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Acquisitions – Documentary Films

Cinedigm & Team of Docu Backers Have a Heart for Sundance Winner “Blood Brother”

Docu-lovers can consider themselves lucky as Steve Hoover’s Blood Brother, the  life-affirming, altering account which is regarded as one of the top offerings so far this year, (siting at the number 3 spot in our Best Docs (so far) of 2013) will be receiving some TLC from a five team partnership comprised of Tugg, ITVS, Independent Lens, Mongrel Media (Canadian distributor) and a film company that we think is the best new outfitter of the year in the folks at Cinedigm (lead by acquisitions head Vincent Scordino). Deadline reports that the award-winning doc is pegged for an October theatrical release, with the television premiere on Independent Lens/PBS circled for January 2014.

Gist: Double award winner at this year’s Sundance Film Festival is an intimate portrait of Rocky Braat, a young man who longed to find a family. He didn’t know it, but this desire would lead him to an AIDS hostel in India, a place of unspeakable hardship, where he would find almost more love and need than he could bear.

Worth Noting: Before embarking on his feature film debut, Hoover is already well-versed in filmmaking as a commercials and music video helmer – here’s a sample.

Do We Care?: Our doc-specialist Jordan M. Smith (who also interviewed Hoover at Hot Docs) reviewed the doc saying that like “its big hearted protagonist, Blood Brother offsets the horrors of HIV/AIDS with a genuine statement that small scale human compassion can be world altering. Wearing their hearts on their sleeves, Steve Hoover and his best friend have pieced together a stunning docu debut that will surely win the hearts of all but those most callously cynical while moving charitable mountains for a deserving cause.”

Eric Lavallée is the founder, CEO, editor-in-chief, film journalist and critic at IONCINEMA.com (founded in 2000). Eric is a regular at Sundance, Cannes and TIFF. He has a BFA in Film Studies at the Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema. In 2013 he served as a Narrative Competition Jury Member at the SXSW Film Festival. He was an associate producer on Mark Jackson's This Teacher (2018 LA Film Festival, 2018 BFI London). In 2022 he served as a New Flesh Comp for Best First Feature at the 2022 Fantasia Intl. Film Festival. Current top films for 2022 include Tár (Todd Field), All That Breathes (Shaunak Sen), Aftersun (Charlotte Wells).

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