The Belgian drama from director Bas Devos premiered as part of the Directors' Fortnight in Cannes last year.
New York boutique distributor Cinema Guild has picked up the Belgium drama Ghost Tropic for North America.
The third feature from Belgian director Bas Devos, Ghost Tropic premiered in the Directors' Fortnight of Cannes last year.
The drama follows Khadija (Saadia Bentaieb), a 58-year-old cleaning woman of Maghrebi origins living in Brussels who falls asleep on the last subway train, waking up at the end of the line. She has no choice but to make her way home, across the city, on foot.
Devos’s light touch with the issues of immigration, Islamophobia (the film takes place in the wake of the terrorist bombings that shook Brussels in 2016) and the gap between rich and poor, drew critical praise for Ghost Tropic. The Hollywood Reporter called the film "a stunning little gem," citing it as one of the few standouts of the 2019 Directors' Fortnight section, alongside Robert Eggers' The Lighthouse, which has become a sleeper hit and even picked up an Oscar nomination for cinematographer Jarin Blaschke.
“When we first saw Ghost Tropic, it took us on an immersive journey through a side of contemporary Europe we hadn’t seen on film before,” said Cinema Guild president Peter Kelly. “We can’t wait for audiences to take the trip with us.”
Cinema Guild will premiere Ghost Tropic in New York next month as part of the First Look 2020 program at the Museum of the Moving Image, before rolling the movie out in theaters later this year.
The deal for Ghost Tropic was negotiated by Peter Kelly of Cinema Guild with Meng Xie of sales group Rediance Films.
Cinema Guild's upcoming lineup includes Angela Schanelec’s I Was at Home, But …, which premiered in Berlin last year; Albert Serra’s Catalan period drama Liberté, which bowed in Cannes' Un Certain Regard section; and Kazik Radwanski’s Anne at 13,000 ft., which premiered in Toronto and will screen as part of the Forum lineup at the Berlin International Film Festival later this month.
