Summit Entertainment has picked up US rights to Kathryn Bigelow's The Hurt Locker in the second significant domestic deal of the festival.

The distributor closed the deal late on Tuesday night and plans to release the film in 2009. The deal follows a successful North American premiere for the war film here hot on the heels of a world premiere in Venice that earned a ten-minute standing ovation.

Meanwhile IFC Films closed a deal on Wednesday to acquire North American rights to Steven Soderbergh's four-hour Che starring Benicio Del Toro five months after its world premiere at Cannes. The film will be released for a one week awards qualifying run in New York and Los Angeles in December and then reopen in January through IFC In Theaters, the company's day-and-date distribution platforms which makes films available in theatres and on-demand simultaneously.

The deal was negotiated by IFC president Jonathan Sehring, vice president of acquisitions and production Arianna Bocco ad senior counsel Betsy Rodgers with Wild Bunch's Vincent Maraval, Agnes Mentre, Laurent Baudens and Pierre Selinger.

In The Hurt Locker, Jeremy Renner stars as the leader of a bomb disposal unit in Iraq whose reckless behaviour makes his fellow soldiers reevaluate their priorities. Anthony Mackie and Brian Geraghty also star and Bigelow produced with Nicolas Chartier, Gerg Shapiro and screenwriter Mark Boal.

CAA packaged the film and represented the domestic sale to Summit.

'It's wonderful to be working with Kathryn Bigelow and all of the film-making team to bring this film to the US audience,' said Summit co-chairman and CEO Rob Friedman.

Meanwhile several offers were on the table for Jim Stern's documentary Every Little Step however a deal has not closed yet.