ARP has bought French rights to The Story Of The Weeping Camel, one of the surprise hits of the Toronto Film Festival and the official Mongolian entry for this year's best foreign language film Academy Award.

Sold to the French independent by Menemsha Entertainment, which has worldwide sales rights, the film is a docu-drama directed by Luigi Falorni & Byambasuren Davaa as their graduation film from the Munich Film School.

Set in the remotest parts of the Gobi desert, it tells the story of a family of shepherds trying to bring a mother camel together with the baby camel she rejected at birth.

The deal was closed between Laurent Petin and Michele Halberstadt of ARP with Menemsha's European sales chief Beatrix Wesle in association with Natalie Lambsdorff, head of department at the Munich Film School.

Menemsha sold domestic rights to the film to THINKFilm which plans to open it next summer in the US and Canada.