Kino Lorber has acquired North American rights from Beta Cinema to the feature film “Sand Storm,” which won the World Cinema Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival in January.
“Sand Storm,” the directorial debut of Israeli filmmaker Elite Zexer, also won awards at the Jerusalem and Locarno Film Festival’s work-in-progress sections, and won the New Directors competition at the Seattle International Film Festival.
“Sand Storm” will premiere at New York’s Film Forum on Sept. 28, and expand to other national markets during the fall.
The story centers on a 42-year-old Bedouin woman hosting her husband’s second marriage to a bride who is 20 years younger than her, while her 18-year-old daughter’s secretive forbidden liaison with a strange man was just unveiled. The movie stars Ruba Blal-Asfour as the wife and Lamis Ammar as the daughter.
Ella Taylor said in her review for Variety, “… this emotionally intelligent first feature offers a sympathetic but clear-eyed look at the tangled skein of inequalities that entrap women (and the men they love and resent) in a Bedouin village stranded between modernization and anachronistic patriarchy.”
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“This is a subtle, intelligent and incredibly cinematic portrayal of a mother-daughter relationship,” said Kino Lorber CEO Richard Lorber, “and their struggle to re-define their place in a world bound by tradition and changing by the minute.”
Producers are Haim Mecklberg and Estee Yacov-Mecklberg. Executive producers are Rami Yehoshua, Moshe Edery, Leon Edery and Yigal Mograbi.
