Montreal-based Seville Pictures has taken all Canadian rights to Wolfgang Becker's international hit Good Bye, Lenin! and has acquired all French Canadian rights to Pedro Almodovar's upcoming Bad Education, currently in post-production.

Both deals are through Sony Pictures Classics (SPC), which holds North American rights on the pictures. Meanwhile, Toronto-based Mongrel Media and SPC have negotiated a nine-picture theatrical and TV sub-distribution slate that includes Robert Altman's The Company and the Errol Morris documentary The Fog Of War.

Unlike competitors such as Miramax and New Line, SPC does not currently have an exclusive sub-distributor in Canada; rather it sells packages of titles to various outfits. Other studio-owned classics divisions, such as Fox Searchlight and Paramount Classics distribute through their parent companies' Canadian distribution arm.

Good Bye Lenin! has grossed over $70m on release internationally, and is one of the highest grossing films of all time in its native Germany. The film will be released in North American in Spring 2004.

Seville held French Canadian rights to Almodovar's previous hit, Oscar-winner Talk To Her. Bad Education is slated for North American release in late 2004.

Other films on Seville's distribution slate include Takeshi Kitano's Zaitochi and Francois Ozon's 5x2, which Seville pre-bought Canadian rights through Celluloid Dreams, and Anne Fontaine's Nathalie' and Agnes Jaoui's Comme Une Image, pre-bought through Canal +.

On the Canadian film front, Seville will release Falling Angels by Scott Smith, based on the novel by Barbara Gowdy, Piggy Bank Blues directed by John N. Smith, the sequel and prequel to Canadian horror film Ginger Snaps, Emile by Carl Bessai, starring Sir Ian McKellen, and Daniel Roby's vampire romance Peau Blanche.

Apart from the Altman and Morris titles, Mongrel's SPC slate includes Canadian rights for Almodovar's Bad Education, Francois Dupeyron's Monsieur Ibrahim Et Les Fleurs Du Coran, Jean-Paul Rappeneau's Bon Voyage, Roger Michel's The Mother and Hans Petter Moland's Beautiful Country. SPC parent company Columbia Tristar will distribute the titles in home video, save the Seville-handled Bad Education in French Canada.