GKIDS has entered a distribution agreement for all North American rights to the upcoming animated feature The Girl without Hands, following the film’s premiere screening at Cannes. Written and directed by French auteur Sebastien Laudenbach, the adult fairytale will screen in competition at Annecy in June.
GKIDS’ President & CEO Eric Beckman and SVP Distribution David Jesteadt negoatiated the deal with Pyramide International’s head of international sales Agathe Valentin.
“Dave and I were both blown away,” said Beckman. “The film has an utterly transporting beauty and poetry, while the story unfolds with the powerful dream logic of a fairytale, taking you into the darker, deeper, primal origins and emotional core of the Grimm’s tales. With magic and cruelty, sublime beauty and tenderness, The Girl without Hands is at once timeless and unlike anything you have seen before, a stunning example of the potential of the medium of animation as a powerful cinematic art form for adult moviegoers.”
Produced by Les Film Sauvages, The Girl without Hands is based on an infrequently adapted Brothers Grimm fairytale. The film centers on a girl, the daughter of a miller who in hard times sells her to the Devil. Protected by her purity from the archfiend, she escapes, but the Devil in revenge deprives her of her hands.