Cinema Guild Takes North America For Berlinale Encounters Winner ‘Here’; Rediance Unveils Asian Deals

EXCLUSIVE: Cinema Guild has acquired North American rights for Belgian director Bas Devos’s film Here which won best film in the Berlin Film Festival’s Encounters section last month as well as the Fipresci prize.

The film revolves around a Romanian construction worker living in Brussels who is making preparations ahead of his return home to visit his mother for the holidays, not knowing if he will come back to the city.

While waiting for his car to be fixed, he meets a Belgian-Chinese woman bryologist, or expert in the study of moss and lichen, who is preparing her doctorate while working in her aunt’s restaurant. Her attention to the near-invisible stops him in his tracks.

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Like Devos’s previous 2019 film Ghost Tropic, Brussels is inherent to the storyline as the director explores ideas of longing in contemporary urban life and the potential for enchantment that still exists in spaces shared by strangers from different worlds.

“During the pandemic, we missed out on the opportunity to share Ghost Tropic with audiences in theaters,” said Cinema Guild Head of Theatrical Tom Sveen.

“So we’re delighted that Bas Devos brings the same warmth and humanity to Here while adding a dash of romance. The film is a healing rain shower and we can’t wait to see what grows from it.”

The deal was negotiated by Sveen and Cinema Guild President Peter Kelly with Rediance’s Fen Chen and CEO Meng Xie.

In addition to the U.S. and Canada, Rediance has also recently closed deals for Japan (Sunny Film) and Singapore (Anticipate Pictures), and both distributors will carry out theatrical releases. The deals were closed before Filmart. 

Here is Devos’s fourth feature.

His first film Violet won the Grand Prize in the Berlinale Generation 14-plus section in 2014. His second film Hellhole premiered in the Berlinale’s Panorama sidebar in 2019. Ghost Tropic premiered later that year in Cannes Directors’ Fortnight.

World cinema specialist Cinema Guild’s upcoming releases include Hong Sangsoo’s Walk Up, Helena Wittmann’s Human Flowers of Flesh and Laura Citarella’s Trenque Lauquen.

Recent releases include Rodrigo Reyes’ Sansón and Me, Jacquelyn Mills’ Geographies of Solitude and Juan Pablo Gonzalez’s Dos Estaciones.

Cinema Guild will release the film theatrically following its U.S. premiere later this year.

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