Australia's Sharmill Films and Champion Pictures have bought Australian rights to writer-director Radu Mihaileanu's World War II story Train Of Life from Menemsha Entertainment.

The film was included in the programme of last year's French Film Festival and is set to get a mid-year release. Sharmill has a long history of distributing French films. Its most recent release was Francis Veber's The Dinner Game which has grossed A$400,000 in its first five weeks in Australia; a solid performance for a foreign-language title.