Watermelon Pictures is testing the market with Cannes-premiering To a Land Unknown among a handful of well-reviewed and thoughtful narrative films from Wild Diamond to Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight and Sovereign, and documentaries We Are Guardians and Apocalypse in the Tropics hailing from the Croisette, Venice and Telluride and with distributors more upbeat on the indie/arthouse scene than they’ve been in some time.
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“The market is in recovery. I feel energized by it right now,” said Kyle Greenberg, marketing and distribution head for Utopia, which is in the market with a trio of innovative projects, including the ongoing Pavements road show.
“The indie box office feels stronger,” agrees Justin DiPietro, EVP Marketing, Distribution & Business Development for Watermelon Pictures, genre label Dark Sky Films & parent MPI Media Group. Watermelon is out with Mahdi Fleifel’s To a Land Unknown in NY and L.A. at the Quad and Laemmle Royal, respectively. The narrative feature debut of the Palestinian-Danish director of documentaries, including the multiple award-winning A World Not Ours, expands to 25+ markets next week and to the top 50 the following. Premiered at Cannes Directors’ Fortnight, see Deadline review and Fleifel interview at Deadline’s Cannes Studio.
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Mahmood Bakri and Aram Sabbah star in To a Land Unknown as Palestinian cousins Chatila and Reda, hustling their way through the underbelly of Athens pursuing their dream of making it to Germany. As their hardship grows, so too does their desperation. When Chatila hatches a reckless all-or-nothing plan, it strains their bond and pushes the limits of what they will do for freedom. Written by Fleifel, Fyzal Boulifa and Jason McColgan.
Deadline’s review says Fleifel brings “a steady hand to this material, never trying to overstep the limits of these two men’s daily experience to grandstand or wave a flag. He cites Midnight Cowboy as an inspiration; others have compared To a Land Unknown to the Italian neo-realist classic The Bicycle Thief. What it shares with both these films is a generously simple sympathy with these men, even when their criminal activities become monstrous. This would be unworkable were it not for the warmth of the performances by Bakri and Sabbah, who cling to each other, fight and make up again with the urgency of people whose only remnant of home, having been exiled twice over, is each other.”
Watermelon Pictures, launched In 2024 by Badie and Hamza Ali with Alana Hadid as creative director, focuses on Palestinian and Arab stories and underrepresented voices at a complex moment morally, geopolitically and also theatrically. Releases include documentary Walled Off, The Teacher and The Encampments. The latter followed Columbia University students who, in 2024, launched a movement protesting the war in Gaza and features activist Mahmoud Khalil, a graduate student active in the demonstrations who also served as a spokesperson for the group with the university. He was arrested by ICE agents in March and held in a detention center in Louisiana, where he faced deportation amid a legal fight over where his case should be heard. Recently freed, he has filed a claim for $20 million in damages against the Trump administration. The Encampments was released the same month as documentary October 8, which examined the emergence of antisemitism on college campuses, in social media and on the streets after the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel.
Sony Pictures Classics is out with Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight in limited release in New York (Lincoln Center and Angelika) and L.A. (Laemmle Royal and AMC Burbank 16). Written and directed by Embeth Davidtz, the film based on Alexandra Fuller’s memoir captures the childhood of 8-year-old Bobo on her family farm in Zimbabwe (formerly Rhodesia) at the end of the Zimbabwean War for independence in 1980. Growing up in the midst of this long-running war, Bobo internalizes both sides of the struggle. Conflicted by her love for people on opposing sides, she tries to make sense of her life in a magical way. Through her 8-year-old gaze we witness Rhodesia’s final days, the family’s unbreakable bond with Africa and the deep scars that war leaves on survivors.
Stars newcomer Lexi Venter with Davidtz, Zikhona Bali, Fumani N Shilubana, Rob Van Vuuren and Anina Hope Reed. SPC picked up worldwide rights to Davidtz feature debut after its Telluride world premiere. The movie also played TIFF as a gala presentation. Shot in South Africa, where U.S.-born actress Davidtz (Schindler’s List, Bridget Jones’s Diary) was raised, with an all-South African cast and crew. Hear the helmer on her film at Deadline’s Toronto Studio.
Wild Diamond from Strand Releasing, Cannes-premiering feature debut of Agathe Riedinger, opens at the IFC Center in NYC, adds L.A.’s Laemmle’s Royal and Gene Siskel Film Center Chicago next week. Stars Malou Khebizi as 19-year-old Liane, daring and fiery and living with her mother and little sister under the dusty sun of Fréjus in the South of France. Obsessed with beauty and the need to become “someone,” she sees reality TV as her opportunity to be loved. Fate smiles upon her when she auditions for the show Miracle Island. See Deadline review.
