95th Academy Awards.

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