Sony Pictures Classics Buys Venice Competition Title 'Never Look Away'

SPC nabs Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck’s film for North America, Latin America, Australia/New Zealand and Scandinavia.

Sony Pictures Classics, the distributor that released Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck’s Oscar-winning debut The Lives of Others, has jumped on the German director's latest, Never Look Away, taking the drama for multiple territories, including North America.

SPC picked up rights to the psychological thriller from German sales outfit Beta Cinema in North and Latin America, Australia, New Zealand and Scandinavia ahead of its world premiere in competition at the Venice International Film Festival.

Never Look Away stars Tom Schilling, Paula Beer, Sebastian Koch, Saskia Rosendahl and Ina Weisse in an epic period drama spanning three eras of German history. Schilling stars as a young artist who flees from East Germany to West Germany but remains haunted by his childhood under the Nazis and his youth suffering under communism. Once in the West, he begins to work through his and his generation's trauma through his paintings.

Never Look Away will have its world premiere in Venice before heading to Toronto, where it will have a special presentation.

Jan Mojto produced the film with Donnersmarck; Quirin Berg and Max Wiedemann of Wiedemann & Berg Film production; and Christiane Henkel von Donnersmarck. Mojto's Pergamon Film and Wiedemann & Berg produced with ARD/Degeto, Bayerischer Rundfunk and Beta Cinema, all co-producers on The Lives of Others.

SPC handled the domestic release for The Lives of Others, which grossed $11.28 million in North America and won Donnersmarck the best foreign language film Oscar in 2007. His Hollywood follow-up, Sony Pictures' The Tourist (2010), starring Johnny Depp and Angelina Jolie, was a commercial success, earning $278 million worldwide, but was largely panned by critics.