Sideshow & Janus Films, maestros behind the launch of Drive My Car, bring EO to cinemas

“The donkey is cute, but this is not a Disney film,” says Jonathan Sehring, the former head of IFC Films, whose fledgling distribution channel Sideshow produced Jerzy Skolimowski’s Cannes jury-winning film with Janus Films . E.O this weekend at two theaters in NYC. “We created Sideshow for great films that would otherwise be overlooked, to give them the best release possible,” he told Deadline.

E.O comes to the big screen a year after Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s opened drive my carHe tenderly directed the three-hour Japanese film about a grieving theater director who guided a production of Uncle Vanya through an acclaimed season extension that garnered four Oscar nominations, a Best International Feature Film win and solid box office returns.

“We didn’t invent it. It was a very traditional platform release because when we bought it we were hoping it would be a critically acclaimed film. We didn’t know what the reaction would be. You never know,” he said.

E.O The reviews so far have been nothing short of phenomenal. Deadline review from Cannes here.

Skolimowski will be in NYC for select screenings and Q&As. E.O opens in four theaters in LA on December 2nd and then expands to 12-15 markets. Reservations are actually out drive my car Despite a busy art house market, more theaters opened this year than last year. And Poland’s Oscar entry is a “lively, fresh and different film than anything you’re going to see,” Sehring said.

E.O is a vision of modern Europe seen through the eyes of a donkey on a stoic journey through a world where disaster and despair alternate with unexpected bliss. being Presented by Skopia Film and Jeremy Thomas. Screenplay by Ewa Piaskowska and Skolimowski. E.O It stars Sandra Drzymalska, Isabelle Huppert, Lorenzo Zurzolo and Mateusz Kosciukiewicz, but it’s a film with relatively little dialogue. The donkey is the star.

Sehring said he was delighted to work with the 84-year-old director and remembers being blown away at a screening of Skolinowski’s at his first Cannes film festival in 1982 moonlight with Jeremy Irons.

The CEO launched Sideshow two years ago with Jonathan Turell and Peter Becker, partners at Janus Films. Turell is also CEO and Becker President of The Criterion Collection, a separate company that shares an executive team and works regularly with Janus. drive my car was her first project.

Sideshow is also partnering with Submarine at HBO Films Anything that breathesWinner of Cannes Best Documentary Awards and Sundance World Cinema.

The slate includes No bears the Iranian director Jafar Panahi, whose release is scheduled for December 23, has been imprisoned; The Eight Mountains by Felix van Groeningen and Charlotte Vandermeersch, who shared the Cannes Jury Prize E.O; and that of Jean-Pierre & Luc Dardenne Tori and Lokita.