Well Go USA Entertainment has acquired North American rights to Ukrainian war drama Sniper: The White Raven, directed by first-time filmmaker Marian Bushan, from Berlin/Warsaw-based sales agent Media Move.
Media Move’s Justyna Koronkiewicz told Screen that a day-and-date release in the US is planned for July 1.
The film has also sold to South Korea (YJ Creative) and Japan (AMG Entertainment).
Sniper centres on an eccentric pacifist (played by actor, musician and photographer Pavlo Aldoshyn), whose world collapses when the war starts in Donbass and his pregnant wife (Maryna Koshkina, the lead in Taras Dron’s award-winning Blindfold) is killed by militants. Mykola enlists in the military and earns a position as a sniper, vowing revenge both against his wife’s attackers and the elite enemy sniper who mortally wounded one of his closest comrades.
The production by the UM Group received support from the Ukrainian State Film Agency and the Ministry of Culture and Information Policy.
Bushan, who wrote the screenplay for Sniper with Mykola Voronin, previously directed 2016 documentary The Lucescu Phenomenon about the former Romanian football player and coach Mircea Lucescu, and 2010 short Rakhira based on the novel Land by Olha Kobylianska.
Negotiations are also underway with distributors to acquire the film for French- and German-speaking territories, as well as UK/Ireland, Spain, Italy, Latin America, Poland and Sweden, among others.
“Although the film was not able to be released in its home territory in February as originally planned, we are gratified by the opportunity to make this story accessible to North American audiences,” said Doris Pfardrescher, president and CEO at Well Go USA Entertainment.
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