Kino Lorber has acquired North American distribution rights from Beta Cinema to Alex Schaad’s body swap thriller Skin Deep, which premiered in 2022 in Venice Critics’ Week, where it was awarded the Queer Lion.
Skin Deep is the directorial debut of Alex Schaad, who previously won the Student Academy Award for his social media thriller Invention of Trust.
The film is co-written by Schaad and his brother Dimitrij Schaad and produced by Tobias Walker and Philipp Worm of Walker + Worm Productions, Bayerischer Rundfunk, and Donndorffilm.
In the film, a young couple Leyla (Mala Emde) and Tristan (Jonas Dassler) travel to a remote island where they join another couple in a ritual to exchange bodies and see the world through the eyes of someone else. Free from the constraints of her former body, Leyla quickly finds she has never been happier, with a fresh outlook on life. But when she refuses to return to her old self, the situation threatens to spiral out of control.
The deal for Skin Deep was negotiated by Kino Lorber Senior Vice President Wendy Lidell and Dirk Schuerhoff, CEO of Beta Cinema.
Kino Lorber is planning a theatrical release later this year followed by a digital and home video release.
“Alex Schaad’s sensational debut is a twisty dive into who we are and who we love, a mind-boggling tour de force anchored by his actors’ shape-shifting performances as two characters who switch bodies,” said Kino Lorber SVP Wendy Lidell. “The results are both revelatory and deeply rewarding, and we think American audiences will join us in embracing this thoughtful, eye-opening love story.”
“Can you ever really know what is going on inside someone you love? What do we really love in a person anyway - their body or their mind? Will we still love them if they change? And how much can they change and still stay the same “someone” that you used to love? And what if there was a place where the boundaries of gender, sex and age could be overcome?Skin Deep offers very specific answers to these eternal questions,” said director Alex Schaad.
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