EXCLUSIVE: Big World Pictures has acquired U.S. and Canadian rights from Paris-based sales firm Charades to Giacomo Abbruzzese’s debut feature, Disco Boy.
Winner of the Berlinale’s Silver Bear for Outstanding Artistic Contribution earlier this year, the film stars rising German actor Franz Rogowski as a Belarusian immigrant haunted by his actions as a mercenary in the French Foreign Legion. Above is an English-language trailer for the movie.
An early 2024 theatrical release is being lined up following fall festival play.
Rogowski is best known for Ira Sachs’ Passages, Christian Petzold’s Transit and Sebastian Meise’s Great Freedom. Upcoming he will star in Andrea Arnold’s Bird and David Michod and A24’s Wizards!.
In Disco Boy, Rogowski plays Aleksei, who reaches Paris following a difficult and undocumented journey across Europe. In Paris he enlists in the French Foreign Legion, which will grant him a French passport in exchange for his service. His life will intertwine with that of Jomo, who is fighting against corrupt oil companies in the Niger Delta, and Jomo’s sister Udoka who dreams of escaping.
Deadline’s Damon Wise called the “beguilingly magic-realist” film “a trippy flex of the imagination that creates indelible images and strange new connections in the brain”.
New Directors/New Films noted that the film “investigates contemporary globalist Europe—the intertwined consequences of capitalism, militarism, and immigration—while also creating an interior portrait of the emotional fallout from violence and guilt. Abbruzzese’s ambitious film is a jarring, visually rich tale of exploitation and the possibility of transcendence.”
Previous releases for Big World Pictures include Ulrich Seidl’s Rimini, Radu Jude’s Aferim! and Mohammad Rasoulof’s A Man Of Integrity.
