LA-based Menemsha Entertainment has acquired worldwide rights excluding Turkey to the controversial Turkish film Hejar directed by Handan Ipekci. The film, which was the Turkish submission for last year's Academy Awards, was a breakthrough hit and scored 100,000 admissions before being banned for its "chauvinistic portrayal of the Turkish-Kurdish relationship."

The film is the story of a Kurdish girl who has lost her family in the operations mounted on her village in the south-east of Turkey, and her relationship with a retired Turkish judge when they are forced together during a raid on an apartment they are both caught in.

Menemsha, run by Neil Friedman in LA with Beatrix Wesle as his senior vice president in Europe, has built a reputation as a seller of prestige art films such as Color Of Paradise, Divided We Fall, Train Of Life and Son Of The Bride.

Friedman says that documentary Blind Spot: Hitler's Secretary, which Menemsha recently acquired, is stirring up interest with buyers. Directed by Andre Heller and Othmar Schmiderer, Blind Spot is an on-camera interview with 81 year-old Traudl Junge who was Adolf Hitler's private secretary from 1942 to 1945. It played in Panorama at the Berlin Film Festival this year, after which Sony Pictures Classics picked it up for the English-speaking world and Mexico to the film.