Briarcliff opens crime thriller Sovereign starring Dennis Quaid, Nick Offerman and Jacob Tremblay on 54 screens. Inspired by true events, the film written and directed by Christian Swegal follows Jerry and Joseph Kane, a father and his teenage son who are members of the Sovereign Citizen belief system, a deeply anti-establishment worldview rooted in distrust of government authority. As the pair travels across the country delivering self-taught legal seminars and pushing back against systems they believe have failed them, their journey brings them into conflict with Police Chief John Bouchart, setting off a tragic chain of events that forces a reckoning with power, principle and the limits of freedom. Also stars Thomas Mann, Martha Plimpton and Nancy Travis. World premiered at Tribeca Festival this summer.
Moderate release: IFC Film/RLJ Entertainment scares up Abraham’s Boys: A Dracula Story by Natasha Kermani on 470 screens. Based on the short story by Joe Hill.
Max and Rudy Van Helsing have spent their lives under the strict and overprotective rule of their father, Abraham. Unaware of his dark past, they struggle to understand his paranoia and increasingly erratic behavior. But when they begin to uncover the violent truths behind their father’s history with Dracula, their world unravels, forcing them to confront the terrifying legacy they never were meant to inherit. Starring Titus Welliver, Jocelin Donahue, Aurora Perrineau.
Netflix is giving a weeklong exclusive theatrical ping to Petra Costa documentary Apocalypse in the Tropics, opening the Netflix Original at the IFC Center in NYC, Laemmle Monica Film Center in L.A. and Landmark Opera Plaza in San Francisco. It also will play this weekend at Hot Docs in Toronto and VIFF Centre in Vancouver.
Costa’s previous documentary, 2019’s The Edge of Democracy, another Netflix Original, nabbed an Oscar nomination for Best Documentary Feature. It explored how Costa’s native Brazil emerged from military dictatorship in the mid-1980s, only to see fundamental tenets of democracy threatened more recently by right-wing elements who refused to honor the peaceful transition of power — a phenomenon that would be replayed in the U.S. after the 2020 presidential election.
Apocalypse in the Tropics examines another threat to Brazilian democracy and the rise of Christian nationalism, which also echoes in the United States. It premiered at the Venice Film Festival, screening at Telluride, San Sebastián, São Paulo International Film Festival and many others, taking two prizes at the Montclair Film Festival including the David Carr for Truth in Non-Fiction Filmmaking.
Documentary We Are Guardians from distributor Area 23a opens in NYC at The Village East by Angelika this weekend, continuing its theatrical tour after premiering in 50+ cities across North America since June. Directed by Edivan Guajajara, co-founder of Mídia Indígena, Brazil’s leading Indigenous-led journalism collective, and environmental filmmakers Chelsea Greene and Rob Grobman, produced by Oscar-winner Fisher Stevens and executive produced by Leonardo DiCaprio
The doc, which opened in L.A. last week, will run through September. It follows the Indigenous protectors of Brazil’s Amazon rainforest as they risk their lives to fend off illegal loggers and land invaders. Shot in a close, character-driven vérité style, the film explores the complex intersections of politics, history, economics and science, shedding light on the global implications of deforestation in one of the world’s most vital ecosystems and the Tembé and Guajajara people’s struggle to preserve their ancestral lands.
It’s timely: The United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP30) will be held in the Amazon for the first time, later this year. Accolades for the film, which world-premiered at Hot Docs in Toronto, include the Cinema for Peace Green Film Award, the Jackson Wild Impact Award, Best Documentary at the UK’s Raindance Film Festival, and the Audience Award for Best Documentary at the Mostra São Paulo International Film Festival.
Gritty Irish crime thriller Amongst the Wolves from Sunrise Films, by director Mark O’Connor (Cardboard Gangsters), is out in a handful of U.S. theaters and on digital platforms. Stars Aiden Gillen from Game of Thrones, Luke McQuillan (Black Medicine), Jade Jordan (You Are Not My Mother) and Helen Behan (Small Things Like These). Premiered at the 2024 Galway Film Fleadh. Set against the backdrop of Dublin’s underworld, the pic follows Danny (McQuillan), a homeless ex-soldier battling PTSD whose chance encounter with a runaway teen, Will (Daniel Fee), sparks an unlikely alliance. As they’re hunted by a ruthless drug gang led by the menacing Power (Gillen), their fight for survival becomes a journey of redemption. Released earlier this year in Ireland and the UK by Wildcard and Vertigo.
Re-release: Rosa La Rose, Fille Publique, the 1986 drama from the late prolific French filmmaker Paul Vecchiali, opens for an exclusive one-week NYC theatrical run at Metrograph. The 2k restoration is the first New York release for the film, which barely was screened in North America. American Genre Film Archive is leading theatrical. Will be showing in L.A. at Brain Dead Studios on July 15.
Stars Marianne Basler as Rosa (“La Rose”), who is desired by men, pampered by her indulgent pimp (Jean Sorel) and beloved by her fellow working girls plying their trade in the streets around Les Halles, until tragedy strikes on the eve of her 20th birthday. A love-at-first-sight encounter with Julien (Pierre Cosso), a young worker, will shake her out of the comfortable place she’s found in the ecosystem of “the milieu.”