New York-basedspecialized distributor New Yorker Films has acquired US distribution rights toJia Zhang-Ke's Chinese teen drama Unknown Pleasures which world premiered in competition atthis year's Cannes Film Festival. It also screened in Toronto and playedat the New York Film Festival last night.

The story ofjobless teenagers in rural China cost $0.5m to produce and was co-produced byJapan's T-Mark and Hong Kong's Hu Tong Communications withfinancial backing from Office Kitano (Japan), Bitters End (Japan), Lumen Films(France) and E-Pictures (Korea).

"It'sgreat that Jia's third feature finally made it to be distributed in theUS," said Shozo Ichiyama of T-Mark, the producer of Unknown Pleasures and of Jia's secondfeature Platform.

CelluloidDreams, which handled world sales of the film, has now sold the film to 12countries. As well as the US, deals were struck in Canada (Les Films Seville),France (AD Vitam), UK (Artificial Eye), Switzerland (Frentic Films), Belgium& Luxembourg (Cinelibre), Netherlands (A Films), Spain (Indisa), Portugal(Atalanta Films), Greece & Cyprus (Audio Visual Enterprises), Korea (E-Pictures) and Japan (Office Kitano/Bitters End).

UnknownPleasures will open inFrance this December, in Japan in Jan 2003 and in the rest of the worldsubsequently.