Sony Pictures Classics has picked up U.S. rights to Oscar winner Denys Arcand’s upcoming The Fall of the American Empire. This is a follow-up of sorts to the Canadian helmer’s 1986 Oscar nominee The Decline Of The American Empire. SPC has also acquired all rights in Latin America, Australia and New Zealand.

The film explores the predominance of capitalism in a society where all other values seem to have crumbled. It centers on Pierre-Paul, a 36-year-old intellectual with a PhD in philosophy who is forced to work as a deliveryman to earn a decent living. One day, while delivering a parcel, he gets caught in a hold-up gone terribly wrong. With two dead and millions in money bags laying on the ground, Pierre-Paul is confronted with a dilemma: leave empty-handed, or take the money and run?

Alexandre Landry (Gabrielle) stars as Pierre-Paul with newcomer Maripier Morin, Louis Morissette (The Mirage), Maxim Roy (Look Again), Pierre Curzi (The Barbarian Invasions), Vincent Leclerc (The Revenant), Patrick Émmanuel Abellard, Florence Longpré (Threesome), Eddy King and Rémy Girard (Decline Of The American Empire, The Barbarian Invasions).

This is also a reteam for Arcand with SPC’s Michael Barker and Tom Bernard after previously working together on Love and Human Remains and Jesus of Montreal. Arcand won the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar for 2003’s Barbarian Invasions which was a sequel to the hit Decline Of The American Empire.

The SPC bosses say Arcand is “back with a satirical spirit as biting and as perceptive and as entertaining as he has ever been.” He wrote the script; Denise Robert produces.